California politicians ignore agriculture’s troubles, but boost movie business

When James Marshall discovered traces of gold in the American River in 1848, he ignited the famous California Gold Rush that attracted a tidal wave of immigration and led to statehood just two years later.

However, not everyone who made the arduous trek to California in the mid-19^th century was seeking gold. Many — including those in the ill-fated 1846 Donner Party — wanted farmland.

Completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 made immigration into California and shipping produce out of the state much easier. As the gold rush quickly waned, agriculture became the state’s dominant industry, globally famous for fresh fruits and vegetables.

California’s vast network of reservoirs to capture water and canals to deliver it was originally created to help farmers prosper. They still use, by a wide margin, most of the system’s water.

While California is still No.1 in agricultural production among the states, generating about $60 billion a year, other sectors, such as technology, health care and logistics now play much larger roles in the state’s economy.

This is the time of year when crops are maturing and farmers are looking forward to harvests, shipments and paydays. But agricultural leaders see this year as one of the industry’s most trying periods, beset by economic and political factors that could significantly reduce production.

“When we talk about the things that are keeping me up at night, it really comes down to what is going to keep our members in business,” Shannon Douglass, president of the California Farm Bureau, said this month during a gathering of industry leaders.

She cited a federal census of agriculture which revealed California has lost 20% of its farmers in the last decade. The industry is at a tipping point, she declared.

She also pointed to a study by researchers at Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo that detailed rising costs of producing lettuce in the Salinas Valley due to government regulations. It found that costs of environmental, labor and food safety regulation are $1,600 per acre, up 63.7% since 2017, while income from lettuce has been virtually stagnant.

The list of factors affecting the industry also includes rising labor costs due to state wage regulations, new limits on pumping water from wells and demands from the state to reduce water diversions from rivers.

This year brought two new adverse factors — President Donald Trump’s tariffs that could generate retaliatory tariffs, depressing export markets, and Trump’s sweeps of undocumented immigrants, who are a major portion of the agricultural labor force.

Alexi Rodriguez, president of the Almond Alliance, told the gathering that China had been the top market for almonds until 2018, when an earlier round of Trump’s tariffs cut shipments. “After this year, China is likely to drop out of the top 10 export markets for almonds as a result,” she said.

The state’s labor costs also put California’s growers at a disadvantage.

“We’re sitting here in California and getting our brains beat in with costs that are through the roof and going up against my competitors in the East Coast paying $8 to $9 an hour for labor, and we’re dealing with the same customers,” said Mike Way, a bell pepper producer in the Coachella Valley. “What’s my choice? My choice is to shrink my acreage and go elsewhere.”

As agriculture’s acreage declined, so too did its economic importance and its once-dominant political clout vis-à-vis other economic interests. Efforts by Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislative leaders to double state subsidies for the film industry underscore that decline.

Newsom, et al, say the subsidies are necessary to keep film production from declining further. The film industry pegs its economic contribution at $30 billion a year, just half of agriculture’s output.

Implicitly politicians believe that producing movies is much more important than producing food.