Blog: What’s the deal with the carrot boycott in Cuyama Valley?
When California lawmakers enacted the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act in 2014, it was an effort to tame the wild, wild west of water. Nearly a decade later, there’s been some progress creating local sustainability plans, but Big Ag corporations are still hogging water and bullying smaller groundwater users. Look no further than the fight heating up in the Cuyama Valley, where small farmers and rural residents are calling for a boycott of carrots produced by a pair of big corporate growers who use a lot of water in an increasingly dry place. … The problem is that more water is being pumped from the ground than is being replenished. Cuyama Valley is one of California’s 21 over-pumped, or “critically overdrafted” basins.