Western drought puts food security at risk
Water is in short supply in the West. A coalition of farmers and farm organizations recently ran a national ad in the Wall Street Journal to educate consumers on the fact that farms producing much of the food in the U.S. shouldn't be taken for granted.
“Without prioritizing a safe, affordable, domestic food supply, higher prices and food shortages could be coming soon,” Mike Wade, executive director of the California Farm Water Coalition, said in a news release.
Consumers pay attention when food prices go up. With prices rising, they are forced to make decisions about what they can buy.
“Western agriculture supports the national economy and is the foundation for U.S. consumers to pay less on food than anywhere else in the world,” said Dan Keppen, executive director of the Family Farm Alliance.
The Family Farm Alliance is one of the partners in producing the ad. The coalition hopes to awaken consumers and affect government action.
“Over 80% of our country’s fruits, nuts and vegetables are grown west of the Rockies, but current government policies are putting that food supply and the farms that produce it at risk,” Wade said in the release. “In addition to produce, beef, poultry and dairy are also at risk.”
Many western growers have had their stored water supply cut to very little or zero.
“The water bureaucracy continues to allocate water for purposes that decades of data show simply do nothing to help fish or the environment,” Wade said in the release. “Our government must move much more quickly to build the infrastructure necessary for us to store water in wet years for use in dry ones like 2021 and 2022.
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Most consumers do not know that the national food supply is at risk because of Western droughts.
Without balance among water uses, none of these farms can continue to operate. Wade said in the release that consumers will see shortages at the store and higher prices. They will have to rely more on increasingly unstable foreign sources.
“Consumers have experienced supply chain disruptions over the past two years and now see the tension around the world as a potential threat to global food supplies,” Wade said in the release. “We thought it was important to remind them that California remains our best, most reliable source for food if farmers have the water they need to grow it.”
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