Capturing Precarity & Plenty in California’s Central Valley

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Large, still water body with brown mountains in the backdrop

The Central Valley is a flat, sprawling valley in the heart of California, spanning over 400 miles between the Coast Ranges and Sierra Nevada Mountains and draining into the San Francisco Bay. The Valley has a Mediterranean climate characterized by hot, dry summers and cool, wet winters.

Agriculture thrives in the Central Valley but is almost entirely irrigated, because there is virtually no rainfall in the summer. These photos were captured in October 2021 to document the period between crop harvest and the onset of winter rains, as well as to explore how these seasonal fluctuations shape the landscape. The 2021 water year (officially ending September 30, 2021) is the second driest on record.

“The Central Valley is the armpit of California.”

After I first moved here, a group of Californians would—with a straight face—give me unsolicited opinions like this about their home state. On some level, I get why people slander the Central Valley. While driving on Interstate 5 between San Francisco and Los Angeles, the sights and smells can convince a lot of people that Central California is drive-thru country.

A black asphalt parking lot with a dumpster standing at the edge and a brown, dry landscape in the background.
A graffitied dumpster sits at the edge of an asphalt lot at the Orestimba Vista Point, which overlooks the golden hills along Southbound Interstate 5 west of Newman.
A yellow tractor with a trailer attached to it, representing agriculture in Central Valley.
Heavy machinery sits ready to spread manure from a nearby cattle feedlot onto this field east of Los Banos.
Dry and yellow landscape with two strips of highway roads cutting the middle of the landscape, with vehicles going to and fro.
Left lane drivers and semi-trucks rush down Interstate 5 through western Stanislaus County, between the California Aqueduct (right) and the Delta-Mendota Canal (center).

For the record, I don’t think that the Central Valley should be written off as a wasteland. It appears different than other parts of California, sure, but the Central Valley is challenged by the same kind of impermanence and overzealousness that makes places like Silicon Valley and Hollywood attractive. Tech moguls and wannabe movie stars are not really that different from the land speculators and water barons hoping to make their mark on Central Valley agriculture.

I moved here to work as a researcher in orchards, and I had to travel throughout the Central Valley to work in some of the region’s more than 1,000,000 acres of almond orchards and more than 350,000 acres of walnut orchards. Over 400 different crops, from raisins to radicchio, are grown in the region, and it is home to the most diverse and productive agricultural systems in human history despite an ongoing roller coaster of multi-year droughts and wettest-ever winters.

A group of white sheep huddle together in front of a metal water trough, representing agriculture in Central Valley.
Sheep drink water from a trough and graze vegetation under the vines in this vineyard, pulling up any weeds that might grow after winegrape harvest in northern Yolo County.
Several grapevines stand in symmetrical rows in a field, the grapevines are covered with cardboard milk cartons, representing agriculture in Central Valley.
Unused milk cartons from a Sonoma County dairy protect young grapevines from physical damage, winds, and herbicide sprays in northeastern Merced County.
Two yellow road signs with black painted arrows stand in the foreground with greens fields on the left and a golden field on the right.
Two road signs point the way around a bend in a gravel road, next to a bee yard and an almond orchard near Zamora and the Dunnigan Hills.

Before colonization, Patwin, Miwok, Yokuts, and other Indigenous Peoples enjoyed diets rich in salmon, acorns, and a cornucopia of other foods. Winter rains created vernal lakes and sustained an abundance of life through long summers. Springtime flooding and dry summers proved to be an issue for settlement, though, so most of these water flows have since been smoothed out with reservoirs, massive pumps, and concrete-lined irrigation canals that allow people to use water when and where they want to.

A water body in the middle with green trees standing on either side of it.
A piece of remnant wetland in the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge is nearby the site where agricultural drainage evaporation ponds caused selenium poisonings of birds in the 1980s.
Still water in a large water body and two men sitting on the side of it.
Two men fish for catfish or striped bass in the Delta-Mendota Canal in Stanislaus County.
A water canal into which gushing water is being pumped from a water pump.
Water pumps recirculate water in the irrigation canals south of Williams before rice fields get flooded for the winter.

Agriculture and nature exist in polarity—neither is separate from the other, and farms push the boundaries of what natural systems can produce.

In the mid-1700s, Spanish colonizers began setting up permanent Mission settlements and ranchos along the California coast, bringing with them livestock and crops like grains and figs. Agricultural development in California exploded a century later, following the Gold Rush and completion of the first transcontinental railroad.

California agriculture spread further during the twentieth century. Enabled by new technologies like refrigerated rail cars, immense irrigation projects, and diesel engines, as well as immigrant farmworkers from around the world—Punjab, Japan, Oklahoma, Mexico—farmers began to overlay the flowing rivers and rolling hills of the Valley with a grid of laser-leveled fields.

A field with with several grapevines, old and new, standing in symmetric rows and columns, representing agriculture in Central Valley.
New and older grape plantings stand side by side in the undulating fields of northeastern Merced County.
A brown, empty field in which a tractor stands as clouds of dust billow in the distance, representing agriculture in Central Valley.
A farmer tills to break up crop residue and create a perfectly smooth surface before the next crop is planted in this row crop field northwest of Westley.
Brown landscape with blue sky overhead and dry, brown hills on the left.
A dusty berm separates a fallow field and a recently leveled field southeast of Tracy.

When I look through these straight lines, level fields, and hard infrastructures to the land underneath, I see a complicated relationship between intensified agriculture and the landscape. Agriculture blankets a colossal amount of the land in Central California, but natural landscapes still peek through the edges. When crops are harvested every fall, there is uncertainty about whether nature will provide enough water to create another crop. Crops grown from one year’s rainfall generally get harvested before the next water year begins, and there’s no way to know in advance how much rain will fall or how much groundwater will be pumped to make up the difference.

Brown path in the center with a dry irrigation canal on the left and a green field on the right, representing agriculture in Central Valley.
Cotton harvest in Merced County is in full swing, while this irrigation canal runs dry until next season.
A row of big heaps of almonds covered with white sheets.
Piles of harvested almonds await shipment from central Merced County to nut consumers across the world.
Broken branches with green leaves lying on the ground in a heap.
Farmers ripped out this almond orchard northwest of Westley, to replace this field with another crop or just because the almond trees became less productive.

There’s a preternatural quality to these agricultural landscapes. Agriculture and nature exist in polarity—neither is separate from the other, and farms push the boundaries of what natural systems can produce. This polarity is mirrored by a number of apparent dichotomies that are actually deeply engrained in the culture of the Golden State: coast and valley, wet and dry, boom and bust.

Man riding a horse on the side of an empty road.
This cowboy rides south along the road out of El Nido.
A cross shaped installation made of horseshoes stands in the ground along with miscellaneous objects like a pair of boots and artificial flowers.
A monument erected from horseshoes stands by itself on a roadside in the Grasslands Wildlife Management Area, Merced County.
A herd of cattle stand in an enclosure, representing agriculture in Central Valley.
Cattle enjoy the cooling effects of a large sprinkler in a feedlot east of Los Banos.
The carcass of a cattle lies on dusty ground in front of a building and a shed- like structure.
Someone left this dead steer in a loading yard east of Los Banos.

The imperfect symmetry of the Central Valley is even evident in its common name. “Central” can mean principal, primary, and important, or it can mean middle, halfway, and intermediate. This place—like many rural places—is both energetic and permanent, interstitial and connected. People, crops, water, and resources flow through the Valley at a tremendous rate, but, for most people, there is barely an exchange with the golden hills and ancient lake beds underpinning it all.

Landscape with a water body and some greenery and trees in the background and a narrow plume of smoke rising into the sky.
Migratory waterfowl swim in remnant wetlands in the Colusa National Wildlife Refuge while agricultural burning takes place in the distance.
Dry and brown landscape with a water body on the left and a plume of smoke on the right drifting into the sky.
Water streams through the Delta-Mendota Canal in San Joaquin County while industrial burning takes place in the distance.

When I moved to California in the summer of 2017, the state had just experienced its second-wettest winter, wiping out a five-year drought that included its driest period in history. Since that time, the cycle has repeated, with another multi-year drought including a new record driest period (that includes the year when these photos were captured), followed by an incredibly wet and snowy winter.

There have been some ups and downs in the farm economy over this period, but agriculture has generally continued to grow. For example, California almond acreage started to decline for the first time in decades, but almond production also reached record high levels. This region continues to be one of the world’s most important fruit baskets but also, seemingly, always one dry winter away from collapse. In truth, the last fifteen years of California agriculture have shown that a sudden collapse is unlikely, but they also demonstrate the dynamic instability of our approach to building human systems over the top of natural systems.

A metal irrigation pipe atop which a pumping system sits, and is leaking a fine spray of water.
Water puddles up around this leaky, metal irrigation pipe, which moves water into a row crop field south of Gustine.

Personally, I got off the California water ride and moved closer to where I grew up, but it’s clear to me that the Central Valley will remain an agricultural powerhouse even amidst ongoing climate, labor, and food system uncertainties. Superlative is the norm in California, and even Central California has to claim the title of most, or biggest, or greatest. In my mind, it has the distinction of being both one of the most temperate and most intense landscapes on Earth.

Featured Image: The Delta-Mendota Canal in San Joaquin County, where up to 8,500 acre-feet of water flows every day. Photo by author, 2021.

Steven Haring is a recovering academic who spent over a decade as an agricultural researcher. He is now an independent agronomist for Virginia Agroecology Services and a cider apple grower in Central Virginia. Website. Contact.

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