Part 2 (1/2)

At the very least, we could s.h.i.+ft the nature of subsidies to stave off more water losses. Many small and midsize farmers canat convert to precision irrigation and other water-saving technologies, because their margins are so small. Helping farmers use less is often a wiser investment than building new supply projects that goad them to use more.

In the twenty-first century, local, state, and federal governments have upped incentives to help farmers pay for new technologies that slash water use. After the sinkhole scourge, the Southwest Florida Water Management District paid three-fourths the cost for any upgrade that would cut a farmas pumping in half. Farmers lined up to install tailwater-recovery ponds, which collect excess irrigation and rainwater for reuse, soil-moisture probes and weather stations to prevent overwatering, and other technologies.

But nationwide, funding for these programs is a drop in the bucket compared with traditional agricultural and irrigation subsidies. And one sector that is a particular drain on water is getting a particular boost from the government.

In 1925, Henry Ford told the New York Times that ethanol would be athe fuel of the future.a His Model T was designed to run on gasoline, ethanol, or both. But ethanol would be the best bet for America long term, he believed: aThere is fuel in every bit of vegetable matter that can be fermented. Thereas enough alcohol in one yearas yield of an acre of potatoes to drive the machinery necessary to cultivate the fields for a hundred years.a34 The point was crucial to Ford because Midwestern family farms like the one he grew up on in Michigan were facing an economic crisis that would soon worsen in the Great Depression. He promoted ethanol as a way to boost markets for American corn. Black-and-white photographs from the 1930s show Nebraskans fueling their Fords at corn-ethanol blend stations, juicy ears of maize painted on the tall fuel pumps. Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell were among those who joined Ford in calling for homegrown fuel. But ethanol ended up on the historic road not taken after some dramatic twists and turns driven in part by cheaper petroleum prices. In any case, it did not turn out to be the panacea Ford imagined.35 Nor is it quite the elixir hoped to cure the nationas current dependence on petroleuma”at least not when made from corn. When oil prices spiked in 2007, along with violence and uncertainty in the Middle East, Congress overhauled U.S. energy policy with the Energy Independence and Security Act. The original aim was to cut petroleum subsidies to encourage private investment in alternative fuels. But the well of government largesse proved impossible to cap: Congress illogically kept the petroleum subsidies and created huge new ones for biofuels to help reduce our oil dependence. Ultimately, Congress settled on a strategy to improve fuel efficiency in our cars and require a higher percentage of biofuels in our tanks. The act calls for a nearly fivefold increase in U.S. ethanol production, to 117 billion litersa”thatas almost 31 billion gallonsa”by 2022. By 2015, nearly half of that is supposed to come from corn ethanol.

The ramp-up has serious unintended consequences for Americaas freshwater. Demand for corn has pushed crops beyond relatively rainy states such as Kentucky, Ohio, and Iowa, where it grows with little to no irrigation. Now, the ethanol craze has farmers planting more corn in states such as California, Colorado, and Nebraskaa”where it needs a lot of water, and where water resources are some of the most threatened in the country.

Scientists always knew corn ethanol would be a thirsty proposition. They estimated that between 263 and 784 liters of water would be required to grow and convert corn for each liter of fuel. But in the driest western states, researchers have found the water usage needs to be much higher than they projected, as much as 2,138 liters of water for one liter of ethanol.36 The drain on aquifers is only part of the problem. Of the agricultural water that does return to nature, roughly 30 percent is contaminated with nutrients, soil particles, pesticides, minerals, and salts picked up on the farm.37 Midwestern cornfields send large amounts of fertilizer into streams that meet up with the Mississippi as it flows to the Gulf of Mexico. As they make their way into the Gulf, the nutrients feed giant algae blooms that suck up oxygen as they decompose, wiping out sea life. The result is Gulf hypoxia, occurring in a widening dead zone that at times is as large as Ma.s.sachusetts.38 All of this makes biofuels little more sustainable than petroleuma”aat least not in the way we practice row-crop agriculture to produce the feedstocks for bioethanol and biodiesel in the United States today,a says Jerald Schnoor, an environmental-engineering professor at the University of Iowa.39 Nearly thirty years ago, Schnoor was one of the first scientists to model the impacts of acid rain on aquatic ecosystemsa”and the solutions that helped clean up the nationas watersheds. Heas convinced that the models for sustainable biofuels are out there, too: they include munic.i.p.al and yard wastes, wheat straw and other nonedible parts of grain crops, woody trees like poplars or willows, and perennials such as sweet sorghum and switchgra.s.s. Perennials have long roots that hold soils in place and tap deep sources of watera”meaning they require little to no irrigation. They are more resilient than the annuals we rely on for agricultural crops. Switchgra.s.s was once one of the most ubiquitous prairie plants on the Great Plains. Schnoor envisions a day when it dominates the prairies once more, creating fuels as it enhances bird habitat, improves water quality, and captures carbon in the soils.40 A water ethic for agriculture means this sort of holistic thinkinga”about where to grow which crops, their water demands, their impact on soils, their fit with local ecosystems. At least thatas how Aldo Leopold envisioned it.

aThere are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm,a Leopold wrote in A Sand County Almanac, which recounts many of his own farming experiences at his Wisconsin River property. aOne is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.a41 Leopold had both great affinity for farmers and great concerns about the agricultural practices of his time. Just as he drafted Americaas ecological conscience, Leopold articulated the wisdom of sustainable agriculture before its time.42 Then and now, agriculture missed the acomplex web of living relations.h.i.+psa that Leopold considered key to the land ethic, says farmer-philosopher Fred Kirschenmann. Leopoldas web included not only water but also soil, climate, biodiversity, husbandry, and much else. aYet we still manage farms as if all of their parts, including water, are separate ent.i.ties,a Kirschenmann says.43 A distinguished fellow at Iowa State Universityas Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, Kirschenmann converted his familyas North Dakota farm to organic in the 1970s. It was a natural outgrowth of his fatheras teaching. His parents began their life together farming in 1930, during the Dust Bowl. They understood that the devastation was not solely about the lack of water but also about the way the land had been used. Rain scarcity was the immediate cause, but farming methods had devastated the soil. aAs a result, my father became a radical conservationist, and from the time I was five years old, I can remember him admonis.h.i.+ng me to atake care of the land,aa Kirschenmann says. aAs far as he was concerned, that was the most important moral duty imposed on any farmera”not only for the sake of the land but also for the economic survival of the farmer.a44 That moral duty was the same articulated by Leopold in his call for aextension of the social conscience from people to land.a It was no coincidence that Leopoldas land ethic also emerged in the wake of the agricultural disaster of the Dust Bowl. Yet he predicted that agriculture would have the toughest time embracing the ethic, given the lack of economic value attached to ecosystems and because ascientific agriculture was actively developed before ecology was born.a45 Kirschenmann says his farmas conversion took a lot of tweaking, still ongoing. But in the first decade, he hit on a crop rotation that controlled weeds, recycled nutrients, reduced disease, and, perhaps most important, improved the soils. In 1988, when North Dakota was. .h.i.t with one of the worst droughts in its history, Kirschenmannas land absorbed and retained enough moisture to sustain his crops. His fields produced a decent harvest, while conventional fields around him dried up and yielded nothing.46 Despite those results, he doesnat consider his farm resilient enough for a future with less water, higher fuel costs, and the rising numbers of extreme weather events that climate scientists predict for the Midwest. In the short term, Kirschenmann is increasing the perennial gra.s.ses and legumes in his crop rotations. Someday, he hopes to be able to convert annual grains to perennialsa”the dream of an increasing number of farmers and scientists who are worried about the impacts of agriculture on water, land, and energy resources.

Writing in the journal Science in 2010, soil scientists from Was.h.i.+ngton State University and the Land Inst.i.tute of Kansas said a transition from annuals to perennial grainsa”that is, grains that regrow each year, rather than having to be replanteda”awould be one of the largest innovations in the 10,000-year history of agriculture.a Perennial grainsa”which at this point exist only in experimental strainsa”have longer growing seasons than annual crops and deeper roots that reduce erosion and build up soils. They require far less fertilizer and herbicides. Reaching 10 to 12 feet below the surface, their roots can better tap into water as they create paths for rainfall to recharge aquifers. Annual grains can lose five times the water of perennial crops and thirty-five times the nitratea”a valuable plant nutrient that pollutes drinking water when it flows off fields. The authors said it could take as long as twenty years before the experimental perennial grains are ready for prime time. However, breakthroughs could come sooner with more research and investment into their breeding.47 Also still in the laboratory are the technologies that could break down cellulose in switchgra.s.s and other perennials to turn them into starch and sugar for fermentation into biofuels. That makes the nationas research funding and its universities key accelerators for the blue revolution. Unfortunately, some agricultural research is putting on the brakes instead.

One Nation, Under Sod When you talk to farmers about water policy, they like to make two points: One, we need to eat. Two, keeping food supply in the United States is a matter of national security; itas not a good idea to become overreliant on the rest of the globe for food, any more than we should depend on other nations for oil. Both points are true. But here is another truth: farmers in Florida pa.s.sed a poignant milestone in 2000. As of that year, oranges were no longer Floridaas top crop. The number-one crop in the Suns.h.i.+ne State for the past decade has been landscape materials, primarily sod and shrubbery.48 The stateas license plates, instead of that iconic image of two plump oranges, should sport a square of green turfgra.s.s.

Sod and shrubs are not food, of course. Nor are they matters of national security. But they are thirsty commodities that go on to require a lifetime of irrigation. Sod is a high-value crop, with about 400,000 acres in production over all fifty states and an annual value of more than $3 billion.49 Growers harvest it with a mechanical slicer that cuts thatched 16a - 24a rectangles, or 24a - 60a rolls of gra.s.s, from the earth, along with a layer of soil. They pile it onto pallets and truck the heavy heaps to Home Depot and Loweas, where itas sold to patch and expand Americaas 63,240 square miles of gra.s.s. Thirsty cotton may be the fabric of our lives, but sod is the fabric of our landscapes, from highway medians to mini-estates.

Part of the $80 billion U.S. landscaping industry, the sod profession touts a product as green as it looks.50 Turfgra.s.s helps reduce soil erosion. It captures stormwater runoff. It helps recharge aquifers. It absorbs carbon. The industry uses research results from remote-sensing expert Cristina Milesi at California State University, Monterey Bay to show that Americaas turfgra.s.s could store thirty-six billion pounds of carbon a year. But Milesi says emissions from lawn mowers sputtering to and fro across the nationas gra.s.s, along with energy to pump water for irrigation, make the overall benefit small.51 If virtual-water calculations considered future demand as well as the water it takes to make commodities, sodas footprint would grow to the nineteen trillion gallons of water a year Milesi calculates. Thatas more than three times the irrigation demands of all the corn in the country.52 No doubt, turfgra.s.s has its place in American culture: it feels good on bare feet; itas just right for kicking a ball; it smells good when you cut it. All those things are worth some of our water supply. But surely not 19 trillion gallons. Around the nation, some cities and real estate developers are reenvisioning green-carpeted landscapes and replacing sod with beautiful native gra.s.ses. They are leaving or restoring large swaths of urban s.p.a.ce to forest and wetlands, eliminating irrigation and speeding groundwater recharge. Yet some leaders trying to steer their communities onto an ethical water path have found themselves up against an unlikely barrier: their own public research universities.

In 1862, the federal Morrill Act established land-grant universities to bring advanced practical research to Americans who didnat have access to higher education. Over time, Congress also asked these colleges to build networks of experiment stations and sent extension agents into rural areas to bring research to farmers. In recent years, university extension has turned its attention to the environmental challenges facing communities, from climate change to pressures on freshwater.

But research funding and personnel directed to the new path remain only a fraction of that devoted to the old. And in some instances, agricultural researchers have worked against local communities trying to change their water fortunes. In 2005, researchers at the Texas Cooperative Extension arm of Texas A&M University, working with the Turf Gra.s.s Producers of Texas, disputed San Antonioas decision to ban some gra.s.ses, including the widely used St. Augustine variety. At the University of Florida in recent years, researchers with the Inst.i.tute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, which is partially funded by the turf industry, have recommended an increase in suggested fertilizer-application guidelines at the same time local governments around the state have been trying to enact ordinances to reduce nitrogen runoff into local waterways.53 Meanwhile at the University of California at Davis, agricultural economist Steven Blank calls agolf courses, nurseries, and turf farmsa the only truly sustainable sector in American agriculturea”because it will supply the greenery for city living and playing in our increasingly urban future.54 The nationas tapped-out aquifers and shrinking rivers are part of Blankas argument that most farming in America will come to its natural end. In his book The End of Agriculture in the American Portfolio, he predicts a time when the United States will import nearly all its food from other countries. Costs for land and labor, he writes, will become too high for American farmers to compete with their global counterparts. Depletion of the High Plains Aquifer and others will give farmers in key regions ano choice but to leave agriculture.a.5.5 Blank says we shouldnat lament his ultraurban vision of the future, grudgingly shared by a growing number of people in conventional agriculture, in which rural areas with open s.p.a.ces will be transformed into residential developments for an increasingly affluent population. Communities of interest will replace physical communities, as telecommuters work thousands of miles from their offices.56 Of course, just like the dire visions of a parched American future in which weave overdrawn every aquifer and river in the land, it doesnat have to be this way. And by the looks of our newfound love for local farms and food, it wonat be.

Inside the city limits of Milwaukee, farmer and MacArthur Fellows.h.i.+p winner Will Allen grows food for thousands of urbanites on two acres at his nonprofit farm, Growing Power. Six greenhouses grow twelve thousand pots of herbs, salad mix, beet greens, arugula, mustards, and sprouts. Interspersed among the plants are hydroponic systems growing tilapia, perch, and a variety of salad greens along with bins of wriggler wormsa”the key to the farmas rich soil. The small plot also houses chickens, goats, ducks, rabbits, and bees. The whole system demands less water than either irrigated agriculture or the urban-scapes the farm replaced, because its water needs are met via rainwater catchment and recycling systems that keep water flowing in a loop in which fish ponds fertilize plants and plants clean up fish ponds.

Allen is among a new breed of American farmers who embody Thomas Jeffersonas vision of the yeoman spanning rural and urban life, growing food to enrich local communities and keep the nation self-sufficient. In 2010, private entrepreneurs began to launch commercial rollouts for Allenas aquaculture/agriculture model in other parts of the country.

While Allen turns abandoned factories into fish farms, farmer turned land planner Matthew aQuinta Redmond, in Golden, Colorado, is taking on both industrial irrigation and the lawn. Redmond wants to replace stretches of sod with community farms that use less water as they feed local residents and supply restaurants. Where golf courses border subdivisions, Redmond sees borders of herbs and gourmet lettuce; sand traps become kale traps. Where parking lots surround office buildings, Redmond envisions vegetable-crop lots. Workers on break from their cubicles can pull weeds or just enjoy the scenery. aWhen you do it really well, agriculture is stunningly beautiful,a says Redmond. aThatas why property values in Sonoma are so high.a57 One of Redmondas companies, TSR Agristruction, is part landscape-design firm, part community farm. Homeowners and landowners hire Redmond to build gardens or farms, for personal use or to join his community-agriculture program, which harvests the produce year-round for sale to local restaurants. Redmond uses geographic-information-system technologies to a.n.a.lyze demand for produce by census track. He figures out how many calories each track would consume, and how many plants are needed to grow those calories. He waters with satellite-controlled computer systems that monitor moisture and drip-irrigate in forty-eight zones. In the first couple of years, the company has turned a profit and repaid landowners between $3,000 and $4,000 per acre per year. But the owners seem happiest with the beautification of their land, and with the fact that they no longer have landscape-maintenance costs.

Longer term, Redmond wants to develop former industrial croplands into agricultural-urban communities, a concept he calls Agriburbia. His first project, proposed for Milliken, Colorado, aims to replace 520 acres of flood-irrigated cropland with a community that weaves farming and urban life together rather than setting them up for collision. About 150 acres are slated for civic farmland, another 100 for privately owned crops. The original farm earned about $350,000 in annual revenue, Redmond says, and he estimates that the Agriburbia design will net agricultural revenues in excess of $1 milliona”with a third of the annual water use, thanks to recycled water and efficient irrigation.

Fred Kirschenmann, at the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, says urban and suburban agriculture is poised to spread quickly across the nation as Americans look for new ways to avoid the steep water, energy, and pollution costs of industrial agriculture. aSmall-scale farmers have found ways to produce incredible amounts of food on limited acreage for local populations,a he says.58 Heas been working with Columbia Universityas Urban Design Lab to a.n.a.lyze how much food might be grown within a 200-mile radius of New York City. Even the most optimistic locavore enthusiasts have a.s.sumed metro areas that large could never home-grow enough food for populations in the millions. The a.n.a.lysis found otherwise. When you include all the sod, seven million acres are available for farming around the city. aIam increasingly thinking that urban agriculture is really going to surprise us,a Kirschenmann says.

One hundred years ago, visionaries like William Smythe were saying the same about the potential for small farmers to feed their local communities and further the cause of democracy. Industrial agriculture usurped those ideas, taking advantage of Americansa love for farmers to steer irrigation benefits in a much different direction. Then and now, rhetoric over water and farms does not exactly match the reality.

In spring 2009, the plight of farm workers in Californiaas Central Valley suddenly became as widely known as it had been during the Dust Bowl seventy years beforea”at least for an Internet moment. In 1939, the public had devoured two books, one nonfiction and one fiction, exposing the wretched existence of migrant farm workers in the place many Americans considered a cornucopia of goodness. The agrarian mythology surrounding the fertile Central Valley gave way to the reality of industrial agriculture as Factories in the Field, by lawyer turned labor activist Carey McWilliams, and The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck, rose on best-seller lists. To try to clean up their tarnished image, growers commissioned narratives of their owna”with t.i.tles like Plums of Plenty and Grapes of Gladness. But popular sentiment lay with the plight of the farm workers, especially Steinbeckas Joad family members and their sorrowful search for the American dream.59 Indeed, the dream denied tends to arouse American outrage. And on a dry April day during his final term, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger tapped into the narrative to inspire some national outrage over water. Standing in front of the half-empty San Luis Reservoir, built in 1962 to store water for the fedsa Central Valley Project, he painted a Dust Bowla”grim picture of Central Valleyas storied farming economy. He spoke of lost jobs and suffering farm families. And he blamed it on water. aFarmers are leaving their land unused because they canat count on water,a Schwarzenegger bellowed. aFarm workers are losing their jobs because crops are not being planted.

aIn towns across our Central Valley, our unemployment is skyrocketing,a he added. a[Californiaas] unemployment rate now is 11.2 percent, and this is absolutely unacceptable.a60 Schwarzeneggeras speech topped off a four-day March for Water along the dusty highways of the Central Valley organized by the California Latino Water Coalition. As California suffered in its third year of drought (and as the residents of Granite Bay kept topping off their grottoes), federal water managers had slowed the pumps that send water south to farmers through the Central Valley Project in an effort to protect migrating salmon and other fish in the Sacramentoa”San Joaquin Delta.

The March for Water brought hundreds of farm workers, farmers, and local elected officials together to protest the water cutbacks and to call for easing environmental protections for threatened species such as the Delta smelt.61 As the crowd chanted, aWe need water, we need water,a Schwarzenegger seemed to be channeling McWilliams and Steinbeck. He twice invoked the name of labor leader Csar Chvez as he used the plight of farm workers to highlight the importance of water for agriculture: Csar Chvez knew the power of a good marcha”he led by example and he never stopped trying until he found a way. And this is exactly what we are going to do. We never will stop until we find a way, find a way together here, because this is the right thing to do, because we need water, we need water, we need water, we need water.62 But the governoras remarks were problematic. For one, the union founded by Chvez, the United Farm Workers of America, did not partic.i.p.ate in or support the march. aIn reality, this is not a farm worker march,a said Arturo Rodriguez, president of the 27,000-member organization. aThis is a farmer march orchestrated and financed by growers.a63 Moreover, the New York Times reported that amany of the protesters were paid by their employers to march in lieu of harvesting crops.a64 Helping the Latino Water Coalition with its gra.s.sroots action was Burson-Marsteller, the global public relations giant known for its ability to generate news coverage. It also has a knack for spinning corporate interests in the voices of everyday people. Burson-Marsteller organized the purported citizens group National Smokers Alliance in the early 1990s to protest antismoking lawsa”on behalf of the Phillip Morris tobacco company.65 As it turns out, the jobs and unemployment crises Schwarzenegger talked about had little to do with watera”or even with agriculture, according to state economic data. In spring 2009, the state was ground zero for the national recession. The major cause of Californiaas downturn was a two-thirds decline in construction activity, which led to a loss of almost 400,000 construction jobs and another 200,000 jobs in finance and real estate, says Stephen Levy, director and senior economist at the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy, in Palo Alto. During the drought and water crisis that coincided with the recession, awe didnat see real disruptions in agricultural exports or production or the job side,a Levy says. aNothing like you see when you go from building 200,000 homes to building 40,000 homes.a66 No doubt, workers were hurting in the Central Valley. The unemployment rate in Merced County, where Schwarzenegger spoke, was 22 percent that spring.67 But local and state economists alike blamed the moribund housing market and high foreclosure rates rather than agricultural job losses. In fact, Merced County ended the year pulling in the third-highest agricultural revenues in its history despite water rationing. If not for low milk prices, it might have been the highest.68 Not unlike Burson-Marstelleras smokersa rights campaign of a decade before, which attempted to crush the indoor smoking bans being launched in California, the workersa rights rhetoric was more about money and politics than about farms and farm workers. Schwarzenegger and the Latino Water Coalition were championing the $11 billion water bonda”the one that promised to restore the Sacramentoa”San Joaquin Delta and ensure reliable supply for all of Californiaas water users. It needed two-thirds approval of the state a.s.sembly to be placed on a statewide ballot. The stateas agricultural lobby was adesperatea to see it pa.s.s.69 Burson-Marsteller landed impressive media saturation of the farm worker story, by outlets from 60 Minutes to Sean Hannity. And Schwarzenegger did muscle the water bond through the state a.s.sembly. Political compromise that it was, the bill contained its share of pork. a.s.semblyman Chuck DeVore, a Republican from Irvine, recalled the sausage making of one particularly torturous all-night session as supporters tried to line up votes. Leaders aadded about $100 million an hour as we played Letas Make a Deal,a he says.70 But a few months before it was to appear on the November 2010 ballot, Schwarzenegger and other supporters decided to delay the $11 billion question until 2012, ato avoid jeopardizing its pa.s.sage.a They worried that Californiaas financial crisisa”a $20 billion hole in the state budgeta”would make it a tough sell to voters.71 Schwarzenegger deserves a lot of credit for his administrationas intense focus on water during his second term, and for his determination to fix the Delta. But the man dubbed Governor Green for helping rewrite Americaas energy screenplay was taking his cues from industrial irrigators when it came to water for agriculture. His invoking of Csar Chvez must have had the labor leader rolling in his grave at the nearby United Farm Workers headquarters in Keene.

While Schwarzenegger was the one who wanted to leave office with a water legacy, Florida governor Charlie Crist was the one who may have done so. In his last term, Crist orchestrated a buyout of former Everglades marshland south of Lake Okeechobee, owned and farmed for decades by the U.S. Sugar Corporation. Floridaas economic crisis shrunk the original deal, but in 2010, the South Florida Water Management District completed the purchase of forty-two square miles of sugar property for $200 million, with an option to buy five times more land if the economy turns.72 The land buy did not make everyone happy. U.S. Sugaras main compet.i.tors in the Glades, the Fanjul family of Florida Crystals Corporation, were furiousa”and they got Floridaas growing Tea Party boiling, too. It also may have helped Crist lose the first election of his career, his bid for U.S. Senate in 2010. But it was the right decision for the Everglades. Buying up farmlands in those parts of the nation where water can no longer survive agricultural practices will be far cheaper in the long run than the consequences of not doing so.

The blue revolution does not turn away from agriculture; it is a water ethic for agriculture. Farming and water have a lot in common. We have an emotional attachment to each. We are physically and aesthetically drawn to farms, as we are to water. We value both of them in ways that defy economics. We appreciate the regional imprint of peach orchards off Interstate 75 in Georgia and cornfields off Interstate 80 in Nebraska. We relax at the break of green from rice plants peeking out of their paddies on the drive to the Sacramento International Airport. Floridians who moved to Plant City did so in part to live among the bucolic green swaths of strawberry farms that ended up causing them so much trouble.

These intangibles are all the more reason to heed Aldo Leopoldas warning that agriculture not be governed awholly by economic self-interest.a73 Though California is the largest agricultural state in the nation, agriculture is no longer king in California. Technology and trade, tourism and entertainment are now kings. The farming sector accounts for only 4 percent of gross state product by even the most generous calculations. If you look at statewide employment, agricultureas impact is even smaller.74 Thereas no comparing the revenue and growth potential of rice paddies to iPads. Still, most of us would probably agree that rice is more important in the larger scope of life. No one wants to see the end of agriculture in the American portfolio, as the subt.i.tle of Steven Blankas book puts it. With political will, we could reduce subsidies to those agricultural operations that flout the water ethic, and support those farmers who embrace it. We could invest in sustainable agricultural research and practices in rural America while we build urban farming into metro areasa”reminding us all not only where food comes from but where water comes from, too.

As the March for Water made clear, however, heading down this new, blue path will require getting arounda”or winning overa”a pretty big obstacle: the politically powerful sectors of the American economy that make their living off the old.