Also, there are only direct federal subsidies for historically overproduced staple crops and dairy - never for fruits, nuts and vegetables, the keys to California agribusiness. Furthermore, the focus on making profits in agriculture varies greatly across the country. Alan Rudy
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Interesting. I spent a lot of time yesterday in a utopian fantasy with a map of Italy, thinking through how to redraw the agricultural map of California. The basic idea was modelled around cuisine, a daily table of great tasting food.
What's missing in most plans for the revolution, and what the quasi-socialist urban planning departments obviously lack is agarian reform. When agarian reform is discussed it isn't well enough centered on the table.
Everybody makes fun of California and especially nouvelle cusine. I agree on the latter. On the other hand, we commonly have available much better tasting and a much greater variety of food than most of the rest of the country. This is almost entirely due to immigration from Mexico, China, Japan, SEA overlaid on a big Italian immigration from a century ago.
Whatever the demographic reason, I would really like to see the state evolve into a different cultural complex---personally of course motivated on my interest in cooking and eating. The California wine business is the obvious example, but there are equivalents locally produced cheeses, salamis, breads... We used to also produce olive oil, which I only dimly remember. I visited an olive orchard out in the San Fernando Valley as a kid. I remember biting into a fresh olive and spitting it out in disgust.
When I was in high school out in the Valley, we had an orange grove across the street in front, and behind us was a turkey ranch---terrible smell, but it was usually down wind. We had a row of orange trees on one side of the yard and lemons on the other. Down the street was a (sweet) corn field. Grapefruit was grown in the next grove over, etc.
Anyway, it seems to me we could solve a lot of environmental problems by re-designing Cal agriculture and re-tailor it to food production, and then channel that production into a much better tasting food system.
``There remain, even today, large numbers of fairly small farms where agricultural production is continued for reasons of identity more than profitability..''
This identity-culture aspect is central, because that's what makes good tasting food, especially at the processing level, i.e. sauage, cheese, wine, olive oil, bread, etc. Think about the contrast between Hormel Spam and Molinari sauage. As far as I know, they are made from similar `waste' products from hog slaughter.
The tradition of state fairs, prizes, certifications and other customs needs to be revived. I was looking through the French and Italian appellations, inspired by my balasmic vinegar label which has a state certified, Moderna. There is a similar system in Jalisco (a big culinary area), over tequila.
Just read Dennis Claxton's post:``Walker deftly decodes an agro-industrial landscape that even most Californians sometimes find inexplicable and mysterious.''
Yes. That's the reality, and that's what has to be changed. The question is into what? Agarian reform into what?
So, my answer is to start at the table and work backward, like in grade school. Where does your salami come from? Get out a two foot long Columbus and tell the class, when they stop howling in laughter and giggles. [The answer is 493 Forbes Blvd, SF.] When you take it a little further back, it comes mostly from the local live stock and diary farms which are just north of the Bay Area around Petaluma.
CG