Fires in the West

[Carol Dee]

WOW that is cool

 

[flowerbug]

Knock knock , hello ... do you even realize that you have been brainwashed by those that live in la la land ?

do you realize that i actually look at the world around me and see the damage the older generation keeps pushing off and never takes responsibility for? i'm not going by what the big agricultural and chemical companies are advertizing and funding to teach more farmers how to kill off even more of the environment. yep, certainly, that's brainwashing... yep, yep... lol

look at the world, look at the wild animal populations, look at your groundwater situation, what condition is it in, what are your rivers like, etc. those speak clearly to me.

the rivers that are recovering are those where people fight to remove dams and where water is restored via buying out farmers or other water rights and putting it back in the river where it belongs. i'll take their vision over a functional ecosystem before i'll accept a dead river as a way to treat this planet.

 

[flowerbug]

There is an organic blue berry farm here in our county. The farmer has an estimate of 10 million of which 1.7 million have been harvested so far (Oregon produces 100 million lbs a year). The day labor crew left for a higher paying job. He now has almost 8 million lbs rotting on the bushes. NOBODY wants to pick. Its very hard labor and only the migrant farm workers, many of whom are illegal, want to work that hard.

Oregon min wage is $10.25 a hour. Harvest wages average $12.50 an hour. Unemployment in OR is 4.1%. UE in Grants Pass is 6.1%

Blueberries are rotting on the bush.

they weren't willing to pay a high enough wage to keep the workers or to attract others to do the work. the consequences of our current government's inability to actually govern IMO.

 

[flowerbug]

We purchased 20 acres in the arid high desert open rangeland type of land that grew mostly tumbleweeds in the central valley of Cal. We drilled a water well to the depth of 29 feet that procuces 152 gallons of water per minute because we were fortunate to tap into a ( now filled in with silt erosion from the mountains over eons) prehistoric creek bed. Before we got there the carrying capacity was ONE cow . Now , the carrying capacity is 5 cows plus their calves. Meanwhile, just a mile West one has to drill at least 300' to 500' to yield 4 gal. per minute IF the water does NOT have a high percentage of salt on over 100,000 acres so it is undrinkable and not suitable to water a garden. What are those people to do ? That is why the dam and irrigation canals was build to harness the annual snow melt from the high Sierra Nevada Mountains. Now the large proportion of these lands produce millions of tuns of almonds, pistacios, apples, pears, walnuts, oranges, lemons, grapes for wine and raisins, tomatoes , field crops, cotton, dairies, beef, sheep, etc. With the misguided loss of the water, a large portion of this food producing area that employed thousands of migrant workers as well as the land owners and their families is returning to tumble weeds. The vast majority of the workers and their families now collect welfare checks and many of the land owners had to move into cities and have to find a job that is IF they can find one and their house rents are increasing every year , Great ha ?

agriculture in an arid environment is always going to be a risk. the people who don't understand that shouldn't be in the business or everntually they'll go under. i thought the conservative mantra was for people to be responsible for their choices.

as for the loss of value, i'd say that you sold for what the buyer aka free market would pay. that's the other conservative mantra. oops. sorry, it shouldn't apply to you?

the carrying capacity of acreage is good to know, but also good to know is the diversity of species and the ability of that pasture to survive drought and fire, how many diseases were endemic, etc. there's a lot more to any pasture than carrying capacity.

was the well pumping rate sustainable indefinitely? that's the other point. was the water level going up or down after years of pumping? if you kept track of that and pumped within your limits then you were one of the rare smarter people.

those who pumped their acquifers and got them so salty that they can't use the water it's pretty clear that wasn't sustainable. so why would you expect those jobs to be anything other than temporary on the bigger scale of things? you can bring in water from other places but that's always going to have it's own issues and those tradeoffs are often damaging to other places (such as turning the many square miles of the previous productive Colorado River Delta into unproductive square miles) or ruining miles of previously productive river (fishing, wildlife, no more ground water recharge, etc.). you don't get a free lunch pulling such things. try to give the Delta some water back and people complain that you're wasting water. what they don't mention is all the evaporative losses and various other costs involved in moving that amount of water around nor do they mention that the water from the Colorado River has quite a bit of salts in it too so using it for irrigation is eventually going to be a problem no matter where it goes...

have you ever had to deal with land ruined by sustained irrigation salt buildup? do you know how many acres of land are currently being negotiated over being fallowed or abandoned because of such issues? i can tell you it's in the many millions of $...

the current cry in many quarters is desalinization but they don't usually tell you what they're going to do with the stuff they filter out. in the inland irrigation districts they're going to have to deal with that and i would guess they're going to try to dump it in some river or pump it back underground... which eventually catches up to them in other ways... again, no free lunch.

i don't considered fallowed land a loss if it is actually allowed to go back to wild lands. especially in an arid climate. that's just the obvious consequence of an unsustainable system in an arid climate. perhaps a dryland farmer could pick it up and do something with it, but i sure hope it's an organic farmer who uses natural methods and does so sustainably. one who also values the wild lands and encourages species diversity. i'll cheer for such people.

 

[flowerbug]

And you're an expert on this how?
They are not isolated training kills.

statistics from?

 

[Nyboy]

Thistle 14 days without a shower

 

[seedcorn]

Thistle 14 days without a shower

Why? Glad u r in NY.....

 

[Nyboy]

I shower 2x sometimes 3x a day. A few times I overslept did not shower before work felt gross all day. Sorry 2 weeks is way to long between showers

 

[thistlebloom]

Why? Glad u r in NY.....

Oh brother! Hahaha!

 

[seedcorn]

Oh brother! Hahaha!

Since I just glanced wasn’t following train of thought......