California's drought withers tomatoes, pushing grocery prices higher | Reuters
Category: News & Politics
Via: kavika • 2 years ago • 21 commentsBy: Nathan Frandino,Christopher Walljasper,Aude Guerrucci (Reuters)
A lack of rain and snow in central California and restricted water supplies from the Colorado River in the southernmost part of the state have withered summer crops like tomatoes and onions and threatened leafy greens grown in the winter.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
By Nathan Frandino , Christopher Walljasper and Aude Guerrucci1/13
Processing tomatoes dried up by heat and drought hang on vines on a farm belonging to farmer Aaron Barcellos in Los Banos, California, U.S. September 6, 2022. REUTERS/Nathan Frandino
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FIREBAUGH, Calif., Oct 10 (Reuters) - A lack of rain and snow in central California and restricted water supplies from the Colorado River in the southernmost part of the state have withered summer crops like tomatoes and onions and threatened leafy greens grown in the winter.
That has added pressure to grocery prices, putting a squeeze on wallets with no end in sight.
The rise in food prices this year has helped drive U.S. inflation to its highest levels in 40 years. California's drought conditions, on top of Hurricane Ian ravaging citrus and tomato crops in Florida, are likely to push food costs even higher. Drought in an area known as the U.S. salad bowl has not only impacted fresh produce, but also pantry staples like pasta sauce and premade dinners.
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"There's just not enough water to grow everything that we normally grow," said Don Cameron, President of the California State Board of Food and Agriculture. Cameron also grows processing tomatoes, onions, garlic and more than a dozen other crops …
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It is not only California that is suffering and lacking the water for crops but Nevada, Arizona and Texas.
The tomato crops in Florida much of which were destroyed by Hurricane Ian.
gee, green produce in the stores or green golf courses in phoenix and tucson, that's a real head scratcher...
Chase a little white ball or eat...Hmmm
The only golf I play features astro turf, a dinosaur, a little bridge over a small pond and win a free round if I hit the ball into the clowns mouth...
I thought most of our tomatoes come from Mexico, but it doesn't take much to move prices up.
Over 50% come from Mexico but the shortage by US growers will certainly increase the price here and Mexico will probably follow suit in raising prices, supply and demand.
While we do import a lot of produce from Mexico, California still produces nearly 18% of our nations produce. That's nearly a fifth of the United States fruits and vegetables, so this over 7-year draught we've experienced due to climate change is affecting produce costs for the entire country.
Great. I can't afford steak anymore and now I won't be able to afford vegetables. Next will be potato crops and I won't be able to afford starches...
We have some serious problems that no one wants to address. Some are more worried about drilling for oil.
Exactly...
Overpopulation is the root cause of this and other problems, that is what needs to be addressed
Then to top it off we have people like Musk saying that we cannot survive because of low population and he is doing his part by having ten kids.
He is a nutjob.
Our inability to understand that water is finite and our past and present view of how to use it, IMO is a much larger problem than overpopulation.
More people use more scarce water
I remember reading a few years ago that every human being on earth could fit into the state of Texas and given 10 square feet of space.
Overpopulation is not the main problem, human stupidity and greed are the main problem.
In the undeveloped countries people want to have a lot of kids because they need them to work when the time comes and bring a pittance of money into the family so they can survive.
you only want to have 10 square feet?
Quality of life over quantity of people is better
We don't just need room to fit in to survive, John. We need arable land. We might all fit in Texas (very uncomfortably), but there's no way we could feed the entire world population just by farming Texas.
My point was not that the land in Texas could feed the world. My point was that there is a lot more room on this earth than people realize. The world is not overpopulated.
It is if we have trouble feeding everyone.
Yes, there's land. How much of it is useful? Is it easy to raise high-yield crops in the desert? On steep mountain sides? On permafrost?
No.
Hell, I live in a farming area, and my yard isn't even suitable for a garden. Not enough topsoil for most plants to root well. There are lots of places where the soil doesn't cover the rocks. My garden consists of raised wooden beds - not exactly something that's practicable on a large scale. I certainly couldn't raise enough food on my 3 acres to feed myself and my son reliably. So even in agricultural areas, one patch of land wont produce nearly as much food as another nearby patch of land.
And besides land, there's the water problem. It takes water to farm. And if you're going to try to make previously non-arable land into arable land, it takes even more water. My yard, for example - I'd have to irrigate, and because I'm on a mountain slope, I'd lose a lot of that water to runoff.
John, the author doesn't really support his statement. He just makes a declaration.
My daughter is going to school in Davis right now, and it is an agie school, and she tells me that the agie students are trying to come up with drought-resistant crops. But still, crops do require some water.
The problem is that humans tend to wait till things are at an emergency level to do something. Just think of a roof on a house. You can see it looking really bad, but most people wait till they have a bad leak.
CA is the biggest producer of almonds in the world and it is a very water-intensive crop along with cotton and CA is one of the top producers in the country of cotton.
Right now in West Texas, the drought is killing their cotton production.