But many folks in this region and in the rest of the country aren’t so lucky. Fresh  vegetable consumption has declined by nine pounds per person over the past 10 years.  And it’s no wonder, considering how little US agricultural policy invests in fruit and vegetable production.

Instead, the sprawling federal Farm Bill, written by Congress every five years, is geared towards supporting large farms that grow five commodity crops: corn, soybeans, rice, cotton and wheat. These commodities, which mostly provide cheap feed for livestock and raw material for highly processed foods, are primarily grown in the Midwest, though California is no stranger to large-scale cotton and rice production.

Last year, California upland cotton growers received the largest share of federal agricultural payments made in the state–$198 million in taxpayer subsidies. That equals the amount spent to support all fruit and vegetable production and marketing in the state, even though the cotton crop, valued at $105 million in 2009, is tiny compared to California’s $18 billion annual fruit and vegetable harvest.

In 2009, the top one percent of subsidy recipients in the state–just 125 growers–reaped  $57 million in subsidies, an average of $453,000 each. That precisely equals the amount spent on the Environmental Quality Incentive Program (EQIP), the state’s most important agricultural conservation program. Last year 70 percent of the farmers that applied for help from the EQIP program were turned away because of lack of funding for the program.

Just eight of the top subsidy recipients received $12 million in subsidies, the same amount spent by the US  Department of Agriculture on programs to support local and regional food systems in California in 2009. Unlike direct farmer subsidies, these programs support farmers’ markets, community-supported agriculture (CSAs) programs, local garden and youth agriculture projects, value-added agricultural enterprises, farm-to-school initiatives and others that make fresh food more accessible while creating new outlets and returning higher prices to local farmers.

Unfortunately, Congress will not end this gross misallocation of spending unless we galvanize a massive movement to fight for a major shift in Farm Bill priorities. Just last month (February 18th), nearly half of California’s Congressional delegation (including three Democratic members of the House Agriculture committee) opposed an amendment introduced by Rep Blumenauer (D-OR) that would have limited the amount of farm subsidies to no more than $250,000 per farm per year. A $250,000 a year cap hardly seems like much of a limit, but still the amendment failed in the House 185-241.

California’s Bay Area legislators⎯with the exception of Representatives Anna Eshoo (D-Palo Alto), Jerry McNerney (D-Pleasanton) and Mike Thompson (D-Napa)⎯had the good sense to support the amendment. With Congressional discussions on the Farm Bill already underway, it’s time for urban and rural eaters and their representatives to have a seat at the table and to demand greater equity in farm bill spending. We need a Farm Bill that invests in sustainable agricultural policies that expand fruit and vegetable production while significantly reducing chemical fertilizer and pesticide use and ramping up organic production. We also need increased investment in local processing and distribution to connect farmers effectively with local retail and institutional markets. We must also spur demand by expanding access to fresh fruits and vegetables in our food assistance and school lunch programs.

At a time of daunting federal deficits, the agricultural budget is a zero-sum game. As this past week showed, prying resources away from the subsidy lobby will not be easy. But if any state outside the farm belt can do it, it’s California–the nation’s leading agricultural producer and home to 55 members of Congress. But it will take a lot of eaters making a lot of noise to make sure that California legislators understand that we are counting on them to fight for better priorities in the next Farm Bill.

Last week while savoring the last of the stone fruit and the first crisp apples here in California, I worried about water. If you eat fruits and vegetables, you, too, should be very worried about water. This is because California, the state that supplies vast quantities of our nation’s produce, is running out. The culprit? Urban development gone wild, climate change, and generations of water transfer in a state with a high percentage land in the desert.

Reading excellent coverage of the farmers vs. fisherman water issue here on Civil Eats piqued my interest. Then, last week I heard a roomful of water experts discuss how our water issues impact food and farming. Presented by Sustainable Agriculture Education (SAGE), and Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF), along with San Francisco Professional Food Society and Les Dames des Escoffier, the panel discussion made me more nervous and confused. What was true? After the panel I caught up with Dave Runsten, who heads up CAFF’s work with the California Agricultural Water Stewardship Initiative, to seek clarification.  Runsten’s July 2010 report Why Water Stewardship for Agriculture was published July 2010 and outlines some relevant points of the debate on water issues facing the state’s urban dwellers, farmers and the food system.
Dave, I’m swimming in the murky waters of this debate. Please review the main issues facing agricultural water management as you see them.

It’s a complicated topic even for experts. Here’s the big picture: California agriculture is essential to the food security of the United States. But we built a water system over many decades, starting back in the 19th century, which relies on lot of transfer of water from one basin to another. San Francisco gets water from Yosemite Valley, Los Angeles gets water from the Colorado river and from Northern California, etcetera. Today the LA region has a population of 20 million. If LA had to survive on its own water resources, it could support only one million people. Much of the land in California is desert. This land is worth nothing without access to water. So we transport water to desert areas to make land worthwhile for farming and real estate. It’s expensive, it’s politically controversial, and there isn’t enough water to go around.

How much of a crisis is this?

Today, we are 5 million acre feet short of the water the state needs for families and for farming. This shortage is only going to get worse. Climate change is reducing size of the snow pack, it will create extreme rain with flash flooding and runoff challenges, and means more drought. Almost 40 million people live in California so we need to change everyone’s habits.

We can’t have lawns and lush landscaping. 40-50 percent of our water is used outdoors. The State Water Board says three million feet of water can be saved if people simply conserve.  For example, Los Angeles has mandated low-flow toilets and shower heads.

What’s our goal for water conservation?

Our conservation goal is 20 percent urban water reduction per capita by the end of 2020 in all of California’s urban areas. Legislation was passed in 2009 to require this commitment. But conservation alone won’t solve the problem. We need to store water by capturing it. Farmers in particular can do this by adapting a variety of technologies and practices. Some examples of this are building organic matter into the soil through cover cropping, minimum tillage and amendments, using drip or micro sprinklers, soil monitoring, and many other ways. Conservation must also take place at the irrigation district level, or the watershed level, improving distribution efficiency and working on local infrastructure rather than relying on central water infrastructure with dams.

In your July 2010 publication you say it is argued that farmers ‘waste’ water. Who argues this and why?

Los Angeles wants more water allocation to water lawns and cars. As a farmer, this offends me. I’m growing food for those people to eat. [Meanwhile] people have a concept that flood irrigation is a waste of water. Really it’s the way groundwater is being recharged. Water finds its way back into the Sacramento River after its flood irrigated, so it’s a natural recycling/reclamation system. Certain crops would be very difficult to grow with drip or sprinkler type irrigation. These types of systems are expensive to manufacture, purchase and install, they require electricity to operate, and they must be maintained, so they are far from a simple solution.

How much do farmers pay for water?

Farmers pay the cost of getting water to them depending on their location. Along the Sacramento River, farmers pay $5 per acre per year. On east side of San Joaquin valley the cost is $20/$30 an acre, and West of San Joaquin water costs $200/$300 an acre. In San Diego, farmers pay $2,000 an acre. That reflects the reality of what it costs to transport water there. To be truthful, anyone paying $5 per acre doesn’t have a much incentive to conserve.

What are the top controversies re: water for food, farming and families as you see them?

When Mark Reisner wrote Cadillac Desert about land development and water policy in the West back in the 80’s, he said rice growers were wasting water.  Not about to take that one lying down, the rice farmers invited him to visit.  He worked with them to create a water fowl habitat, timing of flooding the field to work with migration which vastly increased the number of water fowl flying through. To me this is a terrific illustration of how it is possible to have agriculture conducted in harmony with nature.

What about the Delta Smelt?

For sure the Delta has crashed. We pump more and more water out of it, especially in last 10-15 years. We’ve been destroying the environment of the Delta for a long time and these indicator species along with it. But here’s the rub: if we leave more water in the delta, whose water will we leave there, Northern California’s or Southern California’s? There is absolutely no simple solution to it.

What should CA food and farming advocates do?

Advocate for water conservation, urban and rural. It’s simply not fair to just attack farmers. We must recognize that farmers are producing our food, so we must create an urban-rural compact centered on stewardship and smart use to find a way to reduce water use. A lot of farmers don’t have any economic incentives to do this, so food advocates will have to support subsidies, technical support and monies to help them. Technical assistance through cooperative extension systems have been severely cut back; that means there’s not a lot of help available for farmers.

What about industrial agriculture versus small farms?

Water is a problem that cuts across every farming operation, both big and small. The price of water has everything to do with where you are located, what your water rights are, not the size of your farm. Smaller farms have even more limited budgets, while bigger ones have more access to consultants and technologies.  Not all small organic farms are doing a great job on water use. They could do better, and they could use financial and technical help.

Here’s a good example from the Southern San Joaquin valley in the very large Westlands Water district.  These are some of the biggest farms in CA , and they’re doing a great job conserving because they have expensive water and have to work really hard to adopt high technology irrigation practices. It’s simple economics. Compare them with organic farmers in Capay Valley. They do use drip irrigation to grow vegetables, so they’re not wasting water, but don’t have sophisticated moisture probes or other higher technology tools. Plus, there’s a high learning curve since historically they’ve had enough water.

What is your final thought for water-concerned Civil Eats readers?

The overarching problem is that people want to build houses in the desert. The water must come from Northern California. That’s the political reality here. Still, a permanent, sustainable agriculture in California with a permanent, sustainable water supply is possible if everyone in the state, urban and rural, conserves water.

Photo: AnniThyme

Two weeks ago, I noticed that two of my tomato plants had late blight. I was up on the roof, weeding, pulling off yellowing leaves from all the excess rain, and harvesting some early tomatoes when I noticed leaves with yellow and brown spots on them. I’d read the article in the New York Times about the blight, and so I sent out the photo on the left to Twitter, asking my followers, “is this the blight?” The answer, sadly, was yes. So I pulled one plant up, before it could spread to the others, and took all the leaves off the other plant which was confined to a corner, hoping to let it’s three giant tomatoes ripen.

Unfortunately, rooftops are not immune from the soil disease that ravages spuds and tomatoes — I bought my seedlings from two small nurseries upstate, which had grown them locally. But it is possible that contamination had already spread to my tomatoes from the nurseries’ neighbors who bought their plants at big box stores like Lowe’s and Wal-Mart, which sold plants in soil from an Alabama facility that carried the blight. Ironically, it is new growers’ enthusiasm that might have exacerbated the disease through increased consumer demand. And while a record number of people are growing some of their own produce this year, excess rain in the northeast has created the perfect conditions for the blight to flourish — but it is small organic farmers that are taking a punch.

Last week I spoke to some of the farmers at the Union Square farmer’s market. Three of my favorite sustainable farms are not spraying, even though it means a losses of up to $25,000. It’s a depressing worse case scenario. Amy Hepworth, the farmer at Hepworth Farms (my CSA) and Kira Kenney of Evolutionary Organics, both places from whom I normally get beautiful tomatoes for eating and canning, have sustained big losses this year. Another of my favorites farms, known for their tomatoes, has decided to spray to save their harvest — for the first time in 14 years. It’s hard to tell farmers not to spray. As M.K. Wyle wrote on Civil Eats last week, its painful to watch all of that work be destroyed in one fell swoop.

So what can be done, and is this just the farmer’s gambit? On my rooftop, I’ve planted salad greens and kale in the place of my missing tomatoes. But for small farms, most of which grow diverse crops and often don’t qualify for disaster insurance, such a loss could put them further into debt and make their ability to grow in the future uncertain. It is possible that had plants been grown from seed nearby, and soil stayed in its region, we wouldn’t see the blight spreading like it is through the northeast. So should small farms bear the brunt of the burden alone?

Governor Paterson doesn’t think so. He requested recently that the USDA designate 17 New York counties as agricultural disaster areas. If these counties get this designation, low-interest loans will be made available based on the extent of the losses.

But loans aren’t ideal. I’m glad that the option is there, but how about better supports in Washington for diversified growers, who support a healthier population and healthier soil? Loans are more like a band-aid, after the fact. Growers of cotton, soy, wheat, corn and other non-perishable commodities are protected because they are the biggest producers, and as such have the most detailed crop histories, lobbies, and of course that longer shelf life.

Getting crop insurance is based on data sets and tables which are essentially a history of a certain crop’s performance. According to Scott Marlow, of the Rural Advancement Foundation International, there is precious little information being gathered on USDA-designated “specialty crops” (around 10 million acres planted according to the 2007 census, a fraction of the total 310 million acres planted in the US), like tomatoes, and so it’s harder for these farmers to get coverage. It is also harder for them to get loans, which are often based on crop insurance.

Furthermore, planting restrictions put in place by the federal government aim to keep specialty crops at that 10 million acres so as to control prices. If a farmer shifts from commodity crops to specialty crops, they lose the payments on their land. All of this means that a farmer has to feel really passionate about diversified growing, because they are managing their own risk most of the time. And the growth of the local food movement gets stifled by these realities, too.

But I would argue that the farmers growing perishable fruits and vegetables are our insurance policy against future preventable disease; that, in fact, our health is rooted in this issue.

I may be able to withstand losses in my little plot, (an experiment in growing, really) but small farmers cannot. Let’s change the inherant unfairness in our system that favors big over small farms by pushing the goverment to re-evaluate these policies. Indeed, the future of local food is at stake.