This is more of an anti-foreigner measure than it is about protecting water resources. If they cared, they would have curbed consumption in general.
It's bad when US citizens are sucking up all the water.
It's even worse when a foreign country that has made hostile attacks against the United States does the same thing.
Yes, but I'm sure a couple of very rich people profit from this, you see!
/s
Anti-foreign ownership of domestic resources. Not anti-foreigner.
Otherwise yes.
OK now do foreign ownership of real estate. I'm getting close.
No release for you
Whatever reigns this shit in. I say this as a liberal stuck in a rural Arizona town who's water is being stolen. About 10 years ago a farm popped up just outside of town and it now consumes most of the valley we live in. This farm pumps 10x the consumption of the entire city with a population of 80,000. Peoples wells are running dry and this dude pays nothing for this water.
This is the desert. Nothing is supposed to grow here. We probably shouldn't even live here.
Fuck these guys, I don't care where they are from. But if it takes xenophobia for the idiots in this state to vote on it, go ahead. If the crops are for local use, well, we did fine before they showed up. We didn't need those farms. So they will go away. If the market for these stupid unethical crops isn't propped up by foreign consumption they wouldn't exist.
Still it will be more than a drop in the bucket. The amount of water pumped for these water intensive cropd was insane.
Eh. I’ll take it as a win
Its the consumption of of water. One of the plants that is likely targeted by the tax is alfalfa, which is a plant used for animal feed. The top importers of alfalfa is china, uae and saudi arabia. Alfalfa is a very water intensive plant and most of its grown in the southwest/California.
It basically makes states $ at the cost that its a huge water drainer. Albeit not Arizona, keep in mind in california, resident use of water is only like 5% of the supply, and wouldnt be suprised of Arizona would be similar. Were in a drought basically to subsidize the price of poultry/cattle for other major nations
If it was about water, it wouldnt matter who was doing the extracting. Removing water is removing water and everyone doing it no matter where they were based should be charged that tax but they're not. Like... if foreign companies were the main ones using a ton of water, there would be no need to target that tax to them specifically because theyd be hit with it just by using all those water resources anyway. But targeting it suggests that the state is fine with American companies wasting water, they just dont want foreigners doing it.
Well yes but this foreign company is using the water to grow a product that is exported. Foreign companies who are doing the same thing to sell locally may get screwed by this, but I’m not sure how many would be affected.
Agree completely, but hear me out. It's politically difficult to ask ranchers and farmers to do anything. Like historically, a lot of our domestic policy centers around keeping them happy - the idea being that they are providing such a vital service that we don't want to mess with them much.
That's why Bundy thought he was going to get away with free grazing forever, and why huge swathes of homestead were granted a few hundred years ago - gotta get people turning dirt into food/money.
So even if this is primarily anti-foreign, it still provides a sorely needed example of legislation that could pass, and then the practice in bureaucracy needed to enforce it. It can be expanded. Let them pass this, and then lobby and advocate for adding groups to it in future legislative sessions.
It's not a bill against farmers. In this case, farmland is leased to a Saudi company called Fondomonte, which uses the state's groundwater to grow alfalfa, which is then exported to feed cows in the country.
This is a real actual headline. Get me the fuck out of this reality
The Republicans should all for this America First bill, right?!
Money. Water. Choose wisely.
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.