Another year, another crop report from Santa Barbara County (see page 5), and this one is (Borat voice), berry nice!
Sorry, I couldn’t resist–the county’s strawberry farmers raked in an astounding $457 million during 2017!
Local broccoli farmers got a significant boost as well, surpassing wine grapes as the second most earning crop from 2016 to 2017. I’m sure 4th District Supervisor Peter Adam is happy about that; he grows a lot of broccoli in the county. Is that how he also grows such an illustrious mustache, a diet rich in greens?
The cut flower industry bloomed a bit brighter than last year as well, to the tune of about $10 million, but that was after losing nearly $30 million between 2015 and 2016. Still, $85 million across 2017 for cut flowers is impressive, especially considering that’s all done on less than 1,000 acres, mostly in the Lompoc Valley.
I guess the ongoing labor shortage hasn’t been that dire, or at least local farmers found enough workers to help grow the county’s agricultural gross by $163 million from 2016 to 2017. Perhaps the federal H-2A farmworker housing program helped, despite some local cries to limit the amount of it in Santa Maria.
Agriculture is a billion-dollar industry in this county alone, and it accounts for more than 25,000 jobs. That’s why I always get my feathers ruffled when I hear locals complain about “illegals” and resources that help undocumented workers or their kids. Farmworkers are the lowest rung on the proverbial ag industry ladder, and make the least amount of money for their backbreaking labor, yet it’s on their backs that this county garners so much of its wealth.
That’s why I commend efforts by students and staff at Allan Hancock College who want to set up a Dream Center at the school to help DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) or other undocumented students, often called Dreamers, and connect them to much-needed resources (see page 12).
The undocumented community contributes plenty to our local economy, even if it often leaves them behind. The staggering crop numbers are just one illustration of that.
Santa Barbara County has plenty of wealth, but it also has plenty of poverty. Of the nearly half a million people living across the county, 60,000 are living at or below the federal poverty level (see page 7), and a lot of those are children. That’s not just undocumented folks, it could be anyone who doesn’t have a high-wage job.
Or it could be anyone who doesn’t own property, which fewer and fewer county residents are able to afford. Rents are only rising while wages stagnate, a problem across the state and the country. It must be nice to be able to own a house or a piece of farmland, to rake in the stacks of rental or ag income from the county’s working class.
That’s why it’s frustrating to see the city of Santa Maria drag its feet on making the city safer for cyclists and pedestrians (see page 6). It’s an issue the Sun has reported on for years as so many residents who walk or bike are hit and killed by cars in this traffic-congested city.
How many of those Santa Marians killed by vehicles do you think had enough money in the bank so their family wasn’t scrambling to pay for mortuary and funeral costs?
The Canary can at least afford a basket of strawberries. Send your thoughts to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jul 26 – Aug 2, 2018.