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A Hard Look at Low-Value Crops
With California's water debate increasingly cast in terms of people and fish vs. farms, obtaining water from the alfalfa, cotton, pasture and rice grown on almost 3.8 million acres of California farmland looks to some like the answer to the state's water prayers. All four are thirsty crops and have relatively little dollar value compared with the state's luscious avocados, citrus, tomatoes, grapes and orchard fruits.
"Even the most horrible scenarios for urban water demand and future population growth could easily be met by diverting some water away from these four low-value crops," says the S.F. Regional Board's Larry Kolb. He notes that according to State Department of Finance figures, these four crops account for only about one-quarter of one percent of the state's economy while using about 30% of its developed water (water that is either pumped out of the ground or diverted from surface water sources for human uses, be they urban or agricultural). "Together these four crops use about 14 million acre-feet of water a year, while all urban uses combined only use 5 million," he says.
Needless to say, farming interests object to the notion that crops should be sacrificed for the sake of cities and the environment, and cite Department of Water Resources statistics in agriculture's defense. "Agriculture and related industries provide nearly one out of 10 jobs in the state, and nearly 28% of the jobs in the Central Valley," says Michael Wade of the California Farm Water Coalition. In addition to farming jobs themselves, these figures include processing, trucking, fertilizer manufacturing and sales and other farming-related jobs, says Wade.
However, Kolb points out that while high-value crops are labor intensive and provide lots of jobs, low-value crops are not. Indeed, from a grower's perspective, this is one of their virtues. "If you've got cheap water and very low labor costs, you can still make money even if the price of the crop itself is relatively low," he says.
But some say crop value and employment numbers shouldn't be the whole story and cite alfalfa as an example. Wade points out that other industries depend on alfalfa and rice, giving these crops a role in the state's economy that far exceeds their dollar value. For example, U.C.Davis alfalfa specialist Dan Putnam says the high quality and low price of alfalfa is one of the primary reasons for the explosive growth of the state's dairy industry, the largest in the nation and the state's biggest agricultural enterprise.
Putnam says some low-value crops also have less obvious benefits. "Most growers grow a mix of crops for very good economic reasons. First of all, if everyone just grew a very high-value crop, in five years you couldn't make any money off it," because the laws of supply and demand would drive prices too low. Furthermore, he says low-value crops such as alfalfa are important as rotation crops even to growers of high-value crops such as tomatoes and lettuce, which "are of higher value but are also higher risk." Putnam says lettuce growers in the Imperial Valley have told him that they make money on lettuce only one or two years out of five. "Lower value crops really have a major role in keeping farms alive - they don't make farmers a lot of money, but they keep places going," he says. Putnam adds that alfalfa in particular also helps keep soil healthy. "Alfalfa obtains most of its nitrogen from the atmosphere. This means we don't have to use nitrogen fertilizers on alfalfa, and it contributes nitrogen to the next crop."
Defenders of low-value crops also point to their role in preserving habitat. Putnam says that Central Valley studies of wildlife in different types of landscapes have found that many species prefer alfalfa even over wild areas nearby. "Alfalfa is high nutritive forage so it's good for any type of herbivore, including rabbits and gophers. Then you get the predators - raptors and foxes -that prey on them."
Apart from the pros and cons of individual crops, Putnam thinks the whole low-value vs. high-value issue may just cloud a bigger picture. "Agriculture is in the same boat as the environment when you start making an economic argument - urban interests will always win. You can always make more money per acre-foot of water with a high-rise full of lawyers than with any crop that I've ever heard of. So if you look at water use purely economically, we'd better just give up and let the whole state look like Los Angeles."
Contact: Larry Kolb (510)622-2372; Dan Putnam (530)752-8982 or Michael Wade (916)441-7723
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