It's almost too
late for California to eat local. Even as we
rediscover how good tomatoes and cantaloupe
taste when they are freshly picked -- if not in
our backyard, then in the next valley over --
our state is fast losing its ability to feed
itself. But that may not be all bad. We will
gain from our loss if the threat of hunger
serves to realign our agricultural priorities
individually and statewide.
Agricultural
census statistics confirm what we all perceive
as we watch schools and subdivisions sprout in
our lettuce fields, and malls and warehouses
move into our pastureland: America's salad bowl
is shrinking by the day.
Producing the
average American diet requires approximately 1.2
acres of land per person, says David Pimentel,
professor in the College of Agriculture and Life
Sciences at Cornell University. Today, counting
all our state's cultivable land (including land
currently set aside in conservation programs to
reduce soil erosion and preserve wildlife
habitats), plus all possible pasture and range
land (even that of the most marginal quality),
California has only three-quarters of an acre of
productive land per Californian.
The average
American diet being the super size that it is,
maybe three- quarters of an acre is plenty.
But let's take a
look at what happens 50 years out, by which time
our state's population will have grown to around
55 million, according to estimates by the
California Department of Finance. If we don't
lose any farm acres, or see the productivity of
those acres diminish, we'll be down to less than
1/2 acre per person of land capable of
supporting some food production.
One-half acre.
Feels pinched. But we might still be OK. In the
September/October 2004 issue of World Watch
magazine, Pimentel and Anne Wilson reported that
China's per-capita cropland stands at
approximately 0.2 acre, providing the Chinese
people a primarily vegetarian diet.
The problem is,
we're unlikely to keep hold of even that
half-acre each of vegetables. Farming in
California isn't easy. For example, as we become
more concerned about water quality and
conservation, California farmers must operate
within tightening water-use restrictions. As of
Jan. 1 of this year, no commercial growers in
California's central coast region, which
stretches from Santa Barbara County up to San
Mateo County, can irrigate their fields unless
they have completed 15 hours of water quality
education and filed an approved plan with the
California Regional Water Quality Control Board
detailing how they aim to minimize irrigation
runoff on each piece of ground they farm. The
farmers must monitor their irrigation discharge
levels, and control board officials will inspect
whether the irrigation plans are being
implemented as the farmers have pledged. Water
quality boards in other regions are developing
their own sets of water-use requirements for
agriculture.
At the same time
that the regulatory price farmers pay rises,
out-of- pocket costs are increasing as well.
Fossil fuels are the key ingredient in synthetic
fertilizers and pesticides, and the primary
source of power for tractors and irrigation
pumps. Pimentel and Wilson predict that some
time between 2005 and 2010, we will reach our
peak year of global oil production. After we
pass the peak, a lesser amount of fossil fuels
will be available each year. Despite short-term
fluctuations, fossil fuels, and with them the
price of conventional farm chemicals, will
become ever more expensive.
Unless we're
willing to pay more for our food, some farmers,
especially those who have developers interested
in their land, are going to opt out and sell out
as the regulatory burdens and cost of farming
mount.
Meanwhile, we'll
be paving over millions of acres during the next
50 years. Each new baby born or immigrant
welcomed needs not only sufficient food, but its
share of warehouses, schools and parking lots as
well: a share that requires, says Pimentel, one
acre of concrete and blacktop per person. If our
population and urbanization trends continue,
California will have only a tiny sliver of land,
less than one-tenth of an acre for each of us,
left to grow food on by the year 2055.
I have an
outside chance of still being alive then.
Barring tragedy, my children most certainly will
be. How desperately, I wonder, will I guard my
one-tenth acre?
A brief
published by the University of California's
Agricultural Issues Center in May of 2001
suggests that the argument that "continued
urbanization will prevent California from
feeding itself" is misconstrued. Most food
consumed by Californians, suggests the brief, is
brought in from other states and countries.
Unfortunately,
worldwide, we're already down to around a
half-acre per person, and we'll be operating on
half of that half in another 50 years if
population growth trends hold true, and assuming
no further loss in land productivity. The rest
of the world is losing its ability to feed
itself at the same time that we here in
California are.
So we are now
forced to consider the unthinkable, a food
crisis at home, in our generation or the next.
I'm never one to advocate bringing things to a
crisis point. Crises are too tricky; they are
moments of opportunity but offer no guarantees.
Some individuals use a personal crisis to make
life changes, and some commit suicide.
Revolutions can overthrow dictatorships, but
kill combatants and innocents, fracture
families, and co-opt childhoods along the way.
But I do believe
that as we get hungry we will be motivated as
never before to protect soil fertility and water
reserves, and learn to feed ourselves without
using fossil-fuel-based fertilizers and
pesticides. Organic and sustainable farming will
no longer be trendy. We will feed ourselves
according to our ability to replicate the soil
food web's systems of nutrient and carbon
cycling and nature's biodiversity, and to learn
from long-surviving species.
We will grow
more of our own food in home gardens, in empty
city lots, in parks and on rooftops. We will
honor growers and ranchers, and pay more money
for the food we buy. Agricultural land will
garner higher prices per acre than developable
land. We will covet organic wastes. We will
question the diversion of any land grant
university dollars away from the central issue
of how to feed ourselves within our
environmental limits. We will probably eat less
and say grace more when we do. We will learn a
new balance walking on the edge of hunger.
Deborah Rich
is a Monterey writer and olive rancher. E-mail
her at
home@sfchronicle.com.
