Severe California drought will lead to higher produce prices for the country

[damnedifIknow]

&hd=1

[fasttense]

1. That farmer is complaining because he will plant 20% less?????

I've lost 20% to bugs in one year, damn Chinese stink bugs. Losing 20% as a farmer is no big deal.

There is a solution to this water crisis. It's called stop global warming.

But did you see all the huge expensive equipment those farmers were using? All of it run on gas no doubt. Those farmers are big into mono-cropping, using petroleum based fertilizers and pesticides and cheap immigrant labor. He strips that land of protective living plants and mulches then lets the topsoil blow away in the wind. I have plenty of water here but I never leave my land exposed to the elements like that. Each swirl of dust represents nutrients flying off your land. And if he got rain, all that exposed topsoil would wash away. You don't have to plow every time you plant. You don't have to destroy the land to farm it.

The only reason they have dust bowl conditions is because they don't know how to farm.

[Plucketeer]

2. I live in this area....

have so since 1989. I've got a couple acres that we raise LARGE gardens on each year - year round at that. There's SOME validity to your rant, but there's also some bogus assumptions as well. This valley is flat as a pancake. In fact, a pancake would be jealous of it's flatness. When we get rain, the topsoil doesn't "wash away" - it just soaks in. As for soil "flying off your land", yeah, that happens every year to a degree. In the summer - when afternoon temps regularly exceed 100F - the temp of the soil surface is over 140F. With the clay that we have here - and the resultant dust devil heat cyclones - you can literally SEE soil swirling up hundreds of feet and dancing, swaying columns. Of course, technically, this would be desert if it weren't for the determined efforts of the farmers. And if that WEREN'T the case - you wouldn't be able to afford a glass of orange juice. (Edit to add)... Even tho the topsoil swirls up and away during the summer - there's no real "away" for it to drift off to. The soil just falls back onto the valley floor - it can't simply blow off to some other somewhere.

In a good year, we see about 10" of rainfall. Farmers could've shut off all their trucks and tractors 10 years ago and it would not have averted what's going on now. The jetstream is running farther north now and the reality of it is that food is gonna cost you more.
These farmers wanna blame the Democratic politicians for their woes. Certainly they're not gonna point a finger at themselves or their "maker". The real truth is that they need to blame the urban voting bloc that likes their showers and tidy green lawns. Decades ago, they hired representatives with lots and lots of votes from people who think the state's meager water supplies should go to the burgeoning metro areas. And those elected politicians naturally vote as their constituents insist they do.

[fasttense]

5. Oklahoma is pretty flat too but their topsoil got blown all the way to DC in the 1930s

Huge black clouds of so called dust (it was really topsoil) traveled all the way across the country and out into the ocean because farmers in the midwest allowed their land to remain exposed. Every time the soil is left exposed to the elements, with no plants living or dead to protect it, topsoil gets blown away. The flatness of the land does not matter. The wind can carry the soil into other states. Rain does not merely fall gently down. It is usually driven with a wind, usually hard winds. And that causes erosion no matter how flat your land is. Flatness of the land does NOT prevent erosion by wind and rain.

If the soil were allowed to be reclaimed by nature, there would be no desert there in 10 years. Have you seen what a good designer of permaculture can do to change desert lands into flourishing ecosystems? Many so called deserts were caused by man over-plowing and over grazing and the land can be reclaimed by just using the natural rain fall. It has been done in several mideastern deserts.

The real truth is that these farmers rely on petroleum to farm. They don't understand how to route rain fall, or how to build up their soil without petroleum products, how to grow without plowing. Most forests and pastures never get plowed and yet they grow all sorts of plants. Farming with petroleum products works only if you have all the water you need or want (and of course all the petroleum you need or want) but when scarcity or droughts set in, petroleum farmers suffer and their lands turn to dusty deserts.

It's these same petroleums that are causing this drought. Global warming keeps the snow pack from forming and their melting waters can't irrigate the land. Stop global warming and the drought would be minimized.

If we subsidized farmers who did not use petroleum like we subsidize corn farmers, factory farms and corporations, the cost of food could be stabilized and kept minimal.

[Plucketeer]

6. Got it!

You have all the answers, and I (living here) know shit. OK. Here's your preachers permit.

[JDPriestly]

7. It's a little more than that. California's climate is a problem. They rely on watering, not rain.

But this is the problem that he could do something about:

He strips that land of protective living plants and mulches then lets the topsoil blow away in the wind.

My grandfather lived through part of the dust bowl in Oklahoma. He then farmed in a different state and agreed with you. You need to protect the soil. Of course, the farms in the Central Valley were established in a very dry climate.

Prices will go up.

[drynberg]

3. Share this with your FB, etc. friends, esp. the Climate Deniers

As we will soon be paying the Piper Big Time.

[Berlum]

4. Note well

k and r

[jsr]

8. +1