Will the arid West’s farms and settlements thrive for another century? Not if we don’t take seriously John Wesley Powell’s ideas.
All that is constant about the California of my childhood is the rate at which it disappears. Joan Didion, Notes From a Native Daughter Idahos Treasure Valley lies in the western Snake River plain, a stretch of semi-arid land with sagebrush-covered hillsides and green river valleys. My great-great-great-grandparents homesteaded there in the early 20th century. As a child, I took rafting trips down the Payette River outside Horseshoe Bend, picked buttercup bouquets in the mountains, and helped my mom can peaches from the local farm stand. Farming most colors my memories of the land: Idahos agriculture industry is the single largest contributor to the states economy. In 2018, Edible Idaho reported that only 20 percent of all U.S. farmland has soil of the quality comparable to the Treasure...
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