livestock is literally the lowest category of usage on the Colorado river, its horrible land for it.
grass, intensive cash crops like almonds, and flood irrigation need curbed
I think that’s misleading because although livestock don’t directly use a lot of water…
Irrigation of crops is the largest offstream use of water in the CRB, averaging 85% of total offstream use
And a lot of those crops are no doubt food for livestock.
reducing irrigation is absolute. it doesnt matter if it was 100% for human consumption, it must go down.
That’s not accounting for cattle feed, which is an enormous land and water use, and drives the concentration of human-destined crops into places like California
Is cattle feed typically grown locally? I’d think corn/grains at least would be shipped in. I don’t know if its economically viable to ship bales of hay in.
The midwest farmland being used to grow cattle feed could be reoriented towards human-destined food. Those places receive way, way more rain than California. I’m looking at the whole US food system: animal agriculture has caused our most critical farmland to be concentrated in a region of the country extremely vulnerable to climate change.
