My advise to the farmers in the central valley stands.
Posted on 09/24/2009 8:30:44 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Nearly a quarter-million acres worth of contracted federal irrigation deliveries have been cut from the big farms of the west side of the San Joaquin Valley in central California. The water in large part is being diverted to the salty San Francisco Bay and the delta to improve marine ecology.
The result of the cutbacks is that many crops in the San Joaquin Valley have gone unplanted. Farm income is down. Thousands of farm laborers are unemployed. Growers and workers are now livid at environmentalists, federal bureaucrats, and judges for worrying more about fish than about people and food growing.
Environmentalists counter that the real cause of the cutoff is an ongoing drought. They argue there are too many claims on too little fresh water with no margin of safety in dry years like this one. The problem is not just saving tiny delta smelt or salmon, but a larger one of living within our means and not polluting our fragile ecosystem.
The crisis is not over an entire valley, but instead a sizable part of it without regular irrigation deliveries. For those farmers and workers whose livelihoods depend on that parched acreage, the result is undeniably catastrophic.
All this should remind us that Americans have developed a bad habit of avoiding tough choices. Californians could build more dams and more canals, and farm with adequate irrigation, but that would mean fewer natural flowing rivers, fewer fish, and saltier deltas.
Few, though, will honestly acknowledge, “I want 10,000 acres of almonds, but I realize that will mean a slightly saltier delta and less marine life,” or, on the flip side, “I vote for more delta smelt but understand that will mean fewer tomatoes.”
Instead of making these bad/worse decisions, we dream on about a natural California, with plenty of rain, stuffed with 36 million affluent residents (most of them crammed near Los Angeles or San Francisco).
Amnesiac federal officials and judges likewise are just as unrealistic.
The problems with fish in San Francisco Bay area water are not just because fresh river water is being sent to San Joaquin Valley farms.
Northern Californian sewer districts, businesses, and developers also are dumping more treated wastewater and run-off into the delta and bay, and more fresh water is thus needed to flush it out. Yet it seems easier to cut short a few thousand farmers and farm workers than to order millions of Northern Californians to alter their habits.
It was also the federal government in the first place that, rightly or wrongly, built the dams, canals, and pumps to provide the vast water transfers for farming. Once upon a time, the government saw public benefit in turning arid land into green productive farms.
So naturally the federal government also provided the crop and irrigation subsidies to encourage a few individuals to create a vast corporate agribusiness out of former alkali wasteland of the valley’s west side. Now that its old dream of new productive farms, plentiful food, and thousands of new jobs is realized, a different sort of bureaucracy and judiciary has the luxury to renege and question whether the investment was ever worth it.
Californians and Americans, of course, will still eat no matter what happens to this water, as they still drive. But if we do not produce our own food and fuel, someone else will do it for us.
That means we will have to earn — or borrow — the necessary cash payments from somewhere to ensure our present standard of living. Good luck with that. Currently the United States is running a $2 trillion annual deficit and a $32-billion-a-month trade deficit. California itself is trying to recover from a recent $42 billion budget shortfall.
Unless we cut our population or our appetites, each acre of food we idle in the United States — just like every barrel of oil we don’t pump — means that we will import what we take for granted from somewhere else.
We can be sure that even if we find the money to pay those who sell us our imported food and fuel, they will produce it in a lot messier fashion than we can ever imagine —ensuring a poorer America and a dirtier planet all at once.
— Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a recipient of the 2007 National Humanities Medal. He lives and works with his family on a 40-acre tree and vine farm in Selma, California. © 2009 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
Next thing will be the eviro nazis will convince the socialist dems to burn our food in an attempt to cool the planet, oh wait, never mind.
More almonds & tomatoes!
And if we’re talking about tough decisions: destroy/dismantle/abolish social security & Medicare/Medicaid, any government agency that does not fill a Constitutionally mandated or authorized function should also be dropped. (Goodbye NEA, EPA, IRS, TSA...)
It starts with “Save the Delta Smelt” How do we save them? Pump the little fresh water fish into a saltwater environment, makes a lot of sense.
The main question that no one has answered yet is what part is Pelousy and her real estate mogul husband playing in this? If it goes on much longer, lots of valuable farm ground will be sold a dime on the dollar at bank sales. Will Pelousy end up owning a majority of that land and then the water come back on? Inquiring minds need to know.
Are there any more contemptible words in this world today to those trying to oppose the enviro-fascists?
The world went on for millenia without them to "put things right" and it will go on without them, but God help us, they just want to do good....frickin do gooders will be the end of us....or at least our way of life.
Just think of all the millions of gallons of water used to irrigate crops JUST to burn them up as fuel. Now THAT is an abomination....brought to us by the “watermelons”...you know, green on the outside, red inside....socialists in drag.....ethanol as fuel. It lowers gas mileage, robs the world of needed food, causes worse emissions, and uses MORE petroleum to make a gallon, than it produces. Welcome to liberal heaven, which coincidentally and logically, is hell.
VDH does a good job outlining the cost/benefit questions about this saga and he’s right that we need to have the discussion on a number of similar issues. What he ignores is who will the discussions be between....who are honorable to conduct this discussion when 1 side appears to be on the path of Cloward-Piven?
Start a fish farm.
Perhaps they should irrigate with Gatorade. After all, it’s got what plants crave.....electrolytes.
Regards,
TS
It’s obvious to me that this is all about someone buying up all that land for pennies on the dollar.
San Diego Carburetor says that ethanol keeps his business alive,the stuff eats up all the rubber seals.
Electrolytes are used to make Brawndo, and since Brawndo is the most awesome drink in the world, that’s why they use electrolytes.
My advise to the farmers in the central valley stands.
Nearly a quarter-million acres worth of contracted federal irrigation deliveries have been cut from the big farms.
So we have to import crops from Mexico yes it’s a fish story alright.
This is a battle that I have been fighting for just about 20 years in the Klamath River Basin. It is all about the use of force by government to reallocate wealth. Force - that is what regulation is. Using the spotted owl and the coho, the federal and State endangered species acts have destroyed our local economy to the point that we have 18% unemployment and 70% of our children living in poverty.
Once the second largest timber producing county in California, now all our lumber mills are closed. All we have left is two veneer mills. Our forests burn horrendously (250,000 acres in 2008) because the growth rate far exceeds anything allowed by environmentalists to be taken off the forest and the resultant ladder fuels carry fire into the crowns of the trees.
The legislature killed the mining industry for the sake of salmon this year. Now our Happy Camp food bank is out of food trying to feed the poor blokes who made a living mning. The local supermarket is down $40,000 in income from this time last year. Wonder if it will survive.
Farmers and ranchers (hay and cow/calf) are suffering poor prices for hay as the dairy industry downsizes. At the same time, through ESA and the Clean Water Act, salmon activists repeatedly hack away at any profits and threaten continued access to basic water for irrigation. (Local water rights are property - adjudicated and with many dating back to the 1850-70s.)
Government force (regulation) is a power that should be used only to secure general public health and safety from the threat of substantial injury by imposing prohibitions and mitigations in a reasonable manner. This is not that. It is wealth redistribution - taking from the villanized farmer and giving to the coastal and tribal economy. By regulating the use of natural resources to increase habitat, the acts turn any use into a “permitted activity” rather than the free use of one’s private property for economic purposes. By turning the use (farming) into an otherwise prohibited activity, it allows them to control where, when and how people farm. It also allows the government to impose “mitigations” at the owners expense to improve habitat - such as planting riparian trees.
Commercial fishing is the only commercial crop I know of where someone else pays for all the inputs in raising the crop and then you get to harvest and sell it and they get nothing.
if crops in California are going unplanted, why, that’s very bad for ...MEXICANS!
Maybe we can set up EnviroGreenies and LaRaza in a Celebrity Cage Death Match....
I used to think this guy was alright but lately he is showing himself to be leaning to the left, he** today he defended LGF.
The point of this article shouldn't be that Californias use low flush toilets or take a dump outside under a tree to save water(oK, I added that)but that the state should dump the EPA and start building desalinization plants all along the coast, thus eliminating the water problem forever. This guy is also downplaying the total devastation that cutting the water off to these farmers is causing.
Do we need more damns in CA? Yep, we need them for the electricity that greenies don't want us to have, fish ladders solve the fish problem. Desalinization plants would solve the "salt water" backing up into the delta in the summer, as all the water farmers and others would need would come from them, or at least most of it.
If the Southern half of the state built the plants the North would have plenty of water without them. The tough choice Californians should be making isn't whether to flush or not but to dump EPA regs and ignore fed mandates on building. Kick the greenies out of the state and do what is best for the humans living here.
He defended LGF? Where?
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