From Access to Excess: Agribusiness, Federal Water Programs, and the Historical Roots of the California Water Crisis
From Access to Excess: Agribusiness, Federal Water Programs, and the Historical Roots of the California Water Crisis
Date
2016
Authors
Tracy Neblina
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
The University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to show the link between water use, land consolidation,
agribusinesses, and the water crisis that California now faces. In order to better understand the
relationship between the growth of agribusiness in the state and the evolution of water policy,
this paper explores the historical context of land policy, the growth of farming in the San Joaquin
Valley, and the development of federally funded water projects in the Central Valley. Years of
expanding farmland, use of surface and underground water with limited regulation have played
an important role in exacerbating California’s water problems. The impact of corporate farming
and the conversion of row crops and grazing land to crops that required abundant water year
round, such as fruit and nut trees, were profound. Predictions made by early champions of the
160 acre limitation for access to publicly funded water programs came to fruition as
environmental and social issues plagued the Central Valley. Efforts to divert any real change to
water policy by corporate farmers and power brokers in the state were largely a success in the
late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. However, farmers themselves began to feel the
consequences caused by years of unregulated pumping from aquifers as soil salinity levels
increased each year, causing salt to build up in the soil and reducing crop yields or led to
collapse of aquifer systems altogether. Although the focus of this paper is on the San Joaquin
Valley, attention was given to the Sacramento Valley in order to show what impact water
diversion and relocation has had on the entire state. Change in water policy is necessary to stave
off environmental and economic crisis that will eventually come if water continues to be used in the manner it has.