Legal Cannabis Farms Use Less Water And Produce More Value Than Any Other Agricultural Activity In California. It's Time To Stop Scapegoating Them

• Published date: 20 November 2021
• Subject Matter: Food, Drugs, Healthcare, Life Sciences, Cannabis & Hemp, Food and Drugs Law
• Law Firm: Rogoway Law
• Author: Mr Joe Rogoway

California's commercial cannabis laws, as established through the Medicinal and Adult Use Cannabis Regulation and Safety Act (MAUCRSA), have always contained the acutely problematic provisions of so-called local control as well as the express exclusion of cannabis from the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) exemptions endowed to all other agricultural crops. This has created an unworkable dynamic for California's legal cannabis mixed light and outdoor cultivators who are uniquely vulnerable to baseless claims of excessive water use. Such claims are routinely deployed as a trojan horse by those ideologically opposed to cannabis legalization in order to prevent the permitting of specific projects, as well as to obstruct the effectuation of necessary local ordinances.

In order to really understand the speciousness of these arguments, it is important to evaluate the water use of other agricultural activities in California. As a baseline fact, agricultural activities are the primary consumer of water resources in California,accounting for approximately 80% of all water used for businesses and homes in the state.¹ Since the scale of consumption is so vast, common units like gallons and liters don't suffice to measure water use. Instead, agricultural water use is often measured in acre feet.

An acre foot is the amount of water required to cover one acre of land up to one foot. This is equivalent to 43,560 cubic feet or 325,851 gallons of water; or roughly half an Olympic sized swimming pool.²

Cannabis cultivation, like almost all other agricultural activities, consumes water. However, cannabis actually uses a relatively small amount of California's water when compared to the average water consumed to grow an acre of California's other major agricultural crops.³

Average Acre Feet of Water Required to Cultivate One Acre of Various Crops

Figure 1: Average acre feet of water, shown to approximate scale, required to cultivate a single acre of various crops in California.

The Scale of Cannabis Cultivation

An examination of cannabis' water usage doesn't stop at scrutinizing the average acre feet of water required to cultivate an acre of cannabis and other important crops in California. To reveal the entire picture, we must look at the scale of cultivation of each crop.

As of August 19, 2021, there were only 8,081 active cannabis cultivation licenses issued in California.⁴ Assuming ALL 8,081 licensees are cultivating the maximum permissible area, which is a likely overestimation, we calculated a maximum cultivated area of 2,078 acres.⁴ Even with this likely overestimation of cannabis farm canopy, this is still a paltry amount of acreage relative to other agricultural activities.

For reference, the assumed 2,078 acres of legal cannabis cultivation is approximately twice the size of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco or half the size of Griffith Park in Los Angeles.⁵

Perhaps, the comparison to other crops is more illustrative. California cultivates approximately 1 million acres of alfalfa, which is predominantly used for livestock feed.⁶ California also cultivates approximately 830,000 acres of irrigated pasture.⁶ For perspective, this total area-1,830,000 acres-represents an area 60 times the size of the City of San Francisco. And this is just the land area used to grow alfalfa and irrigated pasture for livestock.⁶

California also devoted over 1,260,000 acres to almond cultivation in 2020.⁷ This area is nearly as big as all of California's state parks combined.⁷ In 2020, Grapes were cultivated on 895,000 acres: an area that easily dwarfs Yosemite National Park.⁸

Again, California, even with the likely over estimation of plant canopy as described above, only has 2,078 acres of licensed cannabis canopy. This is 0.1% of the irrigated land used to grow alfalfa and pasture for livestock.

Total Land Under Cultivation Of Various Crops in California

Figure 2: Land area (acres) under cultivation of various crops in California, shown to scale.

The Water Used By California's Cannabis Industry

California's legal and regulated cannabis industry only uses a small amount of water...