You may have noticed – and seriously, how could you have missed it – that food prices are soaring.
It’s not just because increasingly wealthy Indians and Chinese are putting strains on worldwide food production. It’s also because insane Federal policy has destroyed the Breadbasket of the World.
Reason Magazine describes the disaster that has become the California’s Central Valley:
California’s Central Valley is a 450 mile long stretch of flat and fertile land that produces much of the food that we enjoy every day. But the people in small towns like Mendota (the cantaloupe capital of the world) are suffering these days, in part due to two federal policies.
In order to protect a threatened fish species called the Delta Smelt, much of the water that used to be pumped from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to farms on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley is now allowed to flow into the ocean. The result is predictable: hundreds of thousands of acres of farm land lies fallow and tens of thousands of jobs have been lost. In Mendota, the unemployment rate is over 40% and food lines are the norm.
But people going hungry in a region dominated by agriculture is only one of the contradictions in the Central Valley.
Nearly all the valley’s farm workers are immigrants from Mexico and Central America, and many of them are undocumented. These people are crucial to the valley’s economy, but they’re breaking the law according to the federal government.
Watch the video. It will simultaneously break your heart and piss you off.
This post was last modified on January 18, 2011
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I suppose now it will be time once again for Kalifornia to try and seize the bajillions of gallons of water that flow from the Columbia into the Pacific every second. They tried in the 80's & 90's when they were bulldozing the deserts for McMansions and didn't have a true long term water solution (like when the droughts hit).
I drove through the Central Valley last summer and was stunned at all the dirt fields as far as the eye can see with a rare green patch that was for the fruit and nut trees...I saw the special that Hannity did on it the year before, so nothing had changed.
When food gets astronomical and people start rioting over the shortages, will the politicians maybe pay attention. In the meantime, grow as much of your food as you can, and if you don't already know how, learn to can. Otherwise, we will be eating most of our food from China and God knows where else...I read the labels and absolutely refuse to buy any food product or fresh produce that is not grown/prepared in the USA.
1) California has had water distribution problems for over a century.
2) The food grown in California looks and smells lovely and tastes like cardboard
3) I thought the Breadbasket of the World was in the plains states!
4) If there is 40% unemployment, and 50% of workers are illegals, then wouldn't sending the illegals home eliminate the unemployment?
5) And through it all, the illegals are getting screwed as well-they don't get unemployment, and theoretically no food stamps, Medicaid, Housing assistance or any other benefits. They cannot complain about their jobs (or the lack thereof) because they will get picked up and deported. How is it fair to use them as labor, but leave them in the dirt when the jobs dry up? This is why illegals need to be deported early on, or prevented from entering in the first place. Illegal immigration is unfair to both sides, the legal immigrants who worked their tails off to do it right, the citizens who feel overwhelmed by the number of illegals living here untouched, and the illegal themselves who can never be fully invested in being American.
Per point #s 2 & 3...
#2 - 100% agree, but it seems that is because less-than-fully-ripened fruit and vegetable crops are shipped away from CA and abroad so they do not hit their destinations' shelves on the backside of fresh. Probably the local stuff was excellent. Do you know, Deb... was it any good in CA? I grew up in Oregon and the "local" stuff we could get in-season at roadside stands was very flavorful.
#3 - You are correct. No region of the world has supplied more grain crops than the Great Plains of the U.S. I think it would be better to call California's Central Valley "The World's Cornucopia" for its ability and past success to provide massive fruit and vegetable crops.
The fruits and vegetables still being produced are just fine. Most of the best citrus gets shipped off to Japan, though. If you want a really good orange, you have to go for a walk in an orchard and steal one.
I think a good commercial for Romney would have him standing with a farmer, pointing across all the dusty, empty, dead fields, and saying, "You didn't build that, government did."
hey, that'd help owsers cut down on incidents of rickets.
Of all the smelts I ever smelt,I never smelt a smelt like that smelt smelt.-Groucho Marx.
The Federal policy: Save the environment, kill the people.
If the lefts argument was valid the minnows would have gone extinct 60 years ago when the water was original diverted.
I still think the libs want the land and found a excuse to grab it. My guess is they want to build a huge solar farm on the site.
All that "free" energy the libs keep talking about that cost 3 times as much..
Here it is the Rio Grande silvery minnow and the Pecos river blunt nosed minnow. I have asked the gestapo agents, excuse me, the state Environmental Protection Agency, what makes them think the minnow has been in either river for millions of years. Prove to me that them minnows are not the offspring of minnows dumped into the river by someone fishing upstream 50 years ago. They cannot answer that question.
Since the Rio Grande and Pecos rivers have never been year round flowing rivers, they go dry for the most part during our rainless summers, why are they trying to drown the little fishies they say they are trying to save? The minnows sense when the water level is dropping and spawn then bury their eggs for the next wet cycle to begin. By trying to regulate water flow, make both rivers run year round, the minnows never feel the need to spawn and continue their life cycle. Are they really interfering with nature instead of helping it? None of the goombahs in the EPA can answer that question either.
I have lived off the land, all farmers and ranchers do, and understand the environment around me much better than some little pencil-necked, pimple headed, college edukated, gooberment clone. The EPA needs to do a little endangered species act of its own. Like in go away, we don't need you anyway.
The Central Valley has essentially become a Third World country where most of the residents are illegal aliens and English is no longer the language spoken by the majority. Many of the small farms and orchards have been abondoned while illegal trailer courts and illegal dumping are spreading. The liberals who live along the Pacific coast and control California remain unaffected and don't care about the ongoing collapse of a once great state---but they can't escape the consequences of their ruinous decisions for much longer.
A few weeks after the Coronation ( inauguration) there was a special aired about the valleys water being turned off, I can't remember what network but I'll guess it was fox.
Paul Rodriguez the comedian was a guest, he asked Obama for his "vote back" and said "this isn't the change he had in mind".
"Nearly all the valley’s farm workers are immigrants from Mexico and Central America, and many of them are undocumented. These people are crucial to the valley’s economy, but they’re breaking the law according to the federal government."
Notice how they turned the article into a pro-illegal alien article.
The bracero program, abandoned in 1964, allowed around 180,000 workers to travel from Mexico to the U.S. to work in agriculture. When the program ended, workers could no longer travel so they ended up staying in the U.S. illegally where there were jobs.