Orick: the gatekeeper and poacher of the redwoods

Every year, expensive cuts of redwood are used to make trinkets, furniture, luxury car consoles, and other goods. A significant portion of this costly timber used to make these items is poached from the Redwood National and State Parks in California. Much of it comes from in and around a town named Orick. 

Orick sits at the base of the Redwood National Park in Humboldt County, California. Once a place with a booming timber industry, it now has a high poverty rate, widespread drug use, and a dwindling population. Once home to 3,000 people, its population is now estimated to be just 300. 

Orick's undiversified economy is surprisingly supported by a lucrative underground tree poaching economy. Many Orick residents have turned to illegally harvesting redwood burls from their neighboring protected lands. Burls are the bumpy growths on redwood trees that form following trauma such as lightning, fire, and fungal infections. When injured, redwoods direct their nutrients and energy into healing this trauma, which results in the burls. The burls thus contain a lot of genetic material, making it likely for a tree to sprout from the rough bump. Cutting a burl does irreparable harm, weakening the foundation of the tree and making it susceptible to disease. More consequentially, it lessens the chance for the tree to reproduce. 

Tree poaching in Orick used to involve only dead redwood logs. The regular theft of redwoods began only about fifteen years ago. In 2006, the San Francisco Chronicle reported on authorities' concerns that poachers would begin chopping down live trees as the number of dead logs decreased, and this is exactly what happened. The U.S. Forest Service estimates that one in ten trees cut in national forests is poached, and the Redwood Park rangers are calling the poaching a "crisis." Investigators have discovered chunks of illegal burlwood along the 101 Highway from Eureka to Crescent City. 

Poachers are primarily motivated by money. These chunks of wavy burl hold significant financial value and a single slab of redwood can fetch a couple thousands of dollars. Poachers can easily drop their fresh loots off to local buyers in the area who then use the wood to make an array of luxury items. Burls are smoother and easier to carve making them ideal for sculptures and furniture. 

Poachers often work in teams and sneak into the park during the middle of the night. To lessen their chances of being caught, rainier weather is preferred during these operations. Poachers use chainsaws to cut into the trees and then haul away large chunks of redwood. From time to time, poachers are caught and charged. They are often fined, banned from the park, and ordered to complete community service (Read about one Orick poacher's sentence here.) These sentences, however, are sometimes not enough to stop poachers from coming back. 

With few economic prospects left in Orick, burl poaching has been a quick way for residents to make money. Orick had reached its peak as a logging town after World War II. During that time Orick had four sawmills, unionized timber jobs, and was a bustling town with bars, restaurants, and shops. This was also the period when many redwoods were logged––two million acres of coastal redwood were diminished to 300,000 acres. By the 1960s, the environmental impact of the logging industry was clear. In an effort to protect the remaining redwoods, environmentalists pushed for action, and in 1968, President Lyndon Johnson signed a bill creating the Redwood National Park. 

Timber companies blamed environmentalists for their downfall and the effects of deindustrialization that ensued. Officials told the town that while the timber industry was collapsing, tourism to the area would boom. But this did not happen. Lyndsie Bourgon, author of Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America's Woods, told NPR:

Orick finds itself ensnared in a vicious circle: its reputation for drugs and unsightly poverty deters anyone who might want to invest in making it a permanent home or a place where tourists might want to stay.

In her book, Bourgon argues that tree poaching is the product of desperation: people with a deep-rooted attachment to Orick are left with limited options. One poacher likened himself to Robin Hood, telling Bourgon, "Robin Hood was just taking care of his and his own." 

Read more about Orick here and timber poaching in California's national parks here. 

If you thought private fire-fighting was a rich So Cal thing, you need to know what's happening in rural Nor Cal

Theo Whitcomb reports for the High Country News out of Siskiyou County, California, where Hmong pot farmers have established their own firefighting branch in the wake of this year's wildfires.  Here's an excerpt: 

In late June, lightning struck the western slope of Mount Shasta, a volcano in Northern California, igniting the Lava Fire. Four days later, gusting winds sent flames billowing towards the unincorporated community of Shasta Vista, where over 3,000 residents, predominantly Hmong Americans, live.

One resident, Neng Thong, who bought property there a year earlier, joined with 30 others to form a firefighting force. The community saw no choice; people no longer trusted the county or state to protect them. A seven-year crackdown on cannabis farming had eroded what little trust existed between the Hmong American community and county leaders. Thong believed the county would simply use the fire as an opportunity to clear the area. Others thought the county would implicitly approve the destruction of their property. Recently, vigilantes who’d fulminated against the subdivision on the sheriff’s Facebook page openly mentioned arson, with one user wondering whether it would be legal to start a fire. Sheriff Jeremiah LaRue, in a recent interview, brushed off the exchange, saying that the vitriol is “just kind of the way Facebook is.”

“They announced that they’re going to burn our town down,” Thong told me a month later, showing me a screenshot of the comment. “We wanted to save our property. If we hadn’t stayed, the entire area would’ve burned.”

An earlier post about these events is here, with a focus on the Hmong man who was shot by law enforcement.  

Another interesting angle on this is that wealthy communities have set up private fire fighting services in recent years in southern California, and wineries and tourist destinations are doing it in Sonoma and Napa counties.  But I wouldn't have expected it to happen in relatively poor Siskiyou County, where racial difference and attendant distrust seem to be the driving force.  

Rural and small town in the lyrics of Nanci Griffith

Nanci Griffith, folk-and-country music singer died on Friday.  She was an artist I followed closely in the 1990s and into the early 2000s.  News of her death sent me back to her work, which I listened to on Saturday.  One thing I noticed are the rural-themed lyrics, and I'm going to highlight a few here.  

The most obviously rural song, perhaps, is "Trouble in the Fields," which included these lines, which touch on urban use of the rural, rural difference, and the farm crisis of the 1980s, with a reference to the Dust Bowl era, too. 

Baby I know that we've got trouble in the fields
When the bankers swarm like locust out there turning away our yield
The trains roll by our silos, silver in the rain
They leave our pockets full of nothing
But our dreams and the golden grain

Have you seen the folks in line downtown at the station
They're all buying their ticket out and talking the great depression
Our parents had their hard times fifty years ago
When they stood out in these empty fields in dust as deep as snow
And all this trouble in our fields

If this rain can fall, these wounds can heal
They'll never take our native soil
But if we sell that new John Deere
And then we'll work these crops with sweat and tears
You'll be the mule I'll be the plow
Come harvest time we'll work it out
There's still a lot of love, here in these troubled fields

There's a book up on the shelf about the dust bowl days
And there's a little bit of you and a little bit of me
In the photos on every page
Now our children live in the city and they rest upon our shoulders
They never want the rain to fall or the weather to get colder

Then there was "Gulf Coast Highway," which highlighted seasonal and informal work, as well as attachment to place:

Gulf Coast Highway 

He worked the rails 

He worked the rice fields 

With their cool dark wells 

He worked the oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico 

The only thing we've ever owned 

Is this old house here by the road 

And when he dies he says he'll catch 

Some blackbird's wing 

Then he will fly away to Heaven come 

Some sweet blue bonnet spring 

She walked through springtime 

When I was home The days were sweet 

The nights were warm 

The seasons change, the jobs would 

Come, the flowers fade 

This old house felt so alone 

When the work took me away 

And when she dies she says, she'll 

Catch some blackbirds wing 

Then she will fly away to Heaven come 

Some sweet blue bonnet spring 

Highway 90 The jobs are gone 

We tend our garden 

We set the sun 

This is the only place on earth 

Blue bonnets grow 

Once a year they come and go 

At this old house here by the road 

And when we die we say, we'll 

Catch some blackbirds wing 

Then we will fly away to Heaven come 

Some sweet blue bonnet spring

Lastly, I want to mention "Hometown Streets," which featured these lines that touch on lack of anonymity and nostalgia.  Here's the refrain and a verse:

I need a hometown street where the boys are pretty
And a friend is still a friend
I need a hometown street where the love you're given
Surely comes back 'round again
Hometown streets are paved in gold 

With faces that you've always known
But, you'll never see them
Until you pack your dreams and leave them
The one I loved has moved away
It's hot in this city
Hey, it's always late
Here in this place
Love doesn't get the time of day

After preparing this post, I noticed that the New York Times obituary for Griffith featured this subhead:  

Her best-loved songs were closely observed tales of small-town life, sometimes with painful details in the lyrics, but typically sung with a deceptive prettiness.

A good example of living off the informal economy

It's fair season in much of the United States, and this means among other things that my home town newspaper, the Newton County Times, is running features on the county's honored farmers in different categories:  Farm Family of the Year, Junior Farmers and Senior Farmer.  One thing that caught my eye in the story about the Farm Woman of the Year is how the woman, Samantha, and her family earn a living--primarily through the informal economy and with seasonal work.  Indeed, even before they describe the woman's farming endeavors, they report this about her husband, Clayton:

Clayton finds employment in the landscaping and hardwood industries.  He also works for the National Park Service part time as a fire fighter, sometimes spending time away from home on short assignments in other states.  

As for the female farmer, the story reports in the next paragraph:

Samantha also works during the school year as a substitute teacher at the Deer School.  She has also served as the school cheer coach.

The farm includes a garden, but Samantha admits she isn't the one with the green thumb in the family.  That is mostly her husband's department.

In addition to goats on the farm,

There are some rabbits, donkeys, horses, two milking Jersey heifers, chickens, a pair of geese and hive or two of bees that Clayton said are important pollinators for the farm.  Most of the livestock was received in trades.

The end of the story appropriately includes this:

Samantha said her one priority is to teach her children that they can live with what they have and how to be self-sufficient.  You can do anything if you have ingenuity.

Part V of the Washington Post's series on disability and rurality: a focus on the informal economy

The latest in Terrence McCoy's series in the Washington Post about disability as a rural phenomenon appeared yesterday.  Here's one of the most salient excerpts from a story about Donna Jean Dempsey and her brother Bobby, in Mallory, West Virginia (population 1,654), in Logan County:

And where [Donna Jean and Bobby] were going was deep into the underground American economy, where researchers know some people receiving disability benefits are forced to work illegally after the checks are spent — because they can’t hold a regular job, because no one will hire them, because disability payments on average amount to less than minimum wage, sometimes much less, and because it’s hard to live on so little.

The underground economy has long been a part of rural America, but it has become vital in counties such as this one, deprived of the once-dominant coal industry and redefined by a decades-long swell in the nation’s disability rolls that, in its aftermath, has left more than 1 in 5 working-age residents in Logan County on Social Security Disability Insurance, which serves disabled workers, or Supplemental Security Income for the disabled poor.

Here's another excerpt that provides context for the Dempseys' "place" in that community:

Five miles below, in the hollow of Mallory, is a thin road lined with junk cars and mobile homes, several of which belong to Dempsey family members, who have lived here longer than nearly anyone, through everything that has happened. Seven of the 13 children died. The family house burned down. And Donna Jean, the eighth child, underwent one misfortune after another: rape survivor at 12, mother and illiterate dropout at 13, and, after years in special education, disability beneficiary at 22, the exact reason for which she can’t recall but summarizes as, “I’m not that smart, buddy. Kids made fun of me.”

The "everything that has happened" presumably refers, at least in part, to a 1972 coal slurry dam break here.  It is often referred to as the Buffalo Creek Flood, and it killed 125.

Separately, I see, on his Twitter feed, McCoy writes that Logan County is like no other place he has ever visited.

I see that Logan County, West Virginia's 15th largest county in population, is a persistent child poverty county, though not a persistent (general) poverty county.

The entire story is well worth a read, along with others in McCoy's series (the most recent, set in Roanoke, Alabama, is here).  I blogged about another story in this disability series here, and another here. 

Humboldt County is at a crossroads as locals anxiously anticipate the activation of Prop. 64

In November's election, California voters overwhelmingly opted to approve Proposition 64, signing the Adult Use of Marijuana Act into California law. The law allows the sale and cultivation of recreational marijuana. It also lays the groundwork for a sophisticated regulatory structure to collect taxes, grant licenses to cannabis businesses, and protect the environment. Drug reform advocates hailed the measure as a step in the right direction. However, in Humboldt County, one of the longest running cannabis cultivation areas in the country and part of the famed "Emerald Triangle," many growers and other stakeholders in the illegal industry were opposed. Humboldt originally became a nexus of cannabis cultivation precisely because of its remoteness and isolation from the bustle of the larger cities to the south. Long term growers in the area are now worried that the ruralness that protected them from law enforcement and allowed them to develop a culture of impunity will work against them in competing against growers able to produce cannabis close to consumers. Many small family operations are worried their business model will collapse with the addition of licensure, regulatory compliance, and competition from corporate interests. The clock is ticking toward January 2018, when the law goes into effect. What will become of Humboldt's biggest industry, and with it, the fortune of the county?

The answer is not simple: County government is working full-speed to set up the regulatory structure necessary to administer the newly-legal industry, but the high-stakes process is very contentious, and the repercussions of any given move are hard to foresee. A coalition of long-term growers in the area recently threatened the county with litigation over the re-opening of a pre-existing grow permit application period, arguing that it was contrary to the plain meaning of the (very new) statute. The litigation is the latest round in the conflict between legacy growers (those with pre-existing medically sanctioned farms) and new growers.

Cannabis regulation and the headaches it engenders place a heavy burden on county officials. Humboldt County received 2,337 applications for 2017's medical marijuana business permits alone- this includes grows, dispensaries, processing facilities, and testing labs. These applications go through a relatively well-refined process that was created after Proposition 215 legalized medical marijuana in 1996. The process for granting recreational-use licenses goes through three separate state-level agencies, and is brand new. Among those expressing concern about the difficulty of setting up a regulatory structure for a high-stakes new industry is State Senator Mike McGuire, who foresees enormous difficulty in implementing these regulations consistently and predictably in such a short time.

For Humboldt growers who are already worried about their future in an industry they fear may be dominated by out-of-town venture capitalists, the difficulty of complying with a complex set of untested regulations compounds their fears. A regulatory scheme shifts risk to the smaller pool of 'outlaw' growers who can't or won't comply. Outsiders are sanguine about the prospect:

“Candidly, the future for many current growers isn’t bright,” said Joe Rogoway, a Santa Rosa attorney specializing in cannabis issues. “The new marketplace requires a degree of capitalization and sophistication that inevitably will leave people behind. It’s capitalism. There will be winners and losers.”

The question is: Will Humboldt County lose? On the one hand, there is little incentive for business-savvy investors to make their play to enter the industry in the area, now that the remoteness of the area is no longer an asset in avoiding law enforcement. Shipping cannabis products from Humboldt is likely to be expensive and difficult compared to situating a cannabis business more centrally in the state. The much-vaunted excellence of the area's climate for cultivation is largely puffery, as cannabis is a robust weed that has been heavily altered through selective breeding to be tolerant to a wide range of climates, and is often cultivated indoors. Many local growers are (understandably) unequipped to become experts in this complex web of regulatory compliance. The transaction costs of the industry are about to skyrocket. With widespread cultivation and the application of sophisticated economies of scale, the Humboldt cash crop may see the bottom fall out, squeezing out local farmers.

On the other hand, the culture of Humboldt is tolerant of widespread marijuana cultivation. Local government is responsive to growers as stakeholders in county governance. Growers are a large local constituency who wield serious clout, and have significant institutional knowledge. A core of committed long term locals appear willing to get compliant. The county is also levying a local cultivation tax on growers, expected to yield approximately $7.3 million to be kept solely for county services. Provided the industry can survive the likely price effects of legalization, local services could be seriously bolstered by taxation. It does seem likely that a reduced cohort of the savviest local growers could weather the storm and ultimately thrive in the legal market.

Perhaps effects like the revenue expected to be collected by new taxes are the best reason to be optimistic. Humboldt County, despite its reliance on marijuana, is not populated solely by marijuana growers. The deleterious effects of illegal grows have taken a long toll on Humboldt. Migrant workers on illegal grows have been abused and exploited. Predatory growers, emboldened by a climate of outlaw impunity, sexually abuse their seasonal workers. Watersheds that comprise the runs of endangered steelhead salmon are drained and polluted. At the same time, the porous boundary between the illegal industry and the drug culture has produced a mental health crisis in the county that underfunded local services are struggling to keep up with.

Prop. 64 includes new protections for workers and for the environment. New streams of both local and state taxes are earmarked for improving drug rehabilitation services and other vital services. Bringing a wholly unregulated industry into the daylight is the move Humboldt County needed-- provided the bottom doesn't fall out on the commodity propping the whole project up. The next few years will likely produce huge upheaval in Humboldt-- only time will tell whether the county is relegated to a backwater as cannabis moves to more populous areas, or whether it can capitalize on its history and use tax revenues to improve county services.

Full disclosure: I worked for the Drug Policy Alliance during the 2016 push to get Prop. 64 passed.

A "Fancy" call for research on rural prostitution

The country music industry is buzzing over the results of the 52nd Academy of Country Music Awards, which aired live Sunday, April 2nd. This blog has previously discussed the ties between country music and ruralism on many occasions (see here, here, here, here, here, and here for several examples), but I decided to continue the conversation.

I grew up a fan of country music, and I learned at a young age to appreciate a variety of artists in the genre. I remember shooting guns with my father on his 40 acre ranch listening to Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, and Patsy Cline. At the same time, I have fond memories of traveling to cities with my mother to attend (what I refer to as "pop country") concerts, including Tim McGraw, Carrie Underwood, and Luke Bryan. 

This Spring Break, I found myself on a solo road trip across California. On lengthy trips, I tend to put my entire music library on shuffle. While driving through the desert, Reba McEntire's country cover of "Fancy" (here is a link to the music video), a 1969 song originally written and performed by Bobbie Gentry, blasted through my stereo. I have loved and listened to this song since I was a little girl. Singing along with the lyrics, I began thinking about the implications of the song in the context of rurality.

The song is told from the perspective of a woman named Fancy, who reminisces about the summer she turned 18. Fancy's family (including her mother and a baby sibling) lived in "a one room, rundown shack on the outskirts of New Orleans" after her "Pa" abandoned them.

In a last, desperate attempt to save Fancy from the vicious cycle of poverty, her mother spends her last money to buy Fancy a red "dancin dress," and essentially sends her away to be a prostitute. Her mother encourages Fancy to "be nice to the gentlemen . . . and they'll be nice to you." The chorus sings:

She said, "Here's your one chance, Fancy, don't let me down.

Here's your one chance, Fancy, don't let me down."

Lord, forgive me for what I do

But if you want out well it's up to you

Now don't let me down

Now your Mama's gonna move you uptown. 

Fancy used sex to build a better life for herself, eventually owning a Georgia mansion and a New York City townhouse flat. Moreover, Fancy eventually makes peace with her late mother and acknowledges the complexity of the decision her mother was forced to make "for turning [her] out." In embracing her past, Fancy declares, "You know I might have been born just plain white trash, But Fancy was my name."

Listening to this song after learning more about rurality, I began thinking about prostitution in the rural context. Upon an initial search, I struggled to find significant research regarding rural prostitution. In a 2015 article in the Journal of Sociology and Social Work titled "'We Get a Lot of Crack Whores': Official Perceptions of Rural Prostitution in Four Rural Counties," authors Christine Mattley, Thomas Vander Ven, and Kelly L. Faust address the lack of scholarship pertaining to rural prostitution.

Mattley et al. note that "while there is a long rich literature on urban prostitution in sociology, investigations into the forms, frequencies, and functions of rural prostitution are few and far between." Through their interview-based survey of law enforcement officers and social service providers in four rural counties, Mattley et al. present interesting findings about rural prostitution.

Law enforcement officers said that arrests and incidents of prostitution in rural areas were "rarities" or "oddities," consistent with Uniform Crime Report (UCR) data which reports that prostitution arrests make up less than 2 percent of the total annual arrests for prostitution nationwide. Contrastingly, social services agency workers saw prostitution as relatively common in rural communities. For example, one social worker reported that 'out of 100% of cases, 45% of them are engaging in prostitution." Another maintained that prostitution is "very common in the area" and out of her caseload of 23 clients, that "10 of them were involved in prostitution."

However, "Fancy" presents a idealized vision of using prostitution as a way to escape rural poverty and establish upward mobility in high-class urban society. Fancy may have escaped her "white trash" roots, but is this the common end result for most rural sex workers?

Perhaps surprisingly, Mattley et al. found that most instances of prostitution–while out of economic necessity–did not typically result in cash exchanging hands. Social workers commented that they believed sex is not just exchanged for money, but many other necessities or goods including housing, food, transportation, drugs, and cigarettes. One social service provider noted:

"They (female clients) trade (sex) for pot, for diapers, for food, for rent, etc. You know that they don’t have any money but somehow the rent gets paid and they have stuff so you kind of know where it comes from."

Unlike Fancy, it seems as though most rural female sex workers do not escape poverty or leave their homes for the city; rather, they turn to prostitution to support their families or their drug habits. While prostitution is illegal in virtually all of America, the state of Nevada is the only jurisdiction in the United States where prostitution is permitted. Strictly regulated brothels operate legally in isolated rural areas, away from the majority of Nevada's population.

A clear lack of research exists addressing the issue of prostitution in rural America. The statistics indicate that prostitution is almost exclusively an urban phenomenon, but new literature indicates such a generalization may be inappropriate. Thus, new studies would be useful to fill the existing gaps in the literature.

Trump’s costly “Deportation Force”

During his campaign, Mr. Trump attacked immigrant communities. He blamed Mexico for sending criminals, he vowed to ban all Muslims, and he built his campaign on a promise to construct a wall along our southern border. He also pledged to create a "deportation force" that would remove millions of non-citizens. Trump has now released three executive orders focused on immigration policy, basically following through with all of these campaign promises. Trump's plan to deport millions of people will have devastating effects that go well beyond the lives of people he wants to throw out of the country. One of those effects is already seen in our produce industry.

Undocumented people make up 50 to 70% of the farm workers who pick our fruit, plant our vegetables and do everything in between according to this Boston Globe op-ed. Under Trump's plans to increase deportation across the country, we will see increased labor shortages on farms everywhere. What's more, the price of fruits and vegetables will increase by close to 6%. (Here's another cause of increased food prices)

The other side of the coin is that these invisible people who play such vital role in feeding our families are faced with horrendous work conditions. Farm workers work long hours, doing arduous physical labor, with numerous health risks, but they receive some of the lowest wages and zero benefits. However, because these undocumented men, women, and children live in such vulnerable situations and fear immigration enforcement, they often don't complain. (See this related blog post on reported farm worker complaints of favoritism towards immigrant workers.)

According to the Boston Globe, if all US farm workers were actually paid a living wage, that price increase I mentioned earlier would only be 3.7%, not 6%. Fancy that, paying our farm workers is cheaper than deporting them. Not to mention more humane.

Let's not forget that Obama deported more people than any other president. (His immigration policy failed temporary visa-holders too.) Deportations under the Obama Administration concentrated on people with criminal convictions, "felons not families." (Because felons don't have families?) Trump's January 25th Executive Order: Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States greatly expands this deportation policy. Instead of just prioritizing non-citizens with criminal records, Trump is prioritizing removable non-citizens who have been convicted or charged with a criminal offense, or who have "committed acts that constitute a chargeable criminal offense" (emphasis added).

When I was 12 years old, I stole a bottle of nail polish from the store because my mom said she wouldn't buy it for me. No one ever found out. I would be a priority for removal (deportation) if I were an undocumented immigrant because shoplifting is a chargeable criminal offense. At this point it is hard to say if Immigration and Customs Enforcement will actually have the resources it needs in order to enact these priorities, but I have no doubt that deportations will increase even more than they did under Obama. More and more innocent, working people will be removed from their homes, their lives and their jobs.

After 8 years of Obama, the produce industry is already seeing annual losses in the billions of dollars. There aren't enough workers. This Gilroy, CA garlic farm is just one example of the labor shortage playing out already. "The dearth of ag labor seems to have reached a tipping point when the Obama administration stepped up border enforcement and deported millions of undocumented workers." Both the LA Times and Boston Globe articles cited here report recent and future production decreases at least partially due to deportations. Under Trump, we can expect these losses to increase.

As a result of labor shortages and financial losses, ordinarily conservative politicians have shown a desire for more lenient worker visa provisions. In 2013, senators Dianne Feinstein, Michael Bennet, Marco Rubio, and Orrin Hatch, two Democrats and two Republicans, agreed on a provision allowing for 337,000 farm worker visas over three years. The fact that agribusiness donates a lot of money to Republicans and conservatives may play a role in this dynamic.

However, it is not clear that this unusual alignment will be a good predictor for the future. Trump has shown almost no tolerance for immigration reform. His casual use of the word "humane" is virtually the only exception.

California and the rural way of life: Part III - Gold dredging

This is the third installment in a series of posts that focus on some of the issues that rural Californians have with their state government (see here for Part I and links for other posts on this topic, and here for Part II).  Many rural Californians feel that they are not being represented at the state level. This post will focus on the issue of California's moratorium on gold dredging.

In July of 2009, California placed a moratorium on gold dredging statewide.  Gold dredging is when a machine is used to suck up dirt and rocks from the bottom of a streambed.  The water, dirt, rocks, and gold are then sent down a sluice box to separate the gold from the rest of the material (for more info about dredging, see here).  This moratorium was to remain in place until the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (formerly California Department of Fish and Game) complied with CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act).  Dredging can only resume once an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) is completed and the department adopts and implements new regulations that address the environmental impacts of gold dredging. 

The reason behind the moratorium is due to the fact that gold dredging disturbs streambeds.  This disturbance can supposedly harm fish and remobilize mercury pollution that was left over from the California gold rush of the mid 1800s (mercury was used to separate the gold from sand and gravel).  For more info about mercury in California, see article here.  According to Fisheries Biologist Peter Moyle of UC Davis, the impacts of suction dredging are not well understood.  However, Moyle states that gold dredging "represents a chronic unnatural disturbance of habitats supporting fish that are already likely to be stressed by other factors." For the entire article, see here.

Some people are drawn to gold dredging for its recreational value; others are drawn by the money they can make by selling the gold.  People are upset at the state government because of the moratorium for several reasons.  First, the moratorium could not have come at a worse time in regards to our economy.  The other reasons are due to a lack of consensus showing that the detrimental effects of gold dredging outweigh the positive effects.  

In 2008, the United States entered what is now called the Great Recession.  This economic downturn caused people to lose their jobs, their homes, and their life savings.  Many people were forced to find new and inventive ways to support their families.  Some people, including my own family, turned to gold dredging to supplement their incomes.  However, less than a year after the recession started, California thought it was a good idea to limit the earning potential of gold dredgers.  Money made from gold dredging, although not much compared with the other industries in the state, could have been used to stimulate local economies and help lessen the impact the recession had on the gold mining community.  The price of gold was hitting record highs, yet nobody could extract it in any meaningful way.  People could still pan for gold, but that technique is far less efficient at extracting gold. 

I attended a public hearing prior to the implementation of the moratorium, along with a packed house of gold dredgers and representatives from the California Department of Fish and Game.  It seemed as though every dredger in the place was upset and/or angry.  Most felt that nothing they said to the Fish and Game representatives was taken seriously.  Having been there myself, it seemed to me that the decision was already made and the "hearing" was just an attempt to placate the dredging community.  During this hearing, gold dredgers made a couple of valid arguments in opposition to the notion that dredging is harmful to the environment.  The first argument directly contradicted the theory that dredging causes the remobilization of mercury, which is then washed downstream, thus potentially harming humans.

The serious and avid dredgers were the first ones to talk about all of the mercury and lead they removed from the water.  The dredgers claimed that they had removed, in some cases, barrels of lead and mercury from their sluice boxes, and thus from the rivers.  The positive effects from the removal of these substances from the rivers could have been compared with the detrimental effects of the mercury and lead spread downstream.  However, the state decided to place a moratorium on dredging instead of allowing research to help guide their decision before implementing the ban.

Even if it were shown that dredging spreads mercury and lead downstream, natural events do the same thing.  Heavy rain and snowmelt cause rivers to swell.  The increase in the volume of water in these rivers and streams stir up sediment, remobilize mercury, lead, and gold, and can scour and dramatically change the river bottom.  However, the state didn't compare the effects of dredging against natural causes before enacting the moratorium.

California has salmon and steelhead (anadromous rainbow trout) that are listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).  Part of the reason for the moratorium was to protect these species.  Dredging can destroy redds (basically fish nests) and kill the unhatched fish.  This is a significant problem.  California, however, has a multitude of dams that restrict salmon and steelhead migration upstream to their native spawning areas.  Much of the dredging occurs in areas above the dams where these fish can no longer reach.  This, too, was not taken into consideration when the moratorium was issued.

Not only can dredging harm the anadromous species (fish that live in the ocean and reproduce in fresh water), the activity can also harm native freshwater trout species. The redds of these species can easily be destroyed by a dredge.  However, stirring up the river beds can bring insects into the water and feed the fish.  I have seen this first hand.  Trout that are normally evasive will either hang out behind the sluice box to feed upon the insects that flow out from it or will hang out right in front of you and feed on insects a few inches from your face.  Once again, this was not taken into consideration by state regulators, or if it was, it was not given much weight.

The state could have taken a more tailored approach to the problems of dredging by limiting the moratorium for dredging below the dams (where the salmon and steelhead are), limited the ban during the times of the year between when the fish spawn and when the fish hatch, limited the size of dredges allowed, or a combination of all three.

Even though the moratorium is in effect, people continue to dredge.  Dredging is usually done in remote places and the Department of Fish and Wildlife, already stretched thin, lacks the resources to enforce the moratorium.  The dredging community has also come up with inventive ways to get around the moratorium.  In addition to high banking (water is pumped from the stream into a sluice box and gravel/dirt is shoveled into the box) and electronic prospecting (metal detector is used to locate gold), they have started to use "underwater blow mining" to find gold.  Blow mining uses a stream of water to stir up the bottom or in crevices to clear material out of the way, leaving the gold behind.  For more info about different dredging/extracting techniques, see here.

Many people feel that this moratorium was due to lobbying by environmental groups with very little attention to any positive consequences of dredging (due to lack of research or understanding in the scientific community).  The gold dredging community has not taken this sitting down.  This issue is on it's way to the Appellate Court of the Third Appellate District of California.  The gold dredgers have challenged the moratorium under a federal preemption argument (see here).  If California had just considered the social effects of the moratorium before enacting a one size fits all moratorium, the people would not have had to rely on the courts to have their voices heard.

In the next post, I will discuss ways that California (and other states) can tackle the lack of rural representation in state policy decisions.  This problem can possibly be resolved in one of three ways.  One idea comes from Arizona, one from Australia, and one from the proponents of Jefferson State.

For more posts on gold and gold dredging, see here, here, here, and here.

Food sovereignty movement spawns struggle for local control

Recent events in El Dorado County, California highlight emerging tensions between state and local laws related to agriculture. These tensions arise in the context of a burgeoning food sovereignty movement, as consumers seek more choices about what they eat and its provenance. The Sacramento Bee reported a few weeks ago that the El Dorado County Board of Supervisors voted to support "the grass-roots (and grass-fed) agriculture revolution," and--in particular--local farmers who are bucking state regulations by selling directly to consumers.

At their January 24, 2012, meeting, the Board of Supervisors lent verbal support to a "Local Food and Community Self-Governance" ordinance.

The ordinance is being pushed by Patty Chelseth, a smalltime dairy woman (we're talking two cows) who wants to provide raw milk to customers. Chelseth started selling shares in her cows because California law permits a cow's owner to drink the cow's milk filtered, but unpasteurized. It's her attempt to workaround the prohibition on selling raw milk.

This July, 2011, Sac Bee story provides some background for the Supervisors' decision. It tells of Chelseth's initial dust up with the state over a cease-and-desist letter the California Department of Agriculture sent her regarding her sales of shares of her cows. That July story included the language of Chelseth's proposed ordinance. As journalist Carlos Alcala observes, it reads something like a Declaration of Independence:

We the People of the County of El Dorado, California, have the right to produce, process, sell, purchase and consume local foods, thus promoting self-reliance, the preservation of family farms and local food traditions.

Indeed, "freedom v. oppression" was a theme among the 20 or so pro-ordinance speakers at the meeting. According to the Bee, another hundred or so supporters overflowed from the meeting room.

While El Dorado County Supervisors did not adopt that ordinance at their January meeting, but they did appoint two members to draft a resolution in support of local food governance. This watered-down action came in spite of highly supportive comments one supervisor made about local agriculture and his own family's involvement in it. Supervisor Ray Nutting is quoted:

I am personally appalled that they will come onto my ranch and tell me I can't share my cow or I can't share my chickens.

After some references to his own "homesteading, cow-milking ... and chicken-decapitating grandmother," Nutting concluded: "Whatever we need to do, I'm in full support." El Dorado County Sheriff John D'Agostini commented that his office is "not going to be the milk police" and voiced support for the ordinance.

Despite widespread sentiment in favor of small farmers and direct sales, the Board of Supervisors was surely influenced to take only tepid action by the county's lawyer, who advised that Chelseth's proposed ordinance runs afoul of the California Constitution, which reserves for the state the prerogative to regulate food for public safety.

Indeed, state regulators say they "won't kowtow to the movement when it comes to changing policy." A California Dept. of Agriculture spokesperson said the Department would be guided by the state legislature. He added that the only proposed changes in the pipeline are aimed at achieving greater clarity regarding the regulation of very small dairy herds. The spokesperson did not indicate whether such changes would affect producers like Chelseth, who seek to sell raw mailk directly to consumers.

Lest this state-local power struggle appear to be an isolated event, I note that both Bee stories indicate that similar tensions are playing out elsewhere, both within California and across the nation. An official from the Sonoma Valley (California) Grange who attended the El Dorado County meeting commented that the California State Grange supports such ordinances and is "searching for an alpha dog to lead the way, and we're encouraging your county to be the leader."

The earlier Bee story compares what is happening in El Dorado County to a similar movement in Maine. There, the state agriculture agency has told municipalities that their food-related ordinances do not supplant state laws.

Shermain Hardesty of the UC Davis Small Farms Program thinks some middle ground may be possible. She is researching different standards that would ensure the safety of food that is not widely distributed and sees small meat-processing plants as one solution. But even Hardesty says "raw milk is a different question," presumably because of serious concerns about its safety. Get more information here, from Real Raw Milk Facts.

El Dorado County lies due east of Sacramento County, and it stretches many miles from exurban El Dorado Hills, a posh planned community abutting Sacramento County, though the Mother Lode and historic gold rush towns and hundreds of acres of El Dorado National Forest, to Lake Tahoe. It is part of the Sacramento-Roseville Metropolitan Area, but it is relatively sparsely populated as metro counties go, at just 106 persons per square mile.

I travel to El Dorado County frequently, in part because I particularly enjoy its viticultural offerings. More on that, perhaps, in another post. Photos are of some farm scenes in El Dorado County, including my favorite farm stand, run by a Hmong family, on Pleasant Valley Road. Of course, regulations around selling vegetables are far less strict than those regarding meat and milk products. The sign proclaiming availability of eggs was taken yesterday, also on Pleasant Valley Road, which is south of Placerville (a/k/a "Hangtown"), the county seat. The top photo, from a farm on Bucks Bar Road, illustrates a workaround for selling directly to the consumer--selling the entire live cow! (This practice, too, may run afoul of the law, as Bee journalist Carlos Alcala reported here). El Dorado County Farm Trails signs are numerous, with many of them designating the county's dozens of wineries and hundreds (maybe thousands?) of acres of wine grapes.

Cross-posted to Agricultural Law Blog.

Farmers markets vs old fashioned farm stands

This story about people growing vegetables in the Appalachian foothills appeared in the New York Times a few days ago. The main point of the feel-good story, "Vegetable Gardens are Booming in a Fallow Economy," is that more folks in this region are self-provisioning by growing vegetable gardens and selling the excess, often informally. The story's dateline is West Liberty, Kentucky, population 3,363, in the Appalachian part of the state where the economy has long been depressed. Sabrina Tavernise writes:

Garden plots are dug into the green hills, laid out in fuller force than people have seen in years. People call them sturdy patches of protection in uncertain times.

Tavernise makes the point that while many farmers' markets have sprung up in Kentucky in recent years, people buying food there tend to be looking for bargains, buying in bulk to can and preserve. This is in contrast to farmers markets in urban areas, where the "words 'locally grown' conjure images of affluent shoppers" buying pricey, beautiful food. Speaking of beautiful, don't miss the slide show accompanying the story.

The casual way some of these farmers sell their overflow produce reminded me just how far some contemporary, urban farmers markets are from what I consider to be their forerunner: an old fashioned farm stand (sometimes the back of a pick up truck) where a farmer sells her/his own stuff. Indeed, sometimes the stand is right next to or on the field where the food is grown, which takes the locavore idea to a new height. I'm posting a few photos of how producers sell the fruits of their labor right from their homes, as it were. The top photo is from just north of Polson, Montana, along Flathead Lake, where a family was selling cherries from its orchard, summer 2011. The bottom photo is from near Collinsville, Oklahoma, summer 2011.

Farmers markets--at least those I frequent in greater Sacramento--are, in contrast, highly commercial. As Tavernise points out in her story, part of the draw is the array of goods they offer--not just fruit and veg, but flowers, dried herbs, wine, jams and jellies. Some even have musical performers each week. (And don't forget the fresh--make that live--fish). And the fare isn't necessarily local. Some produce, avocados, for example, may be trucked in from as far away as Southern California, which undermines any claim to being particularly environmentally friendly. I love urban farmers markets, but we should admit that, among other things, they are a form of agritourism.

A rural life (as distinct from "The Rural Life")

Effie Lea Shatwell, Lisa R. Pruitt and Elver Shatwell,
at their home in Vendor, Arkansas, 1995

A rural life ended this week with the death of my maternal grandmother, Effie Lee Shatwell of Vendor, Arkansas. She was 92 and is survived by six children, 18 grandchildren, 36 great-grandchildren, and 10 great-great-grandchildren.

Reflecting on the life of "Grannie Shat" has served as a reminder of so many of the aspects of rural living that have drawn me to think and write about rural people and places. Certainly, her life and times were worlds away from "The Rural Life" depicted by Verlyn Klinkenborg in his popular blog by that name. While Klinkenborg makes a good living as a writer and keeps a farm in Columbia County, New York, as an avocation, my grandmother spent the vast majority of her life actually eking a living out of a subsistence farm in the Ozark mountains of Northwest Arkansas. Born in the community of Red Rock in 1915, she married my grandfather in 1939 and lived out her adult life in nearby Vendor. Both of their families had already lived in the area for several generations. She and my grandfather made their living almost entirely from their hill farm, putting in a full garden every year until my grandmother had a stroke and went to live in a nursing home more than 9 years ago. That year, my grandfather's last, he put in and harvested the garden without her.

Throughout her married life, my grandmother canned and stored all summer to have food to get the family through the winter. Only a few years before her stroke did they stop keeping chickens, pigs, cattle, and a mule to pull the plow. They sold eggs, milk and butter to their neighbors, and supplied them also to their grown children. As the mother of young children, my grandmother took money earned from selling eggs and other produce to buy dry goods to make all the kids' clothes. The fabric was used again and again, as girls' skirts were turned into shirts for the boys, then quilt tops. The food I most associate with my grandmother is a pot of pinto beans with a big ham hock in it for flavor. Second to that, there was the "big mess of squirrel" she'd fry up after my grandfather had gone hunting.

My grandfather worked as a logger in the timber woods and did some work stints in Kansas City when there was no work to be had in Newton County. Only after I moved to California did he tell me of his stint working in a cooperage in Oakland, presumably during the Dust Bowl era. "I hated California," he said, "and I wanted to be back here, so I caught a ride back to Arkansas in the bed of a pickup truck as soon as I could." In their latter years, my grandfather brought in a little extra money from carving miniature wooden plows and making birdhouses to sell at the tourist stops along nearby Scenic Highway 7. My grandmother never worked outside the home, never paid into Social Security, but I have no doubt that she contributed as much to her family's survival as my grandfather did.

Many of the themes of rural living that we have discussed this semester are reflected in my grandmother's life: poverty, hardship, and deprivation (she and my grandfather got indoor plumbing in their home only in 1990; they drew water manually from a well at the corner of the front porch, and you can see part of the wringer style washing machine in the photo above); the informal economy (as noted above); social and spatial isolation (my grandparents came to the county seat, traveling in part on dirt roads, every Saturday to buy feed for the animals and what few foodstuffs they didn't grow); and attachment to place (although no one has lived on the farm for almost a decade, my mother and her siblings have been unwilling to sell it).

And then there's law's relevance to rural lives like those of my grandparents. Or, perhaps I should say complete lack of relevance (except, of course, to the extent that the rule of law permitted them to own their farm and live there in peace). Perhaps law has become more relevant only in their absence. My mom tells me that a meth house is operating down the road from their vacant farm. Now that I think about it, maybe this doesn't represent change in terms of a role for law. Law remains largely irrelevant to their lives (or more precisely, those of their heirs) if law enforcement resources are so strained, or so influenced by local considerations, that the meth house is ignored.