Stopping for gas and then leaving is the best way to visit.
San Joaquin Valley, Agriculture, Water, and California
- Thread starter GON
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While I live in Colorado, I worked for a company based in Bakersfield for years, and now work for a company based in Visalia and spend a lot of time there. The Central Valley's history is in oil and farming. Bakersfield still has an oil economy, especially asphalt. Many of the dust bowl era headed west on Rt 66 and instead of turning south at Barstow, continued west into the Valley where many found jobs and a place where if they worked hard they could get back on their feet. The work ethic is still strong in the Valley.
Like anywhere, corporate farming found its way and much of the land is corporate-owned. Between Fresno and Visalia is Sun Maid raisins country. Almonds became a cash crop which Valley farmers jumped on and still take up a lot of the ground. Blue Diamond farms a lot of it. By the way, you don't want to be in the Valley when the almond harvest is going on, the shakers create massive clouds of dirt and dust in the air! Lots of Bolthouse Farms carrots around Bakersfield.
Unfortunately, the Valley has become less of a desirable place to raise a family although houses are relatively cheap compared to the rest of California. Many towns are shells of their former selves although Bakersfield and Fresno are still thriving in their own way. Bakersfield has a huge Basque population raising sheep just like their ancestors did, the Basque restaurants are amazing good eats!
The best thing about the Valley is its car culture. American Graffiti is alive and well and when you drive down the main streets of many of the towns, you can feel it. Bakersfield has a huge car culture and a lot of nice custom vehicles.
I hesitate to mention it but this giant high-speed rail build going added some jobs but still doesn't look like it belongs. It's like 2022 meets 1960!
Like anywhere, corporate farming found its way and much of the land is corporate-owned. Between Fresno and Visalia is Sun Maid raisins country. Almonds became a cash crop which Valley farmers jumped on and still take up a lot of the ground. Blue Diamond farms a lot of it. By the way, you don't want to be in the Valley when the almond harvest is going on, the shakers create massive clouds of dirt and dust in the air! Lots of Bolthouse Farms carrots around Bakersfield.
Unfortunately, the Valley has become less of a desirable place to raise a family although houses are relatively cheap compared to the rest of California. Many towns are shells of their former selves although Bakersfield and Fresno are still thriving in their own way. Bakersfield has a huge Basque population raising sheep just like their ancestors did, the Basque restaurants are amazing good eats!
The best thing about the Valley is its car culture. American Graffiti is alive and well and when you drive down the main streets of many of the towns, you can feel it. Bakersfield has a huge car culture and a lot of nice custom vehicles.
I hesitate to mention it but this giant high-speed rail build going added some jobs but still doesn't look like it belongs. It's like 2022 meets 1960!
I'll try as much as I can to leave politics out of this.
Central Valley is pretty much a desert had they not use most of the Colorado River water for farming. The location is perfect with irrigation because, you know, sun light is strong and you got water diverted from a major river. The kinds of crops you can grow there are very high value and you have low cost farm labor from the south (legally on visa as well as illegally and the large 2nd / 3rd generation). It also has easy access to other markets (ports in NorCal and SoCal, railway to the east, I5 going through it, etc), so whatever you want to grow and sell, if you have enough water, you will be able to grow and sell.
The problem is water isn't unlimited, and farmers aren't always great at predicting rainfall, so there's always fight in how much water goes between different interests (river flow for the fish conservation and recreation, farming for food crop like fruits and alfalfa for the cows, and then almonds selling to China and almond milk), every year they are fighting, every year some farmers lost their crops, every year some farms have to cut down trees they could not save due to speculative planting years back.
Quality of life wise, Fresno is not a famous place for high quality living. On the contrary it is famous for being a lowish income farm town, affordable but have concerns about water, pesticides, lack of quality university (UC Merced is a UC but it is still relatively new and less famous), income level of population, and to some extend crime rate. The whole area is pretty much farm related and there aren't too many other economic activities, and it can be risky for many reason including political (i.e. what size your egg laying hens' cage must be), and weather / climate (rainfall).
Speaking of weather, in California standard Fresno isn't a place with great weather, as it can get very hot in the summer and air pollution from coastal pollution blown inland, smog forming in the summer in particular.
At least Yosemite is nearby, you can hike there every weekend if you want to.
I wouldn't count on water being diverted to California. Arizona and Nevada would probably get the first dib before we will get them.
Not sure about your airport standard, but FAT has to fly to a major hub if you want to go somewhere major (i.e. Europe, Asia, etc) instead of a direct flight to your destination. In many cases it is better to drive to LAX, SFO, or even SJC and fly direct (cheaper and faster). Maybe Mexico has direct flight from FAT, I don't know.
Central Valley is pretty much a desert had they not use most of the Colorado River water for farming. The location is perfect with irrigation because, you know, sun light is strong and you got water diverted from a major river. The kinds of crops you can grow there are very high value and you have low cost farm labor from the south (legally on visa as well as illegally and the large 2nd / 3rd generation). It also has easy access to other markets (ports in NorCal and SoCal, railway to the east, I5 going through it, etc), so whatever you want to grow and sell, if you have enough water, you will be able to grow and sell.
The problem is water isn't unlimited, and farmers aren't always great at predicting rainfall, so there's always fight in how much water goes between different interests (river flow for the fish conservation and recreation, farming for food crop like fruits and alfalfa for the cows, and then almonds selling to China and almond milk), every year they are fighting, every year some farmers lost their crops, every year some farms have to cut down trees they could not save due to speculative planting years back.
Quality of life wise, Fresno is not a famous place for high quality living. On the contrary it is famous for being a lowish income farm town, affordable but have concerns about water, pesticides, lack of quality university (UC Merced is a UC but it is still relatively new and less famous), income level of population, and to some extend crime rate. The whole area is pretty much farm related and there aren't too many other economic activities, and it can be risky for many reason including political (i.e. what size your egg laying hens' cage must be), and weather / climate (rainfall).
Speaking of weather, in California standard Fresno isn't a place with great weather, as it can get very hot in the summer and air pollution from coastal pollution blown inland, smog forming in the summer in particular.
At least Yosemite is nearby, you can hike there every weekend if you want to.
I wouldn't count on water being diverted to California. Arizona and Nevada would probably get the first dib before we will get them.
Not sure about your airport standard, but FAT has to fly to a major hub if you want to go somewhere major (i.e. Europe, Asia, etc) instead of a direct flight to your destination. In many cases it is better to drive to LAX, SFO, or even SJC and fly direct (cheaper and faster). Maybe Mexico has direct flight from FAT, I don't know.
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The same can be said for the eastern sides of Washington and Oregon. The dams plus the irrigation systems transformed these regions into great agricultural areas. Where it was once jackrabbits and rattlesnakes is now huge orchards and fields of grain and ranching.
Referring to desalination, I have customers who use reverse osmosis (RO) for fresh water. This is because they are too close to the salt water marshes and the wells provide "contaminated" water that can not be used to water fields and ornamental plantings without proper treatment.
The biggest issue I've seen is the disposal of the waste product from RO. Highly concentrated "brine" solution (more than just salt in there though) must be dealt with if desalination is to be a viable solution for larger populations or greater usage.
Cost is a factor also, but the biggest customer issue is finding competent techs to repair the RO when it goes down. The installers just want to replace the whole unit with a newer model, and the customer has so much money invested they are trying to get more ROI.
The biggest issue I've seen is the disposal of the waste product from RO. Highly concentrated "brine" solution (more than just salt in there though) must be dealt with if desalination is to be a viable solution for larger populations or greater usage.
Cost is a factor also, but the biggest customer issue is finding competent techs to repair the RO when it goes down. The installers just want to replace the whole unit with a newer model, and the customer has so much money invested they are trying to get more ROI.
Desalination for residential can be a solution (every hotel in Cabo has its own desalination for water), but for agriculture it is just too expensive for anything but the highest price lowest water use crops (maybe vertical green house salad leaves within a major city willing to pay for it).
It's a brine, not a salt. Halfway between good stuffs so it is pretty much junk.Sell it to the Northeast states for their winter roads.
I don't mean for this to be political, but one of the reasons for water shortage in CA is conservationists having their priorities upside down. Most of the rain simply goes into the ocean; almost all of the snowpack also. This article by the LA Times is long and wordy, but the headline is succinct. While others have debated the sidebar, this is only LA. There is a tremendous amount of runoff in the rest of the state doing the same.
That sounds more like a click bait title than a real analysis. Without building major reservoirs and without relying on snowpack, pretty much all rivers will have most of their water during storms and pretty much most of the storm water has to go down to the ocean.
LA river is not the main source of water, I think Colorado and Hetch Hetchy are the main one for drinking and farming. LA river is pretty much a storm drain of SoCal relatively speaking. When you build cities all over the place, all the unpaved lands become paved and you won't have unpaved ground to absorb storm water, and they all just go into the ocean via storm drain.
Most of Colorado river water is already used up in California (some due to agreement has to flow to Mexico, a guaranteed fixed amount in a treaty or agreement). Most of the usable Hetch Hetchy snowpack ends up in our water system and some has to flow into the ocean to keep the rest of the people happy (salinity of the delta, the fishing industry, the people living near the river, etc). There are rivers in Asia with insufficient water flowing into the ocean and the pollution gets very bad, you don't want to see that, so some water has to go to the ocean to keep the system healthy, the population healthy, and the real estate value healthy.
I've lived in CA for 25 years, what I observe is our rainfall has decreased by a lot since back then, our population has increased by a lot, and nobody was crazy about almonds back then.
LA river is not the main source of water, I think Colorado and Hetch Hetchy are the main one for drinking and farming. LA river is pretty much a storm drain of SoCal relatively speaking. When you build cities all over the place, all the unpaved lands become paved and you won't have unpaved ground to absorb storm water, and they all just go into the ocean via storm drain.
Most of Colorado river water is already used up in California (some due to agreement has to flow to Mexico, a guaranteed fixed amount in a treaty or agreement). Most of the usable Hetch Hetchy snowpack ends up in our water system and some has to flow into the ocean to keep the rest of the people happy (salinity of the delta, the fishing industry, the people living near the river, etc). There are rivers in Asia with insufficient water flowing into the ocean and the pollution gets very bad, you don't want to see that, so some water has to go to the ocean to keep the system healthy, the population healthy, and the real estate value healthy.
I've lived in CA for 25 years, what I observe is our rainfall has decreased by a lot since back then, our population has increased by a lot, and nobody was crazy about almonds back then.
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In 10 years will CA have water crisis the way things are going ?
Some people on well water need to keep drilling past 500 feet to get any water.
Already happened in some places, sometimes you cannot fight climate (historically we do cycle with El Nino). In some areas, people get water trucked into their gigantic tanks once a week.
In some areas watering commercial building lawns using potable water is prohibited, reclaim water only. Farmers sometimes couldn't get their water has to watch their almond trees die, some just decided to get their alfalfa out of state, or even shut their dairy processing plant and "move" out of state.
100-Year-Old Bay Area Dairy Company Berkeley Farms Closes For Good
Also: Reviews of the groceries no one wants, and more news to start your day
sf.eater.com
The biggest impact occurs in Central Valley because they are the drier part of the state and they are agricultural and big farms have been pumping a lot of groundwater over the years (before there were regulations), so wells do run dry.
The whole river system is not designed to hold water-it never was. And yes-even if you could it would be polluted by who knows what.
The Central Valley of California is not and never was a desert. The southern end was home to the second largest fresh water lake until the last century (Tulare Lake) and the northern end is a huge Delta. Politics and population growth in other areas of California have undone efforts to continually provide surface water. The water in Central California is provided as snow in the Sierra Nevada but more infrastructure to manage it hasn’t been built in decades. Read the history of California aqua duct, Owens valley, Hetch Hetchy. Read about Delta Smelt and the Delta pumps and how much water is released to flow into the ocean instead of serving our population.
The Central Valley is home to some of the most fertile soil on earth and the climate to grow almost anything. That’s why it’s grown there.
I highly recommend you watch “My Job Depends on Ag” from Valley PBS.
The Central Valley is home to some of the most fertile soil on earth and the climate to grow almost anything. That’s why it’s grown there.
I highly recommend you watch “My Job Depends on Ag” from Valley PBS.
Growth of any population does not stop unless and until a vital resource is depleted.
As @97K15004WD points out, flow through rivers must be maintained or people will be affected by backflow of salt water upstream.
As @97K15004WD points out, flow through rivers must be maintained or people will be affected by backflow of salt water upstream.
"Using fewer than 1% of U.S. farmland, the Central Valley supplies 8% of U.S. agricultural output (by value) and produces 1/4 of the Nation's food, including 40% of the Nation's fruits, nuts, and other table foods. " https://ca.water.usgs.gov/projects/central-valley/about-central-valley.html
(or whatever) , all of our eggs in one basket are going to break. We absolutely don't learn from history.
When the great earth quake hits
(or whatever) , all of our eggs in one basket are going to break. We absolutely don't learn from history.Similar threads
