Sunrise this morning while I was walking the dogs was fabulous.
You Actually
Get Less with Less
By Paul H. Betancourt
By Paul H. Betancourt
The Hippies of the 60’s had a mantra,
“More with Less.” Sheryl and I even have a “More with Less Cook Book.” While it
makes a pretty good cookbook, that is not the mantra for progress. You usually
get less with less.
I thought the “More with Less”
mantra was a thing of the past. But, a few weeks ago I was in Portland for a
sustainable cotton conference and one of my new environmental friends went on
and on about how we will get ‘more with less.’ These guys haven’t had a new
idea in forty years.
Yes, - I am all for conservation. I believe in the careful
use of our resources. But, eventually you get less with less. We didn’t get
more when our water supplies were cut back to ten percent a few years ago. UC
Davis reported 40,000 people lost their jobs that summer. That’s not “More with
Less” that’s a lot less.
This foolishness has to stop. We have not been getting more
with less water the past two years. We have been getting much less. Tens of
thousands of more jobs were lost in the past year as even more acres were
fallowed. Food prices are inching up. That is simple economics. If you have
less of a product with even demand price will go up.
Farming Is
Not An Optional Industry
This past week I have seen more comments about how the drought will not hurt the California. Let me remind you of what three time Democratic candidate for the Presidency William Jennings Bryant said a century ago-
This past week I have seen more comments about how the drought will not hurt the California. Let me remind you of what three time Democratic candidate for the Presidency William Jennings Bryant said a century ago-
“Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and 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 in the country.”
Because everyone has to eat, every economy
is built upon a strong farming sector. My last year as Fresno Farm Bureau
president I heard countless politicians, academics, journalists and regulators
say, “If California farmers can’t produce under these rules, we will just
import our food.” Really? Do you think foreign producers are going to follow
your regulations? Didn’t we have a poisoned imported dog food problem a few
years ago? If they can’t even produce safe dog food do you think your food
would be any safer?
We Are 25 Years Behind
In
1992 the Governor’s father, Gov. Edmund G. “Pat” Brown said they built enough
canals for the future, but not enough reservoirs. “Additional works were scheduled
to be built to increase project yield in an orderly fashion as more water would
be needed (starting around 1990).” We are 25 years behind schedule. No
wonder we have a problem. We have a water system built for 19 million people
and a population of 38 million. Sure we need to conserve. But, there are not
enough low flow toilets to solve this problem.
The Cold Hard Number
As
I pointed out in a recent column, the UN Food and Agricultural Organization
calculates that it takes 800 gallons of water per day to produce food for one
person. In California that means it takes over 30 million acre feet per year to
produce enough food for each Californian. This is an irreducible number. You
will not get more food with less water- you will get less food.
In general you don’t get “More with
Less”, you get less. We won’t have progress with less, but by carefully
building on the foundation of the past.
Brown, Edmund G. “Pat”, Achieving Consensus on Water
Policy in California,
Edmund G. “Pat” Brown Institute of Public Affairs, Los Angeles, 1992.
Edmund G. “Pat” Brown Institute of Public Affairs, Los Angeles, 1992.
Howitt, Richard, et al., Measuring the Employment Impact of Water Reductions,
www.ewccalifornia.org/.../MeasuringEmploymentImpacts-092909.pdf
Jennings, William Bryant, Cross of Gold Speech, http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5354/
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