With so much of the nation's food supply concentrated in the "Shake and Bake" state, its good weather is bad news for us all.
By
As a
Californian, I have not gotten too much sympathy from friends and family about
our rotten weather this winter. Yes, I said rotten weather. It’s been
incredibly pleasant— except for a few times when the temperature crept up to 90
— but we’ve hardly had any rain.
Cry me a
river, you might think. Especially if you live in a part of the country where
the term “polar vortex” was added to your vocabulary in the past few months.
Boo-hoo. It was too sunny and perfect every day.
California’s
climate problems have nothing to do with human comfort — but they have
everything to do with human food. And not just for California.
A recent Mother Jonesarticle points out that nearly all
of America’s almonds, walnuts, strawberries, broccoli, grapes, and more come
from the Golden State. And just one walnut requires a whopping 4.9 gallons of
water. That’s not 4.9 gallons for a pound of walnuts. That’s for just one nut. A stick of butter? That takes 109 gallons of
water to produce.
It’s
more than a little crazy that a state without much water provides the nation
with nearly half of its fruit, nuts, and vegetables. And yeah, you can’t judge
California’s water supplies based on this year alone since it’s one of the driest years on record. But whether
the current drought continues (as some experts predict) or the recent downpours
herald a break in this dry spell, we are foolish to put all of our agricultural
eggs in one geographic basket.
The
prominent food writer Michael Pollan once made the point that efficiency in
agriculture comes at the expense of resilience, and vice versa. To date, it’s
been efficient to produce 95 percent of America’s broccoli in just a few
California counties. But that also means that one natural disaster could take
out the majority of our broccoli supply in a given year.
California
is blessed with a mild Mediterranean climate and seemingly unlimited sunshine,
but it’s not for nothing that we call ourselves the “Shake ‘n Bake” state. Earthquakes and
wildfires are only two of our specialties — we’ve also got mudslides, flash
floods, and now this terrible drought.
Even in
wet years, it doesn’t rain much.
When
farmers concentrate the growth of a single crop in one area, we risk losing
that crop to an outbreak of pests or disease. That is even truer when farmers
grow the same variety of the same crop. Think grove after grove of Valencia
oranges, without any Navels in sight.
Our
current farming system arose out of a drive for efficiency. If we grow all of
the tomatoes (or lettuce or broccoli) in one spot, then the farmers benefit
from an entire distribution and processing system centralized in their area.
Perhaps there’s a tomato canning plant or a ketchup factory nearby.
This
system currently gives us the cheapest food in the world. Americans spend less
than 10 percent of our disposable income on food, less than
any other nation.
Yet our
cheap food system is inherently risky. A few years ago, a drought across most
of the country radically reduced our corn production. California’s ongoing
drought will reduce the supply of many fruits, nuts, and vegetables.
With the
changing climate, we can expect more weather extremes and the crop failures
they sow. Let’s build resiliency into our food system by growing fruits, nuts,
and vegetables across the country instead of concentrating way too much of our
food in one drought-prone state.
OtherWords columnist
Jill Richardson is the author of Recipe
for America: Why Our Food System Is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It.
OtherWords.org