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Agriculture Tops $1.8 Billion in New SD County Crop Report

/in , , /by /Water News Network

Agriculture values topped $1.8 billion for the first time since 2014 and just the third time in 30 years in the County of San Diego’s annual Crop Report that covers the 2020 growing season, overcoming decreases in many crop values and reported mixed effects of the coronavirus pandemic.

The total value of all agriculture crops and commodities rose just 0.8% in the new Crop Report. But that was enough to push total values from $1,795,528,573 in 2019 to $1,810,326,411.

It was the fourth time in the past five Crop Reports that overall agriculture values increased, and the third time since 1990 that total values topped $1.8 billion in San Diego County. Values exceeded $1.8 billion in both 2013 and 2014.

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Could Trading Water on the Stock Market Actually be Good for the Environment?

/in , /by /euronews.greenby Anna Tobin

Last year, for the first time, it became possible to trade water on Wall Street through futures contracts. Normally reserved for commodities like oil or precious metals, water became the latest asset to join the financial market. But how could this practice impact the planet?

The trading in the future prices of highly-prized commodities, where buyers agree to purchase an asset at a set date in the future for an agreed price, began in Japan in the seventeenth century with the trading in rice futures.

The latest commodity to begin trading in futures is water supplied in American’s most populous state, California.

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Wall Street Can Now Bet On the Price of California Water. Watch Out

/in , , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Michael Hiltzik

Wall Street’s reputation as one of America’s premier innovation machines can only be enhanced by a new futures contract that began trading publicly on Dec. 7. It allows investors to bet on the price of water in California.

Those who take the gamble are effectively betting that the spot price for water will rise during the life of the contract; they’ll pocket the difference. Sellers are betting that the price will fall.

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