FERN’s Friday Feed: Who owns LA’s water?
Welcome to FERN’s Friday Feed (#FFF), where we share the stories from this week that made us stop and think.
How one tribe proved California’s water rights system is a sham
FERN and KQED’s The California Report
“In a state shaped by water grabs, drought emergencies, and ‘pray for rain’ billboards, Payahuunadü is the locus of California’s most infamous water war—the fight between Payahuunadü residents and the city of Los Angeles, about 270 miles away,” writes Teresa Cotsirilos. “In the early 1900s, Los Angeles was a small city that was running out of water, and Payahuunadü, which means ‘the land of flowing water,’ had lots of it. Renamed the Owens Valley by white settlers, the valley was a snow-capped patchwork of pear farms and cattle ranches. Around 1904, Los Angeles city officials came up with a plan to take the valley’s water for themselves. Today, about a third of LA’s water comes from Payahuunadü and other parts of the Eastern Sierra, the city’s population has ballooned to nearly 4 million, and many of the valley’s streams and lakes—including Patsiata—have all but disappeared.”
How McHaters lost the culture war
The New York Times
“Directed by and starring Morgan Spurlock, the bootstrapped, lo-fi documentary [Super Size Me] was a smash hit, grossing more than $22 million on a $65,000 budget. Following Mr. Spurlock as he ate nothing but McDonald’s for 30 days — and the ill effects that diet had on his health — the film became the high-water mark in a tide of sentiment against fast food. McDonald’s, specifically, became a symbol for the glossy hegemony of American capitalism both at home and abroad. “McJobs” became a term for low-paying, dead-end positions, “McMansions” for garish, oversize houses. In 1992, the political theorist Benjamin Barber used the term “McWorld” as shorthand for emergent neoliberal dominance,” writes Brian Gallagher. “But two decades later, not only is McDonald’s bigger than ever, with nearly 42,000 global locations, but fast food in general has boomed.”
The wild west of food marketing
Pressure Cooker Part 1 Part 2 (audio)
“A generation ago, food marketing to kids was found mostly in two places: Saturday morning cartoons and the cereal aisle. No more. Children are now targeted throughout the grocery store, on billboards, product placements and, most dangerously, on digital media.” Over two episodes, hosts Jane Black and Elizabeth Dunn go deep on the complicated new era of food marketing to kids, including a dissection of “one of the most closely guarded spaces in American life today — teenagers’ phones. What do teens and tweens see on their devices? And are the kids all right?”
Tracking illicit Brazilian beef from the Amazon to your burger
Yale Environment 360
“By the end of his probe into the supply chain of JBS, the world’s largest meat processing and packing company, Marcel Gomes reckons he and his team at the São Paulo-based nonprofit Repórter Brasil knew more about the origins of the beef it supplies from the Amazon to the world’s hamburger chains and supermarkets than the company itself. With grassroots support from labor unions and Indigenous communities, he had mapped the complex networks of cattle farms responsible for illegal deforestation. He then tracked the often-illicit beef through JBS’s slaughterhouses and packing plants to the freezers, shelves, and customer trays of retail outlets and fast-food restaurants around the world. When his sleuths were done, the fingerprints of forest destruction were plain to see. Six of Europe’s biggest retail chains reacted by halting purchases of JBS beef.”
In defense of wild meat’s place at the table
Knowable Magazine
“For the past 25 years, conservation scientist E.J. Milner-Gulland of the University of Oxford in the UK has studied the often-opaque trade in wild animal meat, hides, horns, tusks, scales, bones and more, across Africa and Asia. Her initial interest was in understanding how much hunting would be sustainable — without causing worrying declines in wild animal populations — but she soon realized that understanding hunters and the people who eat wild meat was equally important. When some conservation and animal welfare organizations started calling for a ban on wild meat during the Covid-19 pandemic, citing health risks and conservation concerns, Milner-Gulland and over a dozen colleagues protested. They argued that while certain hunting practices create unacceptable risks for endangered animals and human health, other forms of hunting are largely sustainable and crucial to people’s livelihoods.”