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Mother Jones
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California is by far the dominant US produce-growing state—source of (large PDF) 81 percent of US-grown carrots, 95 percent of broccoli, 86 percent of cauliflower, 74 percent of raspberries, 91 percent of strawberries, etc.
But all three of its main veggie growing regions—the Imperial Valley, the Central Valley, and the Salinas Valley—face serious short- and long-term water challenges. As I recently argued in a New York Times debate, it’s time to “de-Californify” the nation’s supply of fruits and vegetable supply, to make it more diversified, resilient, and ready for a changing climate.
Here are maps of US fruit and vegetable production:
USDA
USDA
Now check out this map depicting average annual precipitation. The data are old—1961 to 1990—and weather patterns have changed since then as the climate has warmed over the decades. But the overall trends depicted still hold sway: The West tends to be arid, the East tends to get plenty of rain and snow, and the Midwest lands, well, somewhere in the middle. So the map remains a good proxy for understanding where water tends to fall and where it doesn’t, though the precipitation levels depicted for California look downright Londonesque compared to the state’s current parched condition.
Not only is California gripped in its worst drought in at least 1,200 years, but climate models and the fossil record suggest that its 21st-century precipitation levels could be significantly lower than the 20th-century norm, when California emerged as a fruit-and-vegetable behemoth.
So here’s an idea that could take pressure off California. In my Times piece, I looked to the Corn Belt states of the Midwest as a prime candidate for a veggie revival: Just about a quarter million acres (a veritable rounding error in that region’s base of farmland) from corn and soy to veggies could have a huge impact on regional supply, a 2010 Iowa State University study found.
Now my gaze is heading south and east, to acres now occupied by cotton—a crop burdened by a brutal past in the South (slavery, sharecropping) and a troubled present (a plague of herbicide-tolerant weeds):
Let’s leave aside all of the cotton growing on the arid side of the map. (The drought is already squeezing out production of the fluffy fiber in California; as for the Texas panhandle, cotton production there relies heavily on water from the fast-depleting Ogallala Aquifer—not a great long-term strategy.)
What I’m eyeing are those cotton acres on the water-rich right side of the map—the Mississippi Delta states Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, and Louisiana, along with the Carolinas, Alabama, and Georgia to the east. According to the USDA, mid-Southern and Southeastern states planted more than 4 million acres of cotton in 2014. This is what’s left of the old—and let’s face it, infamous—Cotton Belt that stocked the globe’s textile factories during the 19th-century boom that delivered the Industrial Revolution (a story told in Sven Beckert’s fantastic 2014 book Empire of Cotton).
Decades of low prices have already put a squeeze on Southern cotton acres, and the fiber has recently slumped anew in global trading. Why not transition at least some acres into crops with a robust domestic market? I bounced my idea of a Cotton Belt fruit-and-vegetable renaissance off a few experts to see if it was nuts. Ferd Hoefner, policy director of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, called it “noncrazy.” He pointed out that, as in most other parts of the United States, small-scale farms that sell directly to consumers are “already gearing up down there,” and added that the region “seems ripe for entrepreneurial companies to come in, buy land, grow farmers, introduce a whole new vegetable supply chain on a bigger scale, especially with California’s woes.”
I’m not talking about a fantasy in which everyone eats from within 20 miles (although such locavore networks, which have thrived nationwide over the last two decades, certainly add diversification and resilience to the overall food system). I’m simply pushing a more regionalized, widely distributed scheme for filling our salad and fruit bowls, one less dependent on California and its overtaxed water resources.
Scott Marlow, executive director of North Carolina-based RAFI USA, a farmer advocacy organization, also said the idea make sense—with caveats. One is credit. Marlow says that most farmers who still plant cotton are large enough that they rely on loans to start the growing season—and bankers understand and are used to cotton, but may find vegetables too exotic and risky. For such farmers, “if the banker won’t lend for it, they are not doing it,” he said. Reforms in the latest farm bill made it easier for “specialty crop” (i.e., fruit and vegetable) farmers to get good crop insurance, and that, in turn, made it easier to get loans, he said. But those changes take time to sink in.
He added that the South’s high levels of precipitation can actually be a liability compared to California’s aridity, because “rain spreads diseases through splash erosion, ruins product, screws up harvest, reduces product quality.” California farmers, who meet their watering needs through controlled irrigation, don’t have those problems.
But rain troubles can be addressed through low-tech means like high tunnels, which are already being adapted by Southern produce farmers to extend the growing season, but also to protect sensitive crops from rain, Marlow said. Black plastic mulch, another widely adapted practice, also helps keep crops healthy in rainy periods, he added. The South’s farmers have demonstrated the ability to innovate, he said, but “there have to be markets, there has to be risk management, and there has to be access to credit.”
Converting swaths of Dixie country to vegetables won’t be a fast or easy process. But if California’s water troubles drag on, as it appears they will, broccoli may yet emerge as the heir apparent to doddering King Cotton.
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There’s a Place That’s Nearly Perfect for Growing Food. It’s Not California.
Mother Jones
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The latest from the campaign trail:
Republican Tom Cotton said during an Arkansas U.S. Senate debate on Tuesday that “Obamacare nationalized the student loan industry.” The first-term congressman added, “That’s right, Obamacare grabbed money to pay for its own programs and took that choice away from you.”
Huh. Does Cotton really think this is a winning issue? I mean, it has the virtue of being kinda sorta semi-true, which is a step up for Cotton, but why would his constituents care? Does Cotton think they’re deeply invested in the old system, where their tax dollars would go to big banks, who would then make tidy profits by doling out risk-free student loans that the federal government guaranteed?
That never made any sense. It would be like paying banks to distribute Social Security checks. What’s the point? The new student loan system saves a lot of money by making the loans directly, and that’s something that fiscal conservatives should appreciate. Instead, they’ve spent the past four years tearing their hair out over the prospect of Wall Street banks being shut out of the free money business. Yeesh.
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Tom Cotton Is Upset That Democrats Ended a Free Money Stream for Banks
Mother Jones
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Mitch McConnell came prepared with a soundbite. The Affordable Care Act, the Republican Senate minority leader declared during a debate Monday, is “the worst piece of legislation in the last half-century,” and needed to be pulled out “by the roots.” But when it came to actually getting rid of the law—specifically Kynect, his state’s popular new insurance exchange, and the associated expansion of Kentucky’s Medicaid rolls—McConnell’s tough talk began to fade.
“With regard to Kynect, it’s a state exchange, they can continue it if they’d like to,” he said. He went on: “With regard to the Medicaid expansion, that’s a state decision, the states can decide whether to expand Medicaid or not.” When asked, once more, if he supported the state’s decision to create Kynect and expand Medicaid, McConnell finally conceded, “Well that’s fine, yeah. I think it’s fine to have a website.”
McConnell, one of his party’s loudest voices against Obamacare, could barely put together a sentence when pressed on the specifics of what he’d do about it. And he isn’t alone. At a Senate debate in Arkansas on Monday, GOP Rep. Tom Cotton, who is challenging Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor, talked tough about repealing “Obamacare,” but when asked directly, declined to say whether his state’s version of Medicaid expansion, known as the “private option,” ought to get the boot. (In not answering the question, he did manage to say “Obama” 13 times in two minutes.) This has been Cotton’s approach to the question for months now, and it’s not hard to see why he’s so cautious—the private option was approved by a Republican-controlled state legislature and even has the backing of his party’s gubernatorial nominee, former Rep. Asa Hutchinson.
And in Iowa on Saturday, GOP state Sen. Joni Ernst, who is seeking the Senate seat being vacated by Democrat Tom Harkin, was asked by a man who had received insurance through the Affordable Care Act about how she’d propose to keep him insured after the law is repealed. She ignored the question.
The GOP is still poised to win big in November. McConnell, Cotton, and Ernst all lead in the polls. But four years after the passage of Obamacare, Republicans are finding it harder and harder to say what they really think about it.
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Mitch McConnell Can Barely Form a Coherent Sentence About Obamacare Now
Mother Jones
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James Lee Witt, candidate for Congress in Arkansas’ fourth district, wipes away a fresh gob of tobacco spit with his brown cowboy boots and tells me about his old friend Bill.
“He was down here re-dedicating the Greers Ferry dam…and he called me after that, because my wife had passed away you know, and he…visited with me for a little while,” Witt says, recalling a recent conversation with the 43rd president, as we wait for the start of a parade in Arkadelphia. “I said, ‘I need to tell you something,’ and he said ‘What’s that'” I said, ‘I think I’m gonna run for Congress in the Fourth District.’ And he said”—here Witt breaks into his finest Clinton impression—'”James Lee, I think that’s a great idea!'”
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Can the Ultimate Clintonite Still Cut it in Bubba’s Home Base?
Even with our knowing of the negative impact that unsustainable habits can have the environment, the decision to commit to environmentally friendly practices is occasionally difficult to do. Although, a growing number of individuals and businesses are trying hard to go green. For instance, wind energy is becoming more widespread. Additionally, there are a lot of little things that the rest of the people can implement to help out the environment. One of those things is to wear organic clothing.
Maybe you are familiar with the concept of organically grown food, but you might well not be so familiar with organic clothing. What is organic clothing? If we refer to organic products, we mean any that don’t add chemical pesticides to the water and soil. This helps support biodiversity within the ecosystem.
Cotton grown the old way is the most extensively used clothing material, and regrettably it’s also the one crop with the biggest environmental footprint. Are you aware that twenty-five percent of pesticides are used on cotton crops?
Organic cotton, on the other hand, is harvested without any chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Instead, the cotton is grown through natural means. Other organic materials such as hemp and bamboo are also eco friendly raw materials for organic clothing.
One large plus of organic clothing should be the fact that it is more gentle to your skin. Due to the fact that the clothing fibers are lacking any traces of harmful chemicals, they won’t lead to skin allergies. In addition, clothing made from bamboo is naturally antibacterial.
Any time we choose organic clothing, we reduce the number of chemicals slipping into the environment. Conventional farming causes great amounts of harmful chemicals to get into the land and spread out to the watershed. That is a growing source of health issues in these times. But if we opt for organic clothes, we are supporting the efforts of organic agriculture which don’t harm the ecosystem.
A number of organic clothing fabrics such as hemp and bamboo are very durable. They still look great after many washings and last longer than non-organic fabrics.
Whenever we select to wear environmentally responsible apparel, we are making a positive impact on the lives of all the people who grow clothing fiber crops. Their communities and homes are safe from an exposure to a toxic influx of chemicals that originates from large scale agricultural methods.
If you think about all of these benefits, we should not be surprised that a larger number of clothing manufacturers are switching over to making organic clothes.
Are you interested to read more about organic clothing, including which fashions are current? Go ahead and click on the link to learn more.
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