Hungry in America; a growing problem

According to government statistics 49 million Americans are going hungry. What is even more heart wrenching is that 17 million of these are children.  President Obama promised during the campaign to eliminate childhood hunger in America by 2015. Many of the families that ran out of food before they could afford to buy more, earned above the poverty level. Hunger and malnutrition is a huge issue with lifelong consequences.

Much of the food in America is grown in California. What should be a concern to everyone is that many of the fields are not planted and orchards are drying out from lack of water. The local farmers call this a Congress created,  " Dust Bowl."

Early in 2009, The Bureau of Reclamation for the first time projected zero water allocations for agricultural water service contractors on the west side of the San Joachin Valley.  As a consequence as many as 500,000 acres will be taken out of production. Also as many as 40,000 farm workers will lose their jobs.

The San Joachin Valley continues to face a water crisis in which  the water supplies have become inadequate to meet expanding needs. Demands by dometic uses, industry, and the environment continue to grow and strain the water supply to the breaking point. 

One of the issues as noted on Congressman Devin Neves ( R- Ca ) web page is inadequate water infrastructure. He notes that many of the problems were a direct result of Congressional action taken in 1992.

Environmentalists would argue that diverting water for farming poses a severe environmental risk. The National Marine Fisheries Service announced that the operation of both state and federal water projects are contributing to the extinction of salmon, sturgeon, and southern resident killer whales and steel head.

According to Newsweek's Katie Paul, the sum total of this problem is a microcosm of national political issues. The confluence of increasingly strict environmental regulation, political negligence, a three year drought and a century's worth of uncontrolled growth. As for solutions they are  not  as simple a problem as Congressman Neves believes when he states all they need to do is turn on the pumps. In addition many planners are asking for the first time if things should be returned to the way they were or not.

The San Joachin Valley was once a natural Dust Bowl. It was made green by a system of irrigation dams and canals built during  The Great Depression. The historian Kevin Starr calls it," The most productive unnatural environment on earth."

The San Joachin Valley by itself produces more than any other individual state. In 1992 Congress passed new federal standards for maintaining ecosystems. Increasing amounts of water have been set aside for wild life restrictions. A U.C. Berkeley analysis claims that the economic impact of these water restrictions could top $ 48 million dollars.

On November 10, 2009 Arnold Swarzenegger, the Governor of California signed a far reaching water bond intended to rebuild the states water infrastructure. Unfortunately, this will not provide immediate results,

We can bail out banks that are too big to fail but not people. As more and more people are going hungry we seem to be incompetant as a nation when it comes to figuring out how to properly balance ecology, planning and finally keeping farmers growing crops.