Bye-Bye Family Farm, an Exchange

[Tim Bousquet <chicoexaminer@xxxxxxxxx>]

Bye-Bye Family Farm

Dear Editor:

My name is Heather Froh and I live in Grimes, Ca. My
husband and I own a 6th generation farm. We hope our
children can make it their 7th. This farm is
everything to us, it is not just land. After talking
with many people, they were surprised to hear that
California is rated #1 in agriculture revenues in the
United States. However, as each year goes by, crops
are being taken from us because the United States can
buy it cheaper over seas. For example, look at sugar
beats. We no longer produce them in northern
California.

When living in Oregon, I experienced many friends and
neighbors loosing everything because of the spotted
owl. If it were not for farmers and ranchers little
towns like Williams, Colusa and so many towns down I-5
would not survive. Grimes and Colusa County have so
many historical places. We still have buildings
standing that are over 100 years old on our ranches.
One of our ranches is my husbands and his uncle. It is
over by the levee and it has an old Victorian house.
Personally, I am disgusted with environmentalist's
sneaking onto our properties, trespassing, and stating

there is an extinct habitat located on farmers,
ranches and properties. If we were talking about this
20 years ago everyone would be supporting farmers. It
is time Politicians throughout California put their
foot down and stand up for us; otherwise agriculture
won't exist in the future. The environmentalists have
to much access and power.

Isn't it time to take the power back? My husband and I
are willing to fight for our home and land so
that it can be handed down to future generations. We
are too proud of this town, farms, and friends to let
it slip through our hands. We need your support so
that we can say, " no, you can't take our homes and
our heritage." Please call me at 530-682-6199. Please
contact me further if you have any questions or
comments.

Sincerely,

Heather Froh

Editor responds:

I agree with you that the family farm is an endangered
specie in itself, and that this is a horrible thing,
but would disagree with your analysis of the problem.
Certainly environmental laws and regulation should be
applied in a fashion that is understanding of the
business realities of farms, and doubly so on smaller
farms; but it is simplistic to lay the blame for the
demise of the family farm solely on environmentalists.


The history of the Central Valley shows that after
white settlement farm population densities were at
their thickest, and by the time the railroad came
through thriving towns with farm-based economies were
found every twenty miles or so. The decline began with
the railroad, and increased with the introduction of
trucking and automobiles, because farm equipment,
supplies, and other goods could be more cheaply
procured from San Francisco or Sacramento than from
the merchant middlemen in valley towns. In some
respects, towns like Colusa or Willows never recovered
from the Depression.

So far as the farms themselves go, smaller operations
simply could not compete in an increasingly
corporatized economy. I'm guessing here, but I would
say that the average farm size in the north valley
increased on the order of 100 times between 1900 and
1950. This of course was before the development of
most environmental regulations.

Things only accelerated as industrial farming
intensified. In order to compete, successful farmers
needed to fully buy into the chemicalization of the
farm, dousing their crops with pesticides, herbicides,
and fertilizers, and therefore relying increasingly
upon the banks for credit to see them through the
growing season. Obviously, however, a bad year or an
oversupplied market could spell disaster, especially
for those living close to the edge. Consolidation and
increasing of farm size continued.

The trend continues right up to the present, and the
latest round of international (and misnamed) "free
trade" agreements probably do indeed spell disaster
for most small farmers in California. In Butte County,
profitable cattle ranching is already a thing of the
past, and I've predicted before that in the next ten
years we will see an almost entire elimination of
cattle ranching, such that a quarter of the acreage of
the county--the entire foothill region between the
valley and the treeline-- will revert back to ungrazed
grassland or become housing developments or golf
courses or (the latest proposal) new resevoirs.

How much this has to do with environmental legislation
is debatable. Surely environmental protection laws put
an added cost on the small grower, but that cost is
miniscule compared to the costs imposed by competing
in a corporatized, globalized farm economy.

The flip side of the above discussion is the emergence
of a very small market in specialized and organic
farming, which allows small farms to succeed. But,
alas, if that market niche is to survive and grow,
efforts by corporate agribusiness to bastardize
organic standards, stifle speech of big industry
critics, and prevent truthful labeling must be
frustrated.

Tim Bousquet

=====
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