Re: [FRIAM] water is amazingly cheap, especially to farmers

[rolandthompson]

Title: Message

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060821/sc_nm/environment_water_dc_2

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Oliker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Aug 18, 2006 9:53 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: [FRIAM] water is amazingly cheap, especially to farmers

Water prices to agriculture are amazingly low.  I pulled a number off an Alabama website (complaining that subsidized water in the west is killing AL ag): $5-15 /acre foot for agriculture, $200-$600/acre foot for municipalities.  There are 326,000 gallons in an acre-foot of water, so 1 thousand gallons costs $0.015 to $0.03 for farmers, while it costs $0.60 to $1.80 for city folk.  The cost of meat would then have to carry only four to twelve cents per pound at 2500 gallons/pound.  Even at low end city prices, it would only add $1.50/pound.  Meat producers may be covering the twelve cents.

 

http://www.atmos.uah.edu/public/msu/Ag-Blackbelt-Com.ppt

 

It also suggests that water is incredibly cheap.  The high end municipal price is around the current cost of desalination, roughly $2/thousand gallons.  If we started to pay the real, unsubsidized cost of water, and allowed people to sell their water rights, we might find we have plenty of water.

 

-Mike Oliker

 

Message: 1

Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2006 18:31:39 -0400

From: "Martin C. Martin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] My biggest complaint about ethanol as automobile

      fuel

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group

      <friam@redfish.com>

Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

 

 

 

Bill Eldridge wrote:

>

 

> Sorry to switch subjects, but from Steve Boyan:

>

>     I was wrong. If I had known that for every pound of beef I did not

>     eat, I would save anywhere from 2,500 to 5,000 gallons of water, I

>     would have been moved.

 

Why doesn't a pound of beef cost more than 2500 gallons of water?

Wouldn't ADM (or whoever cares for the cow) have to pay for that much water?  To make a profit, wouldn't they have to charge more than their costs?

 

Confused,

Martin

 

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