Almond Planting and A Presidential Visit

   It's been a busy week. I didn't make it to the Farm Show because we planted twenty acres of trees on Thursday. Preparing for that kept me going this week. The process of planting began two years ago when we tore out the old orchard and ordered these trees. 

They come off the truck in bins.
Then we load them on to the planter.

Look at them go.
They don't look like much now...

...and it will take a few years before they are producing.
   The first thing we did was heel them in. Then get them watered right away in those furrows you see here.. We will prune them next. Then we will add some fertilizer and give them lots of tender, loving care. This is a thirty year investment and we want these trees to be strong and happy.


   In other news, President Obama came to town to talk about the drought in California. I am not nearly a big enough fish to meet with the President. I did, however, throw in my two cents in an open letter to the President that was printed in the Fresno Bee and the Fresno Business Journal.

An Open Letter to President Obama-

First, Mr. President, thank you for coming to the Valley. This is important to us, and to all Californians. There is nothing like having leaders out in the field seeing things for themselves.

Mr. President, this is a multi-year problem that requires multi-year solutions.

We have been short of rain for a few years. It is catching everyone’s attention right now because it is affecting our cities, not just our farmers.

This is a political problem, not a technical problem. When President Theodore Roosevelt led in the creation of Western irrigation projects he said, the purpose of these projects was, “reclaiming the waste areas of the arid West…and creating new homes upon the land” (Roosevelt 411). Our predecessors built a system to take care of our water needs and we have mis-managed it. President Kennedy was here for the ground breaking of the San Luis Dam and spoke of how important this was for the citizens of the Valley. Now that reservoir is being squeezed off by the federal government.
           

If you want to know why we are suspicious of the Federal government you only have to look as far back as the Central Valley Project Improvement Act (CVPIA). The CVPIA took water from the irrigation system for the environment and promised to restore the capacity to the system within ten years. Twenty years later we are still waiting.

The 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics went to Amartya Sen who proved that famines were caused by governments, not by natural disasters. Sen wrote, “droughts may not be avoidable, but their affects can be” (Sen 123).

There are wet years and there are dry years in California. We are foolish because we do not save water from the wet years for the dry years. In 2009 we cut off water and the University of California reported 60,000 people lost their jobs. Howitt, et al).

A few years ago we had 160% normal rainfall. Farmers only got 80% of their water supply and 27 million acre feet of water ran out in to the ocean. Imagine what we could have done if we had saved even ten percent of that water.

Your administration is concerned about climate change. One way to lower our carbon foot print is to grow food near where it is consumed. There are over thirty million consumers within a few hundred miles of Central Valley farms. Help us secure our long term water supplies and we can help millions of people lower their carbon footprints by growing self, healthy and affordable food here in California. But, we need a reliable water supply.

This drought is a multi-year problem that will require multi-year solutions. In my book, Ten Reasons: Finding Balance On Environmental Issues, I make the case that we need a healthy environment and a healthy economy. Yes, let’s care for the environment. But, let’s feed and clothe our people too. We must manage our system so we can capture more rainfall during the wet years for the dry years.

Cordially,

Paul H. Betancourt
Kerman, California

Howitt, Richard, et al., http://ewccalifornia.org/reports/MeasuringEmploymentImpacts-092909.pdf

Roosevelt, Theodore, Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography, New York,

            De Capo Press, 1985.

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

I hope you all have a great week.

P