Is California Farming Doomed to Decline?

SACRAMENTO, Calif. May 26, 2003 — -- If California were a country, it would be the sixth-largest agricultural producer in the world, growing 350 crops from artichokes to walnuts, and providing one in every four glasses of milk Americans drink.

Everyone in America thinks California is synonymous with farming, so what could be wrong? Some see the makings of a farm crisis. It is, to say the least, a little hard to grasp.

"We're producing more but yet our input prices have gone up," said Ken Oneto of the KLM Farm, south of Sacramento. The farm, which has been in the same family for three generations, grows everything from wheat to cherries and artichokes.

"Fuel is gone up two or three times," Oneto added. "Workman's comp insurance is up three times. Labor is up three or four times."

And there is international competition in everything, from everywhere.

Oneto grows wheat, but it won't be long before China stops importing wheat and starts exporting it. Their production costs don't begin to compare.

"The price you receive as a farmer for your commodity is determined by global supply and demand now … because it is possible to import commodities from any continent on the globe," said Steve Blank, an agricultural economist at the University of California-Davis.

The problem for farmers is accelerating. Supply and demand may be increasingly global, but production costs are always local. The big agricultural corporations simply go to another country, where the price is right.

And here's another problem in the neighborhood: At Lincoln High School, on the north side of Sacramento, they have their own farm. A lot of high schools used to — but land is being lost to urban sprawl and the kids are looking for other things to do.

"Lincoln's developing a lot," one teenage boy said. "We're losing a lot of good agricultural land. And a lot of kids are really getting away from it."

"It's hard work and you don't get paid a lot anymore," said a girl. "So it's hard to make a good living out of it."

Think about all this the next time you're in the supermarket — tomatoes from Mexico, cantaloupe from Guatemala and grapes from Chile, not to mention apricots from Turkey, peaches from Greece and South Africa, pears from Argentina. It never stops.

The American family farm seems no longer essential to the American portrait.

"Yeah, we're down to what, 2 percent of the population of the country?" Oneto said. "It's a great lifestyle, but it's a rotten business."

That's why there are fewer farms in California every year.