Why the government sucks

I met with a client today. 80 years old with some significant health issues. She and her husband, in their heyday, worked about 40 acres of stone fruit trees and a family-owned packing house. Life was good. Life was simple. Their labor force was well compensated and their laborers appreciated them.

Play it forward. Husband dies. The family home is on a 20-acre parcel and she would like to have the opportunity to sell the agricultural land and keep the house. That’s where the Williamson Act comes in. To split the parcel into a 2-acre lot with house (so she can pass it on to the kids) and an 18-acre agricultural lot (for possible future sale) she has to pay the State extortion money. Big time extortion money. Over 2 years and $45,000 later the parcels are split.

Packing fruit used to be a relatively simple and lucrative endeavor. Now with government interference with everything from labor codes to a need to purchase expensive machines to put individual labels on each piece of fruit, many couldn’t survive. Fruit is now picked and more than 50% of the gross profit is then spent on packing house services offered by those select companies that jumped through the bureaucratic hoops and get the compensation for doing it. Now, for each dollar’s gross profit for the fruit (after labor, pesticides, fertilizer, etc.) the grower gets about 43 cents net. What’s wrong with this picture?

I’d like to throw the politicians out into the ag fields for a year or two. Perhaps their perspective would change. Hats off to the family farmer – one of the true endangered species.