California lost 500 farms in 2005

SacBee via SHNS ^ | 02-02-06 | JIM WASSERMAN

[Amerigomag]

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- California, the nation's leading farm state, lost 500 farms in 2005 as agriculture continued to consolidate to bigger operations and urban development consumed more land, says a report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

While California's closures represented less than 1 percent of the state's remaining 76,500 farms, the number of farms in the state has fallen for seven straight years _ a loss of 10,500 farms _ reported the USDA.

California state conservation officials estimate urban growth alone covers 50,000 irrigated acres of farmland yearly. Last year, state farm acreage dropped by 300,000 acres. Nationally, California's farm losses represented 4.2 percent of 11,980 farms that closed in 2005, according to the USDA. The nation has 2.1 million farms on nearly 1 billion acres of land.

In California, where farmers produced $31.8 billion in goods on about 26.7 million acres in 2004, the average farm size was 345 acres last year, federal statistics indicated.

The consolidation trend is easy to see when revenue figures are broken down. For instance, the number of farms reporting sales over $500,000 rose to 8,500 in 2005 _ an increase of 200 farms. Similarly, farming operations reporting sales of $250,000 to $500,000 jumped to 4,300 last year. That was an increase of 100 farms.

North Carolina lost 2,000 farms in 2005, the most of any state. Others states with losses of 500 farms or more included Washington, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Ohio, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama. Texas gained 1,000 new farms.

[calcowgirl]

LOL. What else do people put in stockings today?
I still put fruit and nuts (in the shell) in stockings.

[calcowgirl]

There is no such thing as a decent tomato.
The only way to do that is to plant it yourself.

I agree, home grown is the way to go. But I don't remember the store-bought variety
being as bad a decade ago as they are today.

[unixfox]

So...the question should be, since CA has lost so many farms, has the USDA (the overlords) cut back on THEIR personnel?

Answer: (insert laughing here)

[Clemenza]

Calipornia's problem is that they voted in a large welfare state over the years, while refusing to pass new taxes to pay for them.

States like Texas and Florida have large illegal and legal immigrant populations, but the financial drain is not as harsh because those states don't have the social welfare state that California Anglos voted in decades ago.

[NathanR]

Blame Cesar Chavez and the Farm Workers Union. Before him, tomatoes were picked by hand using Mexican stoop labor and the tomatoes were good. Once the union got involved, farmers developed tomatoes what could be picked by machine using fewer laborers.

[tiki]

I've heard of a few farmers holding out but when they offer you a million bucks an acre and you've been busting butt for 30 for practically nothing it is hard to say no. Not to mention that when the first farm sells out it makes life harder for the remaining farmers because they then have to deal with urbanites who gripe and complain about everything.

There was a spinach farmer around Phoenix. Someone called the Sheriff everytime he started a tractor. He finally called it quits this year and got 5 million an acre.

[FOG724]

Doesn't matter to me, I still won't eat them.

[tiki]

This is true but you would have to take into account what is being imported and what is being exported. For example, we get a lot of our fresh fruit and vegetables, high value crops, from Mexico and they also supply a lot to the canneries. We export more grain type crops.

[tiki]

...or starvation.

[1rudeboy]

Because they are picked when they are green. Pet peeve of mine. The only way to get a decent tomato is to grow your own, or know someone who does.

[tiki]

I'd sell in a moment but I don't live in an urban sprawl area but I'm waiting.

[tiki]

Because they grow machine harvest tomatoes and pick them green and they ripen as they reach market. It is the same with most produce that's why you can't get a good peach or apricot nothing is left on the tree until it is ripe or it would be spoiled. When you pick them you don't know if they're going to NY or to the corner store and you pick them all at the same time.

[freedumb2003]

It is called Capitalism.

A farmer is a small businessman, just like a deli owner, restauraunt owner, gas station owner or an eBay store owner.

If the big boys do a better job, then time to find a new line of work.

[tiki]

If the writer had meant that they lost 500 farmers he sure should have said so. In our rural county we've gone from over 400 farmers to less than 40 in 35 yrs. I would estimate that 60% of those farms are out of production. Around here people have sold their water rights to the power plant and to the city who is sowing them up for the future.

[tiki]

We always had navel oranges, qumquats and chestnuts at Christmas.

[isom35]

I dont worry about farms, there is more than enough food in the grocery store.

[tiki]

I can't give you the facts but IIRC they announced that they were closing quite a few offices nationwide.

[hispanarepublicana]

LOL. What else do people put in stockings today? I still put fruit and nuts (in the shell) in stockings.

I'm partial to finding tiny jewelry boxes and small bottles of liquor in mine....

[calcowgirl]

I like your style! :-)

[Arthalion]

If you decided to drive down Hwy 99 (Hwy 5 and 99 meet at both ends of the valley but for the most part they run parallel about 20 miles apart. Most of the land between the two roads is farm land. Driving 99 south from Sacramento you hit a large city about every hour, Stockton, Modesto, Merced, Fresno and then Bakersfield. Everything between the cities is farm land.

That may have been true fifteen or twenty years ago, but it's certainly not true today. Drive south out of Sacramento and you'll hit Elk Grove in about 5 minutes. South of Elk Grove you'll pass through a bunch of marginally farmable marshlands until you hit Lodi in 15 minutes. On a clear day, you can SEE the sprawl in northern Stockton from the edge of the sprawl in southern Lodi now. In 10 years, it'll be one city. When you leave southern Stockton, you have a short 15 minute drive to Manteca. South of Manteca, it's only 5 minutes to Ripon. From there, it's SOLID CITY from southern San Joaquin county, all the way through Stanislaus county to the Merced county line. Ripon, Salida, Modesto, Ceres, Keyes, and Turlock have ALL bumped into each other. While there are still a couple of spots of farmland along the freeway, they're all owned by developers who already have development plans on file for them. Once you enter Merced County, you'll find yourself in Delhi in under 5 minutes. South of Delhi, it's a bridge and two minutes to Livingston. Unfortunatly, every single one of these once tiny towns is now surrounded by an ever expanding ring of subdivisions. Tiny Salida, which had a population of about 600 15 years ago, now has over 14,000 people in it. Ceres, which had about 8,000 people in it when I was a kid (and I'm only 30), is over 40,000 today.

As recently as 10 years ago, most of these towns and cities had vast stretches of unbroken farmland between them and every one of those farms put food on our tables. Today, vast areas of that land have been developed, and development plans are publically availalbe showing that they plan on expanding far more.

There's considerably more land available in the southern half of the Valley, but that land has problems of its own. It's poor quality soil, it has a lot of salt in it, and there are serious limitations on the amount of water available to it. The central and northern valleys pull water from a dozen rivers and have enough water to pump to other parts of the state for drinking. As the cities expand, they're using the water from these rivers to sate their populations. And the southern half of the valley? Only three rivers that are ALREADY tapped so heavily that two of them end in dry riverbeds, and the third is shallow enough to walk across mid-summer. Empty dirt is only one of the requirements for farming, and we have plenty of that. Poor soil conditions and lack of water ensure that the southern valley cannot be made productive enough to counter the loss of farmland in the north.