What will we eat when California Ag disappers?

The title is a serious question that should concern all Americans. California is the largest agriculture producer in the United States. According to the California Department of Food and Agriculture:

With 88,000 farms and ranches, California agriculture is nearly a $36.6 billion dollar industry that generates $100 billion in related economic activity.

In a story in today's LA Times, Energy Secretary Steven Chu is quoted as saying that "'We're looking at a scenario where there's no more agriculture in California." This, in a state that can not even find enough money to pass a budget. When you take away the number one industry in the state, what future does it have?

What is our legislature doing about it? Not a damned thing. Even a normally progressive State Assemblymember, Jared Huffman (D - 6th AD) has introduced AB-39 that seeks to implement the very flawed Delta Vision Task Force Recommendations that, unfortunately, do not consider the impact of what Dr. Chu is saying.

I am too irate to write a plausible plan for what we should be doing. I just know it is not what we are doing now.

All Hail the Farmer in Chief

In 2006, Stockton Record columnist Mike Fitzgerald rather put the nail in Richard Pombo's coffin with his just before column calling Pombo the Taker in Chief. Now, I believe that the Nation needs a Farmer in Chief and if you click read more, you will find out why. This is an OpEd that I submitted to my home town newspaper and which, I hope, runs next week.


We have heard a lot about what the next president, whomever that may be, will do for our economy, energy and the manner in which we project American Power into a world that is increasingly skeptical of our motives. We have not hear a lot about food. It is a subject that seems more likely to be covered in the life style segments of the evening news than as “hard news.”

I know, that in these increasingly hard times, my wife and I are very happy to have the ability to raise a significant amount of our own food. I would be sorry to inform the folks at Nob Hill, Safeway, Trader Joe's, or Target that we almost never buy fruit, not when we can eat what we have grown ourselves every day. And, we don't have to worry about whether or not is was contaminated by e coli somewhere in the food chain. We do not have to think about how much natural gas was required to manufacture the fertilizer, the possible contamination by pesticides nor any of the other concerns that can turn food into real news.

Still, I am of the opinion that possibly the single most important appointment the new president will make is to he position of Secretary of Agriculture. We have gone through an era in which the family farm has disappeared, in which factory farms and multinational corporations like ADM dominate not only the market but also the politics of agriculture.

Why do I write this here, in Morgan Hill, when agriculture is slowly disappearing from the Santa Clara Valley? Because there are alternatives that work and which address a range of other problems: energy, global warming, health care.

You could say that our current situation, an unhealthy diet, a fossil fuel driven agriculture, an expensive delivery system, and the factory farm are all the result of Richard Nixon's single instruction to Sec. Of Acticulture, Earl Butz: “Do whatever you can to boost production.” Nixon was facing rapidly increasing prices for agricultural products and a declining popularity. Butz had the answer: subsidies.

NY Times write Michael Pollan is not a farmer. He is rather a journalist, an avid gardener and a thoughtful consumer of food. Earlier this month (October 9), the Times published his open letter to the next president. He gives some data to underscore the importance of food. “After cars, the food system uses more fossil fuel than any other sector of the economy — 19 percent. And while the experts disagree about the exact amount, the way we feed ourselves contributes more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than anything else we do — as much as 37 percent, according to one study.”

It would seem that we can not make the progress that we want in any area without contemplating how agriculture, our food, fits into the picture. Consider that it now takes 10 calories of fossil fuel energy to produce one calorie of food in our supermarkets.

One solution, according to Pollan, is to re-solarize agriculture. After all, every bit of what we consume comes from the sun. The energy to grow plants comes from photosynthesis. The animal proteins that some of us eat are the result of animals eating plants, or their products. Even the petroleum, coal and natural gas on which we have based our energy system are there because of photosynthesis and the sun.

I can not think of any better solution. It may mean the end of the factory farm, but if it also means that we can improve the quality of the American diet, lowering the incidence of diet related chronic disease that costs our health care system

It may mean that we no longer practice mono-culture agriculture where only a single crop is grown. Since McDonald's only buys one type of potato for it's fries, that is all that many farmers grow, even though it requires the use of more pesticides than almost any food crop we have. The alternative is to practice multiple crop rotation as is done in Argentina where the rotation of cattle and grains on the same land has brought a lower cost of production, no pesticides required and far less fertilizer.

Standing in the way of this is the fact that we, as consumers, have this notion that the only choices are some high priced organic market. That would not be true if the food system were operated for the benefit of the farmer or the consumer rather than corporate profitability.

Both major party candidates talk of change. But when their campaigns started in Iowa, they bowed down to the corn god and mouthed the right words. Even our supposedly environmental senator, Barbara Boxer votes on the food bill knowing that “we have our cotton people and our rice people” and so supports subsidies to those who need it the least.

Effecting change will not be easy. We need political leadership that will challenge the prevailing wisdom and I am not sure that it will come from presidential candidates who are fighting over Indiana or Iowa votes.

Even in the Green Party it is not easy to get people think of agriculture in this way. Too many have a strictly urban view or confuse ecology with environment where the environment is a place to visit. It challenges too many deeply held, but false, beliefs in how the real system works. I am working to change that, in my community, in my party, in the whole country. Join me.

You can read Pollan's full open letter here:

Finally some Engineererd sense from Sacramento

Apologies to the citizens of Sacramento. I was using the name of your city to refer to those visitors who show up and try to come to some agreement about the governance of this fine state. It is that latter body that so often fails to apply some sense.

That rather holds true for California Greens. Given that Greens are found where the population is found, most are in the major urban areas of the state... San Diego, Los Angeles, Bay Area. So we don't pay enough attention to what is happening in the rural areas and the legislation that passes through the Agriculture Committees of our state legislature rarely raises a ripple.

There is one bill that we should all be supporting. AB 541, introduced by Marin County's Jared Huffman, has as it's primary function to establish that the manufacturers of genetically engineered (GE) crops are liable for damages if the GE material contaminates crops on other lands and causes financial loss. This is the first state-wide legislation related to GE crops that has passed out of the Agriculture Committee. It is a hopeful sign that the first bill is one that is designed to protect farmers who choose not to use GE seed.

According to a press release from the Genetic Engineering Policy Project:

Specifically, the newly amended bill would provide for:

1. Protection from patent infringement lawsuits for farmers unknowingly contaminated by GE crops. Currently, farmers with crops that become contaminated by patented seeds or pollen have been the target of such lawsuits without clear recourse or defense.
2. The establishment of a mandatory crop sampling protocol to be used by patent holders when investigating farmers they believe may have violated patents or seed contracts. This protocol would require the farmer’s written permission for sampling, and provide for a state agriculture official to accompany the patent holder during the sampling and collect duplicate samples for independent verification if requested by either party.

The vote in the Committee on Agriculture was 5 - 0 with three members either absent or abstaining. Those three were Doug LaMalfa (R - AD 2), Jean Fuller (R - AD 32) and Cathleen Gagliani (D - AD 17). Gagliani's non-action is interesting in that she has just moved into the 12th State Senate District served by Jeff Denham, long a major fixture in agricultural legislation in this state but facing a Don Perata backed recall drive.

Most of the time, the Assembly Committee on Agriculture goes about it business out of the sight of our major media. The LA Times, SF Chronicle, San Jose Mercury New, San Diego Union Tribune are all urban papers and the don't pay much attention to agriculture unless that is a story on food contamination with which they can scare everyone.

Even the Committee on Agriculture likes it's relative anonymity. That have not seen fit to post their hearing schedules [click "Committee Hearings" in left side menu] since April 2005.

Among all of the other things we have to worry about, the changes we want to see, this bill is one for which I believe the Green Party should be active in it's support. We can not sit back in our comfortable (sub)urban homes and expect any legislature to do the right thing. There is a long way to go on this one and we have to keep pushing. You know that Monsanto will be doing heavy lobbying.

Water Wars Continue... Politicians Hide.

We are finally beginning to see the shape of what the experts deem to be the future of water in California. The 2nd draft of A Vision for California’s Delta has been released and will be under discussion today and tomorrow in Sacramento.

Given what it is, a report put together with major input form the water agencies and not enough input form the public, it appears to me to be saying that we need to do all of the above: new dams, new underground storage, new canals, etc. It is cloaked in enough fine words that even major environmental groups are not strongly criticizing in in public... and I don't know about what they say in private.

“There’s a lot of good things in here,” said Barry Nelson, a water policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “A lot of these are issues that the agencies have been ducking for a long time.”

The Blue Ribbon Task Force will make it's recommendations by the end of November, so there is little time do much to change it, though there will be 3 rounds of public comment afterwards.

Here is a list of quick observations:

• The current firestorms in Southern California show us exactly how dependent we are on a fragile system and how interconnected all of this is. The time to view anything as other than interconnected is long past.
• Much of the rhetoric will frame this as a conflict between people and endangered species. This is a dangerous framing and far from the truth.
  
• Water agencies will never take a stand that implies any limitation to growth or demand.
  
• Neither major political party is willing to take the step of addressing the number one use of water in the State. Think "Got Milk." California agriculture is heavily invested in crops that are water intensive: cotton, alfalfa, rice. The predictions of climate change scientists are that rainfall and temperature changes will necessitate changes in agricultural practices, crop selection, etc. The time to start this is now.
  

The report does call for changes in the agricultural use in the Delta.

Specialized forms of agriculture that are particularly well suited to the Delta must be encouraged, such as subsidence-reversing crops, carbon-sequestering crops, and wildlife-friendly farming practices.

It fails, however, to recognize the need for making other basic changes, assuming that their job is only to deliver the water that agriculture needs. But then, Central Valley Water Districts help write the report.