David: It’s been several days since I blogged. We’ve passed through several cities, notably Yuma, without me writing. Chris said maybe it was because it’s hard to “meet people” in the larger cities. “We need to meet some people,” she said, “Then you will be able to write.”
I initially stopped in when I saw a huge row of palm trees and stopped to take pictures. It turns out those are palms but not date palms. They are palm trees that put out branches year after year which are not cut off, creating a natural windbreak. There were date palms across the road. It’s Tom’s Hay Farm but they also raise dates. The average yield for an acre of dates is 4.5 tons of dates. The grower gets $3,880 a ton. You can do the math.
It’s not all profit. Tom says each tree gets 5 different treatments during the growing season. Trimming, shaping (twice), covering with a bag, harvesting. Most of that work is done by people who come across the border with work visas. Mexicans, but also Guatemalans and Peruvians. Men with small and lithe bodies to ride the machines that lift them into the air to work. don’t know how much they get paid.
Of course, everything that is grown here also depends on water. Irrigation.
Most of us have heard about the Colorado River and how it supplies two countries (The US and Mexico) and more than 7 states with water. We’ve also heard about how it’s drying up, threatening the cities and farms that depend on it. Yesterday I was researching the Great American Canal system that was inaugurated in the 1930s to dam the Colorado River and distribute the water to the the deserts of California, Arizona and New Mexico to support agriculture.
There are 1/2 million acres being irrigated and cultivated in California’s Imperial Valley, where they can grow crops year round.
I have always seen that as a problem. Using scarce water to grow crops in the desert. Especially thirsty crops like rice, cotton and alfalfa.
Tom is the owner of Tom’s Hay Farm. (He’s on the left in the picture below). Tom is very anxious to tell us why that does make sense. “Years ago, before the Colorado River was damned and run through canals, it would periodically flood this entire region, and deposit a thick layer of silt. We’re basically farming the floor of the Pacific Ocean.”
I asked if, since the Colorado River doesn’t flood anymore, the fertility was going to run out. Tom said no. “We as farmers are more concerned about conservation and environmental practices that anyone. We have very little organic matter in the soil: the sun bakes it out. So we are constantly adding to it. We work hay and straw into it. The green manure from plants and trees. We would like to use sludge (dried and treated sewage waste) but California doesn’t allow it. Where does the sludge from San Diego and Los Angeles go? They truck it past us and pay farmers in Arizona to accept it.”
Farmers like Tom are thrifty in many ways. Dylan, on the right below, was proud of the fence at the base of the palm trees running into the farm. “Those are from the old wall with Mexico,” he explained. When the wall was rebuilt several years ago, it was cheaper for the Border Control to give the fence materials to the farmers than pay to have them hauled away.”
Tom said the wall has made a complete difference in the number of asylum seekers (my term) coming across the border. “I don’t have a problem with when they would come and ask for water. I don’t have a problem when they ask for food: I give them food. But when someone knocks on my door and says ‘Come get my friend,’ and it’s a woman who is dying from the physical and sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of the smugglers . . .” And his voice trailed off and his eyes filled with tears.
There is a downside to human attempts to manipulate nature in this scale. The water that runs through the canals from the Colorado River has naturally occurring salts and other minerals. Over time, the fields get more and more salinated. Before, the floods would leach the salt out. Now it builds up. When the irrigation water goes on the fields, there is back wash that ends up back in the canals through ground water seepage. The California Environmental Health Hazard Assessment Department has issued an advisory against fishing in the canals because of the high concentrations of Mercury, PCBs and Selenium.
And, there is a cost in terms of human lives. More than 500 people have drowned in the canals since they were inaugurated in the 1930s. The buoys across the canals are a reminder of that danger, as well as the fact that not everyone accepts that toll as a “cost of doing business.” The buoys save lives without asking why people are in the canals.
Dylan’s and Tom were both friendly and generous. Dylan said he would give me a bag of dates. “We sell the boxes,” he explained. I said I would be happy to pay for dates.
Tom told Dylan he had already set out a box on the counter for me.
Thank you for the dates, and your time, and your care for the earth, and for the people around you.
Yet another example about how things can sometimes seem to be clear from a distance but upon closer examination there may be nuances not considered before.
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