Agriculture has been fascinating to me for so many reasons. This article captures the intersections between economics and resource issues, history and culture. And since everyone eats and jobs are at the foundation of the recovery we need, stories like this speak to many essential issues at once.

The Appalachia of the West

Jan 21st 2010 | FIELDS BETWEEN BAKERSFIELD AND VISALIA
From The Economist print edition

MIKE CHRISMAN looks out from his SUV as he drives through seemingly endless rows of walnut trees on his property near Visalia, in central California. “I have to be optimistic, I’m so tied to this land,” he says. His great-grandfather, after trying his luck in the Gold Rush, settled in Visalia in the 1850s, and the family has been there ever since. But as California’s secretary for natural resources—a job at the intersection of the environmental and farming lobbies, perennially at loggerheads over the state’s scarcest resource, water—Mr Chrisman also knows that optimism has become a minority view.

Read the entire article here.