Modern Agriculture’s House Of Cards, Inside California’s Controversial Prop 13, And Why Private Label Is Having A Moment

As David Barber, a partner at agriculture and food investors Astanor Ventures, told me while reporting my latest feature, modern agriculture has been built on three key assumptions: cheap energy, free water and consistent weather. Take a moment to think about that, and then pause to consider what happens when one—let alone all—of those resources are threatened.

“The whole system does not function without that,” Barber told me. “It reveals some of this for the house of cards that it is.”

Some cards are already starting to fall. At least 2,000 cattle in Kansas died in June during a nasty heat wave. Meanwhile, the skyrocketing price of water in New Mexico and Arizona has ranchers and other meat-producing operations considering getting out of the business. In Texas, where some western counties have been facing the least rainfall since the 19th century, drought is responsible for the very poor condition of about 11% of the state’s corn crop.

These signals are not random. They are part of a pattern, which many other data points help illuminate as well. My story also drew from the Data Commons, an ambitious Google project spearheaded by the creator of RSS, which combines a lot of hard-to-use data sets on climate change, hunger and health while making analysis more user-friendly. More data on drought, nutrition and crop viability is going to be added in the coming weeks, and I look forward to continuing to play around with the charts to see what interesting stories are waiting to be found.

For now, though, I’m focusing on the stories I can tell with my grill, and the jokes I’m keeping in my back pocket for a few cookouts slated for this weekend. I’m wishing you a festive, fun and restful summer holiday!

— Chloe Sorvino, Staff Writer

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