This is What Happens When You Fallow Farm Land

The wind kicked up this week and all those fallow fields started to move. It is a little hard to see in the photos, but that line of gray on the horizon is not normal. In fact it reminded me of the air I saw in China. [Many people forget that China had air quality problems years ago. Winds would blow dust from the deserts in Western China into the populated areas in the East. It is not all vehicle exhaust, but that is another story.]

My point is, when you take hundreds of thousands of acres out of production to protect our water supply, you end up with a lot of dusty open ground. When the wind kicks up, that dirt is going to move. I don't make predictions very often, but I bet that by the end of summer there will be at least one front page article about an increase in particulate matter in our Valley air. 
   Can anyone say, "Unintended consequences"? I discovered a long time ago that liberal activists are fragmented. Food activists do not necessarily talk with environmental activists. This was a surprise because I thought they all walked in lock step. But, could someone send a note to the air quality activists and the water activists? They get a choice; they can take the water, but our air quality will suffer. Or, if they would like cleaner air, could they please arrange to send us some water?
   When farmers do what they do best we get food and cleaner air. That's a combination I like.

I hope you all have a great week.

P

Ground water and Drought

   Well the oat hay has been cut, baled and stacked. not bad. Almost sixty tons off of twenty five acres. Now we will find out if prices are as good as folks have been saying.

   Elsewhere on the farm- the cotton sure has been loving the warm weather. Soon it will be time for the first irrigation. Timing is everything. If we water too soon, the plants will all go to stalk. If we water too late, we stress the pants and lose yield. This is just another example of why I will not relax about the cotton until the last row is picked and the last bale ginned off.

   I am a little concerned about what I am hearing from Sacramento. There is legislation brewing about restricting groundwater. It seems they noticed that our ground water is getting over drafted. OF COURSE IT IS! THAT IS WHY WE NEED SURFACE WATER. This is an old problem. We put in the irrigation systems so we would not over draft the ground water any more.

   Groundwater is the back up supply for dry years.

   One thing, if the want to talk about ground water restrictions here in the Valley then San Francisco's water from Hetch Hetchy in Yosemite National Park should be on the table. It is fundamentally unfair to take water from our watershed and then tell us to manage our groundwater better.
   For those of you who do not know, San Francisco draws over a quarter of a million acre feet from a reservoir made from the Yosemite Valley's twin sister. The fight to save the Hetch Hetchy Valley broke John Muir's heart a hundred years ago. He died shortly after he and the Sierra Club lost the fight to protect the valley.

   Yes, there is a limited amount of groundwater and we are drawing it down faster than it is being replenished. But, I find it ironic that Sacramento and the environmental community realize this the same year they cut off our surface water supplies.

OK, enough gripping.

Happy Memorial Day everyone. Please take a moment to remember and honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom as you spend time with friends and family. We live in a most amazing country and we wouldn't be here except for them.

No Trip to China is Complete Without...

...a Cotton Visit!

   Anyone can go to the Great Wall, and we did. But, how many people visit cotton mills?

   Below is an operation run as a co-op by local farmers. They spin and weave their cotton making light weight summer quilts which are very popular in China. These guys get an 'A' in entrepreneurship. They actually started by coming together to develop cotton seed varieties for China. Another 'A'.

  My thanks to Ernie Schroeder, Jr. owner of Jess Smith and Co. who was my host in China. Ernie is a Road Warrior for American cotton. His regular visits to Asia help create markets for our products. It was interesting watching him work with his colleagues from Shanghai as we visited mills and merchants.

   Yes, the Chinese are our competitors. They work hard and they have learned the benefits of capitalism and globalization. The good news is they know we grow world class cotton in California.

                                          Just so you know I was at the great Wall.

   I'll make another report when I am a little less jet-lagged. [ I flew back from China last night, and boy are my arms tired. ;-D Ba dump bump.]

I hope you all have a great week.

My New Book is Out!

For those of you have enjoyed This Week on the Farm here in the blog, or on the radio, you can now own the book! I have selected some of our favorite This Week stories, added some photographs and even a few recipes. You can find the book at Amazon.com as a hard copy and for your Kindle. I will also get hard copies over to the Clovis Book Barn in a few weeks.

The cover art work was done by Jeanna Burdine-Slaven. She is awesome! I wish I could draw like that.

 It has been another busy week on the farm. The cotton is growing quickly as the weather warms. We started fertilizing this week. We also have to spray weeds and furrow out by June 1st so we can be ready to irrigate.
   We have been irrigating the almonds with the drip system. It will take some getting used, but it is pretty amazing.

   Now, if you don't mind I am going back to packing. I leave tomorrow for a week in China. I will be visiting cotton merchants, mills and farms with one of the merchants who buys our Pima cotton. We will also have a few days touring the sites in Beijing. I will post some pictures.
   I have been looking forward to going to China for years. They are major cotton producers and consumers. I been reading their economic reports for thirty years. I love reading, but their is nothing like a few days there on the ground. As a student of history, religion and politics I think China will be very interesting. They have a long and proud tradition and they are vigorously engaged with the modern world.

I'll check back in with you when I get back.
Yes, I will be taking pictures.

P

How the Drought Affects Non-farmers

   One of my favorite sounds of Spring is listening to the Tri-Colored Blackbirds out in the wheat fields. While I miss the almond trees around the house, I realized that the blackbirds have moved in to the oats we have planted behind the house. Last night I sat on the back porch with a book and a cup of coffee and was serenaded by my black bird friends as the sun set. Another pure pleasure of living on the farm.

   Some folks in Firebaugh, California thought it as important for you to know that the lack of water doesn't just affect farmers. They put together the video in the link below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDMO6CQRS2Y

There are a lot of good people who are ready to work hard to grow your food. All we need is a little water.

I hope you all have a fabulous week.

P

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