Farming in 2014

Okay, so I'm back.

I forgot that one of the reasons I got this thing in the first place is I wanted full editorial control over my writing and didn't want to post all my ideas on Survivalblog.com which has its own particular slant, despite being run by a writing colleague I've known 20 years. He's into bunkering, I'm into problem solving, both of us are largely convinced there are too many bad people running around loose. We deal with that our own ways.

I like transportation and working. He wants an independent farm or ranch but lacks the knowledge and money to actually do it in a place that makes sense so struggles on in Idaho rather than knuckle down in California where the growing season is twice as long. He's from farm country in Mendocino county, you see. Out by Boonville in Anderson Valley. A hard place to make a living, but better than the Palouse Hills in Idaho. If you're going to be a farmer, do it where you can grow things and sell them for a profit. Otherwise you're handicapping yourself and that's both expensive and foolish, in my opinion. As my Uncle and Grandfather were both farmers, and I grew up in farming (vineyards and wineries) and ranch country in Sonoma County (California), I do have some deeper understanding of this. I don't do it myself, but I'm interested in the subject. It is a core industry in California, far more valuable than High Tech or Movies or Tourism.

Agriculture.com is interesting. It's a website for agriculture news, for farmers. I've watching some good trends in Agriculture and the ones I find the most interesting are:

• Electric tractors, with solar panels on barns charging battery banks to charge tractors overnight for use the next day. There are now electric combines and solar powered wells for irrigation, replacing field engines who get their fuel stolen or stop running. PV is cheaper and more reliable.
• Biodiesel is a good stop-gap fuel until electric farm vehicles are cheaper and more efficient. Farm vehicles running on farm diesel avoids the pitfalls of gasoline going bad. Biodiesel with hobby level refining of oil feedstocks are very important. Having all farm vehicles running diesel or alcohol keeps costs down, so include ATVs and side by sides with a small hitch on the back for a trailer or other farm accessory. While I like motorcycles for their power to weight ratio, ATVs are more practical on farms, thus you see many of them in the real world.
• Agricultural telemetry is a new-ish thing, and has a huge future for IT nerds willing to work with real world environments with dirt, corrosion, and water. On advanced vineyards, you can find Wifi remote thermometers and humidity sensors reporting to a hub displaying a map and controlling irrigation. This automates irrigation so fields don't die in the heat. A big problem here and cuts costs of water as well as improves quality of plants. Better grapes grown in marginal lands that cost a fraction as much as the natural environment in the Napa and Alexander valley, which is most ideal for vineyards. If you're growing in the Foothills or Lake County, where its hotter and there's no fog and your water is coming from drilled wells, you need this to make it work.
• Drip irrigation is most efficient and cheap way to grow veggies for home or farmers market. Less water, all goes on plants, no water for weeds, means less effort to run them. Set them on a timer, upgrade to telemetry someday. Integrate controls into your farming server or PC to manage them. Start simple and small, grow complicated later.
• Cheap greenhouses with heat opening hatches to let out excess heat, and thermostat controlled heaters to prevent freezing inside means plants can be started in flats and transplanted later, for a much earlier start once frosts are over. This improves yields and lengthens their growing season.
• Leaf grinders and soil amendments are a great way to improve soil and enhance fertility. Rice hulls are excellent for mechanical aeration and last 10 years in the ground. This being California, rice hulls are cheap and necessary since the volcanoes make for sticky clay soils. Tilling farm waste into the ground has its pros and cons. You have to watch out for bugs and do your crop rotation to starve them out. This is WHY we do crop rotation in the first place.
• Levees are likely to break, even with maintenance. State is unwilling to dredge river bottoms, and basic hydraulic physics means those rivers cut their banks and S curve, naturally. There is no escape from flooding without raising surrounding land. Dredging the bottoms is cheaper. Shifting topsoil and placing the dredgings below is cheaper. Nobody is doing that. The penalties will be huge, with topsoil washed away and seasonal lakes wrecking land next to levees along the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers. This is a multi-billion dollar project that must be done to delay inevitable land loss to flooding and resulting famine, which always brings war. This must be done in California and in the South.
• Hobby Farmers are seeking elusive farming knowledge, unburdened by economic realities of profitability. Farmers cannot afford to stare in happiness. They mostly worry and wonder if the crops will sell for more than it cost to grow, and if the weather will cooperate. Growing where there is sufficient water, under your control, and good weather typically, reduces the negative factors and gives you the advantages.

This brings up real estate. I live above the Sierra Foothills on the East side of the Sacramento Valley. Marysville and Yuba City below me are a major rice growing region, with orchards to the north (nuts and fruits), worth billions a year, with their water coming from the river flowing about 8 miles north of me, the Yuba. The rice grown there feeds over 1 billion people in Asia, mainly Japan and China. Neither country can grow enough food for themselves, due to either lacking mechanization (China) or a willing workforce (Japan). We grow their food, and essentially dominate their ability to survive because we can cut them off. This is big and important, though never directly stated. Its only a threat if we don't use it. If we do, its genocide. Thus this is a powerful political weapon to counter their purchase of US T-bills.

Farm towns in agricultural areas in California are largely Spanish speaking but this is not the only way forever. With a lack of employment opportunities and mechanization, there are still White people in farming. While African Americans are largely disinterested in it, highly dismissive even, none of us may have much choice in the matter. If you aren't able to underbid Asian manufacturing contracts in the City, you are completely dependent on govt aid to eat, and that's only important so long as you vote or threaten riots that don't provoke deadly response from police or national guard. A fine line. Eventually your value is too low and we know what happens, historically, to those populations.

Whites consider themselves too good for stoop labor, but like vineyards and wine making, like gardening, and grow far too much sensamilla in marginal lands. They're fine with mechanized farming, they just don't like short handled hoes or picking cotton by hand. And short handled hoes are where fields of tomatoes come in. Mechanize that and Mexican labor will be struggling since they tend to be illegals and not invest in local land. They send their wages back to their wife and children in Mexico. And that opens farm town real estate to for-profit white farmers.

Most farm towns in the Sacramento valley are dusty, and at least half empty. They are a good opportunity for general contractors who want to buy a distressed property, renovate, and flip for a profit. Just be sure the properties are either in the little farm towns with active fields and orchards, or in those fields and orchards. Most farmers walk to work, and most farm workers hitch a ride on a pickup truck for day labor. The better skilled have their own vehicles and carry family with them, full up, every seat, to the fields for the day. You see them in the summer time, weeding and trimming trees or picking.

While high tech is dying down in the Bay Area, desperate families are looking for new careers. Manufacturing machines is not it. Food is, and farming will offer a more consistent profit, done right, than working for someone else at minimum wage, Part Time, with no benefits. Any person considering this had best learn Spanish to a conversational level, just to get along with others practically. There is no way around this. It is a reality. Like kitchens in most restaurants, the guy you're working with is Spanish speaking and probably not born here.

The big limitation is drought. Right now we're having drought. Its lovely weather, don't get me wrong. 75'F in January. 45'F nights. Lovely. Sunny and warm. But we need rain, lots of it, to refill the reservoirs for next summer's agriculture and the dry season which runs from May to November is also the best growing season. Almost two seasons. And sometimes three depending on crops. Cold weather crops grown in summer up North are winter crops here, for profit or soil improvement. They call Alfalfa "green manure" and you till it back into the ground before it goes to seed. This forces more nitrogen and organic matter into the soil so the next crop that's nitrogen hungry, like corn or tomatoes, will flourish. Soybeans are a good oil crop and fix nitrogen into the soil for later crops too. That oil can be sold or burned as biodiesel.

Someday there will be smaller agricultural robots with limited brains to work marginal lands like people used to for higher wages, likely increasing used arable land by double. There's lots of unused arable land because it is hard to use a big combine or tractor to till and maintain it compared to giant irrigated circles with minimal labor to care for.

I think farming is going to be an important topic this year. We should all be paying attention to it. Even if you never want to till the soil or plant something, there will be jobs for farm mechanics and tractor repairmen and the welders and machinists who keep farming equipment running. Low paying, usually, but lots of consistent work. Better than being unemployed in the Bay Area.