657 WHICH SHOULD GET THE WATER: FARMS OR FISH?

[michaelo]

Whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting.

Well into its third year of drought, California is running desperately low on water, and the fight is on for what’s left, and there are many who want what’s left.

Manufacturing has some jobs, but only a few manufacturers can afford to make things in California anymore, so manufacturing will not likely get as much as it wants to create more jobs. That leaves agriculture and the environment to do the serious fighting.

California is the nation’s largest producer of fruits, nuts, vegetables, livestock and dairy products and ranks fifth in the world as a supplier of food, with cash receipts totaling nearly $40 billion annually. But while once many lived on farms, few now do. The vote has moved to into the city.

City people, starved for nature, make great environmentalists, and vote for politicians and judges that enforce their will. Recently, a Federal judge turned the spigot off for California agriculture, and on for California’s fish.

The loss of water is having a devastating impact throughout Calfiornia’s great Central Valley, perhaps the most fecund geography in the world. 600,000 acres of prime farmland have been abandoned; tens of thousands of farmers and farmworkers have lost their work; and local food banks have been reduced to distributing food manufactured in China to hungry farm families. And so we ask…

Farms or Fish? (The Forums #656)