As the California drought continues to rage on, so do tempers in Sacramento about how to handle the issue. Lawmakers are proposing a serious advancement in using more taxpayer money to buy out farms and sequester the land.
This is not a new strategy, but it is a larger take, with the new proposal giving the California senate up to $1.5 billion dollars to purchase out farms and put those lands under the protection of certain wetland and protected lands categories.
California does have a complex water rights history and system. It is unclear if this proposal could help the state drought, though it is worth noting that incentives for this style of conservation have already been in place. This would just make it a much larger operation.
There is also another state proposal that would attempt to offer to also pay farmers to grow fewer crops that the state deems could help benefit drought relief, another plan that is considered dubious by many.
It is important to note that many farmers have already had their state water allocations severely reduced, sometimes to zero. The drought has affected a great many people, with home owners also feeling the effect of state restrictions across the state.
California is the nation’s and the world’s premier Agricultural powerhouse for many fruits, nuts, and vegetables. And because of this, it is massively important to the state and US economy – employing hundreds of thousands of people and thousands of businesses across the state and nation.
The battle between agricultural interests versus environmental interests in the state is nothing new, with a great many opinions.
California Democrats in the state are currently detailing this proposal and are proposing the state be able to: buy the land associated with the rights, buy just the right itself, or be able to put an easement on the land that requires the water to be used for fish and other fauna and flora.
Sen. Bob Wieckowski (D), representative of the San Francisco Bay Area, chair the budget subcommittee overseeing environmental spending, stated, “It’s like we’re taking a page from corporate America and we’re buying back stock.” However, some have considered this statement seriously ignorant and faulty.
Another issue, is that though $1.5 billion dollars seems like a a lot of money, it likely would not be able to purchase that much land or water right – which begs the question, why do this, if it likely won’t matter anyways? The state committee is also assuming the price of acreage to be at around $7,500 an acre of land, which seems extremely low considering the type of farmland they would ultimately want to buy. (But hey, they did such an amazing job with the high-speed rail cost estimates and project after all – so who are we to question them.)
However, for the state plan to work, it would likely require that farmers voluntarily sell their land, and there are some that would wish to do so undoubtedly.
With an aging Ag community, whose children seem mostly uninterested in continuing the legacy; as well as, state officials constantly adding more burdensome and unnecessary regulation – there are farmers who would want to sell.
In regard to regulation overload, Sen. Brian Dahle (R), and a family legacy farmer, vehemently stated, “This makes my blood boil. It’s ridiculous,” Dahle told his colleagues during a legislative hearing on the proposal. “You are forcing them into a corner where they have no other option.”
And again, it is unlikely this plan will have any real affect, especially considering the vast complexities of how water rights work to begin with. Not to mention again, the types of, and amount of, land the government would be able to purchase even with $1.5 billion dollars.
If California State Democrats cannot make this program work, they would have to resort to policy and legal changes to California law. This is considered to be a much slower choice, as those types of actions would inevitably be mired in hundreds of lawsuits, and potentially lasts decades.
