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Pacific Institute Report Defies Logic |
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Wednesday, 10 September 2008 |
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The report ---“More with
Less”--- by the Oakland-based advocacy group Pacific Institute may have some beneficial aspects to it but it poses a serious threat to
California’s
family farmers.
It calls on our farmers to embrace new technology regarding
their water use. But farmers are already doing this…between 1967 and 2000,
farmers increased food and fiber production by 89 percent with an increase of
only 2 percent in applied water.
The report further asserts that
California water rights, some of which have
served the people of California for over 100 years, are not being
applied correctly and that water is not being used beneficially. I don’t
understand how growing food for people to eat is not a beneficial use of water.
The report also calls for farmers
to change from one crop to another because of water use. It is important to
remember that farmers choose which crop to plant based on what consumers are
buying.
If farmers decrease their alfalfa
acreage, as called for in the report, then California’s dairy industry will be forced to
rely upon thousands of truckloads of feed from other states in order to feed
their herds. This scenario certainly goes against what the Pacific Institute
has called for in other documents relating to protection of the
environment.
Telling a farmer to grow one crop
instead of another to save water is the same as telling a restaurant to become a
shoe store for the same reason. It just doesn’t make
sense.
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