AGRICULTURE
Snoop Dogg, Stephen Colbert and PSY
(remember “Gangnam Style”?) to pro-
mote the nuts in TV ads. Health claims
drive some of the campaigning, with
ad content highlighting nutritional
virtues like B vitamins, potassium
and protein.
Promotional literature focuses
on the importance of the industry’s
growth and expansion. “Our future
depends on it,” wrote Brian Watte
and Judy Hirigoyen, global marketing
specialists with the American Pista-
chio Growers, in a recent report on the
pistachio export market.
This surge in production has the
environmentally conscious on guard.
In the past 20 years, as nut acreage
has increased, demand for water has
stiffened. Cotton, which requires
significantly less water than nuts,
was once widely grown in the San
Joaquin Valley. “There wasn’t a tree
in sight,” Goldhamer says, recalling
the early 1980s.
Cotton and other annual plantings
can be fallowed at relatively small cost
to the farmer when water supplies
run dry, making them a potentially
low-impact crop. Trees, though — even
pistachios — need water much of the
time, and the shift to tree crops has put
great pressure on the Delta. At times,
the major pumping stations run with
such force that the San Joaquin River
runs backward, confusing migrating
fish. Salmon populations have crashed
since the 1980s. So have the numbers
of other fish, like the Delta smelt and
the striped bass.
John McManus, president of the
Golden State Salmon Association, feels
agricultural production has sur-
passed the bounds of sustainability in
desert-dry parts of the state. “Orchard
crops in the western San Joaquin Val-
ley, an area with inadequate local wa-
ter supplies, are unsustainable without
poaching someone else’s water,” says
McManus, whose organization advo-
cates for protecting rivers and salmon
habitat. “Grow food where there’s a
local water source.”
Political power
The Westlands Water District, the
largest agricultural water district
in the U.S. (1,000 square miles in
western Fresno and Kings counties),
is ground zero for the state’s nut
boom. It was created in the 1950s
on an agreement that the region’s
farmers would have no guarantees
for steady water deliveries. Facing
chronic water insecurity, Westlands
farmers mostly grew annual crops,
like vegetables, melons, tomatoes and
cotton. However, Westlands — known
for having political connections in
the right capital buildings — has
tightened its grip on the state’s water
resources, and farmers there have
planted more and more trees. The
Resnicks also have used millions of
dollars in political donations, their
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comstocksmag.com | May 2020
WATER-WISE PLANT:
CALIFORNIA GLORY