alt Hacker NewsYeah, there are alfalfa fields in central Arizona. Alfalfa basically turns water and sunlight into cellulose about as quickly as plants can.
Worse, the owners of those fields are often foreign companies. That means they use tremendous amounts of water in one of the driest regions on earth, in the middle of a multiple decade drought, and the wealth these farms generate disappears overseas.
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My understanding is, that at least in California the Alfalfa itself is often also exported to Gulf countries that are too dry for pasture or growing feed, but they want to raise cattle. Alfalfa really is almost like dehydrated water like aluminum is solid electricity.
Of course, the farmers pay almost nothing for the absolutely gigantic amounts of water, and meanwhile they pester me to use a low flow shower head and charge me $400/month for a few gallons.
How is it legal? Shouldn’t water be the most regulated (as in protected) substance of all?
But at least that alfalfa gobbles up CO2 from the air.
I think it’s a good thing when non-americans want to invest in businesses that operate in america. They’ll use that investment to hire americans and produce goods that are sold to americans. I’m sure american capitalists would love to be the only ones allowed to invest here, as they would be able to get more equity for their capital, but it’s not good for anyone else and not really even good for them long term. Smart countries try to attract foreign investment, not scare it away
> are often foreign companies
That have _themselves_ banned Alfalfa farming; because, of the water impact.
Those fields still provide more jobs for the locals than data centers.
People need to work and not everyone can be a tech bro keyboard warrior. Hell apparently the end game is to replace IT workers with AI!
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Part of the issue is not systematically using a pricing structure that charges disproportionately more for usage above high thresholds.
The 101-level "solution" is to just raise the price to account for demand. The problem with that is that it treats all usage the same, whether it's a residence's first gallon or an alfalfa field's last gallon. But the former is something we need to protect.
It makes sense to price water, and electricity, in a fashion where the first X costs a certain amount, and the next X has a higher rate, and above some percentile of usage it has a much higher rate, and at some percentile of usage, customers should be very nearly paying for new required utility infrastructure themselves. That allows using pricing to solve supply problems, without penalizing normal levels of usage.
Some utilities already do this. But if there are actual issues with having enough supply for both datacenters/farms/smelters/etc and residential usage, then they're not doing this well enough, or don't have the pricing correct.