Walters: California politicians ignore agriculture’s troubles but boost movie business

When James Marshall discovered traces of gold in the American River in 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- th century was seeking gold Multiple including those in the ill-fated Donner Party requested farmland Completion of the transcontinental railroad in made immigration into California and shipping produce out of the state much easier As the gold rush fast waned agriculture became the state s dominant industry globally famous for fresh fruits and vegetables California s vast setup of reservoirs to capture water and canals to deliver it was originally created to help farmers prosper They still use by a wide margin the bulk of the system s water While California is still No in agricultural production among the states generating about billion a year other sectors such as apparatus soundness care and logistics now play much larger roles in the state s financial sector 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 the bulk 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 stated this month during a gathering of industry leaders She cited a federal census of agriculture which revealed California has lost of its farmers in the last decade The industry is at a tipping point she declared She also pointed to a analysis by researchers at Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo that detailed rising costs of producing lettuce in the Salinas Valley due to cabinet regulations It exposed that costs of environmental labor and food safety regulation are per acre up since 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 Related Articles Evans Don t believe the haters I m from Arkansas California is no failure Skelton Big state budget questions linger about crime Medi-Cal Delta tunnel Solar agenda plan jeopardizes housing and potential affordability Plan to fund beleaguered Bay Area transit agencies in faces political headwinds Opinion State bill letting cities profit from stolen carts could cost customers 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 described the gathering that China had been the top sphere for almonds until when an earlier round of Trump s tariffs cut shipments After this year China is likely to drop out of the top export markets for almonds as a upshot she noted 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 to an hour for labor and we re dealing with the same customers announced 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- -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 billion a year just half of agriculture s output Implicitly politicians believe that producing movies is much more significant than producing food Dan Walters is a CalMatters columnist