Wasting Rainfall

Both the San Francisco Chronicle and the Associated Press have been reporting this week that we are NOT refilling our reservoirs with the recent rains. Federal regulators are concerned about----wait for it---the Delta Smelt. So let me get this straight, AFTER TWO YEARS OF DROUGHT RESTRICTIONS we are finally getting some needed rainfall and THE FEDS ARE LETTING THE WATER RUN OUT INTO THE OCEAN!!!

This just proves what I have been saying, they want all the water.
We cannot pump to fill the reservoirs in the summer because the fish need the water.
We cannot pump to fill the reservoirs in the Spring because the fish need the water.
Now we cannot pump to fill the reservoirs in the winter because the fish need the water.
Does it make sense yet when people say we have a man made drought?

One of the main points in my book, "Ten Reasons: Finding Balance on Environmental Issues", is that we need a healthy economy and a healthy environment. Now we have neither. Instead of finding solutions to our problems, they just clamp down.

Here is a portion from "Ten Reasons"

Ten Reasons-Reason 7-Solutions

#7-I’ll start believing environmentalists when they start offering solutions. What I usually see is a presentation of a problem and then they jump up and down and tell us to stop it. For example, they will tell us how bad over population is. Then tell us to stop it. What kind of solution is that? It would be nice if the solutions made sense. One suggestion they had about dust on dirt roads was to water the dirt roads every day. Do you know how many miles of dirt roads there are in Fresno County? Do you know how much water that would take? Do you know how many of those roads have no traffic at all during the day? That wasn’t much of solution. Watering the roads we use makes a lot more sense. But, the farmers had to suggest that, the enviros didn’t figure that one out.

            My experience working with the environmental community is they are not

interested in problem solving.

            As I have shared elsewhere, my introduction to the environmental community was

a Sierra Club meeting in San Diego when I was sixteen. [remember this was years before

I started farming.] The sum of the meeting was as follows, “Well, we beat the nuclear

guys on that issue, who do we go after next?” It is not that I am getting old and I can’t

remember, I never found out what issue they beat the nuclear guys on. The whole point of

the meeting was, “where is our next victim?” Even as a starry-eyed idealist ready to enlist

in the cause I was repulsed by this approach, and I was out of there. I will gladly work for

a cause I believe in, but I don’t go around picking fights to throw my weight around.

            Another experience was working with a Bay Area environmental group. In a side

bar conversation I tried to engage David Behar of the Bay Institute about how to solve

water supply problems to benefit both the environment and the farmers. Behar’s

comment was, “This is a Zero-Sum game.” He felt that if one side wins the other side

must lose. Can you see how this perspective automatically limits our ability to solve

problems?  Right off the bat he has eliminated one of the most powerful tools for solving

problems; The Win-Win. Or, as Fisher, Ury and Patton put it in their classic, Getting to

Yes!, “Seek Options for Mutual Gain” (Fisher, Ury and Patton 56). This experience

confirmed once again that the enviros not only do not want to “Seek options for mutual

gain”, they are not interested in problem solving at all.

            In Reason Three I talk about my experience on a Technical Advisory Committee

for the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board. Each of the technical

experts on the committee was locked in to his or her specialty. The salt guys didn’t want

to consider any solutions until the salt issue was solved. The fertilizer guys didn’t want to

consider any solutions until all the fertilizer issues were solved. I think you get the idea.

THE ENVIROS HAVE NO RESPONSIBILITY TO PRODUCE ANYTHING-

            Another reason I think we see a lack of solutions from the enviros is they don’t

have any responsibility to produce anything. When your prime directive is to protect the

environment at all costs everything else can fall to the way side.

            You and I have to produce something or provide a service to support our families

All the things we have in our lives do not magically appear. For example, the coffee you

drank this morning came from beans grown overseas. They had to be nurtured, harvested,

roasted, ground and shipped thousands of miles to get to your home. All of this does not

happen by magic or by accident. It takes a lot of work, a lot of planning, a lot of effort

and that is just for one cup of coffee. How about the rest of the food you ate today?  Or,

the clothes you wear. [I, for one, would love to visit half the places my clothes have been

to.]     

            Our environmental friends and neighbors feel zero responsibility in the production

of the necessities of life. Their over-riding primary goal is protection of the environment.

It is a noble goal, but it has no balance.

[If you want to read more, you can find copies of Ten Reasons on Amazon.com or at the Book Barn in Clovis, CA.]

Two Nobel Ideas for California Water

Two Nobel Ideas for California Water

By Paul H. Betancourt

Copyright January 2016

            When President Obama came to the Valley in 2014 to see the effects of the drought he shrugged his shoulders, blame climate change, hopped back on Air Force One, flew to Palm Springs to play gold with King Abdullah of Jordan and give him a billion dollar check. That was the best our government could do. Maybe there is an alternative.

Amartya Sen

The 1999 Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to Amartya Sen for proving that government policies turn droughts into famines. Sen wrote extensively about the 1943 famine in Bengal, the 1972-74 famine in Ethiopia and the the 1972 famine in the Sahel. Dr. Sen writes, “Droughts may not be avoidable, but their effects can be.” If government policy can starve people to death, which is the slowest way to kill somebody, then maybe we want to make sure we get policy right. There is a lot at stake here.

           

Elinor Ostrum

            One of the things that drove me crazy in 2014 was the passage of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. As soon as they cut off surface water from our reservoirs they jumped up and down and said, “You have a groundwater problem.” Of course we do, that is why we put in the surface water systems! Over 70 years ago we knew we had a ground water problem. We put is the reservoirs and canals so we would have reliable water to grow our population and our economy- and it worked!

            OK, enough ranting. Elinor Ostrum was co-winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics. Ostrum’s work focuses on Common Pool Resources (CPR’s), and the government institutions to manage these resources.

            Ostrum’s work is not limited to the Western world or merely to our time. In her 1990 book Governing the Commons she also studies institutions that manage Common Pool Resources in Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Turkey and Japan. She also studies groundwater management in Southern California in the 1960’s as well as historic irrigation management in Spain and historic timber management in Switzerland. Ostrum’s conclusion is there are significant structures and policies that can be entered in to voluntarily by resource entrepreneurs. These agreements can be monitored internally and/or by governments.

            Ostrum’s “Design Principles and Institutional Performances” for successful use of Common Pool Resources include-

Clear boundaries and memberships-individuals or households who have rights to withdraw resource units from the CPR must be clearly defined, as must the boundaries of the CPR itself.

Congruent roles-Congruence between appropriation and provision rules and local conditions Appropriation rules restricting time, place, technology and/or quantity of resource units are related to local conditions and to provision rules requiring labor, material and. Or money.

Collective choice arrangements- Most individuals affected by the operational rules can participate in modifying the operational rules.

Monitoring- Monitors who actively audit CPR conditions and appropriator behaviors, are accountable to the appropriators or are the appropriators.

Graduated Sanctions- Appropriators who violate operational rules are likely to be assessed graduated sanctions (depending on the seriousness and context of the offense) by other appropriators, by officials accountable to these appropriators, or by both.

Conflict Resolution Mechanisms- Appropriators and their officials have rapid access to low cost local arenas to resolve conflicts among appropriators or between appropriators and officials.

Regional rights to organize-The rights of appropriators to devise their own institutions are not challenged by external government authorities.

Nested assets- Appropriation, provision, monitoring, enforcement, conflict resolution and government activities are organized in multiple layers of nested enterprises.

 (Ostrum p. 90-102)

Please remember these principles are not academic theory, they are time tested principles. The point of Ostrum’s work is that we have a Nobel proven alternative to Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons scenario. Since publication in 1968 the image of the ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ has driven people to conclude that resource entrepreneurs cannot be trusted to use resources in a responsible and sustainable manner.

In Conclusion

            Whether you agree or disagree with Dr. Sen or Dr. Ostrum we have to agree they have world class ideas that we can apply here at home. Before we run off with more central command and control ideas from Sacramento and DC we should consider their Nobel Prize winning ideas. Historically, governments make droughts worse. Properly done, local control of common pool natural resources works better than centralized command and control.

Ostrum, Elinor, Governing the Commons,    1990.

Sen, Amartya, The Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze Omnibus, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1999.

PS-Christmas Shopping

If you are stumped on a Christmas gift for the readers on your list, don't forget

They are available locally at A Book Barn in Clovis. Also available at Amazon.com and Xulon Press.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0692232281?keywords=betancourt%20this%20week%20books&qid=1450065343&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=betancourt+ten+reasons+books

http://www.xulonpress.com/bookstore/bookdetail.php?PB_ISBN=9781624198168&HC_ISBN=

Merry Christmas Y'all

P

On the Farm in 2015

On the Farm in 2015

By Paul H. Betancourt

December 2015

With another year in the books it is fair to ask how things went on the farm this past year.

            The year has had its challenges. The weather has been good, except for that rainfall thing. But, warm weather makes for good farming, usually. Yields were down for most crops. There seem to be a lot of reasons for that. Prices are softening, which is not unexpected. We all like higher prices, but it is the nature of things that prices cycle up and down.

            The drought is obviously the big news in California. There are tens of thousands of acres around our farm that have been fallowed. Production of row crops like cotton and wheat are way down as farmers conserve. What water they have for permanent crops like grapes and almonds. Letting a wheat field go fallow for a year hurts, but if you don’t water a vineyard or orchard for a year you kill it and lose years of work.

            On our farm we are preparing to install another drip system. I did the math a few weeks ago when a friend asked what the drought had cost me personally. Over a three year period we will have spent $400,000 in drip systems and well repairs. I’m not complaining, my pockets are not that deep. Some day I would like to be out of debt.

A while back a neighbor said, “All the indicator farmers are gone.” Huh? I asked what he meant by that. He said all the weak managers are gone. All the poor money managers are gone. All we have left now are the survivors.

One of the things that cracked me up this past year is that no sooner had the long range forecasts started saying we had a strong El Nino event coming and people started saying, “Even if we have a big El Nino rain event that won’t mean the drought is over.” Actually, that is exactly what it would mean. Droughts are when it does not rain. Droughts are over when it starts to rain. What they seem to be saying is, “We want all the water whether it rains or not.”

            Yes, we have had low rainfall the past few years. That happens in California. I have said before, we have wet years and dry years. We are fools because we do not save water from the wet years for the dry years. We have made this drought worse because of how the government has managed the water supply. We had a six year drought from 1986-1993 and we had more water available for our cities and farms. Eric Johnson of The Water Agency has documented how we have more water in storage at the Shasta Reservoir in this drought than we did in the ’86-93 drought. This has caused a lot more pain in our cities and farms than was necessary.

            Technology is always on the move. There are more and more electronics on the farm and in farmers’ pick up trucks all the time. Even drones are on the farm. A former student is starting a business doing aerial videos by drone. It gives you such a good birds’ eye view that birds attacked his drone while we were filming and clipped one of the rotors. The next step will be infrared videos which will help track stress and pests in the plants. Pretty amazing.

            There is also more paperwork. I am starting to not like January. It is too foggy to go for a motorcycle ride and there are all sorts of forms to fill out. Have I mentioned how much farmers really don’t like paper work lately? It was one of the perks of the job. You may be up and dawn and work past sunset. You may freeze in the winter and bake in the summer. You may end up knee deep in mud and muck, but you didn’t have to sit and do paperwork. Well, that’s over. Now we have to report our fertilizer use. We already track that because it is a cost. But, now we have to attend meetings and fill out forms. Arrrgh. I do not see an end to this. In fact, I suspect it will get worse as time goes on. I do not make my living filling out forms. I make my living growing food. Society does not benefit from me filling out forms. Society benefits when I grow food.

As we head in to 2016 the survivors have hope. We hope the predictions of an El Nino year are correct. We hope some of that will end up as water for our farms.

I'll check in with you all again after the first of the year.

We wish you all the Merriest of Christmases and the Happiest of New Years.

Peace on Earth. Good food for all!

Do You Pay Enough in Taxes?

There is always something to do on the farm. The crops for this year are in. We are busy getting ready for next year. Here we are preparing to plant 70 acres of almonds. The ground was deep ripped by the tractor in back, in the center. We are chiseling and discing the ground so we can put up berms and install the drip system. Go. Go. Go. At least for now. we are all looking forward to a break for Christmas.

Does any body out there think they are not paying enough in taxes? Are you wondering if they will ever back off?

A Modest Proposal- 2015

By Paul H. Betancourt

November, 2015

 "The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground." -Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, May 27, 1788.

Can we set the government on a budget like the rest of us are on a budget? The growth of government in recent decades is taking an increasingly greater of our national income. If this continues eventually they will be taxing us at 100%.

The general logic is they see a problem and raise taxes to spend money to solve this problem, or raise fees to solve this problem. There is no end in sight to this logic. We live in a fallen world, there will already be problems to solve. [Of course the logic question is- when did it become government’s job to solve social problems? That is not in the Constitution, but that boat sailed long ago.]

My proposal is this- that we decide what portion of our national income we will dedicate to government and then they decide which portion goes to roads, or national defense, or whatever. How about 20%? That would be a lot of money. If the national economy is $15 Trillion, the government gets $3Trillion. That includes national, state and local taxes and fees. Heck, the church only asks for 10%, giving 20% to the government seems downright generous.

            You and I have to live on budgets in our homes and in our businesses. If there is not money for something we want we either get another job or save up for it. As a farmer I don’t get to go to my customers and say, “I need a new pickup so I’m going to have to raise my prices.” How would the market respond to that? Yeah, they’d laugh and go on to the next guy.

Mr. Jefferson was on to something. The tendency is for government to increase and our freedoms to decrease. Do you remember what the Founding Fathers did about that from your civics class? They separated the powers of government. They did everything they could to restrain the power of government and give us the most freedom. We just keep giving government more power and more of our money. It is like that old story about the camel with his nose under the tent.

Since we have grown up under the current system we think this is normal. It is not. In the Declaration of Independence Jefferson said government’s authority comes from the “consent of the governed”. They can only do this if we allow it.

Jefferson also famously said of religious freedom that he did not object another person’s religion as long as it did ‘not pick my pocket nor break my leg.’ Well guess what? A lot of pockets are getting picked. Recently I was reading in the book of Genesis where Joseph saves Egypt from famine. In the final years of the famine the Egyptians sold themselves and their land to Pharaoh. They were forced to give 20% of their crop to Pharaoh and this was considered slavery! (Genesis 47:23) How many of us are paying more than 20% of our income to the government in taxes and fees and we are supposed to be living in the ‘land of the free.’

Time has proven Jefferson right. He wrote about the ‘natural progression of things in 1788. Have you seen anything to prove him wrong? If we do not accept this modest proposal they will take more and more of our pay checks until they have it all.