Keith Jarrett wrote:
 
> Paul wrote,
> > Here is a graph showing how almond yields in California
> > have been steadily increasing in recent decades thanks,
> > in part, to industrialized agricultural practices:
> > http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k75/4af/beea.jpg
> 
> What is left out here is,   the huge increase of bearing almond acres
> between 1990- 2007,  the yields have not increased all that much. That is a
> very misleading statement.

Keith, I agree it would have been better for me to have cited the
hard National Ag Stat Service statistics instead of a newspaper
article.  However, these statistics show that since the mid-1970's
California almond yields per acre have been increasing at a rate
almost proportional to the increases in bearing acreage:
http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k75/4af/almondd.jpg

Bearing Acres  (up 27% per decade)

1976-1985: 331,000 acres
1986-1995: 414,000 acres
1996-2005: 510,000 acres

Yield
Pounds / Acre  (up 25% per decade)

1976-1985: 1059 pounds
1986-1995: 1274 pounds
1996-2005: 1594 pounds

What dissappoints me about the native pollinator advocate
organizations is that they don't display hardly any alarm or
concern about the permanent adverse impact of increasingly
large homes and vehicles on native pollinator diversity and
abundance. Example:

According to the National Association of Home Builders
the average size of a new home was:

In 1950  983 square feet
In 1970: 1,400 square feet
In 2004: 2,349 square feet
In 2005: 2,434 square feet.

Here's how this building trend has been changing the landscape
just south of Sacramento, California :
http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k75/4af/sac.jpg

Could it be that the underlying reason the native pollinator
organizations don't want to campaign against big homes
cars and the associated sprawl is because their dues paying
members are primarily affluent city folks who live in these homes
and would feel alienated by such campaigns?

And could it be the reason these organizations campaign
against industrialized agriculture is because farmers are
not an important part of their dues paying membership base?

Paul Cherubini
El Dorado, Calif.

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