You have to go back more than 70 years to get a view of a very different Southern California. Long before urban and suburban post-war development blossomed around Los Angeles, the region was a major agricultural producer. Citrus was the leading crop, and that heritage is all too apparent in the place names that remain today. An example of that is Orange County. Now, to the east, in California’s vast desert, growers learned long ago they inhabited fertile ground for dates, a tradition that endures in 2015. I had all that rich history firmly in mind earlier this month when I had an opportunity to visit Coachella Valley farmers, including date producers. I also traveled to Orange County to learn about the vital work at a local food bank to feed the hungry.
While the drought is relatively new to many of us in California, the desert is accustomed to scarcity, and water districts and their customers are always looking for innovative approaches to help farmers produce a variety of crops. While in Coachella Valley, I was able see the benefits of that innovation and adaptation with tours of table grape packing houses where they are just wrapping up the harvest, and a tour of a date packing plant. I also enjoyed meeting with farm and water leaders to discuss the drought and other current issues.
Additionally, I was honored to meet CDFA employees working in Southern California in our Shipping Point Inspection program. These employees make sure that table grapes at cooling and handling facilities meet minimum quality and maturity standards before they are shipped to market. This is important work in the supply chain to bring top-quality produce to consumers.
Secretary Ross (R) with CDFA Shipping Point Inspection employees in Southern California. From left, Bob Ferrier, Omar Soloria, Inspection Services Director Rick Jensen, and Ellen Honda.
My trip to the Orange County Food Bank was inspirational. The organization is teaming up with the United Way to reinforce a commitment to improve access to produce. The groups have a fundamental understanding that it’s essential for all of our citizens to eat healthy foods. In that vein, I was able to attend a ribbon cutting ceremony for a water-saving aquaponic vegetable garden at a Santa Ana history center that is also a partner in this effort, through a pledge to bring-in needy families to harvest the garden and take the produce back to their communities.
California agriculture is truly a miracle of abundance and diversity. It includes farmers and ranchers from the southeastern reaches of the desert and extends all the way to its northwestern corner. Our food production is astounding, feeding the world, the nation and the needy.
Two stories caught our interest this week that centered on folks who might not seem to have much in common – Pope Francis and some Central Valley farmers.
The first story was a look at the document first leaked, then released, by the Vatican containing Pope Francis’ plea for all of mankind to take better care of Earth. Forcefully, he condemned exploitation and unbridled consumption of resources that we all depend on and should share.
With a degree and a work history in chemistry, Pope Francis apparently wants to make the estimated 2 billion Catholics worldwide understand that they must do more to protect what he considers one of God’s greatest gifts to humanity – our planet. He noted the pollution man creates daily is destroying the Earth and endangering everything that lives on it. He calls for changes in our lifestyles and energy consumption.
How does that connect to farmers?
The day after we read of the pontiff’s encyclical, we read a story from Modesto Bee reporter John Holland about a program to help protect threatened tricolor blackbirds. By agreeing to delay harvest of a feed crop that provides a favored nesting site for birds, Valley farmers will likely save thousands of nests, eggs and fledglings. That could make a difference for a species that once numbered in the millions but now is feared to be less than 150,000.
The nutritional value of the harvest will be degraded by waiting, but a payment of $600 per acre from the federal Natural Resources Conservation Service will help offset the loss.
We don’t know if this act of stewardship will help the environment, but it can’t hurt. All things, after all, are connected.
We applaud both the federal program and the farmers. But they’re not the only examples of environmental consciousness found on farms. Not even the best.
Take the methane digesters at Fiscalini Farms, west of Modesto, or on the giant digester at Joseph Farms in Atwater. They gather up a substantial amount of manure (it takes a lot of cows to make all that cheese), remove the methane and use it to generate power.
Methane is a far more potent ozone killer than carbon dioxide, so keeping any of it out of the atmosphere is a good thing. When using it in place of fossil fuels to create electricity, that’s even better.
The cheesemakers at Joseph Farms and Fiscalini have figured out a way to do that.
Others farmers have installed solar panels to generate electricity, and others have replaced diesel pumps with electric pumps.
In his encyclical, the pope takes to task all who deny the obvious changes in our climate and their cause: “The attitudes that stand in the way of a solution, even among believers, range from negation of the problem to indifference to convenient resignation or blind faith in technical solutions.”
Those farmers who are protecting blackbirds, who are finding a way to keep methane out of the atmosphere, who care more for their land than they do for short-term profits – and we believe that describes most farmers – are doing what at least one man of God thinks they should be doing.
When you’re doing God’s work, you don’t always have to wear a backward collar or a robe; sometimes mud-caked boots and ballcaps work, too.
Like so many other living things, Japanese beetles find California’s climate to be ideal, and they absolutely love the food, a little too much.
These guests are unwanted, and worse, a threat. Fearing that the voracious pests will spread from backyards to valuable farm crops, the California Department of Food and Agriculture has embarked on an eradication effort in Fair Oaks and Carmichael, where the shiny green insect has been detected.
Some residents are upset, believing the department is being too intrusive, and worrying that the pesticides that kill the beetles could be detrimental to their health and that of their children and pets.
Clearly, California Ag Secretary Karen Ross would prefer not to be spraying in suburban backyards. But she and Nick Condos, chief of her plant health division, told The Sacramento Bee’s editorial board that the risk of doing nothing is too great.
Seeing no reasonable alternative, the state is imposing on the owners of 41 properties in Fair Oaks and 247 in Carmichael by seeking access to their yards to spray.
We are persuaded. The beetles can make short work of backyard ornamentals. But the threat is far worse for farms. Take a look at the list of plants the bug prefers, and you can see why.
It includes plants we’d sooner do without, crabgrass and poison oak. But it also destroys virtually everything else green, from walnut trees and elms to strawberries, apples, alfalfa, plums, peaches, grapes and wisteria.
The California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment is stocked with scientists who study the health implications of chemicals. Not known for pulling their punches, the scientists regularly get under industry’s skin for their conclusions.
The office notes that California identifies carbaryl, the active poison in the beetle pesticide of choice, as a chemical that in high enough doses could cause cancer or reproductive harm. But, it adds, the diluted version being used in Fair Oaks and Carmichael poses “no significant health risks.”
On the flip side, a beetle infestation of the sort that has occurred in Northeastern states could result in California plants and farm products being quarantined. Agriculture, a $40 billion-plus industry, already is suffering from drought. A widespread infestation would have broad implications, none of them good.
The Brown administration’s decision to act aggressively to eradicate the Japanese beetle is wise. Residents may be inconvenienced. But a greater good is at stake. If state ag workers come knocking on your door, let them into your backyard, for everyone’s sake.
The USDA has introduced the Can I Bring It web site to answer questions about items that travelers may carry into the U.S. and to reduce the risk of introducing dangerous stowaways – invasive species.
The U.S. has laws that prohibit or restrict the entry of certain agricultural products from other countries, including meats, fruits, vegetables, plants, soil, seeds, and some plant-based handicrafts, among other items.
Can I Bring It helps people quickly see if the item they wish to bring into the U.S. is allowed and, as a result, makes travelers our partners in protecting our food supply and environment from invasive pests.
As communities across the Western United States struggle with one of the worst droughts in over a century, President Obama and his Administration are committed to doing everything they can to help the farmers, ranchers, small businesses, and communities facing the severe impacts.
As part of that commitment, the Administration has announced new actions and investments of more than $110 million to support workers, farmers and rural communities suffering from drought and to combat wildfires. The new funding builds on the more than $190 million that agencies across the Federal Government have invested to support drought-stricken communities so far this year. In addition, the United States Department of Agriculture is projecting that they will provide at least $1.2 billion this year in assistance to livestock producers facing grazing losses as a result of the drought across the West.
Currently, 35 percent of the West is facing severe to exceptional drought. In California, the mountain snowpack that supplies most of the water during the summer months is only a trace above zero. In addition to targeting funding and resources to those most impacted, for more than a year the Administration has been doing everything it can to support communities facing drought. That includes coordinating in real time with state and local officials, reducing Federal water use, and identifying the tools and actions needed to enhance community drought planning and water resource management through the National Drought Resilience Partnership.
New Actions and Investments to Respond to Drought:
Drought threatens multiple sectors of the economy and leads to increased risks to communities on many fronts. That’s why the Administration’s efforts will help to address the drought challenge from all angles, from employing workers and providing food assistance to making long-term investments to support water efficiency and conservation and addressing wildfire.
Assisting dislocated workers:
All over the West, continued drought is leading to job losses, particularly in the agricultural sector. In California alone, a recent University of California Davis study estimates 18,000 lost jobs because of drought. These losses leave working families struggling to make ends meet, and today the Department of Labor is announcing new plans to assist them, including:
The Department of Labor will award as much as $18 million to the State of California to provide jobs for workers dislocated by the drought. Starting in July, this National Dislocated Worker Grant will employ up to 1,000 workers for up to 6 months with public and nonprofit agencies working to build drought resilience, reduce wildfire risk, and improve water efficiency. The grant, made possible by the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, will focus on the areas facing the most severe impacts in California. Other states that have received a drought emergency declaration and can document drought-impacted job losses will have the option to apply for similar Dislocated Worker Grants. The program in California will also support youth in drought-impacted households as well as the long-term unemployed.
Supporting American farmers and ranchers and the families who depend on them:
American farmers supply food for the entire Nation, and drought puts their livelihoods – and our food security – at risk. The USDA is announcing ongoing support for farmers, livestock producers, and struggling families, including:
Through the Risk Management Agency, USDA is expanding a program that allows farmers to exclude their exceptionally bad production years, which are often the result of drought, from the calculation of their crop insurance coverage. This ensures that a bad year or two caused by drought does not significantly reduce their crop insurance coverage. This action will provide an estimated $30 million in additional relief to farmers in Fiscal Year 2016, and $42 million in Fiscal Year 2017.
Through its Livestock Forage Program, USDA projects it will provide at least $1.2 billion in assistance to livestock producers in fiscal year 2015. The program, made possible by the 2014 Farm Bill, provides compensation to farmers and ranchers who suffer grazing losses because of drought or fire.
To support families hardest hit by the drought, the USDA Food and Nutrition Service has committed to working with faith-based and community groups to help them establish at least 760 summer food service meal sites in drought-impacted Central Valley communities in 2015. Last year, 725 sites helped provide meals to kids throughout the region. When school is in session, low-income kids can receive breakfast and lunch at school at little or no cost to their families. The summer food service program ensures that every child continues to have access to nutritious meals when school is not in session.
Improving water systems and water efficiency:
As drought conditions persist throughout the West, every drop of water counts. The Administration has supported efforts to improve vital water infrastructure and increase efficiency so communities get the most out of the water they have. Today, the Administration is announcing new investments to address critical water needs, from promoting water conservation to improving water systems, including:
The Bureau of Reclamation is announcing $6.5 million in fiscal year 2015 to support water management improvement projects over the next two years. The Federal grants will be combined with local cost-share contributions, making a total of nearly $30 million available to help alleviate the impacts of the drought on communities and agriculture.
To support water utilities and households coping with drought in California, USDA Rural Development will provide at least $7 million to address the drought-related needs of water utilities and households.
Protecting our communities from wildfire:
A changing climate heightens the risk of wildfire and makes our communities, infrastructure, and natural resources vulnerable to fire. Already, areas across the West are facing longer wildfire seasons and more severe fire activity. That’s why, in his Fiscal Year 2016 Budget, President Obama has proposed a common-sense approach that treats suppression of the most severe fire activity the same as we treat other natural disasters. The funding fix, modeled on congressional proposals with broad bipartisan support, would provide funding certainty in future years for firefighting costs and allow us to invest in programs that more effectively promote fire risk reduction and long-term forest and rangeland health and resilience. The Administration has mobilized resources to fight fires, including more large air tankers to support the firefighters on the ground, as they work to suppress the fires.
And the Administration is taking new steps to build long-term resilience to wildfire, including:
The Department of the Interior is announcing $10 million for 10 Wildland Fire Resilient Landscapes Projects. Currently in its first year of funding from Congress, selected projects emphasize collaborative landscape-scale planning across multiple jurisdictions in order to lessen the risk from catastrophic wildfire and enhance the protection of critical natural resources and watersheds. The President’s FY 2016 Budget proposes $30 million for the program to provide multi-year support for landscape-scale projects and expand the program to new partnerships.
By Richard J. Sexton, Josué Medellín-Azuara, and Tina L. Saitone
Food and beverage processing is the third largest manufacturing sector in California. In 2012 California’s food and beverage processing sector contributed $82 billion in value added to the California economy, 760,000 full- and part-time jobs, $10.5 billion in federal tax revenues, and $8.2 billion in state and local tax revenues.
California’s role as the nation’s leading producer of agricultural products is well known. In 2012 California’s farms and ranches accounted for $42.6 billion in output. California produced 15% of the nation’s total value of crop production and 7.1 percent of the value of livestock and livestock products.
Most people, however, are probably less familiar with the state’s vitally important food and beverage processing sector, which is responsible for acquiring the bounty produced on California’s farms and ranches and converting it to the food, beverage, and fiber products demanded by consumers worldwide. Our study quantifies the economic impact of this integral component of California’s economy. Food and beverage processing is California’s third largest manufacturing sector, following computers and electronics and chemicals, and California’s total of 3,421 food manufacturing establishments is the largest in the nation.
We estimate that in 2012 the food and beverage processing sector directly accounted for total-value added of $82 billion, once indirect and induced impacts are included. The food and beverage processing sector was responsible for over 760,000 jobs in 2012, over 198,000 of them being directly in food and beverage processing and another nearly 563,000 through indirect and induced employment impacts.
Based upon its direct value-added contribution, the food and beverage processing sector is the third largest manufacturing sector in California, comprising 9.2% of the state’s manufacturing value added, and trailing only electronic and computer equipment (34.5%) and chemical manufacturing (15.8%).
With milk production being California’s largest agricultural industry, it is no surprise that dairy is the state’s leading food processing industry. Dairy processing directly accounted for $3.37 billion in value added. Once the multiplier impacts from the sector’s activities are included, the total economic impact of dairy processing in California is $15.6 billion. We estimate that the dairy sector directly accounts for 18,000 jobs, and that another nearly 122,000 jobs are generated from the indirect and induced impacts, resulting in over 139,000 California jobs that can be traced directly or indirectly to the dairy processing sector.
Grape production, California’s second largest agricultural industry in 2012, goes into producing wine and other grape beverages, table grapes, and raisins. Wineries represent California’s second-leading food and beverage processing sector, accounting for $3.65 billion in direct value added in 2012. The multiplier for wineries is estimated to be 3.05, meaning indirect and induced impacts accounted for an additional $7.4 billion in value added in 2012. California wineries were directly or indirectly responsible for just over 100,000 jobs in 2012.
Rounding out the top five California food and beverage processing sectors for 2012, in terms of value-added, were baking (comprised of bread and bakery product manufacturing; cookie, cracker, and pasta manufacturing; and tortilla manufacturing); fruit and vegetable canning, pickling, and drying; and soft drink and ice manufacturing.
These sectors were responsible for $2.64 billion, $2.22 billion, and $1.72 billion in direct value-added activity, respectively. In terms of employment, the baking sector accounted directly or indirectly for more than 89,000 jobs, the fruit and vegetable canning, pickling, and drying sector was responsible for another 73,000 jobs, and total employment due to the soft drink and ice-manufacturing sector was about 58,000.
Richard J. Sexton is professor and chair in the ARE department (agricultural and resource economics) at UC Davis. He can be contacted by email at rich@primal.ucdavis.edu. Josué Medellin-Azuara is a research fellow in the civil and environmental engineering department at UC Davis who can be contacted at jmedellin@ ucdavis.edu. Tina L. Saitone is a project economist in the ARE department at UC Davis. She can be contacted at saitone@primal.ucdavis. edu.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has announced that incentives will resume this summer for farmers, ranchers and forest landowners interested in growing and harvesting biomass for renewable energy. The support comes through the Biomass Crop Assistance Program (BCAP), which was reauthorized by the 2014 Farm Bill. BCAP provides financial assistance to establish and maintain new crops of energy biomass, or who harvest and deliver forest or agricultural residues to a qualifying energy facility.
Financial assistance is available through BCAP for costs associated with harvesting and transporting agriculture or forest residues to facilities that convert biomass crops into energy. Eligible crops may include corn residue, diseased or insect infested wood materials, or orchard waste. The energy facility must first be approved by USDA to accept the biomass crop. Facilities can apply for, or renew, their BCAP qualification status beginning today. $11.5 million of federal funds will be allocated to support the delivery of biomass materials through December 2015. Last year, more than 200,000 tons of dead or diseased trees from National Forests and Bureau of Land Management lands were removed and used to produce renewable energy, while reducing the risk of forest fire. Nineteen energy facilities in 10 states participated in the program.
Farmers, ranchers and forest landowners can also receive financial assistance to grow biomass crops that will be converted into energy in selected BCAP project areas. New BCAP project area proposals will be solicited beginning this summer and accepted through fall 2015, with new project area announcements and enrollments taking place in early spring 2016. The extended proposal submission period allows project sponsors time to complete any needed environmental assessments and allows producers enough lead time to make informed decisions on whether or not to pursue the BCAP project area enrollment opportunity. This fiscal year USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA) will allocate up to $8 million for producer enrollment to expand and enhance existing BCAP project areas. Additionally, in accordance with the 2014 Farm Bill, underserved farmers are eligible for a higher establishment cost share. BCAP projects have supported over 50,000 acres across 74 counties in 11 different project areas.
BCAP was made possible by the 2014 Farm Bill, which builds on historic economic gains in rural America over the past six years, while achieving meaningful reform and billions of dollars in savings for taxpayers. Since enactment, USDA has made significant progress to implement each provision of this critical legislation, including providing disaster relief to farmers and ranchers; strengthening risk management tools; expanding access to rural credit; funding critical research; establishing innovative public-private conservation partnerships; developing new markets for rural-made products; and investing in infrastructure, housing, and community facilities to help improve quality of life in rural America. For more information, visit www.usda.gov/farmbill.
Just about everyone agrees that we need more farmers. Currently, nearly 30 percent are 65 or older, and fewer than 10 percent are under 35. The number of farmers is likely to fall further with continuing consolidation and technological innovation.
But displacement of farmers is neither desirable nor inevitable. We need to put more young people on smaller farms, the kinds that will grow nourishing food for people instead of food that sickens us or yields products intended for animals or cars.
The problem is land, which is often prohibitively expensive. Farmland near cities is prized by developers and the wealthy looking for vacation homes, hobby farms or secure investments. Many farmers have no choice but to rent land for a year or two before being asked to move and start all over, because the purchase of even the smallest plot is out of their reach.
A new bill proposed by Representatives Joe Courtney, a Connecticut Democrat, and Chris Gibson, a New York Republican, and devised with input from the National Young Farmers Coalition, would improve the situation by forgiving the balance of student loans of those who spent 10 years as farmers and made loan payments during that time.
The bill would add farmers to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, which already forgives student loans for police officers, prosecutors, nurses and others, so perhaps its best aspect is the cultural shift it represents, grouping farmers with others in public service.
“Conceptually, this isn’t radical or symbolic,” says Courtney. “It’s recognizing a huge work force need.” And, as Gibson says, it addresses megafarming: “In the five years from 2007 to 2012 we only gained a little over 1,200 farmers. Since we aren’t going to stop eating, we have to reverse that trend, or we’ll see even more consolidation, more corporate farms, or increasing food imports; none of that is in our interest.”
All of this is true. And arguing against a bill like this would be counterproductive. But there are a couple of immediate objections here. The first is that the program is only focused on helping people who’ve gone to college, a particular slice of the American pie that skews white and well off. (There is of course the obvious question of why we can’t provide free college education to anyone who wants it.)
Second, the terms seem onerous: It’s difficult enough to make a living farming, especially when starting out. Why not (as some state programs do) forgive the loan after a couple of years, with an agreement to keep farming?
“It’s a step in the right direction, but it’s not transformative,” says Blain Snipstal, an ecological farmer on Maryland’s Eastern Shore and a member of the Southeastern African-American Farmers’ Organic Network. As everyone knows, it’s difficult to pass anything creative and progressive in Washington right now, so seeing this bill through would be positive movement.
Still: The question of getting land into the hands of all who want and deserve it has been plaguing the United States since Reconstruction, when President Andrew Johnson rejected every effort to compensate former slaves with land. Remember “40 acres and a mule”? It didn’t happen.
Farming is — or should be — a social enterprise as much as a business, one that benefits all of us and uses the land conscientiously and ecologically. Thus in the long run we’ve got to expand our vision to include some kind of land redistribution that would give those who want to work the land for our mutual benefit the ability to do so.
Let’s remember that much of “our” land was acquired though the displacement and murder of millions of Native Americans, and that it was made productive by enslaved, indentured and undervalued labor; providing farming opportunities to more people would partially redress those issues.
We can continue to pretend that megafarmers who produce for export and nonfood purposes need public support, or we can create new policies that invest in a better kind of farming — and lots of new farmers eager to do it.
There’s so much confusion about California’s drought, and a lot of my colleagues in the media, I’m sorry to say, have been amplifying that confusion. The proliferation of stories showing how much water various food products use implies that people should be eating water-thrifty foods — but that would do precisely nothing to fix the problem. The real solutions are within reach (I’ll get to those), but they will require the hard work of politics to achieve, rather than simplistic, consumer-focused fixes.
A recent survey from the Public Policy Institute of California found that, for the first time in the history of its polling, Californians say drought is the most important state issue, and 69 percent of Californians say water supply is a big problem in their part of the state.
Public Policy Institute of California poll
When there’s this kind of concern about an issue, we in the media hustle to provide information. And there’s an obvious set of data for us to transform into engaging infographics: The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Wired, and, er, Grist, along with many others, have been explaining how much water it takes to produce various food items. There’s nothing wrong with these until outlets try to spin that raw, context-less data into buzzy proscriptions about what to order at a restaurant. (In our defense, we tried to present the data without focusing on the California drought, and when Grist’s science editor Amelia Urry went on TV to talk about it she did a great job of pointing out that context mattered and “skipping that sirloin or chocolate cake isn’t going to put water back into depleted aquifers.”)
Here are the problems with trying to diet our way out of drought:
There are lots of reasons a farmer chooses a crop
Many “water guzzling” crops make sense if you consider a farmer’s ecological context.
The Los Angeles Timespointed out that lentils are “a thirsty food.” True, they take more water than other crops to grow. But they are also ideally suited to drought-prone regions. As Liz Carlisle, author of Lentil Underground, writes: Lentils “are content without irrigation, even in areas that frequently see droughts. Lentils grow when it rains, and pause their growth cycle when it’s dry. Instead of overshooting and wilting, they stage their growth to fit their water resource, and they stay low to the ground rather than bolting up in flamboyant amber waves.”
Then there’s alfalfa, which also sips a lot of water. But alfalfa is a great choice for farmers worried that they might not get their water, because if you stop irrigating, it simply goes dormant — then it springs back to life when the rains return. It’s also cheap: One planting can produce hay for six years, so it’s not a not a mortal wound if a farmer has to give up a few cuttings. Both alfalfa and lentils fix their own nitrogen, which makes them great rotation crops for farmers who want to reduce pests and diversify their farms.
Consider rice, another supposed water guzzler. Rice takes tons of water, because the fields are flooded. But that water doesn’t simply disappear — it seeps into the ground, and some of it goes back into the rivers. The water table in northern California is in good shape, in part because of all the rice paddies recharging the aquifers. Rice farmers flood their fields as a means of weed control, which allows them to dramatically reduce their pesticide use. And those fields provide important habitat for birds and fish — so important that the USDA’s Natural Resource Conservation Service is offering farmers money to continue flooding their fields to give migrating waterfowl a chance to survive the drought.
The value of water depends on location
If you’ve been paying attention to these factoids, you’ve learned that it takes a lot of water to grow beef. But knowing that does nothing to differentiate the cattle raised in the middle of a drought from the cattle raised by a rancher in a place with plentiful water, like Montana or North Dakota. It also hides the fact that California cattle subsist primarily on grain freighted in from the soggy Midwest. If you want to count the virtual water flowing out of the state, you also should count all the millions of gallons coming in every day on the rails.
The water footprint of beef also depends on what the beeves eat. In the hilly grasslands, where it’s often hard to grow crops, cattle can be an important part of a ranch’s ecosystem: They clear the grass before it has a chance to go to seed and oxidize, and they fertilize as they go. Remove the animals, and there may not much to do with the land except build houses.
There are other reasons to eat less meat, and I’ve suggested in the past that it would be environmentally beneficial to reduce global meat consumption. But it’s not a solution for California’s drought. We shouldn’t be asking individual eaters to outsmart a complex global market with every purchase.
What actually happens if people boycott California crops?
Farmers chose to grow the crops that will make them a living. If people stop eating California avocados and almonds and rice, it would make it harder to farm in the state. It would speed the conversion of farmland to suburbs and golf courses. And it would probably shift a lot of production overseas: More tomatoes might come from Chile than California.
An export ban would be similarly ineffective. Exports are the most offensive aspect of California agriculture to many: It feels crazy to be turning water into alfalfa and then shipping that to China in the middle of the drought. But the fact is, setting up some kind of trade barrier — even if it were politically possible — wouldn’t put more water into rivers. Farmers still have legal control over a lot of water, and they would put it to use. If we banned almonds, or stopped selling rice to Asia, the farmers would just use that water for something else.
What’s a better solution?
Instead of asking eaters to wade through this complexity every time they pick up a fork, we need policies that make water expensive for farmers in places where it’s scarce. A market price for water would simply eliminate inefficient crops.
And, in fact, California already has a functioning water market … with one massive market failure: It’s still legal for landowners to pump as much water out of their ground as they can in many places. And it’s that market failure that is causing the trueshortages in poor farming towns.
However, the state is on its way to correcting that market failure. The legislature regulated groundwater last year, and water districts around the state are currently figuring out how to make sure they put as much water into the ground during wet years as they take out in dry years.
I am not arguing that an untrammeled market will fix everything. I’m arguing that a heavily, heavily trammeled market (there’s a lot of protections for those who might be injured by the sale of water in California) could fix almost everything.
It won’t fix the inefficient and environmentally damaging way the state moves water through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (the delta is the swamp that mires politicians for life). And it won’t save beleaguered fish, which are really suffering in the drought. Several policy wonks have suggested adding a tax to water use to discourage overuse and help pay for fixes to these environmental problems — they are also market failures, and a tax could bring them into the system.
But, that’s not a satisfying solution!
Politics and policy are not as exciting as a technical fix, but in this case they are the only thing that will actually work. You could try for a complete overhaul of the water rights system, but the experts tell me that just isn’t going to happen.
I just want a future that doesn’t suck for my daughters as they grow up in California. I’d like them to have healthy, rushing rivers to swim in; a diversity of fish species to marvel at, and eat; clean drinking water, available to everyone, equitably; and then, way down on the list, I’d like them to grow up in a state that still has farms, and produces great food.
All of that is within reach — if California can just implement its groundwater law. Instead of haphazardly picking foods to boycott or stockading the almond-eaters, let’s let farmers read the market signals and grow what’s appropriate for their circumstances. Then, when water is scarce and prices rise, farmers may find it’s most profitable to sell their water to serve rivers, cities, and fish.
A well-regulated market will push out the water uses that just don’t make sense. Drop-per-crop infographics won’t.
