{"id":15366,"date":"2014-03-08T05:36:29","date_gmt":"2014-03-08T13:36:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shescookin.com\/?p=15366"},"modified":"2020-03-16T10:12:27","modified_gmt":"2020-03-16T17:12:27","slug":"californias-drought-affects-all-of-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shescookin.com\/californias-drought-affects-all-of-us\/","title":{"rendered":"California’s Drought Affects All of Us"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/p>\n Actually, California’s drought only affects “those who grow food and those who eat food”, words of wisdom from\u00a0Mike Wade, Executive Director of the California Farm Water Coalition<\/a>, while traversing the hair-pin curves of \u00a0Highway 79 from Coachella Valley back to our San Diego starting point. \u00a0Sadly, we’re all going to be affected – not just the California consumer – because when\u00a0a state known as both America’s Salad Bowl and the world’s Bread Basket \u00a0is facing the worst drought in history, it stands to reason that produce is going to be in short supply and prices are going to increase.<\/p>\n The farm tour arranged by Mike Wade and Clare Foley of the California Farm Water Coalition to\u00a0visit several large scale family farms and learn more about water issues arising from the drought was timely as national and international news stations were reporting on the growing water crisis in California. I, and blogger friends,\u00a0Jeanne from\u00a0Jolly Tomato<\/a>, Kim from\u00a0Liv Life,<\/a> and Barbara from\u00a0Barbara Cooks<\/a>, visited three farms in California’s “Low Desert” growing area – two in the Imperial Valley and one in Coachella Valley. The hardest hit crops are broccoli, iceberg lettuce and bell peppers and, soon, summer crops of processing tomatoes, corn and cantaloupe.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Our tour began at\u00a0LaBrucherie Produce<\/a>\u00a0located in El Centro in the Imperial Valley.\u00a0Often referred to as the nation’s Winter Salad Bowl, Imperial Valley and Arizona\u2019s Yuma Valley provide 60 percent of the nation\u2019s vegetables in the winter. It is a desert area that is too hot in the summer for crops, but warm and dry and able to grow produce when Central Valley is too cold – and normally, too rainy.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n J.P. LaBrucherie is a graduate of University of Southern California with a degree in Accounting, a fourth generation farmer, and manager of LaBrucherie Produce. Half of LaBrucherie’s 3,500 acres are planted with iceberg lettuce and romaine, 500 acres are devoted to spinach, \u00a0and 300-400 each for onions, sugar beets, broccoli and carrots. \u00a0La Brucherie contracts with packaging companies and over half of their production is of the highest quality and destined for food service. We visited a spinach field where a section had recently been harvested. We had hoped to see harvesting in action, but entire operations were on hold as winter storms across the U.S. had transportation at a standstill.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Top quality iceberg lettuce goes to restaurants and the food service industry.<\/p>\n LaBrucherie pointed out that what they plant is consumer driven – case in point, iceberg lettuce used to be the only lettuce planted, but as consumer tastes changed they began planting more romaine. He demonstrated how the outer leaves of romaine heads are manually stripped to leave the inner romaine hearts which the market demands. The leaves are left on the ground and later turned under to decompose and replenish the soil.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n We were blitzed with so much information it was mind boggling – scientific data, numbers, statistics, political battles, irrigation methods, agriculture terms, water conservation methods, historical water rights – too much to process in two short days. Growing up working our family garden plot, I’ve always had an appreciation for fresh produce and buying locally, and my takeaway from this particular farm tour was an increased awareness of the struggles of the family farm businesses who raise the food that makes its way to our tables and how vital water, this simple life-giving resource that we take for granted, is to the welfare of our nation.<\/p>\n