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If California's San Joaquin Valley were a state, it would rank first in farm sales and 48th in per capita income. In 2001, per capita income in the San Joaquin Valley was $21,300, compared to $32,600 in California.

The eight-county San Joaquin Valley has 3.6 million people, a tenth of California residents. About 29 percent of adults 25 and older do not have a high-school diploma, compared to 21 percent of all California residents; about 15 percent have a BA or more, compared with 30 percent of all California residents. Half of the K-12 students are Hispanic, and two-thirds of the K-12 students in key farming counties such as Fresno, Tulare and Kern receive free or reduced-priced school meals.

San Joaquin Valley employment rose 25 percent between 1990 and 2003, faster than the 15 percent increase in employment statewide. San Joaquin Valley unemployment averaged 13.3 percent in 2003, compared to 6.7 percent in California.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in June 2005 created the California Partnership for the San Joaquin Valley, which has been holding hearings to grapple with the San Joaquin Valley's problems that include rapid population growth despite high unemployment, a 20 percent poverty rate, and some of the worst air quality in the US. The Partnership is to release recommendations by October 31, 2006 http://www.bth.ca.gov/capartnership/sanjoaquinvalley.asp).

Much of the San Joaquin Valley's employment growth has been people- and cost-driven, as when government, health care and education expand to serve additional people, as construction expands to build housing, and as retailing expands. Some of these expanding industries, including construction and retailing, are seasonal and pay relatively low wages. Except for government jobs, annual earnings are lower in the San Joaquin Valley than elsewhere in California, even in the same industry.

The Partnership says that the "innovation-driven expansion" of nonfarm industries is the key to raising per capita income in the San Joaquin Valley. However, surveys suggest that many knowledge workers do shun the San Joaquin Valley.

Agriculture remains a key industry in the SJV, providing 20 percent of all jobs and many first jobs for immigrant newcomers. Historian Kevin Starr described the San Joaquin Valley as "the most productive unnatural environment on Earth," emphasizing that the valley was a semi-desert until water projects allowed irrigation. Today, the San Joaquin Valley is the "fruit and nut bowl" of the US, producing most US grapes, tree fruits and tree nuts.

Modesto, a city of 200,000 in the northern San Joaquin Valley, was the US car theft capital between 2003 and 2005, with an average 7,000 auto thefts a year. Police say that widespread use of methamphetamine fuels car theft and explains why many other San Joaquin Valley towns, such as Stockton, Visalia, Fresno and Sacramento, are also on the top-10 list for car theft. The 1973 film American Graffiti was based on Modesto, and is celebrated every June with a month-long procession of classic-car parades and doo-wop concerts.

Air Pollution. The San Joaquin Valley has limited carrying capacity for airborne pollutants because surrounding mountain ranges limit air circulation. Of the three major pollutants, ozone, PM10 and PM2.5, ozone is the major challenge, with diesel trucks the single major polluter.

The EPA calls the San Joaquin Valley an "extreme non-attainment" zone, and has set a deadline of 2013 to meet ozone air quality standards. The federal government says ozone is excessive when it is more than 0.084ppm over eight hours; the state when it exceeds 0.07ppm over eight hours. The San Joaquin Valley had 134 days above the federal standard in 2003.

A comparison of San Joaquin Valley payroll shares and San Joaquin Valley pollutant shares found that both petroleum production and dairy operations contribute one to two percent to payroll but account for six to seven percent of pollutants (dairy industry emissions were regulated beginning in 2004).

A Hewlett-Foundation sponsored study, "The Health and Related Economic Benefits of Attaining Healthful Air in the San Joaquin Valley," estimated that air pollution costs the San Joaquin Valley $3 billion a year in premature deaths and missed work, an average of almost $1,000 per person per year. http://business.fullerton.edu/centers/iees/reports.htm)

The California Department of Pesticide Regulation in May 2006 proposed that some 700 insecticides, herbicides and other pest-killing chemicals be reformulated to reduce smog-forming gases in the San Joaquin Valley. Most pest-killing chemicals contain volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, which evaporate from fields and are a key component of ozone, California's most abundant air pollutant.

DPR also plans to impose stricter rules on the use of soil fumigants, gases that by weight account for about one-quarter of all pesticides applied on California crops. Fumigants such as methyl bromide, metam sodium and chloropicrin are injected into fields before they are planted to sterilize soil and kill insects and weeds that threaten strawberries, almonds, tomatoes, carrots, potatoes and other crops. Beginning in 2008, DPR will require deeper soil injections and better tarps to prevent these gases from escaping into the atmosphere.

Housing. California has the 11 of the "least-affordable" US metro areas, led by Salinas, Santa Cruz-Watsonville and Santa Rosa-Petaluma. Least-affordable is measured by the percentage of an area's median income needed to finance the purchase of a median-priced house. In Salinas and Watsonville, the median family would have to spend 60 percent of its income to afford a median-priced house, followed by 56 percent in Santa Rosa and 52 percent in Santa Barbara-Santa Maria.

Most California farming is in metro counties, where high housing prices and low wages make it hard for farm workers to find affordable housing. Napa county in Spring 2006 began renovating barracks-style housing for solo male farm workers with $1.8 million in grants from the state's Joe Serna Migrant Farmworker Fund, plus additional funds from a$9.25 an acre assessment paid by Napa grape growers who do not provide housing for their workers.

Grape growers voted to assess themselves to provide funds for farm worker housing in 2002, and this grower-paid housing tax keeps the cost of room and board at local farm worker housing centers $11.50 a day, just over half of the $20-a-day cost. However, the tax supports fewer than 250 beds in an area that had a peak 5,700 persons employed in agriculture between May and July 2005 (the low was 3,300 in January). Many Napa farm workers elect to move into apartments in the city of Napa.

Oxnard became the fourth city in Ventura county with a living wage ordinance in May 2006, requiring employers doing at least $25,000 of business a year with the city to pay their employees at least $9.75 an hour if they provide health insurance and $12.50 an hour if they do not. California's minimum wage is $6.75 an hour.

San Diego county has an estimated 2,300 homeless workers who seek jobs in agriculture and landscaping, most in the northern and northeastern areas of the county. In 1994, the county moved about 750 workers from a camp at the bottom of McGonigle Canyon. Displaced workers and newcomers now share apartments and pay for rides to work or live in makeshift camps near the fields in which they work. Some of those living in camps in June 2006 reported earning $350 a week picking tomatoes.

San Diego is a major farming county that is being urbanized, pushing up housing prices. Most of the farm land in the coastal agricultural zone, where homelessness is most visible, is owned by developers who lease it to farmers. There is little incentive to develop farm worker housing in such a transitional agriculture area.

Dumping. Los Angeles dumps 750 tons of treated human waste a day at Green Acres, land it owns in Kern county that grows wheat, alfalfa and corn for nearby dairies. Green Acres lies over part of the Kern County Water Bank, a massive underground water-storage project. Kern county voters voted 85-15 percent to approve Measure E on June 6, 2006, the so-called Keep Kern Clean initiative, which bans the use of sewage sludge on farm fields.

Local boosters hailed the vote, noting that the San Joaquin Valley has all the 11 new state prisons built since 1990 as well as a variety of waste burners and garbage disposal facilities.

Poverty. Between 1969 and 1993, the share of California residents living below the federal poverty line doubled from nine to 18 percent. Poverty fell to 13.3 percent in 2004, when the poverty line was $19,157 for a family of four. However, if the income threshold were raised to reflect California's high cost of living, the state's poverty rate would have been 16.1 percent.

The California poverty rate for Latinos and Blacks is 20 percent, 10 percent for Asians and eight percent for whites. The highest poverty rate is in the San Joaquin Valley, 18 percent; a quarter of San Joaquin Valley residents are foreign-born Latinos. About 20 percent of Tulare county residents are poor; 19 percent in Kern county; 18 percent in Fresno county; and 16 percent in Monterey county. The highest US poverty rates are in the Rio Grande Valley: 44 percent of Hidalgo county residents are poor.

Between 1969 and 2004, the share of California residents who were foreign-born almost tripled, from 10 to 28 percent, and 40 percent of Californians lived in households with a foreign-born head. About 21 percent of the US poor in 2004 lived in households with a full-time working family member, compared to 31 percent of California's poor.

Leslie Berestein, "More than 2,300 homeless agricultural workers, others said to be living in canyons of San Diego County," San Diego Union-Tribune, June 4, 2006. Marla Cone, "State to Target Pesticide Pollution," Los Angeles Times, May 30, 2006.