agriculture

The Central California Town That Keeps Sinking

By Lois Henry

In California’s San Joaquin Valley, the farming town of Corcoran has a multimillion-dollar problem. It is almost impossible to see, yet so vast it takes NASA scientists using satellite technology to fully grasp. Corcoran is sinking.

Over the past 14 years, the town has sunk as much as 11.5 feet in some places — enough to swallow the entire first floor of a two-story house and to at times make Corcoran one of the fastest-sinking areas in the country, according to experts with the United States Geological Survey.

The Emerging Strawberry Crisis: Innovate or Else

By Paul S. Towers

Sitting before a panel of legislators, a Santa Cruz area farmer recently compared the potential fate of California’s strawberry industry to the current state of American automakers. He argued that if agriculture doesn’t innovate, it faces a bumpy road ahead. And, he argued, that the decisions of regulators today will create the roadmap for the future of farming. It’s no easy task–the direction of the state’s agriculture system is at stake. One set of choices sets us down the road of producing food that continues to poison humans and contaminate our soil, water and air; the other turns a corner to widespread adoption of methods that, though they are more sophisticated and foreign to most conventional growers, produce safe and healthy food for all.

X Close

Subscribe to Our Mailing List