Our Valley’s paradox
Afew years ago, U.S. youth, progressives and liberals launched a national movement to demand economic equality in our nation. Occupiers began a revolution that sought economic equality between the rich and the poor. Basically what these groups requested was to close the gap between the elites that had the most and the proletariats who had the least.
Protestors particularly focused on Wall Street — the financial monster that has turned Main Street businesses into money-thirsty companies from the Pacific to the Atlantic and from the Canadian border to the Mexican one.
Although still active on social media, the movement began reducing its intensity over the years. However, the issue is still alive and seems to be for the foreseeable future.
Unwillingly, the Imperial Valley Food Bank provided a local example of this problem.
While providing, in a press release, information regarding its new expanded facilities in the works — that will more than double the amount of low-income residents served by next year — the organization pointed fingers on our poverty levels and the irony of the Valley’s agricultural production value.
The IVFB said the county is in the worst 10 percent of all counties in the nation with the highest number of children suffering hunger while a good amount of veterans, seniors and people with disabilities struggle with food insecurity. At the same time, almost a third of Imperial County residents live without the resources to have enough food in order to keep an active, healthy lifestyle.
The IVFB also highlighted that compared to the rest of California, Imperial County has half the average medium household income, the highest unemployment rate, and ranks dead last of 58 California counties in childhood poverty.
The US Census Bureau estimated two years ago that almost a quarter of Imperial County residents lived in poverty which leads to obesity and nutrition-related illnesses like diabetes. It also remarked the fact that 78 percent of the county’s adults and 40 percent of children are overweight or obese.
Also, the spending cuts proposed by the White House will increase the difficulties suffered by many local residents. According to a recent study released by the California Budget and Policy Center, thousands of residents who live in the Congressional District 51, represented by Democrat Juan Vargas, are going to get impacted in benefits of CalWORKS, Social Security, disability insurance, rental assistance, food stamps and before- and after-school programs, as well as summer schooling.
Not even the tax cuts announced recently by the White House are going to be enough. The Main Street Alliance, a conglomerate of small businesses, said the tax reform will benefit just 7 percent of business owners, especially hedge fund managers, lawyers and developers. The alliance also said three-quarters of the tax reform benefits will go the 1 percent of the richest Americans.
In the meantime, with a $2 billion agriculture production value, Imperial Valley is one of the most productive farming regions in the country, ranking in the top 10 percent of all agricultural sales.
This data reveal our saddest truth — while living in one of the most productive areas in the country, the produce we harvest does not even feed our own people. It’s like being a castaway in the middle of the sea — thirsty with plenty of water surrounding us.
This is simply humanely unbearable and morally intolerable. And something must be done to turn things over. And I am not only speaking of supporting the food bank efforts to deliver 242 pounds of food —including more fruits and vegetables — per family by next year. As true as it is the fact that making business in agriculture has become more difficult over the years, it is also real the fact that the richest Valleyites are the poorest rich in California. Regardless, as a society we must turn things around to make sure no local resident suffer from issues thought to only occur in third-world countries.