California’s Central Valley is the most important place you’ve never heard of. And it’s falling apart.
The Central Valley is America’s breadbasket. The fertile land sandwiched between the Pacific Ocean and the Sierra Nevada accounts for just 1% of U.S. farmland, but it produces about 40% of the nation’s fruits and nuts and a quarter of all total food.
Agriculture is the backbone of the largely blue-collar valley. The city of Tulare, with a population of only about 65,000 people, hosts the World Ag Expo. The 2018 version of the event featured Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue, and it annually hosts more than 100,000 attendees from more than 50 countries.
The coronavirus pandemic is assaulting the Central Valley on two fronts. The area has been singled out as a coronavirus hot spot by the White House task force. The positivity rate of Central Valley counties outpace the state’s average, and hospitals are getting close to capacity.
Meanwhile, the lockdowns have kicked an already struggling Central Valley economy while it was down. Central Valley counties have some of the lowest median incomes in the state, and the state’s inability (or unwillingness) to provide the region with the water it needs has led to the slow deterioration of the valley’s economy. Rolling lockdowns have taken that deterioration and sped it up.
Now they’re caught in an unending cycle. Agriculture can’t be put on pause or done from home, and non-agricultural businesses can’t afford sustained lockdowns. They go to work, leading to an increase in infections, which causes the state to step in and impose stricter lockdowns, leading to more economic hardship.
Between water concerns, the coronavirus, and the wide-scale lockdowns, the breadbasket of the nation is reeling. Each passing day pushes the country closer to a food supply crisis as the Central Valley gets closer and closer to the point of no return.
