Commentary

The devastating drought in California has created at least one positive result for the state’s farmers. It’s proving that they have few friends, maybe none, in the radical environmentalist community.

For most farmers this is not news. For years they have listened to the harping of the ‘enviros’ about pesticides, about genetically modified organisms (GMOs), about food contamination on dozens of levels, and about endangerment of wildlife habitats.

The list goes on.

The latest indictment of farming framed by environmentalist word crafters cites California almond growers. They are allegedly water wasters, not only for planting ‘thirsty’ almond trees, but for harvesting and exporting some of the nuts.

Each nut represents a gallon of water sent to a far off land, they say.

Their general claim that agriculture in California uses (they like to say ‘consumes’) 80 percent of the state’s water has already worn thin. Legitimate news reporters are seeing through this outlandish exaggeration, and editing the figure down to a realistic 40 percent.

If they truly pursue accuracy, they point out that environmental uses have been siphoning off 50 percent of the state’s developed water every year, “exporting” it to the Pacific Ocean in a vain attempt to provide comfortable habitat for salmon and the Delta smelt.

No doubt the almond industry will suffer some loss of sales, probably greater at home than abroad, from the water-related smear tactics.

The industry has mounted vigorous sales campaigns in the past. Remember the entertaining “a can a week is all we ask” campaign?  It can speak for itself, and be assured that other farm groups will join to help make its voice heard.

The chilling disappointment of the “piling on” by environmentalists and their fringe supporters is that it exposes a deep-seated hatred by this element of our society toward farming, one of the pillars of the country’s growth, development, and continued prosperity.

Hatred by one group of society toward another group is a sociological tragedy.

This societal rupture has the potential for outpacing even racial prejudice as a flaw and potential cancer. Most of us are prone to pointing fingers at the Mideast and the enmity between divergent political, religious, and cultural groups as conveyed in news reports daily.

We like to think our society provides for expression and communication that allows us to avoid this kind of generational upheaval. Some truly American events in the past few decades have cast some doubt on that assumption.

There is no question that a vast number of those residing in various environmental movements are unaware of the hatred and enmity at the base of true ‘environmentalism.’ Little do they suspect that a remote occurrence such as the California’s drought might reveal the true emotional distortion at the base of the environmental fraternity.

Most farmers, those who consider themselves the original environmentalists - enjoying, protecting, and improving the world around them long before the environmentalist movement took its current aggressive shape - are disappointed by the radical nature of the ‘enviros.’

This is especially true when the environmentalist viewpoint is imposed on them through government edicts and actions. Commandeering the power of government and its legion of unelected personnel has been both a clever and unfortunate move by determined environmentalists.   

Trust in government is essential in our uniquely democratic society. But it is hard to maintain when government’s actions are strongly influenced and manipulated by such radical power structures as those maintained by the enviros.

When they jumped on lifesaving- and crop-saving DDT 50 years ago, the enviros sent the message that farmers would not be in their circle of friends. They have underscored their message by twisting their statements about the drought to their benefit, but to the country’s disadvantage.