That is sad. Environmentalists and stupid government restrictions have an adverse impact on the environment.It has little value unless it's near a growing city and can be urbanized. You have acreage in the Central Valley region that goes for a few thousand an acre now simply because it can no longer be farmed with water restrictions, pollution restrictions, and other government regulations not to mention taxes. So, it sits fallow and unused.
For example, 12 ranches on Point Reyes in Marin County north of San Fran were run out of business after operating there for over a century by rabid environmentalist nutgoobers. In the 1970's elk were reintroduced to the area as part of a conservation thing. The elk had to compete with the dairy farmers and cattle ranchers in the area for grazing land.
Of course, the state stepped in and made regulations in favor of the elk (which you can't hunt and add no value to the land whatsoever having been gone from it for nearly a century). This was followed by suing the ranchers out of business over various practices as they supposedly made it difficult for the elk to survive there.
When Activism Goes Too Far: The Forced Exit of Point Reyes Farmers — The California Conversation
Ranchers in Point Reyes, California are being forced to close their operations after over 150 years of multigenerational farming practices. This raises serious questions about our state’s environmental priorities. How should we think about the impacts of farming practices on ecosystems, and why shouwww.thecaliforniaconversation.com
Or, there are lots of orchards in the Central Valley particularly almond orchards. Operators were restricted more and more on water usage to a point where they couldn't sustain operations. So, they would dig up the trees, smash them into piles and burn then to get rid of them then spread the ash on the soil to help rejuvenate it. The state came in and made that practice illegal. The result was it became too expensive to dig the trees up and use industrial wood chippers to grind them up as an alternative. So, the trees--now dead--were left in place to rot. This attracted all sorts of nuisance pests that began to have negative effects on neighboring farms doing other production. The inability to use viable pesticides meant those farms couldn't control the problem and began losing money on crops lost to the pests. That made them, in turn, shut down operations.
California Agriculture Crisis: Politicians Prioritize Film Over Farming - Farm Trader
California agriculture crisis grows as farmers face rising costs and lost farmland, while state leaders prioritize film industry subsidies.thefarmtrader.com
Ag Alert
www.agalert.com
Here in the Northern counties in PA they introduced Elk and they co-exist with the farmlands. They have lotteries for hunting Elk to keep the herds in check and healthy. Of course, the environmentalists and PETA assholes haven't been successful at trying to mess with the farmers or the Elk herds here...yet. But then, we hunters and landowners would fight them tooth and nail.
