Why YOUR Food Prices Are Going UP

   The drip system is finally in! That took a while. Now we are going to have to learn how to manage it. I just found out a neighbor had to replace all his drip hose because they didn't flush them properly and they all clogged up. I don't want to do that. These systems are amazing, but it is not magic. It is going to take some old fashioned smarts and elbow grease to make it run well. 

   I know that doesn't look like much to you, but watching cotton seedlings come out of the ground is a beautiful sight to me. Once this cool spell is over the cotton will really start growing. I already pulled soil samples so I can apply the right amount of fertilizer in a few weeks.
   I stopped watering the oats. They started to lodge, or fall over, in this week's wind. I will give them a quick drink this next week and then wait to harvest them.

Why YOUR Food Costs Are Going UP

By Paul H. Betancourt

April 2014

            You may have noticed this in your grocery store. A few weeks ago a friend sent me a report saying that food prices have gone up 19% since the first of the year. I know one thing-I would hate to be feeding a teenager with these food prices. I know how much food I hovered up when I was that age. Mom still tells stories. Now, there are just Sheryl and I. I go to the store to pick up a few things and it’s $35! There’s no meat, just some fruit, veggies and coffee creamer. Sheryl even bakes our own bread at home.

            There are two factors driving food prices up and they are both self-inflicted. First, after years of complaining about crop subsidies we finally cut them off in the new farm bill. I understand all the criticisms on crop subsidies. As conservatives we weaned ourselves off these programs. But, what most people didn’t understand is that crop subsidies were a de facto cheap food policy. By encouraging farmers to overproduce we artificially created excess supply which, in the absence of increased demand, lowers process. Now that we have stopped encouraging increased supply, guess what? Prices go up.

            The other thing we have done is cut back farm production in one of the  most productive places in the world, Central California. The current low rainfall is aggravated by poor water policy. Driven by politics state and federal water managers seem content to dry up the Valley’s West Side and let water run out to the ocean. The sad irony is that at the same time your doctor is telling you to eat more fruits and vegetables we strangling the one region in the country that is a powerhouse in fruit and vegetable production; the country’s salad bowl, California’s San Joaquin Valley.

            I want to be very specific here. Our food prices are going up and it is not due to the vagaries of nature. Our food prices are going up because of poor government policy. While they fiddle, with all the good intentions in the world, we suffer the consequences of their decisions. We deserve better.

Something to Think About

   Well, it's been one of those weeks. We started irrigating the oats on Monday and late Monday afternoon the electric meter burned up. The electrician and the lady from PG&E were great, but it still took until late Friday morning to get the pump going again. Arrrgh.

The oats are heading out, and they look beautiful. The cotton is coming out of the ground and that looks beautiful too. The warm weather sure helps make for healthy little cotton seedlings.

    I thought I would share some famous quotes on agriculture with you. The last one is especially important in light of our water situation in California. I am hearing too many activists, politicians and reporters who think farming is optional

            “When tillage begins the other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization.”

            Daniel Webster
            1782-1852

            “No other occupation opens so wide a field for the profitable and agreeable combination of labor with cultivated thought as agriculture.

            Let us hope that by the best cultivation of the physical world, beneath and around us, and the intellectual and moral worlds within us, we shall secure an individual, social and political prosperity and happiness, whose course shall be onward and upward and which, while the earth endures, shall not pass away.”

         Abraham Lincoln

          Address to the Wisconsin Agricultural Society

          September 30, 1859

            “Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are toed to their country, and wedded to its liberty and interests by lasting bonds.”

             Thomas Jefferson

              Letter to John Jay

              August 23, 1785

 “I am one of the class of people that feeds you all, and at present is abus’d by you all; in short I am a Farmer.”

         Ben Franklin
         On the Price of Corn and Management of the Poor
         1766

           

“The cultivation of the earth is the most important labor of man. Unstable is the future of the country which has lost its taste for agriculture. If there is one lesson of history that is unmistakable, it is national strength lies very near the soil.”

             Daniel Webster

            “It is the marriage of the soul with Nature that makes the intellect fruitful, and gives birth to imagination.”

              Henry David Thoreau
              1817-82

            “Of all the occupations from which gain is secured, there is none better than agriculture, nothing more productive, nothing sweeter, nothing more worthy of a free man.”

              Marcus Tullius Cicero

              106-43 B.C.

“Sometime in the future, when all the accomplishments of the 20^th century are recorded for posterity, it will finally be acknowledged that our greatest achievement by far has been the introduction of high-tech, high-yield agriculture. Measured in terms of benefit to human society, an adequate diet of nutritious, abundant and affordable food eclipses all other developments of this most remarkable century. Neither computer technology nor transistors, robotics, advances in communication and transportation, life saving antibiotics and modern medicine, nuclear energy, synthetics, plastics and the entire petrochemical industry rank as high in importance as the advances in food production. And all these other wonderful breakthroughs probably would not have happened without a well fed population.”

    Dixie Lee Ray            Environmental Overkill

            “Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons,

            It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.”

            Walt Whitman

            Song of the Open Road

            “Farmers are the only people I know that buy high, sell low and pay freight in both directions.”

              John F. Kennedy

            “If you want to behold a truly religious man in action, go to Fresno and watch a farmer watering his trees, vines and plants.”

                                   

              William Saroyan

            “Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you’re a thousand miles from a cornfield.”

           

                Dwight D. Eisenhower

“Burn down your cities and leave your farms, your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city of the country.”

                William Jennings Bryan
                Cross of Gold Speech

                Democratic National Convention
                July 8, 1896

Blessings this Easter.

P

It's not just about WATER...

   That's my boy! Indy loves running through the oats every morning. There is always something new to smell. He looks like a black dolphin diving through a sea of green when he gets into the tall oats.

   We got the cotton planted this week. We have never had conditions like this. The soil temps are up over nine degrees since Monday morning. The cotton is sprouting fast. We are knocking the caps off already. It will be a long season and I won't relax until the last bale is picked and ginned. But, we are off to a good start.
   You can see the oats. The wheat is started heading out and is already starting to fill with milk. It is a beautiful sight. This weeks warm weather is a reminder that this month's green wheat fields will start turning golden by the end of next month.
   There was a little hiccup in the orchard. They were supposed to finish installing the drip system this week while we were off planting cotton. The original order for the drip lines was lost. Short end to the story: New drip line has been ordered and is supposed to be installed next week. I will keep you posted. 

Reason 10 in my book, "Ten Reasons:Finding Balance on Environmental Issues is about natural resources.

Reason Ten: Natural Resources

#10-I’ll start believing San Francisco environmentalists when they stop taking their drinking water from a national park.

               This chapter is about more than water. What is at issue is             the use of natural resources. In the American West one of               the largest natural resource issues is water; water

            for farms and water for cities. There are other natural                       resource issues we must address on a national and global                 scale such as; coal, natural gas, timber and even rock                       quarried for road construction.

       One of the biggest ironies in environmental policy, that I              have personally experienced, is that San Francisco takes                  over eighty one billion gallons of water out of a                                national park, transports it hundreds of miles across our                    valley, uses it once and flushes it out to the ocean. Then I                have had San Francisco environmental attorneys lecture                  me about water conservation and how if we were more                    careful with our water supply we wouldn’t have the water                quality issues we have in our valley.  Unbelievable. I could              solve some real water quality issues here in the San                          Joaquin Valley if I could have that quarter

             million acre feet that San Francisco uses to utilize our                      area...

                 Natural resource issues are important to all of us, even if              you have never been on a farm. Because we all have a                      stake in natural resource issues it is important we pay

            attention and get them right. This is important public                       policy and we have this amazing

            system of self-government where we have a say in what                   happens...

                 I digress a bit, but my point is to highlight the                              importance of what is at stake. Water policy is not just a                  fight between the farmers and the environmentalists, water

             policy is not just a California or Western issue. Water                      policy is not, in a real sense merely an American issue. If                we can get water policy in California right we not only

             solve the problem on my farm, we have also created a                      model of natural resource use for the whole world.

It is ironic and scary that there was an editorial in this week's San Jose newspaper calling for the state control of groundwater through regulation. What gets me is that the same people who took away our surface water now want to take away our groundwater.  The only solutions they offer are cutting off our means of production and raising taxes.When will they think of something new? If they win how am I going to farm? and where are you going to get your food? We have to find a better way to manage our natural resources!

If you are interested, you can find the book on Amazon.com and Barnes and Nobles website. Locally A Clovis Book Barn and Barnes and Nobles carry the book.

If They Really Believed in Climate Change...

   OK, don't panic. Yes, that is a prayer. No, it is not spraying evil pesticides. It is an experiment in nutrition.
   The land where our main orchard is, is pretty rough dirt. I friend calls it, "Dragon excrement." We have been reclaiming it form alkali for years, but the trees still struggle. So, we are trying something new. We are pulling leaf samples for analysis, then we are applying foliar nutrients. This way the nutrients go straight into the plant, instead of the dirt where the roots have to wrestle it out of tough ground. It is expensive. First, we bought a used sprayer. Then foliar fertilizers are the most expensive way to fertilize. But, this dirt is so tough it is going to take extreme measures to make these fields as productive as they can be.

Now back to my opening title- If they really believe in climate change...my dear environmental friends have some choices to make.

First- if they really believe in climate change they should support building more reservoirs in California. Our precipitation will not becoming in the form of snow. When it comes in rainfall it will rush down the mountainsides, into the rivers and out to the oceans faster than ever. So we need reservoirs to do the job snow did before and capture some of that rainfall for our thirsty cities and farms.

Second- if I understand correctly, the number one remedy to climate change is to lower our carbon emissions. When it comes to food, activists want us to buy food grown within a few hundred miles of where it was grown instead of shipping water all over the planet. Guess what? Where can you grow food within a few hundred miles of the millions of people who live in the Bay Area and Southern California? That’s right! Here in the Valley!

So, if they really believe in climate change, environmental friends should be helping farmers get more water, not strangling us slowly. But, I suspect they have other concerns.