It was heating up in the San Joaquin Valley this week. Joe Del Bosque, a farmer who had to make some hard decisions this year, was driving toward an asparagus field he's about to plow under. The windshield of his white Yukon was splattered with dead bugs. He didn't seem to notice.
As he drove, he told me a story that has become all too familiar in the last few months.
His sister was at a dinner party in the Bay Area, he said. An engineer sitting next to her asked where she was from. When she told him she grew up on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, he said, "Oh, every time I drive by it makes my blood boil to see all those almonds growing there.