<story><title>California-Grown Coffee Is Becoming the State&apos;s Next Gold Mine</title><url>https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/02/16/585409126/eureka-california-grown-coffee-is-becoming-the-states-next-gold-mine</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>phil21</author><text>Why is California so fascinated on agriculture which is extremely water intensive?  Coffee is up there with Almonds as far as I understand the situation.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ghshephard</author><text>According to &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;waterfootprint.org&amp;#x2F;media&amp;#x2F;downloads&amp;#x2F;Report14.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;waterfootprint.org&amp;#x2F;media&amp;#x2F;downloads&amp;#x2F;Report14.pdf&lt;/a&gt; it requires 140 liters of water to produce 1 cup of coffee.  The most expensive source of water that I can think of, from a reverse-osmosis desalinization plant, costs $0.40&amp;#x2F;1000 liters in Singapore (Hyflux, 20 year contract), - so that cup of coffee has a ceiling of about $0.08&amp;#x2F;to produce in terms of the cost of it&amp;#x27;s water content.&lt;p&gt;The question should never be &amp;quot;how much water to produce this&amp;quot; - but, &amp;quot;what value are we getting from the water&amp;quot; - if you are able to sell a cup of coffee for $5, then it&amp;#x27;s probably a good investment of that $0.08.</text></comment>
<story><title>California-Grown Coffee Is Becoming the State&apos;s Next Gold Mine</title><url>https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/02/16/585409126/eureka-california-grown-coffee-is-becoming-the-states-next-gold-mine</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>phil21</author><text>Why is California so fascinated on agriculture which is extremely water intensive?  Coffee is up there with Almonds as far as I understand the situation.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>narrator</author><text>The Sierra provide ample water and silt for the central valley that makes it one of the worlds ideal farming lands.  It&amp;#x27;s been very actively farmed for more than 100 years.&lt;p&gt;Sure, the water situation has gone up and down with the drought, but normally there&amp;#x27;s plenty of water.  A lot of the almond orchards had to be scaled back during the drought, but when there&amp;#x27;s water they use it.  It&amp;#x27;s a lot more sustainable than many other farming lands because it&amp;#x27;s not dependent on an underground aquifer that took eons to fill up or water piped in from somewhere far away except for the urban areas of course.</text></comment>