Sweet potato farm. (Photo: Katy Grimes for California Globe)
Who Benefits From Attacking California’s Farmers?
Activists pressure legislators and regulators to impose restrictions that make it more difficult for farmers to survive
By Hector Barajas, September 2, 2025 6:55 am
We cannot continue to ignore the fact that the foundations of our food and energy security are being undermined. California has turned simple solutions into impossible ones. Instead of strengthening the industries that feed our families and support our economy, activists and unelected regulators have added restrictions that make it harder and more costly for farmers to grow food and for energy producers to meet our needs.
This is not about conspiracy theories. It is about following the money. Who is behind the hundreds of millions of dollars funding protests in our schools, on our streets, and against the very people who produce our food? Who is trying to shut down California’s domestic oil and gas production? Where is that money coming from, and who benefits from keeping our state divided? Equally troubling, how is it that criminals, child molesters, and human traffickers have organizations lobbying for them and shaping policy? Who is paying for that?
The same pattern is seen in energy. Oil demand has increased over the past decade, but activists have pushed California to import 78 percent of its oil supply while working to end local production. They ignore the fact that oil isn’t just fuel but the foundation for more than 6,000 products we use daily, including heart valves, prosthetics, tires, and roads. Shutting down local energy doesn’t make us greener. It makes us weaker.
Even basic safety measures have become targets of litigation. In Berry Creek, a town that received an $836,365 grant to cut back vegetation, clear access roads, and create ridge-top fuel breaks, environmental lawsuits stalled the work. Then a fire swept through, and the town burned to the ground.
Farmers face the same relentless pressure. Food security is under attack. Activists stage “die-ins” at community meetings and flood the State Capitol to oppose water storage, pest control, conventional farming, diesel equipment, meat, and labor laws.
Step by step, activists pressure legislators and regulators to impose restrictions that make it more difficult for farmers to survive.
The numbers are alarming. A new case study from California State University, San Luis Obispo, reveals that regulatory costs for farmers have increased from $109 per acre in 2006 to over $1,600 per acre in 2024, representing a 1,366 percent rise. At the same time, the price farmers receive for crops like lettuce has barely moved. Margins are being crushed.
Farmers now shoulder rising costs from labor rules, including sick leave and overtime, as well as water quality and groundwater mandates, and limits on pest control. None of this puts food on the table at a reasonable price.
Water is another example of activist engagement and misplaced priorities. Is climate change happening? Are we facing unpredictable weather patterns as these activists claim? Yet, despite voters approving billions in water bonds, California has not constructed a major new water storage project in over 50 years. Meanwhile, stadiums are built in just a few years, government buildings are constructed quickly, and billions are invested in high-speed rail. If we can develop those, why not invest in the water infrastructure that sustains farms?
California already has one of the highest poverty rates in the country. The focus should be on reducing costs, not increasing them. The most urgent priority must be protecting our food supply. So, the real question remains: Who benefits from dividing our state and making it harder to grow food in California? Because the people of California are paying the price.
- California Spent $460 Million on a 911 System That Doesn’t Work - December 9, 2025
- California’s Poverty Machine Manages Misery Instead of Solving It - October 31, 2025
- The Forgotten Victims in the Immigration Debate - October 27, 2025
RELATED ARTICLES
-
June 20, 2022 -
June 8, 2023
-
March 23, 2022
Another aspect of the eradication of the private sector.
These creeps are readying to raze your house.
FOOD WATER OIL SHELTER ELECTRICITY
ANYBODY GET IT?
Evidently not.
One word summarizes the problem: Newsom
As I recall during one of their meetings years ago that the California Air Resources Board has discussed “right-sizing” California’s agricultural production to its population and not for export outside of the state. Seems like they are just promulgating rules to this end. This same approach somehow worked for electric/natural gas prices in CA. Me and mine are actively planning our strategic escape from this zoo.
How about attorneys. Attorneys who work for “environmental groups”.
Once dopey , low information supporters get the ball rolling with feel good donations, the attorneys sue and settle, furthering the cash flow. Then the cycle continues, like a perpetual motion machine.
Self enrichment is the downstream goal, and the dopey old hippie wannabe supporters are clueless as always.
The environmental movement has long outlived any other value or use.
Could it be if they strip the farmers of water and impose strict environmental restrictions, to force the farms to close to lower the value? Then land developers, including foreign developers such national Chinese investors buy it up.
The globalists want to control the population. Restricting food supply is a tool to control people. It has been done time and again through history, i.e. China, Russia, Afghanistan….
These fake astroturf protest groups are mostly funded by billionaires like George Soros. They laundered their money through these NGO’s, it is a tangled web.
The WEF infamously posted, “ You will own nothing and like it”.
“You will eat bugs to sustain you”.
California was once the bread basket of America. Now drive through the central valley and it looks dried up. The almond trees are becoming infested and dying. The bees our decimated. Then you have a cartel that targets beekeepers across this country and steal the honeybees.
Does this seem random? Seems pretty orchestrated to me.
Attack at every angle until the “enemy” surrenders. No shots fired.
One Fed Up Cali Girl you are correct. The wealth of California, the nation and the world is being stolen. In Haggai 2:8 Glod declares that the gold & silver is His, Psalms 50:10 also says that God owns the cattle on a thousand hills. So, what happens when God reclaims stolen goods? The Exodus story comes to ming where the Israelites came to Egypt with money and eventually became enslaved through taxes. God eventually plundered Egypt, and the wealth of the nation was given to the Israelites. Secondly the story of David’s camp being plundered by the Amalekites in I Samuel chapter 30 comes to mind. The chapter describes in detail that all of David’s stolen items were recovered. The second question then is are we living in a time period where we will see a great restoration of what has been stolen? I believe that we are living in such a time period
The Bible is a great teacher. History always seems to repeat itself.
We may not know the answer to the question but God certainly does.
I can say, we are living during some dark days, there is only one answer to the darkness.
Look up, pray up.
We can’t forget the Netherlands farmer protests a few years back .
The Dutch government was forcing them to close farms blaming it on Climate change, another false argument.
This not just local it is a global effort to control us.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/07/the-dutch-farmers-revolt-a-sign-of-turmoil-to-come/
If I remember right, the sri lanka famine was torched off by the government going full on climate change woke, forbidding fertilizer and pesticides. However, the wokies who seek to control what american english words mean have exchanged “famine” for “economic crisis,” deflecting the harm done.
Love you Hector but you did not answer your question.
Is it the Chinese?
Is it the unionized government bureaucracy?
Is it the rich and powerful?
Is it the legislatures?
Is it the “greenies”?
All of the above?
Please clarify.
All of the above.
Who and what the devils disciples get out of it.
I am surprised that the Globe has not covered the war on farmers at Point Reyes. “Environmentalists” have succeeded in running farmers out of business.
Follow UnWon.
Newscum’s “agricultural equity” advisors want to steal farmers land and give it to Demonrat constituants.
https://freebeacon.com/california/stolen-land-gavin-newsoms-agricultural-equity-advisers-prepare-plan-to-redistribute-farmland-to-racial-minorities
It’s Hair-gel Hitler Newsom along with the criminal Democrat thug mafia that controls California who are attacking the state’s farmers. No doubt they are doing it on behalf of their nefarious cronies like the WEF globalists, Chinese Communist Party (CCP), central bankers, etc.?
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has acquired vast swaths of American farmland across 29 of the 50 U.S. states which has raised serious national security concerns.
(https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/07/trump-administration-announces-crackdown-chinese-communist-party-ownership/)
I yesterday attempted to recaption the photo of Newsom leaning against the Great Great Wall. Even had it translated into Chinese calligraphy but it was rejected as spam.
I gave up and washed dishes.
You might want to explore the chinese aquisition of major pork and chicken producers, as well as mass takeover of much of the meat processing industry. The CCP can just instruct its minions to shut down meat and other agricultural production and bam, a crisis is created to rival, if not exceed the great depression. One elderly man said he knew the depression was over when he saw a rabbit cross the road with no one chasing it. An immediate post WWII german dish, reflecting the hunger of a defeated and destroyed nation, was Hund und Nudel, dog and noodles
Not in WV.
This is all about controlling the water and making money from it. Look 100 years ago when the now wealthiest people in LA went and bought up all the farms in the Owens valley and shut them down just for the water rights, they are trying it again with the central valley. The politicians want the water to sell and he flat land to put solar panels on to continue their grift of the states energy industry as they are the ones installing all the huge solar projects and wind farms, while making it harder and harder for homeowners to benefit by installing solar. They control he PUC which controls the utilities and the prices they charge their customers and how much “renewable” energy they have to purchase and who has that power ready to purchase? The politicians and their cronies. There is a reason they do not count hydro and nuclear as renewable as they can not invest in it.
A quote from long ago was like “it doesn’t who owns the land, what counts is who owns the water rights.”
That might extend to who owns the mineral rights or right for oil extraction.
The PUC doesn’t so much control the utilities as it somewhat herds the utilities. The rates and other utility issues are complex and a large topic, but the fact is that it was legislated (most likely the late 70s) that electrical utilities were compelled to buy “renewable energy” “at the highest avoided cost” of building new generation facilities. So, if electricity was 2 cents a kwh from northwest hydro and windfarm 13 cents per kwh, the utility bought from the windfarms. This was recovered through rate case petition with the PUC, and rates at the meter skyrocketed. Then came deregulation, with the false promise of reducing rates, but wreaked havoc from such things like the enron scandal, which threatened to eventually bankrupt the state: leftist politicians giggled with glee about financialy destroying investor owned utilities in california. My best recollection and I believe to be fact: PG&E filed for bankruptcy, SCE shuffled it’s cash to a legally separate corporation and informed sacramento that if the state didn’t pick up the excess cost they created, Socal would go dark, which replaced political glee with involuntary bowel movements in sacramento. I don’t remember what SDG&E did. The utilities were forced to divest their generation facilities, which removed a method of keeping first tier bulk purchase electrical costs down. If a bulk seller raised its price, the utility would fire up idle generation facilities and after a period of the utility not buying, the vendor would lower the price and the utility’s generation would revert to idle. That’s not in the mix anymore.
Good piece, Hector. “Who benefits?” Indeed. As a Catholic, I’m aware that all these attacks on our food supply lead to the Satanic. These are the same secretive ancients who want us dead through GMO, abortion, uncontrolled organ harvesting, physician-assisted suicide, poisonous inoculations, pesticides, exploding electric vehicles, driverless vehicles, and on and on. To say nothing of the EMF radiation from smart meters, cell phones, small cells, cell towers, license readers, computers, Wi-fi, and Bluetooth.
My educational website: RosevilleAware.net
Speaking of foods, I’m reading food labels again. Now it’s “Natural Flavors” in almost, almost!, everything! Even breadstuffs at Trader Joe’s. My understanding is natural flavors is known as a “chemistry lab.” Nobody knows what the chemicals are.
NATURAL FLAVORS – from AI:
Common chemicals found in both natural and artificial flavors include methyl cyclopentenolone, diacetyl, methyl methoxy pyrazine, benzaldehyde, ethyl butyrate, and various esters and aldehydes. Because the exact composition of a “natural flavor” is not required to be listed, it can be a proprietary blend known only to the flavor manufacturer. This lack of transparency means that the term “natural” refers only to the origin of the flavoring constituents, not the overall composition of the final product.
The Nature Conservancy that is tied directly to Gavin Newsom through multiple appointees just scored a $2.7M taxpayer grant to “rewild” Point Reyes. But here’s the kicker: only $78K goes to the project. The rest? Cashed out in wages, “planning,” and bogus indirect expenses. This is the same NGO that helped shove farmers and ranchers off their land by cutting off water. Now, Newsom cronies are getting rich off the chaos. California corruption is hitting new lows!
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjMtSpz_m-Y)