08-11-2012, 01:44 AM
I was having dinner with my father the other day when the conversation of drought came up; I was listening to NPR news and overheard farmers who didn't have "crop insurance" having to sell their lands because they didn't have the resources necessary to keep a farm running. So naturally, I pondered why farmers don't sue the department of agriculture for not providing water for them, especially for the farmers that pay for crop insurance?
Whats the logic in that, you say? Well I was curious as to how much money is doled out for a typical crop insurance claim (but couldn't find any useful information) as opposed to providing a running Desalination Plant that runs on mostly Solar Power? And how is that, you ask? As an example, Santa Barbara county pays a water tax to have water from the Los Angeles area basin pumped into it's lake for us locals. If the pump were reversed, so that a Desalination Plant here on the coast were to provide water for the other counties, they could pay a water tax to Santa Barbara, but dig this, the more counties getting water, the less water tax they would have to pay, thus ultimately the expense of running the plant (combined with the Solar Power) would be negligible to the local community despite needing new filters all the time, and perhaps even profitable, and the cost to demanding counties would also be minimal. Given this logic, there could be Desalination Plants in many coastal communities on the East and West coast filling the lakes inland and being a small price to pay to everyone involved . When you compare this to the cost of failed crop yields on the economy as a whole, not to mention what is paid out in Crop Insurance, you have grounds for negligence on the part of the Department of Agriculture for, instead of "preparing for the future" - which is part of what their website says they do: link - causing a monetary loss through lack of preparation. This provable monetary loss from negligence = lawsuit to me.
But of course, something that seems so simplistic on the outside must have it's flaws, so I really must be missing something. Besides, I think if I'm not mistaken, each state has it's own department. That would definitely complicate things. Thoughts?
Whats the logic in that, you say? Well I was curious as to how much money is doled out for a typical crop insurance claim (but couldn't find any useful information) as opposed to providing a running Desalination Plant that runs on mostly Solar Power? And how is that, you ask? As an example, Santa Barbara county pays a water tax to have water from the Los Angeles area basin pumped into it's lake for us locals. If the pump were reversed, so that a Desalination Plant here on the coast were to provide water for the other counties, they could pay a water tax to Santa Barbara, but dig this, the more counties getting water, the less water tax they would have to pay, thus ultimately the expense of running the plant (combined with the Solar Power) would be negligible to the local community despite needing new filters all the time, and perhaps even profitable, and the cost to demanding counties would also be minimal. Given this logic, there could be Desalination Plants in many coastal communities on the East and West coast filling the lakes inland and being a small price to pay to everyone involved . When you compare this to the cost of failed crop yields on the economy as a whole, not to mention what is paid out in Crop Insurance, you have grounds for negligence on the part of the Department of Agriculture for, instead of "preparing for the future" - which is part of what their website says they do: link - causing a monetary loss through lack of preparation. This provable monetary loss from negligence = lawsuit to me.
But of course, something that seems so simplistic on the outside must have it's flaws, so I really must be missing something. Besides, I think if I'm not mistaken, each state has it's own department. That would definitely complicate things. Thoughts?
"The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained liberation from the self." -Albert Einsetin