California's place in the future

[marie-louise]

All my life, I've always heard how California feeds the nation. But is that still going to be true going forward, or is the bloom off the rose. Are people like me, who have faithfully belonged to a CSA for years, the end of the line for small farmers? Is California's insatiable desire for affordable (by California standards) housing and hideous business parks going to use up every flat piece of farmland between San Francisco and LA? My grandparents were small farmers in the Central Valley. It never was an easy life; they barely made a living fifty years ago. But at least it seemed like large farms were keeping California's agricultural tradition alive. Now I'm not so sure. For instance, in the Capay Valley, near Sacramento, apparently most the tomato farmers have gone out of business because the tomato processing plants all moved to Mexico and there was no longer any need for thousands of acres of Roma tomatoes. Many people say California's wines are overpriced and over-hyped. Is Napa doomed to the same fate? The selection at my local fish market isn't nearly so local these days-and there's not as much of a selection as there used to be.

Please tell me I'm worrying about nothing.

[russ parsons]

I've put off answering this one to the end because it's the most difficult. I'm afraid in many ways, you're right. The world does keep on turning and things do keep on changing and we're losing a lot of good things along the way. Agriculture is a particularly knotty problem. Americans spend so little on food these days and it sometimes seems the only thing they want is to spend less. That makes it really difficult for farmers to survive unless they can take advantage of economies of scale, which means bye-bye small farmers.

Farmers markets offer some hope, but don't kid yourself: any farmer you see driving a mercedes probably had it before he bought the farm. Even the guys charging $4 a peach aren't making that much money when you measure it over a whole year.

It's easy for us as cooks and consumers to say that they should be willing to sacrifice for their art. I'm extremely reluctant to ask other people to do things that I'm not willing to do myself. And I want to make as much as I can so I can send my daughter to college so she can choose what she wants to do in life (uh, and pay for dinners at the French Laundry). Farmers are in the same situation (except they rarely get to eat at fancy restaurants).

I'm not sure what the solution is, but examining the problem is part of my next book. Maybe I'll have more answers in two years.