Mainstream media call for mainstream ag education

Before it can appear here, much of our food and fiber found on grocery store shelves first starts on American farms and ranches. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

An incredible editorial in the Modesto Bee makes me believe that some in the mainstream media actually do get it, and in more ways than one.

The Bee believes that a lawsuit filed against the California Milk Advisory Board and the California Department of Agriculture by the group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is indeed “silly” and “misdirected.”

I couldn’t agree more.

In short, PETA contends that the Happy Cow ads that became popular more than 10 years ago are grossly false and misleading because they depict talking cows standing on lush, green pastures, and that because most dairy cows do not live in such conditions, they must not be very happy. Then again, they’re not too concerned over the false notion that cows can talk, just that dairy cows must not be very happy because of PETA’s false premises, which the Bee articulates well in its editorial.

I wonder if the brain-trust at PETA is likewise concerned that beer companies are equally as reprehensible as dairy farmers because they portray their products as elixirs that cause people to be smarter and more attractive. You’d think that someone would have noticed that the product dairy farmers produce doesn’t cause people to drive drunk and kill other human beings… just a thought.

The Bee is well placed within California’s agriculturally-rich Central Valley to indeed “get it.” It’s as the paper’s editorial board should, given their placement in one of California’s five top agriculturally prolific counties in the United States. But this isn’t so much about the Bee or its editorial position on the latest PETA lawsuit.

Call for better education of agricultural practices

While the Bee’s point was to apparently illustrate just how ridiculous PETA’s lawsuit is, the editorial touches on a much more important issue (I believe) facing agriculture today: the abject ignorance of consumers about the products farmers and ranchers produce — namely “what goes into caring responsibly for livestock,” the Bee writes.

Of all the various trade organizations that farmers and ranchers willingly, and in some cases, not-so-willingly, send their money to, you’d think that at least one of them would take it upon themselves to focus intently on educating the public about the food and fiber that their farmer and rancher members produce, rather than treating it as an afterthought.

In California’s case, the California Farm Bureau Federation’s media department is heads and shoulders above its other state counterparts in terms of the vast amount of information produced for public consumption, particularly across the entire agricultural spectrum. The California Milk Advisory Board, since that’s one of the defendants in this report, merely represents dairy farmers, although it’s funding comes not from voluntary contributions, but through involuntary confiscatory measures employed by the dairy industry itself.

As is the case with Farm Bureau, one would argue that much of the information produced is aimed at its farmer and rancher members, and not the general public, who simply assume that the grocery stores they patronize are amply stocked with a wide variety of safe and tasty items produced on America’s farms and ranches.

Look at the light switch as a metaphor of public indifference and ignorance. We all take for granted that the electricity powering the lights in our homes will be there at our command when we flip the switch. We truly don’t know and in most cases don’t care how the power gets to our home, just that it’s there when we want it. It’s much the same for the grocery store: we all take for granted that the dairy case will be adequately stocked with cold, fresh milk until we discover that the delivery truck hasn’t arrived and the dairy case is empty. I’ve actually experienced that in my local grocery store.

I fully understand organizations such as the California Farm Bureau Federation, and others, have board-approved mission statements, goals and objectives. I fully understand that it’s the dollars that come in from voluntary membership in these organizations that funds the multimedia campaigns of these organizations, along with the various other programs that membership in these organizations provides.

What I am suggesting is that these media campaigns are misdirected to a certain degree, and need to be aimed not so much at convincing members to remain as active, dues-paying members (that’s obviously vital to the existence of any voluntary organization), but that these campaigns need to be amped up to better educate their consumers, who are constantly bombarded with absolute lies and false premises about the production of the products they buy at the grocery store (just look at the latest “pink slime” issue involving American beef as yet another example). It’s these false premises and lies that cause farmers and ranchers to lose money and, in some cases, rightfully wonder if their membership dollars are truly having the impact they desire.

As a consumer with a good bit of knowledge on agriculture and how it operates (I did not grow up on a farm, nor am I the offspring of a farmer), I’d like to see a more direct effort (offense versus defense) employed by American agriculture to educate my peers about just how well farmers treat the Earth and how much effort they put into keeping their livestock healthy and comfortable before the commodities they produce become food on our tables.

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It’s time to move the ball, not merely defend the goal

Dairy cows at the University of Arizona in Tucson are part of a study on various methods of cooling. Animal agriculture spends millions of dollars each year to promote the health and welfare of their animals. © Todd Fitchette

My fascination with agriculture comes from the perspective of an “outsider.“

I am also fascinated by media messages and enjoy communicating messages in which I strongly believe. It’s why I sometimes enjoy the SuperBowl commercials more than the game, and why I desire to have people in America understand at a level deep within their souls the utter importance of American agriculture and why I believe our nation cannot survive as it was founded without it.

To say that we’re constantly bombarded with media messages is an understatement. Unfortunately for some (fortunately for others) those messages come at a price. Advocates for a particular point of view who understand and use the media to their advantage are like the football team with the star quarterback and a roster of go-to guys who can catch and carry the ball to the end zone with ease.

To the detriment of American agriculture, the rabid animal rights extremists and other such groups (for reasons that escape me) want to completely do away with the level of safe and efficient agricultural production that comfortably feeds Americans and provides food for much of the rest of the world. Their motives have nothing to do with the altruistic intentions of improving the lives of animals that they claim.

In an artfully written blog post, a Missouri hog farmer articulately defends and explains how her family cares for the hogs that become the ham, sausage and bacon that fills the refrigerated cases at our grocery stores and ultimately winds up on our breakfast table (or in that convenient wrapper from the fast food joint we frequent on our way to work).

Not to be critical of the farmer I’ve chosen to highlight (she actually does an excellent job in her blog of spelling out the common practices farmers use and why they’re good for the animal), but agriculture still needs to be more aggressive in its efforts to educate and promote what it does.

I’m not talking about the type of aggression that we’ve seen from the likes of PETA, Occupy Wall Street, folks with the Humane Society (HSUS) and the other groups that have more in common with terrorist organizations than they do groups that try to promote their causes through more civil means.

I am talking about being more like the Missouri hog farmer here in terms of promoting, through various media, what she so skillfully articulated as the reasons her family chooses to manage its hogs the way it does. There’s a reason why they manage their animals the way they do, and a video included in her blog points this out very well. Moreover, there’s a reason why livestock producers and managers do things the way they do, and it’s not because they dislike their animals — on the contrary: a dairy cow, for example, receives way more veterinary care during her lifetime than even the most pampered house pet. That’s a fact!

So here’s a thought… although I think the blogosphere has provided a great outlet for people like Chrischinn and others to explain what it is and why it is they do things the way they do, I would like to see the template Chrischinn created here put into an advertising and media campaign to aggressively promote American agriculture to the 99% who so rely on what the 1% do that without the minority doing what it is they do, the majority will literally starve!

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Reclaiming agriculture: America’s sovereignty depends on it

I’ve said it before and it bears repeating. A vibrant agricultural economy in America is much more than just farmers and ranchers doing what they do to feed the rest of us; American agriculture and our ability to be agriculturally self-sufficient is vital to our national sovereignty.

Paul Wenger

I was reading a recent speech California Farm Bureau Federation President Paul Wenger gave at the organization’s recent annual meeting. Wenger called on California’s farmers and ranchers to “reclaim California” by having a plan, and that is to make political action a priority and part of farmers and ranchers individual business plans. In short, Wenger was asking farmers and ranchers to stop merely complaining and to put feet and dollars into action to prevent California agriculture from becoming extinct.

“If everyone in agriculture doesn’t get involved, others will — and they will be the ones setting the political and regulatory agenda you will have to face in the coming years.” ~ CFBF President Paul Wenger

For years California business interests have been fighting against a version of what we see nationally in the “Occupy Wall Street” movement. Urban interests have long been at odds against rural and agricultural interests. Given that the votes and numbers lie with the urban groups (including the environmentalist movement), it’s not difficult to see where farmers and ranchers fall on this spectrum.

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I realize that Wenger’s speech needed to be in broad terms and motivational for the several hundred Farm Bureau members in attendance. I was not there, so I cannot say how his address was received, or what discussions might have taken place in response to his address. I do know this, however, from working as an “outsider” in agriculture: farmers and ranchers need more “outsiders” inside their circles if they’re going to be successful in a world charged with political slogans and run by people who haven’t the slightest idea what it truly takes to fill their food pantries, refrigerators and stock their favorite restaurants with the food they like.

What do I mean by the term “outsider?” Let me tell a personal story.

I didn’t grow up on a farm. I did grow up in a rural part of California and was exposed to farming and ranching operations, however, my dad provided for us by busting his knuckles on automobiles and heavy equipment.

I enlisted in the Army out of high school as a stepping stone to college; I needed money for college and the Army offered me that. College provided me access to a degree in journalism and an education in a few other fields, including philosophy and photography.

It was through journalism that I was exposed even more to agricultural operations. My job required me to ask questions and try to understand what farmers and ranchers were about if I was going to effectively communicate their message to my readers. It’s also where I gained a fascination for agriculture and what it takes to put the food I like to eat on my plate. Journalism also gave me great insights into politics, which likewise piqued an interest within me that I have to this day.

Over the years I’ve worked in and out of agriculture, writing for ag-based publications and for general circulation newspapers. Both genres, if you will, allowed me to discover interests and hone my ideals and beliefs. As my interest piqued in agriculture and politics, I was fortunate enough to be able to blend the two while working for a county Farm Bureau in California. Some of that work even included the opportunity to work  and talk with Paul Wenger as his participation and influence in Farm Bureau circles grew.

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Outsiders to agriculture have a unique perspective that insiders (farmers, ranchers and those directly related to them) may not, particularly if the outsider can develop an understanding for what goes on within farming and ranching. Moreover, the person who can see how other issues are connected to agriculture, the more informative that person can be if he or she also has the skills to communicate them. We see the good and the bad of the various situations and, while we might hold a strong belief in and respect for farmers and ranchers, and what they have to endure to harvest a crop or produce a commodity, we also enjoy the view from the vantage point of a consumer of those agricultural commodities.

While Wenger doesn’t come out and say it directly, I would like to think that he understands the need for allies (outsiders) from a whole host of areas not directly related to agriculture, and the need to educate them in a language that they can understand. These allies will become important as Farm Bureau develops and implements its plan, with the end result being the improvement of conditions that allow for a vibrant and successful agricultural economy, and the furthering of America’s ability to be agriculturally self-sufficient.

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I cannot consume it unless American farmers produce it

What happens when houses replace our farmland? © Todd Fitchette

I am not a farmer.

I don’t pick it, pack it, plant it or pluck it.

I don’t grow it, graze it or raise it.

I don’t get up at 2 a.m. to feed it, milk it or turn on the water.

I don’t need a row to hoe or trees to top. I buy my water by the bottle, not by the acre foot.

My home office does not include a filing cabinet with documents, forms and letters to and from the USDA, EPA, regional water board, regional air board and the county ag commissioner. I don’t need to file pesticide reports, water usage reports or annual acreage reports. I don’t know any milk inspectors, OSHA inspectors or anyone from the state labor relations board.

I am an American consumer… I rely on the American farmer to do all these things and more so I can simply buy it, cook it and eat it.

Growing PR problem related to agricultural use of biosolids

The E. coli in this burger may not come from it being under cooked, but from the lettuce or onion that was possibly irrigated with effluent water from a municipal wastewater treatment plant that did not adequately filter out all bacteria prior to being used to irrigate farmland.

An ag industry newspaper called The Packer is reporting the discovery of E. coli in Romaine Lettuce coming out of the Salinas Valley in California. While this bit of news is not attached to reports of human illness preceding such a recall, this news serves as another black eye for California’s vegetable industry.

According to the article, the Andrew Smith Co. of Salinas recalled 1,000 cartons of lettuce on May 7 “after tests showed the presence of E. coli in a bag of romaine lettuce, the day after another company recalled romaine products — but the two recalls are apparently unrelated.”

While the article does not address it, it’s been reported that farms in the Salinas Valley have for several years now used treated sewage water from municipal wastewater treatment plants as a means of irrigating their crops. The move, according to one website, came in response about a decade ago to the intrusion of salt water in wells that irrigated the high-value vegetable crops grown in the Monterey and Salinas area of Central California.

Just a couple years ago more cases of E. coli were reportedly linked to spinach and other crops coming out of the same growing region of California.

This political and PR nightmare is not what Central Coast growers — or any farmers for that matter — need. But it’s one that farmers have invited upon themselves by agreeing with cities to take toxic water from wastewater treatment plants and use it to irrigate the crops we eat.

It was for this very reason that about a decade ago farmers in neighboring counties of Central California got together and banned the land application of sewage sludge and the use of treated effluent water on farmlands in agriculturally rich counties such as Stanislaus, Merced and San Joaquin. At the same time, farmers in Kern County California were being exposed in newspaper articles there about their practice of having sludge trucked in from nearby Orange and Los Angeles counties for use as “soil amendments.” That news surprised some vegetable farmers in Kern County, who immediately denied using sludge — the industry term is “biosolids” — on their farmland and tried to get an ordinance similar to other counties in order to ban the import and use of sewage sludge on farmlands there. Their fears not only stemmed from the possible contamination of their crops, but from the associated public relations nightmare they feared would befall them once word got out that municipalities were using carrot crops and other farmland to dispose of their municipally treated sewage.

Fast-forward a decade and we see the seeds of these fears bearing fruit in the form of tainted lettuce, spinach and other crops coming out of the nation’s salad bowl. In the expedience of getting rid of treated sewage solids and liquids, farmers have become an easy target for the cities as they push biosolids as a safe and cheaper alternative to other kinds of soil amendments.

The counties that argued against the land application of sewage sludge did so on the grounds that there are truly no guarantees that the treatment processes used eliminates all of the toxins and heavy metals that are part of the municipal waste stream. In short, it’s not just the human waste that gets flushed down all those toilets, but everything else from the petroleum products to the dangerous chemicals illegally dumped by businesses and clandestine drug labs that makes it into the waste stream at the municipal waste treatment facilities that is also a big part of what gets dumped on farmland through these agreements between the cities and farmers.

When are farmers going to learn that they can’t play roulette with cities and expect to not lose when the public learns of these practices and stops buying their produce? The cities surely have no stake in farms losing their ability to sell their crops; it’s the farmers who have everything to lose when consumers decide to stop buying their produce. What happens when packing industry efforts to move more fruits and vegetables through the USDA school lunch program are successful and we wind up with thousands of sick or dead school children because of a few bags of tainted lettuce or other commodities — all because cities coerced farmers to use treated sewage products on their farmland?

PR: Where farms and consumers meet to eat

Before the food we eat winds up served here, top photo, it starts in farm fields such as these in California's fertile San Joaquin Valley, below.

For all that American agriculture provides those who live in California, particularly here in the Central Valley, you’d think that people would be less ignorant about it. Then again there’s little wonder why Americans are so detached from their supply of food and fiber. It’s easy to go to the grocery store and pick through a dozen different brands of the same thing; fruits and vegetables are in plentiful supply, the dairy case is consistently stocked and the remaining shelves and bins have even more choices.

Add to that the ever-decreasing list of people who make their living producing our food and fiber and it becomes a simple issue of numbers. The farmer does what he does in near anonymity. While you may know this farmer from church or your local school sports team where your children play together, there remains a large disconnect between you and the farmer because you don’t buy your groceries from the farmer. He sells his produce, dairy products, meat, vegetables, etc. to someone who processes the raw commodities; that person likely sells them one more time before hiring someone to transport the finished product to the grocery store where they’re neatly stacked on shelves for you to buy.

Then again in today’s global economy you might not even buy the food produced locally. Check the labels of the fruit and vegetables (if you can find a label) on the fresh produce you buy at the grocery store. Avocados and melons from Mexico might sit a bin or two down from the fruit grown in Chile. What kind of phytosanitary rules governed the production of those fruits and vegetables before being imported into the United States?

That’s likely the root of the problem: farmers don’t sell their goods to the consumer. That’s not necessarily bad, it simply illustrates a hurdle that the ag industry must overcome if it’s going to better promote itself. While it may be interesting to some, and useful in a sense for agriculture to promote itself in terms of dollars and jobs, the vast majority of the public likely doesn’t care much that American agriculture accounts for about 4 percent of the nominal gross domestic product, according the US Department of Agriculture, or that in California’s Central Valley alone, agriculture’s total economic impact is over $50 billions dollars.

While farmers have worked to educate themselves, have made strides in becoming more efficient in their practices, and have even joined forces to lobby their elected representatives, they’ve done little at best to educate customers about just what it is they do, how they do it, and why what they do is so important.

With the advent of social media some farmers are doing what they can to impress upon the public their importance. Web sites, blogs, twitter feeds and Facebook pages such as:

• http://twitter.com/JeffFowle
• http://www.keepcaliforniafarming.com/
• http://www.advocatesforag.com/
• http://www.ilovefarmers.org/about.html
• http://dairygoddess.wordpress.com/

are doing what they can to educate folks about the importance of American agriculture.

For a long time Farm Bureau has promoted American agricultural products as the best and safest, but even then we still have legitimate issues and concerns of food safety in America with tainted beef and tainted vegetables causing food borne illness and death. But unless you’re involved with Farm Bureau in some way you wouldn’t know that. Somehow that “best and safest” argument has not permeated American culture. We hear nothing until another outbreak of Salmonella or e-coli breaks out then all of American agriculture is painted in the same negative brush strokes by the drive-by media.

In some cases those outbreaks can be directly traced to imported food — think tainted frozen strawberries from Mexico several years ago that illegally made its way into the USDA school lunch program. Still, other outbreaks may very well have come from U.S. produced food, such as more recent headlines that blamed spinach, lettuce and tomatoes for illness and death across America. It is still suspected that the Salinas Valley farms involved in growing these commodities also use treated effluent water (think sewage sludge). That in and of itself is a whole other issue of monumental proportions.

As detrimental to health and safety that those issues were, they are more the exception than the rule. Even so, this makes an even stronger case for a more concerted effort of education and promotion by the American agriculture industry, along with a fervent drive for improved food safety standards in America.

Our national sovereignty rests on our ability to feed and clothe ourselves with what we produce, and to be able to export another large part of this production. A cursory look at America’s failed energy policy illustrates this point. How many more imported barrels of oil will it take before we completely forfeit our sovereignty? If we cede our food production to other nations, we will lose more than a safe and ample food supply.

Paying protection money or suicide by politician: Either way American citizens and consumers lose

I don’t pick it or grow it, weed it or water it, spray it or till it. I don’t stay up nights to make sure the wind machines and water are running to keep it from freezing. I don’t worry about the rain during the spring bloom or the late-summer harvest. I don’t stress over whether to buy millions of dollars of insurance to cover crop damage from thunderstorms and hail. I don’t worry about the fluctuations of feed prices and milk prices, or even about the availability of bees to pollinate my orchards.

As an American consumer I, like all other American consumers, take for granted that my grocery store shelves will be stocked with ample supplies of safe and healthy food produced here in the United States. My only concern when I peruse the bins of fruits and vegetables in the store is the source of my broccoli, apples or melons (did American farmers grow them or were they imported from foreign countries?). I’m appreciative of labeling laws that make it so I can make an educated choice of whether to buy fruit that was grown in Chile or in the United States.

What I do worry about is my country’s ability to sovereignly govern itself. I worry that my country is losing its sovereignty through policies that believe we’re better off buying oil from foreign nations than mining our own domestic sources of oil; I also worry that these same mental midgets and their political supporters will someday soon regulate the American farmer out of existence and force us to go begging for food from third-world nations. The irony is that some of these same political supporters are the very farmers that right now feed this nation.

I know many farmers. I’ve worked closely with farmers as a journalist and even worked with them for a period of time to promote American agriculture. They appear to be hard working and honest people. They prefer the farm to stuffy meetings and they would much rather do what it takes to produce quality agricultural commodities than have to wade through piles of regulations that stifle productivity and cut profits.

So why do farmers continue to support politicians who regularly vote to cut their water supplies, take their land, and regulate their ability to do business because some well-paid whiner claims that growing the food that feeds the nation isn’t as important as some bug, fish, mammal or reptile?

Today the California Farm Bureau Federation announced its support for Carly Fiorina for US Senate to replace Barbara Boxer. While I’m not arguing that Boxer doesn’t need to be sent out to pasture herself, the choice of Fiorina is certainly puzzling, given her reluctance to really come out and tell the voters what she stands for. What we do know about her is she’s closely tied with Arizona Senator John McCain, who we all know would run from his own shadow if it appeared to his right. That alliance alone makes me as a voter suspicious of her and much more likely to vote for one of the other Republican candidates for US Senate.

I’ve long been puzzled by agriculture’s decisions to financially support Liberal politicians, then a year or two later when those same Liberals vote to shut off water supplies or for more stringent rules to the Endangered Species Act, or for some other anti-business, anti-farming piece of legislation, they complain as if that vote came as a complete shock and surprise.

Maybe it’s because farmers are coy and they know that Liberal politicians like to spend money that’s not theirs to buy favors that will help them during their reelection campaigns, and maybe, if farmers don’t squirm too much and agree to pay ample amounts of protection money for the reelection campaigns of these same politicians, then maybe a well-placed farmer might be awarded with a political appointment or some other financial stocking stuffer.

Meanwhile, America’s ability to be agriculturally self-sufficient suffers and it becomes more necessary for us to import food from nations that are a military coup away from deciding that the United States is not a favored trading partner anymore and should pay much more if we want to buy the food they produce.

We know what it’s like to be held hostage by the price of a barrel of oil that’s set by a cartel that doesn’t have America’s best interest in mind when it meets in secret. Imagine a world where similar tyrants gather in seclusion to decide who gets to buy the food supply they control and how much that food will cost. Sadly, we appear to be on the slippery slope to that end, and the announcement by California’s leading farm organization to support another Liberal politician (albeit one with an “R” behind her name) is just that much more grease on the slide.

Keep the United States agriculturally independent

One of the fallouts of the devastating earthquake in Chile is that US imports of food grown in that South American country will likely slow because of infrastructure damage there.

Good! We don’t need it.

A local story reports that the table grapes, plums, peaches, nectarines, blueberries and avocados, that we buy in our local grocery stores might become in short supply because of the large earthquake to strike our South American trading partner. This is because these products, and apparently many others, are bought from foreign sources. Those Chilean commodities already in transit here by ship will immediately be priced much higher when they get here, according to newspaper reports.

This is yet one more example why the United States should not cede its agricultural production to any other nation on Earth, friendly or otherwise. While Chile might be one of those nations that currently enjoys a positive trading relationship with the United States, it and the other countries where we buy our food are one coup away from not being our friends. Moreover, the food safety standards in these countries are nowhere near as high as the standards set for US farmers on commodities grown, produced, packaged and shipped here. As a matter of practice, I check the labels on fruits and vegetables I buy from my local grocery store. If they’re not grown here, I don’t buy them. I recently put back a cantaloupe that I had intended to buy for my daughter when we were shopping at the local grocery store because the label on the cantaloupe said “grown in Guatemala.” It is completely unnecessary for the United States to have to buy such food products from foreign sources when we can easily produce it for ourselves right here in the United States. For example, the Imperial Valley of California has a year-round growing season; why should we have to buy vegetables grown in from third world nations when we can grow safer and better versions of them right here?

The United States is agriculturally self-sufficient and needs to remain that way. It is completely unnecessary for a nation rich in agricultural production to import the same food that we grow and produce here in abundance?

Buying politicians or paying protection money: They’re one in the same

Some of the farmers who's water deliveries were eliminated last year have been regular contributors to the same politicians voting to cut those deliveries. © Todd Fitchette

There’s a common storyline in old gangster movies where the mob boss goes into someone’s store and tells the store owner that it would be a shame if something bad happened to him or his store. In this case of explicit implication, the store owner decides to “buy” the rather expensive protection services of the local mob boss. It might work, but it’s extortion nonetheless. Politicians play a similar game with their constituents, particularly those who represent groups of like-minded constituents.

Take for example the farm groups that consistently gives money to Democrats thinking that maybe someday these Democratic lawmakers might, kind of, maybe see things their way and stop writing laws that take their water, land and livelihoods. As much as the Supreme Court has ruled that political contributions are protected under the First Amendment as free speech, the case can be made that such donations to sitting politicians are nothing more than legalized extortion. If nothing else, these political donations do not generate the return on investment that the farmers would expect. So the question then becomes, why continue donating to and supporting these wasted causes?

It happens on a regular basis. Farmers contribute to many of the same politicians who then side with the environmental extortionists and further strip farmers and the rest of us of our private property rights and extort more money from us in the way of taxes, fees and levies. I’ve seen it happen with Dianne Feinstein, who claims to enjoy support from farmers, only later to reportedly threaten physical harm against the head of one prominent ag-based organization who also happens to be one of her constituents. Read the story “Breakdown” in High Country News for one such example.

This puzzled me when I used to work for one ag organization and was a reporter and editor covering the ag industry. I could never understand allegedly conservative farmers and ranchers donating richly to the coffers of folks like Feinstein and other Liberals. The line of defense was similar to the honest storekeeper who admits to his closest friend that he doesn’t like paying the mob, but if he doesn’t the cost to him, his family and his business would be worse.

I’ve written in the past on the national security implications such votes have. Farmers and ranchers in America not only provide the safest and best food and fiber produced anywhere in the world, but they contribute in a large way to our national sovereignty by making us agriculturally independent from the rest of the world.

California agriculture (and its larger American ag industry cousin) would do well to end this practice of voluntarily contributing to these criminals. While blackmail is an ugly word, what other word aptly describes the implied threat that if you don’t give to my campaign I’ll vote against your wishes, but then again when the time comes around to call on those favors, the politician suffers a lapse in short-term memory and still votes in favor of legislation that further restricts farming and ranching and adds one more nail to the coffin that will someday be eulogized as “American Agriculture.”

Farm water a national security issue

The ability to capture water to irrigate farms has always been a human consideration. Even with water storage facilities such as Shasta Lake and its 4.3 million acre feet of storage, water policy in California allows most of the water captured in storage facilities in California to flow out to sea unused by the agriculture which feeds and sustains the United States and much of the world. ©Todd Fitchette

I have long argued that our battle over water for agriculture has much larger ramifications than the economy of California’s Central Valley. The cheap and ready access to irrigation water is not only vital to for the existence of farms and families in California, it’s imperative if we’re going to remain a sovereign nation.

Discussions over water have become a crusade here in Central California. The reason it’s become such an issue (again) is because the bureaucrats who control the flow of irrigation water believe that protecting the Delta Smelt, a tiny fish with no commercial value, is more important than growing the crops we eat and export.

Farmers have long been innovators in many ways. In fact farmers from around the world will gather next week at the World Ag Expo in Tulare, CA to consider the purchase of new technologies that will further make them more efficient. They’ve had to be more efficient. Profit and loss margins tend to be thin in agricultural production, and in most cases are reliant on things out of control of farmers: the weather and world markets dictate whether farmers will even have a crop and what those crops will be worth once they’re harvested.

It doesn’t help when bureaucrats and do-gooders looking for a cause change the rules after the bets have been placed. You could rightly understand the outrage people would have in Las Vegas if the house called for the bets, and after the bets were placed, the house completely changed the rules in their favor and swept the table clean. That’s what happens on a regular basis as the federal government repeatedly violates the contract it has with farmers to provide water in the Central Valley. These failed water deliveries and cutbacks always happen after predictions of water are made and farmers have borrowed money from the banks to plant their crops. But lately farmers have stopped planting in California’s fertile Central Valley because the predictions of water deliveries have continued to drop to levels unsustainable for agricultural production.

Agriculture has always been the lifeblood of our nation. Even after the industrial revolution moved people off the farm and into the factories, we’ve been self-sufficient when it comes to our food production. What’s even more remarkable is that fewer and fewer people continue to produce more than enough food for the rest of us here in the United States.

Ours isn’t a problem of a lack of water in California, but a lack of water when and where we need it. Much more water falls on California each year through rain and snow than we’re able to store. The ability to collect more of that water and make it available for agricultural and urban uses doesn’t take any water away from the Delta. In reality, it would stabilize flows through the Delta by giving us the ability to slow the runoff and release it in a more controlled manner. There’s another phrase for this: it’s called flood control.

Before Shasta Dam was built, much of the Sacramento Valley was uninhabitable during certain times of the year. Now with facilities like Shasta and Keswick dams, we’ve not only allowed agriculture to flourish in the Sacramento Valley, but we’ve allowed for urban development as the flood plains became livable thanks to the ability to control the flow of water down the Sacramento River. As an added perk, we created a whole host of recreational opportunities for people.

While we could do well to increase the storage capacity of lakes Shasta, Keswick and Oroville, we need similar storage facilities along the west slopes of the southern and central Sierra — facilities that would collect and store water for farmers and cities alike. Water that could even be used to restore the San Joaquin River.

We can do what it takes to build the storage and conveyance systems necessary to provide ample water for agricultural production and urban uses, or we can let a very loud minority have its way and kill agriculture in California. If this happens, we’ll cede our agricultural self-sufficiency to other countries that likely won’t have the best interest of the United States at heart when we go begging for food.