Christopher Ingraham has a fascinating piece in Washington Poston the water demands of marijuana cultivation. Drawing on a study in the journal Bioscience, Christopher notes that growing an acre of weed consumes more water than growing an acre of wine grapes and about as much water as an acre of (notoriously thirsty) almonds. An environmental catastrophe in the making? I doubt it. The amount of water required for an agricultural industry is a function of two variables: (1) The amount of water per unit of land (acre, square mile whatever) and (2) The amount of units of land needed to meet market demand. The Bioscience paper places great emphasis on the first of these variables but in my view, gives short shrift to the second. The latest USDA data show that 936,000 acres are devoted to growing almonds. In contrast, the marijuana consumption of the entire U.S. population could be cultivated using only 1% of that acreage. Because it takes so little land to grow a large amount of marijuana, weed can be as thirsty as almonds per unit of land but have only a bare fraction of the almond industry's impact on the water supply. Drug policy maven Jonathan Caulkins offered me a rough formula that makes this point concrete: A heavy daily user of marijuana might consume one pound of marijuana a year, which is roughly equal to what a single outdoor plant can yield. Thus, in round terms, that is 1 plant per heavy daily user. So that is 5 months of growing season * 30 days per month * 22 liters per day * 0.26 gallons per liter = 858 gallons, or about 143 toilet flushes. So even a heavy user going to the bathroom only once a day over those 150 days will consume more water flushing the toilet than via the marijuana they consume. This doesn't mean of course that marijuana cultivation isn't straining water supplies in drought-stricken regions of California (e.g. Humboldt County). It is. But from a national viewpoint, the demand that marijuana cultivation imposes on the water supply is rather trivial.
The law is the issue here, not the weed, which isn't very problematic to begin with in regards to the water supply as a whole...
Rains everyday here in Florida in the summertime. One day. One glorious day. I'll be growing some 20ft tropical sativas in my backyard.
Actually Mr. GreenWizard, this has been one of the driest summers on record. I'm S fl btw, maybe rain is more abundant in N fl? And I pray for the day I can use up my backyard for cultivation lol.
We haven't seen rain in a few weeks up here just clouds. Florida weather is going to change drastically. Are you in the keys?
Yea I see articles day in and day out about how much water cannabis is using. Not a word about the miles upon square miles of rice farms we host in a very arid borderline desert environment........ Rice.... Clearly cannabis is the water hog in this situation.... You other folks are right too...when the SE legalizes I expect a large flood of growers who got crushed with a mountain of legal bullshit on the west coast to places with more water and less restrictive agricultural regs......just need some property. Not 10 million fucking dollars in paperwork that took you 3 years to get together (if you're hustling it full time) before you even think about sprouting a seed. I have no doubt in my mind CA will fuck itself out of as much of the cannabis market as it possibly can.
I work on those rice farms. Want to take a guess at about how much of the rice stays state side. Less then 1%. All the rice that is grown is ca is shipped to China for a higher price.
Take a look at the water consumed by farms on Tribal lands along the Colorado River. Their alfalfa fields don't look much different when they irrigate than the pic of the rice fields above. They have unrestricted access to the water and are able to cut alfalfa 4-5 times a year and grow 6' tall cotton plants. It's all about water and they consume an amazing amount. IMHO: Marijuana production uses a minuscule amount compared to other uses. I think the comparison to flushing toilets above is right on point. Just my $0.02 worth.
the future of man and liquids involves grey water filtration devices and they need to make them mandatory in all homes to feed our gardens with. go shit, flush to feed your food....
This seems pretty silly. Obviously the solution is to legalize cultivation in areas which aren't suffering from extreme drought.
That's black, not grey water...grey would be from the sink or shower drain. Humanure isn't the most pleasant thought, especially for food...
None of this matters. There is a more-or-less steady supply of water on the planet, and it just keeps evaporating and condensing again, as it has for millions of years. To "consume" water -- by whatever form -- doesn't destroy it, it just changes form. It isn't always distributed the way we want it -- we call them floods or droughts -- but globally it is irrelevant.
shit! I got it wrong but close. we can figure it out though and it should be mandatory to be efficient as shit with our water there are vapor water clouds that come into our earths atmosphere from space so we get fresh water supply from space to add to our water.
I'm not a scientist, and I'm too lazy to Google it, but I take issue with that. - I'm pretty sure there is no water vapor floating around in space. AFAIK, it only exists around planets that have an atmosphere. - I'm pretty sure the only things that enter earth's atmosphere are solar energy and the occasional meteor or its ashes. Where is Sheldon Cooper when I need him?
There are huge clouds of water vapor surrounding some black holes but I don't think they drift into earth's atmosphere.
We have had several thousands of instances mining/fracking wastes,nuclear weapons with depleted uranium,electrical power plant generation. coal mine, steel mill, chemical pharmaceutical drugs, Monasanto Roundup wastes, railroad construction. cattle processing waste, BP oil spills, and even fluoride poisoning our rivers and oceans on a daily basis since the country was founded. On a scale of one to ten in relation to all of those water-guzzling/destroying situation Marijuana production wastes wouldn't even register a -100 in terms of water abuse, waste, or depletion. In California there is a symposium coming up, California growers can learn about what is *really* taking way their water rights and making growers false targets for the EPA: http://www.californiascience.org/