A New Look at California Agriculture
Southern Californians are much closer to the farm than most of us imagine. According to a University of California study released last week, the eight-county region stretching from Santa Barbara to Brawley has twice as many agriculture-related jobs as any other area of the state.
California’s preeminence in agriculture has been established since the 1940s; it is first in farm revenues, well ahead of other food-producing states such as Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas. Even so, the researchers were surprised to discover that farming still reaches into all corners of the state, including mostly urban Los Angeles County.
In “The Measure of California Agriculture: Its Impact on the State Economy,” authors Harold O. Carter and George Goldman Carter paint a picture of a vibrant California agricultural industry producing more food on less land with fewer people--and generating more revenue than ever before. Much of this, according to the authors, is due to the fact that growers have adapted to the marketplace by switching from less profitable grains to higher revenue-generating fruit and vegetable crops.
But environmentalists say this success has come at a price. “It’s easy to paint a rosy picture of farming by saying that it is a major part of our economy,” says Darryl Young, state legislative representative for the Sierra Club. “But what are the costs to society?”
Agriculture, Young says, uses about 90% of the water in California under a preferential pricing system for growers. And some of the crops requiring intense amounts of water--such as cotton--are exported to other nations.
“What we’re doing is growing cotton in the desert, in the Southern San Joaquin Valley. That is producing fiber; not food. Then we sell it to the Japanese who make products that are, in turn, sold back to us,” he says. “This heavy water usage is leaching the soil, raising selenium levels and affecting wildlife. It’s regretful that (UC) did not take into account the environmental costs of cleaning up after agriculture.”
The UC report did find that one in 20 Southern California workers is dependent upon the state’s 83,000 farms. (The analysis included packing, storage, transportation and food processing but excluded food workers in retail jobs such as supermarkets and restaurants.)
The study also underlines the importance of the state’s agricultural exports. According to the report, in 1991 a record $4.6 billion in California farm products were sold to other countries (with the European Community being the largest buyer).
According to the study, one sector of the farm-related economy lost jobs: agricultural chemical manufacturers. “Many of the smaller firms have not been able to meet the costs of keeping up with tough state (environmental) regulations, while several of the largest chemical companies have relocated to other states.”
On the whole, farm-sector representatives feel the report is a boost for California agriculture, an industry they feel is frequently overlooked in the state’s political and social agenda. They often complain that they are forgotten or misunderstood by the urban population centered in Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego.
The Sierra Club’s Young disagrees: “The California farm economy is big business and this is an attempt to validate itself.”
