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A review by curioso98
The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across California by Mark Arax
5.0
This book is an extremely detailed account of California's history and relationship with agriculture and water.
Mark is obviously very knowledgeable about the current state of affairs and the details of the recent past considering that his family moved to the Central Valley of CA in the early part of the 20th century and has been in the agricultural business since then. However, Mark goes beyond the history of CA in the past 100 years and goes all the way to the beginning of CA and explains the various changes in the ownership of the land including during the American-Mexican War. What was evident throughout history is the scant respect that people (apart from Native Americans) have had for the resources that CA has provided to the people of the land.
Water has always been a precarious resource in CA considering that there are "wet" and "dry" years depending on the weather patterns of that year. The farmers of the area dealt with the vagaries of these patterns by systematically building dams over the years to handle the "dry" years but with the technological advances in drilling (that can drill deeper), farmers no longer depend exclusively on dam water but just drill indiscriminately deeper and deeper to find the water to irrigate their ever-expanding farms.
We need to acknowledge a few facts about the state of water in CA:
- Central/Southern CA is technically a desert and stuff grows there purely due to flooding the land with water
- Water is pumped from Northern CA to Southern CA via a collection of aqueducts and Canals to try and quench the thirst of luxury water-hungry crops like Almonds, Pistachios, Alfalfa, and Citrus.
- Water is drilled from the ground in an unregulated manner to fill the gaps where the aqueduct water cannot. This lowers the water table/aquifer and the ground level along with it
- Big Nut farms (Resnicks, "Wonderful" etc) are ever-expanding enterprises trying to create arable land out of deserts with hordes of undocumented workers from across the border and unsustainable water-extracting practices.
As you drive from the bay-area to anywhere close to Central Valley, you will notice huge signs which say "This water is being used for the food you eat" which is supposed to guilt us into thinking that any cuts to the water supply to these behemoths farms will affect our tables but the fact is that these farms are growing luxury crops like almonds/pistachios/alfalfa which is definitely not "food" in the regular food terms but is also mostly exported and Americans will never taste them.
Every year, we see news stories of CA facing another year of "drought" but now it's clear that it's not really a drought in the true sense since we HAVE enough water for our "needs" but we clearly do not have enough water to satisfy the "greed" of the nut farmers. 80% of usable water in the state is diverted to these farms whereas only 20% is used for residential/commercial purposes.
This book is amazing and an eye-opener in a sense since it explains what we know (Big Ag's insatiable greed for water) but gives more details such as names and the history/future of those firms. Mark has done the people of CA/US service by detailing how CA is using it's a very precious and limited supply of water to satisfy the greed of a few big nut farmers. I'll avoid any "cuties", "Sunkist", and "wonderful" brands in the supermarket in the future along with almonds,pistachios, and other nuts grown in CA to do my part.
Mark is obviously very knowledgeable about the current state of affairs and the details of the recent past considering that his family moved to the Central Valley of CA in the early part of the 20th century and has been in the agricultural business since then. However, Mark goes beyond the history of CA in the past 100 years and goes all the way to the beginning of CA and explains the various changes in the ownership of the land including during the American-Mexican War. What was evident throughout history is the scant respect that people (apart from Native Americans) have had for the resources that CA has provided to the people of the land.
Water has always been a precarious resource in CA considering that there are "wet" and "dry" years depending on the weather patterns of that year. The farmers of the area dealt with the vagaries of these patterns by systematically building dams over the years to handle the "dry" years but with the technological advances in drilling (that can drill deeper), farmers no longer depend exclusively on dam water but just drill indiscriminately deeper and deeper to find the water to irrigate their ever-expanding farms.
We need to acknowledge a few facts about the state of water in CA:
- Central/Southern CA is technically a desert and stuff grows there purely due to flooding the land with water
- Water is pumped from Northern CA to Southern CA via a collection of aqueducts and Canals to try and quench the thirst of luxury water-hungry crops like Almonds, Pistachios, Alfalfa, and Citrus.
- Water is drilled from the ground in an unregulated manner to fill the gaps where the aqueduct water cannot. This lowers the water table/aquifer and the ground level along with it
- Big Nut farms (Resnicks, "Wonderful" etc) are ever-expanding enterprises trying to create arable land out of deserts with hordes of undocumented workers from across the border and unsustainable water-extracting practices.
As you drive from the bay-area to anywhere close to Central Valley, you will notice huge signs which say "This water is being used for the food you eat" which is supposed to guilt us into thinking that any cuts to the water supply to these behemoths farms will affect our tables but the fact is that these farms are growing luxury crops like almonds/pistachios/alfalfa which is definitely not "food" in the regular food terms but is also mostly exported and Americans will never taste them.
Every year, we see news stories of CA facing another year of "drought" but now it's clear that it's not really a drought in the true sense since we HAVE enough water for our "needs" but we clearly do not have enough water to satisfy the "greed" of the nut farmers. 80% of usable water in the state is diverted to these farms whereas only 20% is used for residential/commercial purposes.
This book is amazing and an eye-opener in a sense since it explains what we know (Big Ag's insatiable greed for water) but gives more details such as names and the history/future of those firms. Mark has done the people of CA/US service by detailing how CA is using it's a very precious and limited supply of water to satisfy the greed of a few big nut farmers. I'll avoid any "cuties", "Sunkist", and "wonderful" brands in the supermarket in the future along with almonds,pistachios, and other nuts grown in CA to do my part.