Please, this thread is sad. There are 300 million people in the US. Want them all living around the Great Lakes? Really?
Everything is interconnected and interdependent, and we’re all (except for Broomstick) living thanks to modern technology and conveniences.
Take away modern convenience and 99% of Great Lakes people would starve and the ones who didn’t starve would freeze the first winter.
Where?
I don’t recall that there was an alternate to the 25,000 sq miles of the worlds best and most productive farmland by far, epsecially in the US.
Perhaps you can point us to it on a map?
If it is such a good alternate, has the right soil, water, infrastructure and climate, why isn’t it competing already? Why is it running so far under capacity?
Let me know when you ant to talk about scale. I am pretty sure if you took 25,000 square miles of any farming out of the us, it would make a dent. Not the same as in CA, because of the difference in productivity, but it would be something.
What fraction of 25,000 sq miles are you talking about with the popcorn crop? Let’s compare apples to apples 
Yes, and when, during the last 3 years I have spoken to hundreds of farmers from outside my area who have come here for the annual farm show, they drool at the climate, the infrastructure, the marketing, the diversity of crops, the year round growing season, the money. For those seeing it for the first time, it is really something to hear their reaction. It’s just different here. That’s what actual farmers from across the US (and from other parts of the world) have told me in their own words. If you can swing by next Feb for the same ag show, they will tell you too.
But ironically, I think in the Central Valley, we probably use LESS aircon than places like Vegas or Phoenix. For one thing, so many here simply can’t afford it. For another, Vegas and PHX combined are probably larger populations than our entire Valley.
Yeah but you may have noticed - or not, you were busy gardening after all - heavy manufacturing left the entire US quite some time ago. Good luck getting it back! In any case, it has never moved to the Southwest, can’t blame us for the loss of steel and steel based industries.
Exactly. If you recommend everyone acquire their food as you do, then we will be an agrarian society devoting a huge portion of our gnp simply to feeding ourselves.
I;m gonna go out on a limb here and suggest that we are not going to feed ourselves as a nation by scaling up your subsistence hobby. Do you disagree?
No influences on country music from California? No influence on processes? Techniques? Management? Marketing? Ok. If you say so. (but you would be wrong).
Of course there are. Californians are in the military in proportion to our population in the country. Perhaps they are not needed, as I said upthread, we will be happy to have them come home.
Also, we have many major military installations here. Good luck defending teh West Coast from over there in the Rust Belt. But if you don’t need that…
You think the material at Goodwill simply grows on trees? Does everyone there shop at Goodwill?
Transportation of pretty much all goods that are imported from Asia by ship - including a lot of the tschotchkes at Goodwill - starts in California. any of that make it your way, whether you buy it or not?
And to a large extent the Great Plains do that by draining groundwater.
Are there no reservoirs in IL or IN? No use of groundwater? If it doesn’t rain it doesn’t get watered? Hmmm, this is how you propose replacing CA food?
They don’t demand it from others, they take it from the ground, and they are running out rapidly.
The problem is, too many people to feed on the given amount of water. But I don’t see us culling the herd anytime soon, so other solutions need to be found.
Your plan seems to be everyone stops what they are doing and grows stuff in their yard. If they don’t have a yard, get used to not eating I guess.
“All Hail the Might California Central Valley!” Seriously, it is an awesome thing they’re doing growing so many varied plants in such high volumes because of the soil, climate, etc. They should have more water than is located in the area to keep such a great agricultural machine going. I’ve visited there and was amazed at all the orchards and farms.
However, you don’t need water from the Great Lakes to sustain your agriculture. If you have a water shortage, blame all the people in the over developed urban areas (LA, Las Vegas, Phoenix, etc.) that are stealing the water that should go to the farmers. There’s no reason many of those businesses and jobs in those cities can’t be located in Buffalo, Chicago, or Cleveland.
Additionally, it is NOT economically feasible to pump water from the Great Lakes to California. Look at the last year’s thread mentioned on the 1st page. It does a good job explaining the engineering and financial obstacles of such a project. Desalination plants are MUCH more feasible for the Central Valley.
Don’t discount the bitterness some people in the Great Lakes region have towards people moving from the area to a warmer, drier area but still living and using water like they’re in the Midwest. Most Midwesterns are not begrudging the use of water in agriculture but in large unsustainable cities. Use the water you need to grow the plants, but kick out the other non-useful (read not-agricultural) leaches.
Please, start transporting those goods from California using your own gasoline–processed by your refineries, using crude from your wells.
You’d be welcome.
What the hell do you think people did BEFORE the Central Valley was developed for agriculture? You act like without that 25,000 square miles the entire world would starve. It wouldn’t. That area is minuscule compared to the entirety of the US, much less the rest of the world.
Except the Central Valley DOESN’T have the water - it brings it in from elsewhere. Without that imported water it would be scrubland at best.
The information I could find on line discussed production in tons, not square miles. The US grows about half million tons of popcorn a year, which is both a significant quantity and yet dwarfed by other crops like feed corn and wheat.
The climate here is suitable for other crops, including vegetables, but crops like grains need a large area - something that the CV, despite its charms, doesn’t have compared to the vast expanses of the midwest.
There’s no reason heavy industry couldn’t come back to the Midwest, either. Except, of course, it’s so much cheaper to pay people in other countries starvation wages to make widgets rather than to pay Americans. The CV, of course, can’t outsource agriculture, but it’s well known that illegal immigrants are widely exploited in California in the agricultural industry.
I fail to see how the fact I have a large garden (despite working two jobs at this point!) somehow “proves” we’d all be back to the 1830’s and spending 12 hours a day in the field. Haven’t you ever had a garden? There are a few labor-intensive days in the spring, and some in the fall, but for the most part you just let stuff grow.
Never said we were - YOU have this bizarre assumption that without the CV all agriculture stops. I used my garden as an illustration that, in fact, food grows elsewhere than California. There’s family farm a mile from me that grows spinach, for example. Several grow tomatoes. Strawberries are common around here. Our neighboring state of Michigan is a major producer of apples, plums, and cherries. We still have commercial farm operations out here that produce vegetables and fruit, as does every other state in the nation. If California disappeared it would be inconvenient at worst.
:rolleyes:
Right - if it weren’t for California we wouldn’t have bluegrass music. Oh, wait…
You do realize that not EVERYTHING comes from California, yes?
No, just us poor folks. Actually, most of what I find there has labels indicating third world origin, not California.
This might blow your mind, but in my area of the planet farms really do rely solely on rainfall. Yes, that is correct. NO irrigation, NO use of groundwater. If it doesn’t rain, no, the fields really don’t get watered. Funny though - even in “drought” years it still rains enough in Indiana to produce crops by the ton. We get that much rain from the sky, even in dry years our natural rainfall far exceeds the wettest year in the Central Valley.
IL and IN use reservoirs to get rid of excess water, as storage areas for excess rainfall until it can be pumped into local waterways. (See “Deep Tunnel” for Illinois, for example)
Now, some places do use groundwater - my own home, for example, has a well for water. However, none of our aquifers here show signs of running dry. You are thinking of places served by something like the Ogalla aquifer which is hundreds, even thousands, of miles to the west of where I live.
You seem to be unable to comprehend that the climate, terrain, etc. outside of California varies. As I have stated, in my area farmers do NOT take water from the ground to irrigate their fields, they rely on rainfall - which is naturally ample enough to do the job. There is an enormous difference between the eastern end of the Midwest and the western end, it’s not one monotonous landscape/climate although admittedly it is very flat and thus appears uniform to those not familiar with the nuances.
As I pointed out - I have a garden AND I work. Currently I have a garden and work two jobs. A garden that provides significant supplement to one’s diet is not as labor intensive as you assume. And that’s what it’s intended to be - a supplement. I make no pretense that my garden makes me self-sufficient, it doesn’t, and should I have a major failure (for example, last year I lost all my okra and potatoes) I have no problems with purchasing a replacement (for potatoes) or doing without (okra).
Yes, a certain amount of space is required for this. Not everyone would be able to do this. Not everyone would want to. It’s merely an illustration that some of us are much less tied to California than you believe.
Again folks, the point isn’t to slag California (though not_alice makes it almost irresistible) but to point out that if California wants more water then they’ll have to find it from somewhere else other than the Great Lakes. A better plan may simply be to husband what they have better and/or prioritize water availability to agriculture instead of industry or people.
Well, the Great Lakes area isn’t the only place in the US that is water sufficient…
I would favor a “migration” of population to regions where life was sustainable at lower costs. Alternatively, if somone (or some business) chooses to move to an especially inhospitable climate - whether a desert, mountaintop, hurricane path, or floodplain - they ought to pay the full cost (including environmental costs) of their choice.
Oh yeah - I also would be interested in hearing what put the bee in n a’s bonnet. His/her response seems so out of proportion to everything preceding…
If it were really “the best” then you wouldn’t have to irrigate it. I think that is what all this boils down to; it’s only “the most productive” because it’s irrigated. Next you might say “lots of farmland is irrigated” but no other state in the U.S. uses as much irrigation as southern California.
Cite (scroll down for map of U.S. irrigation usage). The only other state which comes close is Idaho, and it uses about half of what California does.
Again, I don’t think anyone is saying to halt what’s going on in California now, but that we need to change “business as usual” so that we are using water in a better manner, not just in California but in every state of the union.
I’m still trying to figure out what this is about:
“much of what you hold dear”? :dubious:
Actually, the only gasoline we can buy in CA is refined in CA. We pay a pretty penny fro that too in the marketplace 
I don’t know the percentage of our own crude we use, but there is some oil being pumped in CA, particularly around Bakersfield (in the Central Valley!). I also know of oil pumps along the coast in LA, such as at Huntington Beach. There is probably more.
But your broader point is the same as mine - that we live in a very interconnected world (or country), with a very specialized economy, where simply cutting off one regional aspect of it would create highly undesired effects.
[quote=“NinetyWt, post:149, topic:542146”]
If it were really “the best” then you wouldn’t have to irrigate it.
[QUOTE]
Not true at all. There are irrigated lands the world over, including the US. I would be open to knowing what percentage of US farms rely strictly on rain water falling on the land, and do not take water from a river, lake, reservor or aquifer? I consider all of those “irrigated”.
No, it is the best because it has the best combination of fertile soil, climate, water, and production know-how.
Sure, but then remember, that region contains 40% or more of the food production. That is like saying that (at hits heyday at least) Detroit used “lots of steel” that they didn’t really need to, they could have built smaller cars all along.
Well, OK, but so far your solution seems to be “everyone grows their own food”, and I maintain that won’t scale.
Different for everyone since the stuff that comes from California is so varied. I have listed the major industries already several times. Different people will hold those dear in different ratios. But you can’t simply eliminate the California economy and expect life to be normal.
It is not the amount of space, it is its productivity. Yes it is minuscule compared to the US as a whole, but the fact is, it produces 40% of the produce grown in the US. That is a tribute to how productive it actually is.
What did people do before? They had a smaller population to feed for one thing, as I have noted earlier. there was a more agrarian economy as a whole. They overfarmed the midwest, creating the Dust Bowl.
Actually, that is not true on both counts. The natural state of the Valley is wetlands. You can look it up. Most of the water we use does come from California, and originates in snow melt throughout the mountains of CA. Colorado River water does not come tot he Valley at all as far as I know - that would be used in the urban areas and farming areas of the Imperial Valley, not here.
How many months a year can the Midwest, if it so desired, plant row crops?
That’s the thing that draws the envy of the farmers I have met here - people can farm a variety of crops year round.
And if we don’t have CA, then are we going to replace those grains with produce? Maybe by building 40K sq miles of green houses? Then what of our need for grain?
yeah, there is that interconnectedness of the economy again.
It doesn’t. I asked you to describe how your garden would scale to meet the food needs of 350 million people in the US, many if not most who don’t have suffcient or any land on which to garden.
Just an outline of a plan please?
I have a garden right now. And it doesn’t work that way when things go wrong - pests, storms that destroy the plants, animals, etc. Maybe I am wrong and you have a good handle on something that scales. I am asking how that would be is all.
No, you have this bizarre assumption that I have said something I have not. What I am saying is that if you cut 40% of the food supply out, there are going to be serious (and unnecessary) social and economic effects.
Really? You think the country has an over supply of produce, such that no one would notice that 40% of it went missing all of a sudden? You do realize we are talking not only about fresh, but processed food too, right?
:rolleyes:
Right - if it weren’t for California we wouldn’t have bluegrass music. Oh, wait…
You do realize California affects your life more than you might wish it does, right?
You make me think a new thread might be in order - I wonder if people can list what part of their lives has zero influence or contact with anything from California. Won’t be able to get to it until later today though…
And you will notice that upthread I noted several times that anything imported by ship from Asia comes through California when it begins its economic journey in the US. Is your local goodwill store free of such things?
How does this fit into your plan to feed 350,000,000 people? What would be the effect of a drought on the nation if they took chances on just the right amount of rain at the right times every year?
Perhaps the real value of CA crops is that we take that risk out of our economy.
Not jsut thinking of it, mentioned it by name several times. I think this is the first time you mentioned where you live.
My bigger point is that Indiana and Illinois are not going to be able to feed the US should CA go dry.
Far more likely we import food from China and South America, more so than we do now. The question is not if we can do that, but should we? Is that a better policy choice than to assist California? Maybe it is, it is a fair question. But that is the real option, not growing more east of the midwest.
Uh I grew up in NJ and MD and have lived in MA as well as all over CA.
I understand all that plenty well. Do you understand that the US can not simply replace CA crops bybeing more efficient elsewhere?
Oh, and btw, did you know that FL oranges might be history in a decade’s time? They are falling fast to a pest for which there is no known cure…
I don’t see how you are not square in the center of the bell curve. so you have a victory garden - so do many many people right here in my town. so what?
I didn’t know that.
I suppose this is semantics, but to me “the best farmland” indicates that nothing outside of Nature is needed to grow crops. IMO the “best” could not, by defenition, include irrigation. I also would like to know the answer to the second part of your paragraph. I’ve already provided a cite showing that a handful of Western states contain 50% of the irrigated farmland. Did you look at that?
So four states consume HALF of the total water used for irrigation. California uses 44% of that half.
It doesn’t have the water.
Again, I’m not talking about eliminating economies; I’m talking about modifying “business as usual” to make the most of a precious resource while minimizing impacts on economies. Life in the future may not be the “normal” which we are used to now, but it won’t be horrible either IF we do our homework now and plan out our use of resources such as water.
I’ve not been able to find any information about it.
not_alice, do you have a cite for this claim about orange pests?
Some information on ports.
American Association of Port Authorities
U.S. Port Rankings by Cargo Tonnage (2008)
Imports
Maybe this?
Thank you Sailboat. I found articles about so many different viruses and pests that I wasn’t sure. I even found an article about Florida orange growers changing over to peaches.
That is a nasty little critter in your link. It’s been found in San Diego too. I hope they can eradicate it.
Its a BIG DEAL here in CA because the same pest has been spotted just south of the Mexican Border, possibly once or twice on the US side.
Google “Asian Psyllid” for more…
Right - Note that the only ones with direct access to and from Asia are where?