The land of fruit and nuts

Comedians referring to California as the land of fruit and nuts always gets a laugh, particularly when the reference is political, e.g., the Guvenator.

But, it is true. California is the land of fruit and nuts and veggies, beef, milk, seafood, and timber. Everything that can be grown, caught or harvested is produced in quantity in California.

Leaving the Los Angeles area I rode through the San Jaquin Valley where irrigation has transformed the natural brown grasslands of southern California into a garden of incredible scale. Water is the key, and the farmers and ranchers are engaged in a public relations campaign to build support for legislation protecting their access to water. All along I-5 farm wagons supported signs with the message, "Water feeds America." My USC PR colleagues can evaluate the effectiveness of the message, but from a practical, political perspective it seems clear that the farm coalition is trying to gain support from people who may not have ever given any thought to a link between water rights and food.

The scale of California agriculture is illustrated by the Tejon Ranch, California's oldest ranch. The ranch, started in 1843 with Mexican land grants, Tejon has 6,750 acres devoted ot orchards, vinyards and row and grain crops. The ranch is 426 square miles, about 40 per cent of the size of Rhode Island.

Orchards and vinyards stretch for miles. Cattle feed lots the size of Manhattan announce their presence pungently more than a mile downwind. A lot of burgers on the hoof.

When you consider that many of the crops are labor intensive, you can understand the political conflict in a state with a need for immigrant labor and an increasingly xenophobic electorate.

California has inspection stations at its borders and throughout the state to guard against the transfer of crop threatening pests. As an example, oranges from Florida can't be shipped to California, and home grown fruits and vegetables from other states can't be brought into the state even by the folks who grew them.

In contrast to the verdant irrigated farmland the unirrigated grasslands were tinder for wind whipped wildfires. Leaving Santa Clarita I rode to thick smoke caused by a grass fire that had drawn the attention of a couple dozen fire trucks and three or four times that many firefighters. The firefighters were setting backfires along the frontage road of the Interstate to deprive the fire of fuel to spread. At the rear of the burned area power and phone company workers were replacing felled lines and poles. In the northern part of the state fire crews were working to clear vegetation along the roadway to reduce the fire risk.

If you think California is Hollywood glitz, Los Angeles congestion or San Francisco sophistication, take a ride up the central valleys of the state, and you will learn that California agriculture feeds us all. And, if you like wine like my friends Holly and Andy Beeson, California is your wine cellar.