California: America’s bread basket and food regulator
Baylen Linnekin has published a new law review article that you should read if you care about your right to eat whatever you want. He points out that California is leading the charge in regulating and banning politically incorrect foods, including hollandaise sauce and Caesar dressing, taco trucks and other street foods, eggs, raw milk, trans fats, and many others. This should worry the rest of us because as goes California, so goes the nation. For example, California was the first state to ban foie gras, and soon other jurisdictions followed suit, including famously Chicago.
Before reading Baylen’s article, I had no idea that California was responsible for so much of our food production. When you think of America’s bread basket, you tend to think of the midwest, but in fact it is California:
The sheer volume and variety of crops grown in California defy overstatement. The state leads the nation in production of almonds and walnuts and seemingly every crop alphabetically in between. In addition to almonds and walnuts, California is America‘s sole producer—meaning it is home to ninety-nine percent or more of the country‘s overall production—of figs, raisins, olives, clingstone peaches, persimmons, prunes, pomegranates, sweet rice, and clover seed. The state leads the nation in production of asparagus, avocados, bell peppers, broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, celery, cut flowers, dates, eggplant, garlic, grapes, herbs, kiwi, lemon, lettuce, lima beans, melons, nectarines, onions, pears, pistachios, plums, raspberries, strawberries, turnips, and more than a dozen other crops. All told, California farms account for nearly half of America‘s domestic production of fruits, nuts, and vegetables. California growers ship the vast majority of these crops to other U.S. states. California also accounts for all of America‘s nut exports, and three out of five fruit and vegetable exports.
California also has the most vibrant restaurant industry in the country. To me, this begs the question: If California’s agricultural and food industry is so massive why hasn’t it successfully organized to block food regulation? Is it simply the case that green lobby is much bigger?
