Vanishing Valley farmland: Letters to the editor, March 19, 2021

Valley farmland rapily disappears

Your recent column, “ Where did all the farmland go?” (The Bee, Feb. 28) is absolutely correct. Ms. Toste explains regional planning must protect the Valley’s finest agricultural land, and direct development toward land less suited for working landscapes. Once this resource is gone, it’s gone forever.

The latest figures are alarming: Up to 323,000 acres in San Joaquin Valley may be converted into residential uses by 2050, according to American Farmland Trust and Conservation Biology Institute in the 2018 San Joaquin Land and Water Strategy. Indeed, 55% of the Valley’s high-quality farmland has a high development risk.

AFT’s 2020 report, “Farms Under Threat, State of the States” showed California's finest land was 202% more likely to be converted than other agricultural land. This threat is more than urban sprawl. It includes a more insidious type of low-density residential land use.

If trends continue, California will lose a resource that provides economic support to rural communities, mitigates climate change, and helps recover essential groundwater aquifers.

Good to see homeless off Highway 41

I wrote a few months ago about the drive to our foothill property along Highway 41. The homeless encampments were such an eyesore, but exacerbated because Highway 41 is a gateway to one of the most beautiful places in the world, Yosemite National Park, and visited by people from all over the world.

So, Mr. Mayor, you have done an absolutely wonderful job and your approach for reinventing the homelessness “wheel” should be given its proper due. Congratulations! Thanks for actually doing something, not just lauding bad policies in our Democratic run state.

GOP drowning, taking U.S. down

These are strange times. I look for the source of an insurrection propagated by a wannabe dictator and a political party that dutifully follows even as he lost the House, Senate, and the presidency in a mere four years. And I watch as that same party clings to his coattails hoping he can save them.

I watch as Republican senators try and fail to hold up a vote on a relief bill supported by 70% of Americans. I listen as these millionaires object to a $15 minimum wage and an extension of unemployment during the greatest health crisis since 1918; a pandemic they deny. Now I watch as Republicans in 47 states issue 220-plus bills to restrict voting rights under the guise of protecting the vote with zero evidence of widespread fraud. This is mind-bending stuff.

What is the source of all this sound and fury? In 1910 the U.S population was 88.9% white. In 1990 it was 80.3% white, and in 2020 its projected that number will be 60.1% white. I’m reminded of the drowning man who cannot swim, and I remember my dad’s advice — push him away because he will drown us all.

Glad Dyer on board with high-speed rail 

I have just finished reading Mayor Jerry Dyer’s excellent Valley Voices piece on high-speed rail (March 5). After spending nearly 20 years banging the drum for this project on the Opinion pages of The Bee, I am enormously gratified to see such a straight-forward and powerful endorsement.

There is no single project that will do more for economic vitality and cleaner air in Fresno and the Valley. High-speed rail is not a partisan political effort, and to see the Republican mayor of Fresno join the Democratic mayor of San Jose in this effort is most welcome. I urge other political and community leaders to get on board.

This story was originally published March 19, 2021 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Vanishing Valley farmland: Letters to the editor, March 19, 2021."