[HN Gopher] The Rise of the Bee Bandits
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The Rise of the Bee Bandits
Author : jger15
Score : 23 points
Date : 2024-04-26 15:09 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.noemamag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.noemamag.com)
| JohnMakin wrote:
| The biggest problem I have with this is a question this article
| is not asking - do we need to devote so many resources to growing
| almonds? The water usage alone is a little ridiculous in a state
| that has droughts that almost certainly will get worse over time.
| 17% of the _total_ agricultural water allocation in CA (which is
| a buttload of water) goes to growing almonds.
| observationist wrote:
| It's completely irresponsible and ignorant of long term
| consequences. Private almond farms (among other crops) are
| allowed to egregiously consume insane quantities of finite
| resources, resulting in huge disparity in the benefits from
| those resources that should be a common good. Politicians get
| funded by wealthy farmers, and farmers get wealthier by funding
| politicians.
|
| In addition to almond farms, there are all sorts of alfalfa and
| feed crops produced with a high water weight that get shipped
| overseas or to other states. Whatever mechanisms most states
| have in play to manage their water resources are completely
| inadequate, and they should probably be overhauled. The only
| reason almonds and other water intensive crops are grown is
| because there's an exploitable difference in the valuation of
| the product and the cost of one or more resources required for
| production.
|
| The problem can be regulated and rectified, but the people with
| money have a big advantage.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "The problem can be regulated and rectified,"
|
| What exactly is the problem and how can it be rectified?
| Sure, we could make farmers pay actual costs and eliminate
| subsidies. We will also massively cut production because
| local farm can't compete with overseas crop prices. It's also
| possible the rich countries buyout crops from the poor and
| create famines or the breakdown of free trade (or we abandon
| the US version of free trade and tax imports to match
| domestic prices).
| kurthr wrote:
| I think you'd want a justification for subsidizing selected
| farmers and foreign countries imports other than, it makes
| the largest landowners the highest short term profit. None
| of it will exist long term unless global warming increases
| rainfall in the western US.
|
| How to rectify? The simplest is to charge/tax farming with
| scarce water for export. The next is to allow metro
| purchase of water rights (already happening).
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _What exactly is the problem and how can it be
| rectified?_
|
| California has a smaller water budget than before. Use has
| to be cut from somewhere, and to date, those cuts have been
| disproportionately borne by the 10% that goes to urban
| users.
|
| There should be a fixed amount of water every farm and
| household gets for free, and after that, a market rate for
| it. (This is complicated by the history of Western water
| rights.)
|
| > _will also massively cut production because local farm
| can 't compete with overseas crop prices_
|
| The world doesn't have that much arable land [1]. America
| has most of it (and somewhat uniquley, a growing share),
| and moreover, it's bang next to the world's largest
| consumers. Those are difficult built-in advantages to fuck
| up. (I'm not even counting the various federal agricultural
| subisides and trade protections.)
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arable_land
| JohnMakin wrote:
| > those cuts have been disproportionately borne by the
| 10% that goes to urban users
|
| This is really the core of my frustration - if you're a
| CA resident, and don't live in the central valley or work
| in the agriculture business, what possible benefit to you
| is supplying most of the world's supply of almonds?
| Water, especially in the southwest, is an increasingly
| scarce and valuable resource. Why would california
| residents want to subsidize the rest of the world's
| almond consumption? (Honestly I think they don't, but the
| political reasons behind this are complex and depressing
| and way off track of the subject matter of this thread)
| observationist wrote:
| Don't worry, your sacrifice means the politicians funded
| by the farmers continue to get elected. All you need to
| do is elect different politicians that will enact
| regulation that sensibly and responsibly manage the
| water, reducing the profit made by almond farmers and
| their campaign donations.
|
| I'm sure they pay taxes that fund something or other they
| can point to as somehow being a net benefit to "the
| economy" or some high level abstraction. The politics
| should be simple - California's got a whole lot of cities
| and population in places where a reliable and predictable
| source of clean water is a matter of life and death, and
| it should be a trivial calculation of necessity. What is
| needed by those places, minus a sensible and responsible
| buffer, is set aside, calculated dispassionately and
| without regard to almond farmers or any other interests.
| Once those calculations are made, offer fair allowances
| of water from what remains. If some years there are no
| allowances, then maybe you shouldn't run an almond farm
| in California. People should win out over corporations
| almost every time.
|
| The trouble with these issues is that yes, they are
| complex, and that it's somehow acceptable for politicians
| to use the complexity to fog up the narratives and we
| give them the latitude to make bass ackwards decisions
| like favoring the almond farmers. Deny them the
| complexity and insist on the simple solution - people
| first, corporations can figure their shit out with
| whatever's left, and no more.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "I'm not even counting the various federal agricultural
| subisides and trade protections."
|
| This was the main part I was talking about. The only way
| most farms get by is due to subsidies. There aren't many
| trade protections that I'm aware of. For example, honey
| is completely undercut by overseas sources, organic
| labeling is based on the production site regulations
| which can be less strict than domestically, we can't
| export most pork due to ratraphine use, etc.
|
| Remove the protections and rhe industry collapses. This
| is the odd man out when it comes to politics as it's
| something supported by both sides. Cost of living is too
| high in the US to be able to export to many nations. The
| major consumers would look to the cheaper nations before
| us, leading to strict export controls, further supporting
| price increases. We saw a bit about this with the wheat
| export restrictions and famine fears in some countries.
|
| The water allocations should be fixed. It's possible that
| eliminating crops not suitable for the area could be
| another fix (rice and almonds) without having to dive too
| much into the allocation side.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Not a lot of subsidies. Certainly just rhetoric to talk
| about 'most farms'.
|
| Despite the rhetoric of "preserving the family farm," the
| vast majority of farmers do not benefit from federal farm
| subsidy programs and most of the subsidies go to the
| largest and most financially secure farm operations.
|
| Small operators can participate in crop insurance. But
| they pay for that, just like you and me.
| giantg2 wrote:
| You do realize crop insurance is actually subsidized by
| the Feds right? Yes, individuals still pay, but the feds
| cover a portion of the premiums. Commodity market price
| controls are a form of subsidization.
|
| Yes a lot of the money goes to the biggest farms. There
| are some programs specifically for smaller operations
| too. There are also state level grants, programs, and
| subsidies in most states. There are even programs for
| distressed loans.
| danielvf wrote:
| My understanding is that the overall move towards almonds is
| actually a move towards crops that are efficient in terms of
| dollars of income for a fixed amount of water.
|
| Wheat exports for $250 per ton of wheat. This month almonds
| export at $3,783 per ton. (This is actually down quite a bit
| from before and is resulting in fewer almonds being grown this
| year.)
|
| In other words, given that farmers have a roughly fixed
| allotment of water to work from, if you completely banned all
| almond growing from CA, farmers would just use that same water
| on other plants and water usage would not change at all.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| You're making the assumption that the water supply is
| fungible, infinite, and predictable - every year we've had
| severe drought, they don't cut back on agriculture, they cut
| back on consumer's water. I also don't think the current
| level of consumption will be sustainable, so although I do
| agree they'd try to use the same amount, the net result will
| be less water for people who actually need/use it to live.
| tylershuster wrote:
| Restraint is not part of the free-market calculus. Sure, people
| like to tout "sustainability" but only as a means of selling
| yet more products. It's not profitable to fast. Well, it's not
| materially profitable. Until the well dries up.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _17% of the total agricultural water allocation in CA (which
| is a buttload of water) goes to growing almonds_
|
| To put that into perspective, that is almost twice as much
| water as California's cities use _in total_ [1].
|
| [1] https://cwc.ca.gov/-/media/CWC-
| Website/Files/Documents/2019/... _50% environmental, 40%
| agricultural, and 10% urban_
| imzadi wrote:
| I'm guessing the bees are just going in circles, steal from
| person A and sell to person B. Now person A needs bees, so steal
| from person C and sell to Person A, and it keeps going like that.
| The smaller and poorer beeks won't be able to afford to buy back
| their bees (or replacement bees), which will ultimately
| consolidate all the bees among a few wealthier groups. Once most
| bees are controlled by a few people/groups, they'll fund the
| infrastructure needed to keep the bees more secure.
| kazinator wrote:
| They should easily catch these guys if they set up the right kind
| of sting operation.
| throwup238 wrote:
| The trick is to comb the area until they find the culprits.
| kazinator wrote:
| If you think I'm done with the dad jokes here, I've got news
| for you, honey.
| pimlottc wrote:
| I swear, this place is a hive mind sometimes...
| throwup238 wrote:
| Be careful you don't bumble through your worldplay!
| kazinator wrote:
| The judge should make a point of requiring custom black-and-
| yellow-striped prison suits for these bastards.
| schoen wrote:
| They need to have people listening to the buzz in the criminal
| underworld.
| jna_sh wrote:
| Funny, I went out on hive maintenance round with a local
| beekeeper here in the Netherlands, and he was telling me about
| bee thefts. Not even whole hives, he's had other beekeepers go in
| and steal just the queens, effectively killing the hive in the
| process.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| _Farmers have carpeted huge swathes of prime Central Valley land
| with serried ranks of almond trees. The annual budding of this
| sought-after nut and its burgeoning pollination needs means up to
| roughly nine out of every 10 commercial honeybee hives must be
| sent here from all corners of the U.S._
|
| In addition to points made by others here, I wonder also about
| our general drop in bees and other insects.
|
| I am astonished this one crop hogs so many resources and I don't
| know how to feel about it. I like almonds and would like to
| someday learn to make homemade marzipan like my mother made when
| I was a child (sweetened almond paste, basically).
|
| Almonds get vilified for their water use in California and,
| meanwhile, people are also hating on the meat industry and
| promoting veganism. It seems to me nuts are an important part of
| a vegetarian diet and should be even more important to a vegan
| diet.
|
| I have a lot of half formed questions but no real answers,
| questions that have rattled around my brain for some time without
| ever quite gelling.
| schoen wrote:
| I'm vegan and have given up almonds because I'm prone to kidney
| stones, and I was told that almonds have a _much_ higher
| oxalate content than other nuts. Not everyone has a tendency to
| form kidney stones, but in my case it seems like I started to
| suffer from them right around the time that grocery stores and
| cafes started to switch from soy milk to almond milk, so I
| think that may have been the biggest problem. (I haven 't had
| any more stones so far since switching to oat milk and starting
| to take citrate pills every day.)
|
| I still eat a fair amount of nuts, often peanuts, which are
| lower in oxalate. I appreciate cashew (and coconut!) as an
| alternative to almonds that are still high in fat, like for
| making ice cream out of. I think one reason almonds and almond
| milk have been so popular is their pleasantly high fat content.
|
| I don't have any particular intuition for how much water these
| other nuts take to produce.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Peanuts are a legume, not a nut.
|
| Coconuts are a drupe, which I had to look up and didn't know.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coconut
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drupe
| toss1 wrote:
| The victims and police are looking for tire tracks.
|
| Seems it'd be worthwhile for the beekeepers to invest in a bunch
| of game cameras and set them up every time they setup their hives
| unattended. They could at least get some faces, vehicle images,
| and possibly license tags, which would be a big head start in
| tracking the thieves. Mobile-connected cameras would be even
| better. IDK how dense license plate readers are in the Central
| Valley, but if there are even a few, they could likely catch
| perps within hours, even yellow-handed.
|
| Seems crazy to not apply at least a bit of technology when you
| are leaving valuable animals worth $five to $seven figures by the
| side of a field.
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