California screamin' from Grist.org
California’s ag crisis and our concentrated food system
By Tom Phillpott - links are his.California’s severe drought—which could well be related to climate change—isn’t just menacing Los Angeles.
The drought has helped tip the state’s Central Valley, epicenter of U.S. fruit and vegetable production, into a severe crisis, The Wall Street Journal reports. Hammered by dry weather, the weak economy, and new restrictions on irrigation, the area’s vast farms are scaling down production and firing workers. The result is a full-on economic depression—one that falls hardest on the most vulnerable workers. From the Journal article:
“We either have money for gas and medicine, or food—not both,” Helen Hernandez, a 51-year-old mother of four, said after collecting a pallet of food from the relief drive. Ms. Hernandez said her husband, David, 49, has been out of work since losing his $1,200-a-month job at a tomato-packing house last year.
In a Wednesday editorial, the Journal’s right-wing editorial page blamed the situation on the federal government, which has restricted the diversion of water into the Central Valley to protect the coastal ecosystem to the west. Over the last several decades, water has regularly been diverted en masse from the area’s rivers to irrigate the Valley’s vast vegetable farms. As a reuslt, the amount of freshwater entering the coast had plunged—causing coastal fish populations to plunge as well. In response, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service imposed water reductions on the area—just as the drought was settling in.
For the Journal editorial page, the solution is simple—let the water flow freely into the Central Valley, fish be damned.
But should we really be sacrificing a once-robust, highly productive coastal ecosystem so that a few counties in California can go on supplying the entire nation with vegetables? (To see just how dependent we are on California for our veggies, see page 25 of this document [PDF]—or read my post on the topic from last spring.)
It’s hard to see why the Delta fishery should be allowed to die to save the Valley’s massive industrial farms. Moreover—this should register with the ultra-libertarians at the Journal editorial page—the diversion of irrigation water to Central Valley farmers has traditionally been subsidized to the tune of $100 million per year in taxpayer cash, according to Environmental Working Group.
I have lots of sympathy for the thousands of unemployed, struggling workers in the Central Valley. State and federal aid should flow their way. But the way forward is not a return to agribusiness as usual there. The Central Valley needs to diversify its economy in a way that works not only for area residents, but also for the surrounding ecosystem. (Besides industrial agriculture, the area’s other main industry was, until recently, construction—the very kind of sprawling development that is now itself mired in a deep crisis.)
As to the question of where we’re going to get vegetables as agriculture in the Central Valley withers, it’s time to get serious about rebuilding local and regional food production.
Grist food editor Tom Philpott farms and cooks at Maverick Farms, a sustainable-agriculture nonprofit and small farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Follow Tom’s Twitter feed here.
My reply -
Living in Fresno (aka NObama County) I'm consistently flummoxed by the overweening naivete of fellows such as Mr. Philpott. His reinforcement of the quaint notion of "Industrial Agriculture" being deeply affected by, and even vocal in the Water Crisis simply shows the depth of his own self interest. The fact is that it is mostly small, family owned farms which are deeply affected by the Regulatory Drought, and that the vast majority of those "discomforted" by that Drought are proud Latinos, legal citizens who feel that they've been abandoned by a Democrat Party that has most used them.
What he fails to mention is the utter and complete failure of a Federal Bureaucracy to address a mess that they've made, other than to say "Oh, you live there, it's sooooo your own fault!" If that were true, and we had the slightest iota of control over our own water, we would not be in need of educating a deluded populace.
Fact #1: A current poll by the EMC Corp. cites Water Policy as be "a very high priority" to voters, but also reveals that the same 'concerned' Californians seem to think that water simply falls from the sky directly into their taps, toilet tanks, and ubiquitous water bottles.
They insist that no bonds be authorized for new storage and no peripheral canal be built, and are just as unwilling to quell the continuing legal & illegal swelling of the welfare and entitlement rolls, while saying such foolish things as "we can import our food from overseas!" Apparently, they think that "Ma Perkins" goes out and picks their salad tomatoes every day, then delivers them to the Supermarket! The reality is, the masses that you've so handily eluded by plonking down in your comfy Carolina home don't want to go out and grow their own food, won't insist that illegal aliens be responsible toward their "adopted" homeland, and will soon curse us for no longer growing the food they have become obese upon.
What such self interested folk as Mr. Philpott seem to be short on is any sort of answer, save the self same one that my well intended relatives have given Me; "Well, you can always move to North Carolina like we did."
Problem is, Senor Tom, if we all went ahead and did that, we'd simply bring the problems right with us. Pardon me, sir, but your blatant self interest, not to mention overwhelming self satisfaction & smugness with your own "environmentalist, sustainable" perfection cause me to become sadly nauseous. You offer no solutions to the actual problems that we on the "Left Coast" face, only opinions and platitudes.
Do you really think that the same folk who refuse to fund water storage systems that will ensure that they could actually, in some ideal Utopian future, grow their own food, will ever tear themselves away from Oprah and "Dancing with the Stars" to shovel their own compost pile? Do you think that you'll get "GangBangers" to dig the ditches and slop the pigs ("Mmmmmm, BACON!") when they can just go down to McDonalds and order a Big Mac with San Joaquin Valley tomato's and greens on them?
What your "sustainable future" actually means for the plebeian, unwashed masses is DEPRIVATION! Your naive insistence that everyone live as you choose ignores the fact that most folks are vastly more productive than you choose to be. The surcease from the daily toil you offer them has allowed so many to have so much. Just look about you at what it means to be "impoverished" in modern American society: "only" one car; "only" a video game console; "only" a computer with Broadband; "only" cable TV ... the list of "only's" is endless, just as is the 'Great Society's' continued putsch against productive society.
The current "Rulers" have simply decided to make sure that those of us who are actually and truly concerned with alleviating suffering and ensuring an abundant future will be baldly and publicly punished for the 'Enviro-Heresy' we dare to speak and live.
And, since we decide to defy the elected "Rulers" and ask ... nay, BEG for our livelihood to be allowed to flourish and produce and make the unwashed masses of the world happy, we are being made an example of what could be done to "them".
And there's the simple truth.
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