Unsurprisingly, this disruption of the landscape’s natural water flow has consequences. In California, as in most places governed by the short-sighted and unsustainable policies of capitalism, water has been falsely treated as an infinite resource. As water policy and infrastructure developed over the 19^th and 20^th centuries, there was little understanding of the impact that removing large quantities of water from rivers and aquifers would have on ecosystems, vulnerable communities, and long-term water supplies.

The negative consequences have become extremely apparent as climate change warms the planet and dries up previously reliable sources of water. Throughout the western U.S., drought has become less of an anomaly and more of a permanent state of being. It is felt in the explosion of fire season, as wildfires become larger and more frequent due to hotter temperatures and less rainfall moistening the earth. It is felt in the extremely low water levels in most reservoirs and the resulting water curtailments imposed in many communities during the summer. It is felt by the residents of rural Central Valley towns whose wells have gone dry and who don’t have the thousands of dollars it costs to dig a deeper well to reach the lowered water table. It is also felt in the inevitable negotiations over what little water is available, as farmers, tribes, municipalities, and environmentalists fight over how much water needs to stay in the rivers for the sake of the fish and wildlife that depend on it, and who gets the water that is allowed to be taken out. But these negotiations are not evenly balanced because agricultural corporations are an extremely powerful force, using their extensive capital to shape state and federal legislation, dominate the water utility districts in the Valley, and avoid any attempts to regulate their water usage.

Many communities are already feeling the impact of this reckless water management system, it’s now just a question of how many more will suffer and how little water will be left to future generations.

As the ongoing drought forces everyone into water conservation mode, those road-side signs along the I-5 highway demonstrate the continued conviction of farmers that they have an inherent right to water. And while it’s certainly true that many Central Valley farms will suffer without sufficient water, the agriculture industry is hiding a lot behind those signs. Most farms are no longer your typical small, mom-and-pop operations, but rather are large corporations with a lot of lobbying power and immense regulatory capture.

A lot of this activity is hidden behind trade associations, lobbying groups, ag-funded so-called ‘grassroots’ organizations, and water utility districts, making it very difficult to even quantify their outsized influence. And why does all of this matter, if at the end of the day the Central Valley’s farms are getting enough water to keep producing the crops that feed the nation? The answer is that there simply is not enough water to go around – so if the farms are taking more than their fair share, considering the little that is available, everyone else is not getting enough. Operating such large-scale, water-intensive agriculture across so many acres of the Central Valley – especially in the way that it’s currently done, with little movement towards adapting more water-efficient models – simply isn’t viable for much longer.

Many communities are already feeling the impact of this reckless water management system, it’s now just a question of how many more will suffer and how little water will be left to future generations. Remember, water is a limited resource and continuing to over-extract it at unsustainable rates has long-term consequences for the future of California’s water supply. Unfortunately, corporations operate under a capitalistic model where the long-term consequences and impact on surrounding communities are secondary to maximizing near-term financial gain for shareholders. Something is going to break in this system, it’s just a matter of when and how rich will the farmers get before it does.

In the town of Ducor, residents can’t seem to catch a break when it comes to having clean water in their homes. A small town in the southern Central Valley, there are around 600 residents who are primarily Latinx and low-income. Surrounded by farmland, the town experienced severe pesticide contamination of their water supply for decades. Families suffered from rashes and illnesses from using the contaminated water. Not having clean or reliable running water gets very expensive because you must constantly buy bottled water, and not just for drinking but for bathing, flushing toilets, and washing clothes and dishes too. In 2016, thanks to organizing by community members, they were finally able to get Tulare County to build them an expensive, but new, deeper, contaminant-free community well. In contrast to private domestic wells, which serve individual properties, community wells provide water for an entire town or neighborhood. They are preferable to domestic wells because the cost is spread across the community, which also allows them to be deeper and more resilient to drought. Like many of the Central Valley’s most neglected communities, Ducor is unincorporated, meaning that it is not part of a town, nor does it have its own municipal government, and therefore lacks municipal services, like a water utility company. Unincorporated towns are instead governed (and often neglected by) the county, in Ducor’s case, Tulare County.

In many unincorporated towns in California, residents either rely on private domestic wells or community wells – both of which are expensive to install and run a greater risk of drying up. Although many of the incorporated towns in the Central Valley do also rely on groundwater, they have the resources to build deeper, more resilient wells and the political power to protect them.

But just a few years later, Ducor’s new well is now at risk of becoming obsolete. Right across the street from it, a farm has drilled its own private well which is now making the community well dry up. The farm’s well is deeper and by pulling water from the surrounding aquifer at greater depths, it is drawing down the water table and rendering the community well too shallow. In large part this is happening because there is no regulatory process to determine where new wells can and cannot be drilled. So, when the farm decided to install their new well – which will likely only supply the farm – right next to Ducor’s well, there was no one to stop them. And since corporate farms aren’t inclined to worry about the wellbeing of their neighbors, there is little-to-no self-regulation to protect nearby wells.

Ducor’s problem is not only that the farm next door installed a deeper well. The underlying issue is that groundwater in California has been over pumped for decades, according to UCLA’s professor of environmental law James Salzman. Groundwater sits in the aquifer beneath the soil, like an underground reservoir. When it rains, that water seeps through the ground and recharges the aquifer. Wells on the other hand, pump the water out. Problems arise when the pumping rate is greater than the recharge rate – and the Central Valley surpassed this line decades ago.

The underlying issue is that groundwater in California has been over pumped for decades.

Up until 2014, groundwater was almost entirely unregulated in California, meaning wells were unmonitored and unregulated so landowners could pump as much as they wanted. The consequences of drastic over pumping are twofold. First, it causes the water table (the depth closest to the surface where there’s water) to drop, making it harder to reach and pump the groundwater. The worse the over pumping gets, the deeper one needs to drill a well for it to work, and since this has gotten worse over time, many older wells have been rendered defunct. Second, the dropping water table literally causes the land to sink, in a process called subsidence. In some parts of the Central Valley, the land surface has subsided almost 30ft.

Subsidence causes infrastructural problems which are expensive to repair, and at some point, the aquifer becomes so overdrawn that the damage is irreversible. It would take a long time, and require pumping to almost stop, for the aquifer to recharge itself to pre-agricultural levels. There’s debate as to whether the Central Valley’s main aquifers could ever fully return to their historical levels, in part because this drier climate means less rain and snowmelt are entering the system, and in part because the overextraction of groundwater has fundamentally altered the geology. Ducor is facing the double punch of a depleted aquifer and the localized issue of a deeper well extracting water away from a nearby shallower well.

Kyle Jones is the Policy and Legal Director at the Community Water Center, a community organization that works to end the Central Valley’s drinking water crisis. Jones says that when a well dries up, the only solution is to dig deeper. But installing a new well is expensive and even a small one can cost around $40,000. For the average resident in the communities dependent on well-water, that is an unobtainable sum of money. To put that amount in context, the median household income in Ducor is $27,000 as of the 2020 census.

When domestic wells dry up, the property value also dissipates – without water, there’s no value in the home.

When domestic wells dry up, the property value also dissipates – without water, there’s no value in the home. This means the resident can’t get a second mortgage or rely on their home’s equity, furthering their financial instability. On top of all that, they now don’t have access to water and must buy storage tanks to hold expensive, hauled-in water. By one estimate, over 1000 families in the Central Valley are now completely reliant on hauled water and at least another 800 domestic wells are predicted to go dry this year. The families that do manage to deepen their wells often find that it’s a short-term solution – sooner or later it will dry up too.

While the state will sometimes pay for a new well if a family’s income is low enough to qualify for state assistance or a town convinces them to, Jones says that the backlog in constructing these wells has left most people in limbo. The need for newer and deeper wells has recently exploded and there’s just not enough well drillers to go around. The drought and the ensuing restrictions on surface water have pushed farmers to draw more and more from groundwater to meet their needs. Corporate farms can afford to dig bigger and deeper, pumping even more water from the already depleted aquifer. This creates a cyclical problem: the new deep farm wells extract more water, leading to the drying up of shallower wells, leaving more communities in need of deeper wells again just to reach any water. When it comes to prioritizing which wells get drilled first, the large profit-generating agriculture companies are often first in line because their projects are bigger and more lucrative for drillers. The lower-cost, community and domestic wells have largely been left behind. In effect, the trees of wealthy farms have been prioritized over the survival of farmworker and Latinx communities.

In effect, the trees of wealthy farms have been prioritized over the survival of farmworker and Latinx communities.

Historically, surface water has been the only regulated water source in California. Since the Central Valley is inherently arid, early on farmers primarily irrigated with well water. The introduction of the Central Valley Project, the system that distributes surface water across the state, induced farmers to switch to using mostly surface water. It relies on snow that falls in the Sierra Nevada mountains melting into various rivers (Sacramento, Stanislaus, Trinity, American and San Joaquin Rivers to name a few). Most of this water gets channeled into reservoirs and then into the Sacramento River before it empties into the Delta, where a series of aqueducts send it to the southern half of the state. This distribution is managed by either the Central Valley Project or the State Water Project; the former’s water is federally owned, and the latter is state owned. Both projects then distribute it to water districts, semi-public bodies that serve as water utilities for a given region. California has extreme variability in types of water districts – for starters, there are over 3,000 in the state – with some being governed by elected public officials and others by independent boards. Water districts then sell and distribute the federal and state water they’ve bought to their users.

In determining who gets what, California relies on a form of water rights allocation called prior appropriation. Put simply, it’s a “first come, first serve” system. Most real estate is tied to an associated water right, so owners are entitled to water in the order in which their property historically claimed it. Other entities can also have water rights, namely tribes, municipalities, and water districts. There are a few constraints, like a requirement to put it to “beneficial use” and to “use it or lose it,” but generally you can do whatever you want with your allotted water. Given the historical tendency to prioritize farmland, most of the Central Valley’s farms receive hefty quantities of water every year.

In a non-drought year, when water is plentiful, farms receive their allotted water provided by their local water district. This water is pretty cheap, so some farms will supplement it by buying additional water from other districts or farmers with surpluses. Depending on how much surface water they get, some farms will also pump groundwater. However, recent years have exposed the fragility of the Central Valley Project. California has been in its current drought since around 2011, with only brief periods of respite during the 11-year span. When water is in short supply, the “first come, first serve” system’s flaws are revealed. Firstly, the Central Valley Project is limited by how much snow and rainfall occurs in a given year. The Bureau of Reclamation must ensure that there’s enough water to go around and enough to stay in the rivers to protect the fish and wildlife populations. During such times, many users will have their apportionment of federal water cut. These curtailments are imposed in order from newest to oldest rights-holder, so those with senior water rights sometimes continue to receive far more water than makes sense.

Water districts are also part of this hierarchy and during droughts some districts get curtailed more than others. For example, in 2021 the LA Times reported that while some water districts got a mere 5% of their usual water allocation, others got enough water to supply all of Los Angeles for 4 years. The Imperial Irrigation District (IID), in the Imperial Valley, which lies outside the Central Valley but is similarly an agricultural hotspot subject to California’s arcane water laws, is another example of this contradiction. Salzman points out that because the IID has very senior water rights and is awash in Colorado River water, they are growing things like alfalfa and cotton – both extremely water intensive crops amid an extreme drought.

The curtailments of surface water delivered to farms leads to increased stress on the groundwater supply. When farmers don’t get enough water from their surface water rights, they turn to pumping well water. As groundwater extraction has historically been unregulated, landowners pump however much they want. The main limitation is the dropping water table which is pushing them to drill deeper wells – but this can only last so long.

At some point the water table will drop low enough that it becomes prohibitively expensive to drill deep enough to reach it.

At some point the water table will drop low enough that it becomes prohibitively expensive to drill deep enough to reach it. To stave off this fate, the state enacted the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) in 2014. The law requires the formation of localized Groundwater Sustainability Agencies which are mandated to create Groundwater Sustainability Plans and manage their local groundwater basins. So far, it has been a near failure and implementation has been delayed in almost all districts. The only ones benefitting from this failed attempt at regulation are the large growers with lots of land, who are just pumping, pumping, pumping while they still can, endangering the aquifer for everyone else.

Many argue that this system just doesn’t make sense anymore and something needs to change. The surface water rights were claimed as far back as the late 1800s, at a time when mostly only white, American men were legally entitled to own land. The result is an inherently racist system, where those whose ancestors were barred from acquiring land are the first to suffer today during water shortages. Jones points out that not only were people of color and women barred from securing water rights for generations, but they have also been kept out of wealthier communities that hold onto clean and secure water access. As a result, the Central Valley’s majority Latinx and farmworker communities don’t even get water from the state or federal government and are instead reliant on their own wells – which are proving insufficient as the agriculture industry depletes the aquifer at startling rates. Big farms almost always have a backup when water is restricted, but local communities who also rely on drinking water for their homes and schools are left empty-handed.

Big farms almost always have a backup when water is restricted, but local communities who also rely on drinking water for their homes and schools are left empty-handed.

It is no coincidence that farms of the Central Valley are continuing to operate at seemingly full capacity despite the state’s 11-year drought. These farms are large corporations with large amounts of capital and political power. The water districts, which are supposedly public entities, are completely dominated by members of the agriculture industry and spend millions of dollars every year lobbying in Sacramento and Washington, D.C. Together, they wield power over legislators to ensure that no laws get passed which might challenge their control or impose water conservation measures. When laws do make it past them, they are often toothless and ineffective – like SGMA. The end result is that the corporate farms keep taking water and earning profits, while 1 million Californians, like the residents of Ducor, go without a reliable source of water – and any attempts to rectify the problem or create a more sustainable system are hindered by the agriculture lobby. The agriculture industry has grown accustomed to getting all the water it wants, but decades of careless over-extraction combined with the effects of the drought have opened everyone’s eyes to see how unsustainable this is. The industry has resorted to manipulating all the levers of power to maintain the current, outdated system and even worse, to give themselves more water.

The industry has resorted to manipulating all the levers of power to maintain the current, outdated system and even worse, to give themselves more water.

What really frustrates advocates is that most Central Valley farms are incredibly inefficient when it comes to their water usage. Salzman says, “Central Valley farmers are in general, terrible at conservation.” The laws don’t incentivize farmers to enact more conservationist practices because of the “use it or lose it” principle of water law. If a farm were to put in place better irrigation canals on their property and reduce the amount of water lost during transport, they would end up needing less total water to irrigate the same fields. By needing less water, they run the risk of shrinking the amount of water they’re allocated, and no farmer wants that. Water is a scarce resource, so farmers would rather hoard water they don’t need right now in case they need it later. In the end, there’s little incentive to become more efficient today and risk losing your claim to some of your water tomorrow.

Fruit and nut trees are also a major issue when it comes to water conservation. Some “permanent” crops, like almond or pistachio trees and wine grapes, are very high value and many farms prioritize them for this reason. But they’re much less adaptable to drought than annual crops. In a dry year, with annual crops you can reduce your water needs by simply not planting in certain fields, a process known as fallowing. So, if you grow tomatoes, you can let a few fields fallow during a drought and the next year, when there’s more water available, simply resume planting. There’s certainly a loss of profits, but it doesn’t hurt the following year’s crop yields. If anything, fallowing is beneficial for farmland because it lets the soil rest and recoup its nutrients.

The corporate structure of these farms encourages maximizing profits in the near-term by planting lucrative tree crops, even if it means manipulating water policy into an unsustainable form that creates a long-term crisis.

In contrast, with trees, one dry year and they’re dead. If you have a grove of almond trees, not watering them for a season likely means they will die, and now you’ve lost the investment of the years it took for them to grow and the years it will take to restart the orchard. But as Salzman points out, corporate farms largely follow market trends and so when almonds and pistachios became a lucrative crop due to their popularity among consumers, farms prioritized planting them. It’s a risk worth taking for the farms that have enough wealth to know they can always buy water from someone else in a pinch and who have the political and regulatory power to ensure that they’ll keep getting enough water to irrigate their orchards. The corporate structure of these farms encourages maximizing profits in the near-term by planting lucrative tree crops, even if it means manipulating water policy into an unsustainable form that creates a long-term crisis.

As unsustainable as these practices are, the real issue is rooted in agriculture’s infiltration at every level of regulation. The water districts of the Central Valley are a significant part of this regime. These entities serve as the middlemen between the federal and state water suppliers, and the farms they sell the water to. They might look like any other public utility on paper, but these agencies are closely intertwined with growers. In many ways, they are one and the same.

Most water districts have a board of directors composed of local farm owners. For example, Westlands Water District, which serves western Fresno and Kings counties, is a subsidized government entity. According to their website, each member of their Board of Directors must be a landowner (or their representative) in the district. Currently, every single one of their nine board members owns farms that are growing almonds, and most are also growing either wine grapes, pistachios, or cotton – all water intensive crops or the permanent tree crops that rely on uninterrupted irrigation. As Jones describes it, by controlling the region’s water supply, the water district – and by effect the farmers who form the board – is given almost de facto ownership over the land, all because they control the water for it. Because landowners are directly impacted by water issues, it can be easy to justify giving them control over their water boards. But the issue is that water is a public and scarce resource, and many people besides farm owners are impacted by its usage. There are no community members or farmworkers or even elected officials running many of these agricultural water districts. The surrounding communities, and the small-scale farms within the district, don’t have a say in how this government entity that affects their access to life-giving water operates.

By controlling the region’s water supply, the water district – and by effect the farmers who form the board – is given almost de facto ownership over the land, all because they control the water for it.

Water districts get cheap water from the federal and state water projects and make their profits selling that water to the farmers within their district. With that money and their tax dollars – remember, they are subsidized public bodies – they spend large amounts on lobbying and garnering influence. For instance, take Westlands Water District. Not only is it headed by powerful farmers, but it is also a huge political spender. According to OpenSecrets.org, a research group that tracks money in U.S. politics, Westlands spent $660,000 on lobbying expenditures in 2021 and engaged 5 lobbying firms in D.C. and Sacramento. Compare that to the early 2000s, when they routinely spent closer to $100,000 on lobbying. Outside of those figures, the members of Westlands’ board and their relatives have, combined, given more than $430,000 to the Republican Party in the last two election cycles. Most likely, the drought has pushed their spending up as water restrictions become more widespread and they find themselves fighting for extra water more often than in the past. Yet their lobbying extends beyond just asking for more water – they also want to weaken environmental regulations that limit how much water the Central Valley Project can divert, like the Endangered Species Act.

These are large agricultural corporations, using inordinate amounts of water to grow high-value crops, and spending huge sums of money to shape state and federal laws to allow them to continue operating this way

Not coincidentally, Westlands is the largest agricultural water district in the country and the farms within the district grow produce sold by companies like Heinz and Dole. These are large agricultural corporations, using inordinate amounts of water to grow high-value crops, and spending huge sums of money to shape state and federal laws to allow them to continue operating this way. Even some of their member farms have grown frustrated with the way Westlands operates. At a recent district meeting where the General Manager of the district, Tom Birmingham, had his contract extended for another 5 years, growers spoke out about their displeasure with leadership. One grower, Farid Assemi, told SJV Water that he was particularly shocked at the lack of water storage and groundwater recharge efforts. Perhaps the district’s focus on near-term influence and power without working towards sustainable solutions for the future has finally led to some farmers speaking out.

Westlands is a good example of the farming industry’s regulatory capture, but it is hardly the only one. A large number of agriculture irrigation districts have formed an alliance called the Valley Ag Water Coalition, and together they pool resources to lobby even more aggressively. According to Cal-Access, a California government site that provides financial information of lobbyists, political candidates and donors, Valley Ag Water Coalition spent $543,981 on lobbying in the 2021-2022 session. Some of the bills they lobbied against this year include AB 1001, a bill that would add an environmental justice component to the California Environmental Quality Act; AB 377, titled the “California Clean Water Act” that aims to make all California waterways clean by 2050; and AB 564 which would establish the Biodiversity Protection and Restoration Act, requiring all state boards and agencies to consider and prioritize biodiversity protection. The members of this coalition are 44 irrigation districts and 2 law firms, which include the Fresno Irrigation District, Semitropic Water Storage District and the Kern County Water Agency, among many others.

Water districts are also largely responsible for the failure of SGMA. While the historic legislation was enacted over resistance from the agriculture industry, it was written in a way that ensured restrictions and regulation would happen at the local level, with little state oversight. When it was enacted, then-Governor Jerry Brown said, “groundwater management in California is best accomplished locally.”

What this really did was give the power to enact pumping limits and recharge plans to the same water districts and farmers that had fought its passage. It also gave them full say on how to structure the agency boards – unsurprisingly, farmers are overrepresented on these boards while domestic water users are largely missing. Take the Kings River East GSA for example. Their board has seven members, with each seat designated to represent a certain interest. Three seats are for irrigation district representatives, and one is for an ag representative. The remaining seats are: one for Fresno County (currently held by a large farm owner), one for Tulare County, and one for a representative of three cities (Dinuba, Orange Cove and Reedly). There’s no seat reserved for community members or domestic water users and agriculture far outweighs other interests.

This is not sustainable and by pulling at the levers of power to ensure no one can stop them, farmers are setting themselves up for imminent disaster.

So far, of the 42 plans enacted under SGMA, 34 have already failed. By stalling any implementation of groundwater regulation, large growers can keep pumping from their wells with no one to stop them. This out-of-control pumping is creating a dire situation, with the aquifer becoming far too overdrawn and leaving other water users, like the residents of Ducor and many other farmworker communities, without water for their homes. Farmers on the other hand, can keep making millions of dollars off their almond orchards and when their own wells can no longer reach water, they can afford to simply dig deeper. Big farms also have less to lose because they likely have insurance against crop losses – meaning if this pumping frenzy ends up backfiring, they’re covering their losses, a backup that residents don’t have. Just like surface water, groundwater is a finite resource and shortsightedly pumping it to grow as many crops as possible right now will eventually hurt the same farmers who are resisting regulation. This is not sustainable and by pulling at the levers of power to ensure no one can stop them, farmers are setting themselves up for imminent disaster.

The reach of the water districts and corporate farms goes beyond just lobbying politicians directly and blocking progressive laws – although it is certainly true, says Jones, that there’s a cohort of moderate democrats who are beholden to agricultural interests. Beyond that, there’s a concentrated effort to connect with the oil industry, the California Chamber of Commerce, and many trade associations. Jones states that because of these shared interests and their power as a legislative block, trade groups like the Farm Bureau will oppose bills seemingly unrelated to agriculture, like climate change and oil regulation.

In addition to these cross-sector allegiances, there’s another level to the well-oiled machine that moves to further the interests of agricultural corporations. To garner public support, there’s a long list of trade associations that operate on behalf of the water districts and farmers. These include the Farm Bureau (their website says they are a non-profit committed to the well-being and quality of life for California farmers and ranchers), the California Cotton Ginners and Growers Associations (they represent their members on issues at the state and federal level, including air and water quality, labor, taxes and energy, among others), and many more.

There are even identity-based trade groups, like the African American Farmers Association, the Nissei Farmers League, and the Latino Water Coalition. These associations help shape public perception in the interests of agricultural groups by publishing written pieces in local news, providing members with legal support, and speaking loudly on potential new policies – all while seemingly speaking for the powerless farmers of yesteryear. They tend to emphasize the struggle of farming in times of drought, criticizing the government for preserving even minimal river flows at the expense of giving farmers more water. They present themselves as representing small farmers and farm labor, calling on the importance of growing food for the nation. But if you look at what’s being grown, it seems that profits are prioritized over actually feeding people nutritious foods. Growing nut crops and wine grapes isn’t making produce more affordable for the food-insecure farm workers they claim to be fighting for.

But if you look at what’s being grown, it seems that profits are prioritized over actually feeding people nutritious foods.

Most recently, the Farm Bureau published a piece in AgAlert in opposition to AB 2201, a bill being supported by groups like the Community Water Center. The bill would implement a permitting process for new or expanded wells, requiring Groundwater Sustainability Agencies to determine certain requirements will be met before approving a permit. Two of these requirements would be to ensure that the proposed well will not interfere with any existing nearby wells and that it be consistent with that agency’s Groundwater Sustainability Plan. These requirements might have saved Ducor’s community well by preventing the farm next door digging their well so nearby. It may at least save future residents in other communities from suffering that same fate.

The Farm Bureau, however, sees this bill as a threat to the “locally driven” facet of SGMA – this, even though the proposed permitting process would be entirely determined by the local GSAs. As of April 2022, this bill is still in committee in the Assembly. But the Farm Bureau’s response is any indication of the industry’s general opposition to the bill, it will certainly be an uphill battle to get it past their lobbying power.

In actuality, these are all industry-funded groups that operate to influence policy and ensure water districts keep getting significant water allocations despite the drought. Perhaps the most blatant example is the group El Agua es El Asunto de Todos (which translates to Water is Everyone’s Business). Supposedly an educational political group that portrays itself as ‘grassroots,’ they target Latinx communities with the catchphrase “sin agua, sin trabajo”, meaning “no water, no work”. But in reality, they are an organization created by a contract between Westlands Water District and a New York political firm. To remove any remaining doubt as to the group’s authenticity, Westlands pays their $14,000 per month operating costs.

The Central Valley is a complicated place. Of course, there are some smaller farms that really are suffering from water shortages and failed crop yields. And there are many farmworkers and their families who are financially dependent on the ag industry’s survival. But the way the Central Valley farms came into existence is no longer viable. The massive amounts of water they relied on doesn’t exist anymore.

Even without ongoing droughts, the system that early Californians built to irrigate the Central Valley was precarious and unsustainable.

Even without ongoing droughts, the system that early Californians built to irrigate the Central Valley was precarious and unsustainable in the long-term. For now, the state is beginning to reckon with this fact by paying farms to leave some of their field’s fallow. As long as the state pays more than a farmer could make irrigating and harvesting that field, this model works. In order to leave enough water for the rest of the state and to prepare for a drier future, something needs to change.

Unfortunately, the corporate takeover of agriculture and the ensuing power and political influence it yields is not working to secure a realistic future for any of those groups. To be clear, many farms probably will go out of business or learn to adapt to lower water rations. But what’s likely to happen along the way is that the smaller farms who can’t compete will get bought out by the larger farms with more money and water rights. There would be a concentration of agribusiness in the Central Valley, with a small group of farms and investment firms owning the rest, consolidating power.

The consequences of this would be wide-felt, and not just for the local communities whose wells will continue to dry up. With more concentrated wealth and political power, these farms may be able to further shape legislation to protect themselves in other spheres beyond water. Farmworkers will likely be harmed by these larger corporations, for whom exploiting workers is easier. Environmental regulations, like those that limit pesticide use, could go out the window. And water will continue to be pumped and diverted until there’s nothing left. It’s unclear how farmers think they will continue to grow crops once they’ve exhausted their water supply, but their current strategy seems to be to ignore this reality. Unless something changes soon, the rest of the state will bear the brunt of the harm caused by the agriculture industry’s careless use of precious water for generations to come.

From The [F]law:

• Reem Hindi Hussein, The Modern American Slavery: Temporary Worker Exploitation and the Human Supply Chain.
• Amelia Keyes, Seeking Environmental Justice in the U.S. Virgin Islands: St. Croix’s Battle with an Oil Refinery that Refuses to Die.
• Liz Turner, Land is a bank account: A journey into the polluted heart(land) of American agriculture.
• Jeremiah Scanlan, Secrets of the Heartland: The Battle To See Inside Iowa’s Factory Farms.

 

From The Systemic Justice Journal:

• HLS Student, Of Humans, for Humans, and by Smithfield: How corporate law helps enable us to eat pigs comfortably.
• Elizabeth MeLampy, Fowl Play: Corporate Law and the Chicken Industry.
• Tala Doumani, From the Public Charter to Private Power: Corporations, Slavery, and the Cotton Industry in the 19th Century.