“ Without the carrot guys, there’d be nothing there,” a woman who's familiar with Cuyama told me last week. I didn't ask her to define “nothing,” or take her to task. She sees through the lens of production agriculture, a mental frame with steel posts, and we’d just met. I hope to get to know her better in the future.

It mattered what she said though, because I’ve been preparing comments to submit for a groundwater adjudication hearing there. To my eyes, the carrot guys are overriding and threatening the existence of something precious, something getting harder to find: real community among people making a living from the land.

For those just joining this conversation, the struggle in Cuyama to bring their groundwater use into balance with its natural replenishment is underway, much lik

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