The announcement that California is rapidly running out of water has put
new pressure on our most precious resource that could, in turn, force
increased prices and shut down organic food production. Ultimately, it could
even threaten the food supply.
The recent warnings from NASA hydrologist Jay Famiglietti,
based on satellite data of the groundwater supply as it is threatened by the
ongoing drought, is only compounding the issues for farmers who have
already been driven to cut back production as water is rerouted to cities and
industries. State leaders are embracing a full on crisis, and there is no
sign of letting up:
At a news conference on March 19, 2015, California Senate President Pro
Tem Kevin
de Leon warned, “There is no greater crisis facing our state
today than our lack of water.”
In fact, there is no contingency plan if California runs out of water.
Unless the situation changes, an all out war for water is coming. The first
front is economic.
Thousands of farming jobs have already been lost, and many more are likely
coming in the state that produces more farm-to-table produce, and in
particular more organic fruits and vegetables, than any other in the United
States. Many farmers have been forced to stop planting their fields, while
others have found it more profitable to sell their water rights to cities than
to grow their crops at all.
Some pretty serious water wars have been waged in California for over a
century, but the battle is no longer between just big cities like L.A. and
the growers who provide the nation’s food. The new wars are being
orchestrated and promulgated by the corporate masters of Wall Street and Big
Agra.
Attorney Ellen Brown, author of Web of Debt and advocate
of banking reform, put together a lengthy article full of some pretty
disturbing facts that prove water will become a disruptive commodity bigger
enough to strip wealth, assets and rights in California and beyond. It
seems that everyone will be fighting for the last drop:
In California’s epic drought, wars over water rights continue, while
innovative alternatives for increasing the available water supply go
untapped.
Wars over California’s limited water supply have been going on for at
least a century… [especially] between farmers and Los Angeles urbanites
over water rights.
[...]
Today the water wars continue on a larger scale with new players. It’s no
longer just the farmers against the ranchers or the urbanites. It’s the
people against the
new “water barons” – Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Monsanto, the
Bush family, and their ilk – who are buying up water all over the world at an
unprecedented pace.
Indeed, private companies have been buying up water rights, with major
firms like Nestle bottling up California’s water and selling it as a premium
on the consumer market. Industries and bankers controlling infrastructure are
also striking momentous deals in the state and across the globe to redirect
water to the highest bidder.
Left behind? The food producers we all depend upon. In particular,
California produces more organic produce than anywhere else around.
Brown reports:
Maps indicate that
the areas of California hardest hit by the
mega-drought are those that grow a large percentage of America’s food.
California supplies 50% of the nation’s food and more organic food than any
other state. Western
Growers estimates that last year 500,000 acres of farmland were left
unplanted, an amount that could increase by 40% this year. The trade group
pegs farm job losses at 17,000 last year and more in 2015.
Farmers with contracts from the Central Valley Project, a large federal
irrigation system, will receive no water for the second consecutive year, according
to preliminary forecasts. Cities and industries will get 25 percent of
their full contract allocation, to ensure sufficient water for human health
and safety. Besides shortages, there is the problem of toxic waste
dumped into water supplies by oil company fracking. Economists estimate
the cost of the drought in 2014 at $2.2 billion.
What happens if they are driven out of business? Will organic foods still
be readily available?
After that, will food be affordable at all?
With an eye trained on the depletion of resources and the swelling
populations of megacities, former World Bank executive Ismail Serageldin famously warned
the world:
“The wars of the 21st century will be fought over water.”
Those who have peered behind the curtain long enough realize that the
major wars of the last few centuries have all been funded on both sides for
the enrichment and concentration of power of a handful of Machiavellian
elites.
Those who can think beyond these concocted wars to the unconventional wars
of the modern era will also be wondering: who is orchestrating these
conflicts over resources, and who benefits? Where do the profits go?
Christina Sarich, of NationofChange.org, writes:
Numerous companies are poised to take advantage of the water crisis.
Instead of protecting existing water supplies, implementing stricter
regulations, and coming up with novel ways to capture rainwater, or desalinizing
seawater, the corporate agenda is ready, like a snake coiled, to make
trillions off your thirst.
With discussions of vast supplies of “primary water” stored deep in the
earth’s mantle and scientifically proven schemes to desalinate ocean water or
capture greater amounts of rainfall, Brown charges that major players are
ignoring viable solutions to the Great California Thirst, and instead
focusing on the concentrated profits made possible by resources scarcity.
The shortages thus far have already made the price of irrigation water
jump more than 10-fold in cost, making it more profitable for some farmers with historic water rights
to sell it to cities, in fear that it will be taken away if they don’t
sell.
Meanwhile, Ellen Brown points out that California is not only set to
restrict residential water usage, but is preparing to regulate ground water
supplies in an unprecedented way that is causing outrage from farmers:
In September, a trio of bills were signed establishing a framework
for statewide regulation of California’s underground water sources, marking
the first time in the state’s history that groundwater will be managed on a
large scale. Water has until now been considered a property right. The
Los Angeles Times reported:
[M]any agriculture interests remain staunchly opposed to the bill. Paul
Wenger, president of the California Farm Bureau Federation, said the bills
“may come to be seen as ‘historic’ for all the wrong reasons” by
drastically harming food production.
. . . “There’s really going to be a wrestling match over who’s
going to get the water,” [Fresno Assemblyman] Patterson said,
predicting the regulation plans will bring a rash of lawsuits.
