THE GREEN GIANT DOESN’T LIVE IN CALIFORNIA ANYMORE - Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America - page 48

global competition caused wheat prices to collapse on the world market, resourceful “orchard capitalists”
turned to fruit production in the state's long, fertile Central Valley. 1
In the 1880s adherents of Chicago School free-market economist Edwin Nourse seized the opportunity
to make farming a business by specializing, mechanizing, and marketing. This new type of grower sur-
veyed the soil, studied climate patterns, and manipulated the natural environment to grow cash crops for
the eastern market—creating the proving ground for intensive agriculture. The growers formed voluntary
associations to lobby the state legislature to invest in agricultural research and to develop strategies for
marketing the fruits of their labor. Monoculture—growing one crop on a large scale—made crops suscept-
ible to disease and pests and drove the development of the agrochemical industry in the state. By harnessing
chemicals, migrant labor, and technology, California came to dominate the market in perishable products.
But none of this would have been possible without the diversion of river water. 2
Although they are unarguably a calamity for the environment, California's fourteen hundred dams are
monuments to engineering. Throughout the twentieth century, public investment in dams, dikes, and di-
version made subsidized water available and California's agricultural bounty possible. In contrast to other
states, California has a distinctive water distribution system, with three thousand public and private water
suppliers distributing subsidized water through federal, state, and local water projects. Low-cost water al-
lows the state to be the largest fruit and vegetable producer, with four hundred agricultural commodities to
market. California supplies almost half of U.S.-grown fruits, nuts, and vegetables and over 90 percent of
the nation's almonds, artichokes, avocados, broccoli, and processing tomatoes. Nine of the USDA's top ten
agricultural counties in the United States, in terms of the market value, are located in California—five in
the Central Valley. The top produce cash crops are grapes, almonds, berries, and lettuce.
The Central Valley stands alone among the agricultural regions in California, producing 8 percent of the
nation's crops on 1 percent of the country's farmland. Its northern region, the Sacramento Valley, receives
twenty inches of water a year, and the flow of water is regulated to prevent flooding. The larger southern
part, the San Joaquin Valley, is semiarid and extremely reliant on irrigation and groundwater pumping; one
sixth of the irrigated land in the United States is in the Central Valley. Farmers are charged between $2 and
$20 per acre-foot for irrigation water—about 10 percent of the cost of providing water, and taxpayers make
up the difference.
The availability of water has made this long stretch of flat land one of the most productive places on
Earth. After years of squabbling about which government agency would have the pleasure of reworking
nature, the Central Valley Project was created in 1933 to dam northern rivers, create reservoirs, and regu-
late the flow of the water to the entire valley through a series of canals, aqueducts, and pumps—preventing
flooding in the north and providing irrigation to the dry south. The project—completed only in the early
1970s—irrigates 3 million acres of farmland and provides drinking water to 2 million households.
The southern half of California has always jealously sought to rob the north of its precious water re-
sources. In the 1950s, after decades of lobbying by the state's biggest agricultural interests, the largest
state-built water project in the United States was constructed to provide water for drinking and irrigation.
In Southern California, a million acres of agriculture get 30 percent—much of it for a handful of billion-
aires growing almonds and other nuts for export. The California State Water Project, which shares some
infrastructure with the Central Valley Project, transports river water from the northern part of the valley to
the San Joaquin Valley, and farther south to the Imperial Valley.
Well-known author and water expert Maude Barlow says that water projects have had a profound impact
on the environment, destroying rivers, habitat, and wildlife, including the once plentiful chinook salmon.
She notes, “Dams hold back the natural flow of sediment in rivers, eventually burying riverbeds and block-
ing water channels. Regulating the flow of water to prevent floods negatively impacts ecosystems that have