Posted on 02/22/2014 10:36:24 AM PST by Jim Robinson
Central Valley farmers took a crippling blow Friday when U.S. officials made the unprecedented announcement that they would get no irrigation water from the federal government this year because of the drought.
But growers in a region with the country's most productive soil said the loss of one of their chief water supplies won't be their problem alone: Consumers will be hit hard in the form of higher prices at the produce market.
California's unusually dry weather is forcing producers of fruits, vegetables, nuts and grains to make tough decisions about which crops to plant, and which ones not to plant due to a lack of water, leaving harvests that are likely to fall short of demand.
A recent estimate by an industry group, the California Farm Water Coalition, suggested that as much as 600,000 acres of land, or about 8 percent of the state's total, could be left fallow in the coming year.
~~snip~~
Jay Lund, who heads the Center for Watershed Sciences at UC Davis, said products from other parts of the world will fill some of the void, easing the impact on price.
"They'll go up a little bit," Lund said. "But I don't think it will be catastrophic. Time will tell."
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Suddenly, true organic farming rears it’s ugly head.
Mooch will figure something out.
Ya know, up until the 1980’s, a government entity making such a unilateral move against the population would be tantamount to an act of war. Yes, even in the good old USA.
In the 90’s, and even into the first decade, there would be massive protests, which itself could force political change.
I know this. Mr. Head knows this. We’ve seen it all before.
This is for those in the affected areas who think a nice, hand - written letter to your Congress person or whining on this forum can change course.
This move in California ‘ s Central Valley places thousands on American lives at stake. This is not a dem vs gop thing. It’s a matter of a good 20% of America’s food production. It’s a matter of survival. Those that have rights to the water in the valley should not allow under any circumstances their natural resources to be stolen.
(See tagline)
Where’s the revolution?
The highways to San Fran are vital to it’s existence
Thanks JimRob.
Last year I started learning to grow food plants from seed and hope this spring, summer, and fall, I will grow my own veggies. I'm well on the way to having my spring veggies in their final containers to produce food.
I didn't know this was going to happen to California, so now I'm glad I started learning to grow my own. My veggies won't come from Mexico or some other country and there won't be any chemicals on my plants and no hands will have touched them but me. I have a small backyard but it's going to produce food with plants in containers.
Learn to grow your own veggies and piss off Hussein Obama and his corrupted Democrats.
“Filling their swimming pools”
I do not live in California, so I can’t claim any knowledge of the situation there-but while we don’t have many “save the purple trashminnow-that-no-one-eats” people here, we do have the city people who insist on filling their pools, pouring enough water every week on commercial and residential lots planted with everything native to the Florida Keys to keep 4 families of 6 in showers and drinking water for three months, and they don’t care if farmers don’t have any water as long as they do-are there a lot of these people in California, too?
The Boy Scouts taught me how me how to desalinize water with a few sticks, a couple pots & some tin foil. That wouldn’t work on the scale they need but it would (should) still be pretty easy. Of course being Cali., with all their regulations & unions, it would end up costing MUCH more that it should. Still, a couple wind turbines, a few solar panels, an electric coil, 2 collection tanks & a pipeline leading to the lakes they want to fill are really all that’s required for one plant. Streisand could fund it all with her takings from one concert.
It’s time for a Tea Party.
They are changing diapers in the Ukraine, perhaps its time to change some diapers here.
I bet there are democrats buying up the land cheap after cutting off the water and forcing the owners to sell.
Can you say, ‘Collective Farming’? I thought you could. The increasing pressure on those who ‘produce’ continues. The ‘Progressives’ are on track with Health Care, energy is on the agenda, Food comes next.
After all, ‘they’ didn’t build it. They Shoulda known their ground depended on the kindness of the government.
I expect desalinization is farther out than the Columbia River pipeline. For a couple decades now Kalifornia has drooled over the prospect of running a 24 foot diameter pipeline from the mouth of the Columbia, down the coast range, to the central valley. Taken from near the mouth , the Columbia would never miss it, moving the sea water about 6 inches farther inland. If it helps keep Kalifornians in California I’m all for it. They’ve been quiet about the idea for a few years but this dry time might very well fire up the conversation again and it seems like the kind of “shovel ready” job the Kenyan would love? And as with Patton crossing the Rhine it would give me new enthusiasm for piddling in the river.
The irrigation canals from Grand Coulee Dam have been a huge economic blessing and like you said, the river does not miss the small amount of water that is diverted.
A pipeline from the Columbia makes too much sense. There are lots of major infrastructure projects that would greatly benefit our nation, but the threat of litigation and special interests make them nothing more than pipe dreams. Pun intended.
Desalinization plants with pipelines on the coast of California would be more than adequate and cost-effective if we removed the obstacles. All that is required is cheap electricity that could be provided by new nuclear technology and a willingness to allow it all to happen.
If California could provide it’s own affordable electricity it would also lower the electricity costs of it’s neighbors benefitting the region.
The irony is that one of the main arguments against water development is protecting plant and animal life when they would flourish just as much as we would. The animal/plant life in the Columbia Basin greatly benefits from the irrigation projects.
Oh yes they do, they want the land for their buddies in the development business and those buying ag land abroad. They want the Central Valley out of business. They don't want America to be self-sustaining in food production. I saw this coming nearly five years ago.
The key fact is that water is more valuable for development than it is for agriculture. As long as that is true the crooks in the "investment" business are going to tweak things against farming. They're "investing" in farming overseas in "places more appropriate for farming (see "comparative advantage" and "free trade"). So they get the trade agreements they want, push those annoying owners off their land, so that they come running to cities, including here, looking to be the customer base for their housing. That they'll subsidize exactly the same way they are doing now using your tax dollars to feed, clothe, educate, and medicate their brainwashed children up to speed, you know, until things are "fair." They'll make better slaves because they already know the score. Americans are too deluded with relic ideas of "freedom" to be quite as useful.
You really didn't think that Democrats like Pat and Jerry were going to let the "wrong people" make money did you? They got the farmers to pony up the cash for the construction of this massive investment subsidy (the California Water Project), by teasing them into salivating at a profit in real estate. They got the farmers to pay for the infrastructure and let them hold the bag until the big boys saw the right time. They had to wait until they were finished building out the desert anyway. The recession plus the idiot voters wishing up a passenger train boondoggle presents exactly such an opportunity.
Smelt, smelt, oh no, the smelt are dying... uh, the farmers are still hanging on... Oh steelhead, salmon, oh the humanity!!! (they're more photogenic anyway.) So it goes. I'll bet whoever wrote that biological opinion will end up running a lab.
29 posted on 06/09/2009 7:27:54 AM PDT by Carry_Okie (Grovelnator Schwarzenkaiser, fashionable fascism one charade at a time.)
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The biggest developer of Sustainable Development "stack and pack" housing is Catellus Development, aka ChiFi's husband Richard Blum. The biggest stockholder in Catellus is CalPERS. The left is leveraging public pension money to build prison-cities, with the bureaucrats enforcing the means to force people out of suburbs having their pensions tied to the success of that effort, else the taxpayers have to pony up to pay for said inflated pensions.
Quite the deal.
As produce production goes down, and prices rise, I think red area farmers should sell their produce to blue counties for a much higher price (all across the nation), to subsidize being able to keep the prices stable for red counties and states. Reward those who vote sanely, and penalize the tyrants.
Who cares if blue country liberals think it’s unfair? They are being their typical dictatorial selves and once again ruining an American industry. It’s time that for once THEY pay the price for what they are doing to everyone else.
Do you have links/posts/etc that you could collate into a resource? Your hypothesis sounds tyrannical and draconian... and all too likely, given the fascist tendencies of the American Left.
When I was living in kalifonia I remember some idiot from the heartland who came to san fransicko just to visit the sierra club headquarters. He expected to see a bunch of euel gibbons types. Instead he found three martini lunch sipping suits who were running a scam. They were inventing environmental causes just to keep the suckers sending money.
I think that's what this is. Just an ongoing scam.
Truly, if I wanted to make a million dollars, I'd start some leftwing cause. Those idiots are too stupid to think for themselves. They'd send money regardless.
The basic understanding came from research done for my book, Natural Process: That Environmental Laws May Serve the Laws of Nature. A lot of the data about CalPERS and Catellus came from a book by disaffected leftist reporter, Richard Trainor: Paradise Lost? The rest was obvious. I have a lot more on such machinations and (more importantly) how they were integrated into our laws from the beginning here.
Lived SO CAl, it rains usually in March and NOV! March can be a wash out so hang on So Cal it’s on it’s way!
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