The Nevada County Farm Bureau: Why You Should Join Us
I haven’t done much writing for some time now. The reasons being, I have become very involved as a member of the California Farm Bureau and specifically, our local Nevada County Farm Bureau. As an agricultural producer and targeted grazing contractor, I’m sure you can understand my becoming an active Farm Bureau member. It may not be as obvious as to why you should join. In reality, if you eat food and use water, you are involved in agriculture too.
Our goats lounge along an off-season NID ditch on the home ranch.
Despite how it sounds, Farm Bureau is not another California government agency. It is a grass roots agricultural organization born out of the University of California Agricultural Sciences in the early part of the 20th century. Around 1916-17, The UC agricultural schools wanted to develop a county by county network to share agricultural science and technology from the university system to the farmers and ranchers in every county in the state. Because agricultural science is an “applied science,” not a theoretical science, they wanted the feedback and connection to farmers and ranchers who were actually doing the work of production agriculture.
Nevada County was among the first farm bureaus to form because our farmers and ranchers were working to unite around a visionary goal: The formation of an irrigation district using the mostly abandoned dams, ditches, flumes and other infrastructure developed during the gold mining era.
The goal was not easy to achieve. Farmers and ranchers had to mortgage their properties, savings, and risk their economic future for this dream for a better tomorrow to become a reality. But on August 15th, 1921, the Nevada Irrigation District (NID) was officially established.
Cascade Trail Canal
NID and agriculture have faced many challenges, changes and problems over the 100 plus years since its inception. Today, Nevada County Farm Bureau is once again leading the way for affordability, transparency, government regulation, and establishing the true cost of supporting the aging infrastructure.
Today, all of us who buy water from NID are facing an 80-85% increase in that cost over the next five years. Water, both treated and untreated, impact all of us living in Nevada County. Treated water feeds many homes, untreated water raises the local food we eat, provides green zones used for recreation, golf, fire safety and habitat for wildlife. These beautiful rural pastures and farms mixed so closely with suburban homes make Nevada County such a wonderful place to live for all of us.
Nevada County Farm Bureau offers Associate Memberships at a very reasonable cost for non-farmers that wish to support our fight to improve NID’s affordability and transparency.