Water: the price is wrong

A nice presentation of some key facts about the role of agriculture in California's drought is over at the Daily Beast. People always notice when prices go up, but people don't pay attention to prices that are too low. The price of water in many locations, such as for most farmers even in drought-stricken California, is nearly zero: people using water don't pay the full cost of the water, and so they aren't as careful with it as they ought to be. The article argues that planting large numbers of water-guzzling trees in the middle of a desert is probably not the best idea, and it's tough to contest that.