How America’s Farmers Got Cut Out of the Supply Chain – New York Times 4/20/22
“My warehouses are already bulging at the seams,” Mr. Phippen says. “It scares the crap out of me, because in five months I’m going to get a new crop in the door. There’s no timeout in farming.”
…Throughout California, more than 1.1 billion pounds of almonds from last year’s harvest are sitting in warehouses, a volume roughly one-third larger than this time last year, according to the Almond Alliance of California, an industry trade group.
Bay-Delta VA: A Sweetheart Deal to Subsidize Agribusiness – Doug Obegi, NRDC 4/18/22
It’s not surprising, given who was in the room negotiating this backroom deal, that the VAs are a sweetheart deal that would subsidize the mitigation obligations of the state’s largest irrigation districts and industrial agribusinesses, undermining the Public Trust. If you think state and federal taxpayers should pay to subsidize Stewart Resnick’s almond and pistachio empire, the VAs are the deal for you!
Taken as a whole, the proposed voluntary agreement assumes that the majority of the funding and much of the water would come from taxpayers or other water users, not the water districts that signed onto the MOU. It is a massive taxpayer subsidy for these politically powerful water districts that were in the room where it happens.
Groups Request Critical Water Infrastructure funding in May Revise
A coalition of more than 40 California groups sent a letter to state leaders this week asking for $1.5 billion of investments in critical water infrastructure projects in Southern California. These projects include for large-scale wastewater recycling, stormwater capture, groundwater remediation projects, and continued improvements in water efficiency.
The signed-on organizations declare in the letter, “…shared values for an equitable water future: the human right to clean, safe, and affordable water (especially for low-income communities); resilient water infrastructure; good jobs performed by a skilled and trained workforce; healthy waterways, coastlines, rivers and freshwater ecosystems; robust community and tribal engagement, and the health of all people.”