California Farmers Back Whitman's 'comprehensive Plan'

California
farmers
back
Whitman's
'comprehensive
plan'
 By Meg News Channel FRESNO — By next week, Ryan Ferguson likely will have laid off most of the employees at his ranch and harvesting company, hoping for a better situation next spring. It’s a difficult decision that the ranch manager doesn’t want to make. But he, like so many farmers across the Central Valley, has no other choice. There’s not enough water to grow his crops. Thousands of acres of his family’s land will go unharvested this year. He doesn’t have enough work for his employees. And still, the Huron farmer must find a way to pay for his land, his equipment and his workers. It’s a third-generation ranch, but Ferguson doesn’t know if he’ll be able to pass it down to a fourth generation. In a trip to the Central Valley in August, Meg Whitman heard Ferguson’s story and met with dozens of other farmers and ranchers who told her of their plight and pled for her help. They showed her their operations and gave the Republican gubernatorial candidate a first-hand look at how their livelihoods, families and employees are being affected by government’s decisions. And everywhere she went, Whitman took a firm stance, promising to make agriculture a top priority if elected governor. By creating a comprehensive plan to help solve the water crisis — which would include letting water flow from the Delta to farms, and creating a much-needed storage system — Whitman said the state can begin rebuilding its resources and jobs can be created once again. “How do you create a sense of urgency that can bring this to resolution in not six months, but six weeks? It is just remarkable to me that we are sitting here no further along,” Whitman said during a roundtable discussion Aug. 12 with the California Latino Water Coalition. “We need to put everyone in a room right now and say we’re locking the door until we get a common point of view on what we’re going to do. That’s how urgent I view this situation.” Natural drought happens. But combine that with infrastructure built 50 years ago for a population half the size it is today and federal regulations that reduce how much water is allocated across the state, and the result is troublesome: California is facing the loss of livelihoods and farms. While farmers and ranchers have been feeling the pinch for several years now, the state’s water situation has hit a breaking point, and the effects are becoming more widespread. Across the state water rates are increasing, rationing is being enforced and people are losing jobs. “I think (Whitman) is all for a comprehensive water plan that includes immediate relief and interim relief and long term infrastructure,” said Ferguson, who grows crops such as pistachios, melons

and cotton on his ranch. “It gives me some confidence that someone realizes what a huge problem this is in the state.” Whitman calls California water situation 'a crisis for America' In Modesto, Whitman met with the Stanislaus County Farm Bureau. In Fresno, she toured Fowler Packing Company, which produces and ships tree fruit, grapes and citrus. She met with the California Latino Water Coalition, and received the endorsement of the Nisei Farmers League, which represents more than 1,000 growers and food processors — and their 90,000 employees — in several western states. California agriculture is a $32 billion industry. Agriculture in the Central Valley makes up $20 billion of that figure. Whitman said what she saw was powerful, and a visit to those farms should be a wake-up call for legislators. State and national leaders, along with farms and urban areas, must actively find ways to conserve and to improve water distribution and storage. “It really is a crisis now. And if you look at the unemployment rates, and the 30 percent of the land that’s not planted — this is not just a crisis for California, this is a crisis for America because of the importance the Central Valley has to the United States’ food supply,” Whitman said. “If (a solution) doesn’t happen, we’re going to be having this same discussion 15 years from now and it will be far worse.” Longtime farmer says Whitman can strike balance, solve problems Since 1985, Joe Del Bosque and his wife have owned and operated Empresas Del Bosque, a farm that grows and packages cantaloupes, asparagus and almonds. Farming is all the Los Banos resident has ever known, growing up as a farmer’s son and working the fields alongside his father. He’s seen many problems in his days. Still, he’s never seen a situation as dire as it is now. “We’ve been able to overcome all kinds of challenges with weather, pests, disease, markets — all kinds of things — but there’s never been a challenge quite like we have now and that is lack of water,” Del Bosque said. He invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in 200 acres of land and expensive irrigation systems to go with it. But today, water doesn’t run through those pipes. Another 850 acres has gone unplanted. Still, he’s paying rent and taxes on the land, struggling to stay afloat and to keep his workers — who have given their lives to his farm — employed. “We’re going into survival mode, and it’s a very daunting position we’re in,” Del Bosque said. “We want to know that our future will have some reliability, that we will be here, that we will have water to continue because water is the lifeblood of agriculture in this state and without it we cannot operate.” He’s looking for a governor who can reverse what Whitman calls “the humanitarian crisis,” as water sources dry up and decades-old family operations are forced to shut down. He wants someone who can strike a balance and find compromise among the many groups who have so many interests in how water is distributed throughout the state. In Whitman, Del Bosque says he sees a leader who could achieve all of that. “I can see that Meg has a very good understanding of the situation and she’s a very pragmatic thinker,” he said. “She comes from private enterprise just like we are from private enterprise and she has the mindset of, ‘How do you get these issues resolved? How do you solve problems?’ And I

think that she has the ability to do that.” In Modesto, Whitman reinvigorates farmers A fifth-generation cattle farmer, Tom Orvis says farming was always something he felt in his soul, something he wanted to pass along to his children. But things got tough, and a career in farming quickly became impractical as he faced putting two children through college. Today, the governmental affairs director for the Stanislaus County Farm Bureau says he misses his days on the farm. But he also sees his brothers — who now manage the family operation — feeling the same strain that caused Orvis to step away. Orvis says he's confident that Whitman can be the leader to turn things around. Her business sense and her recognition that agriculture is the backbone of California's economy have already won his support, months before the primary election. “I’m extremely impressed with what I heard here today,” Orvis said after Whitman spoke Tuesday to the Stanislaus County Farm Bureau in Modesto. “Meg is a new voice and a new light in California.” He believes Whitman can be the leader who will revitalize agriculture in California and allow those like Orvis who love it — who feel it in their bodies and their souls — to return to the land once again.

Meg News Channel is a fully dedicated media team, which produces original video and print content for the Meg Whitman Campaign. To learn more, go to http://www.megwhitman.com/media_center.php

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