“Cadillac Desert: The Mercy of Nature”

Agricultural production uses more water than any other economic sector and this film examines a unique historical relationship between water supplies, water projects, politics, and farming.

1. What percentage of the food grown in the U.S. comes from the Central Valley in California?

2. What is the biggest disadvantage for agriculture in the Central Valley?

3. How did California pass Iowa as the country’s leading farm state?

4. How far below the surface had the aquifer been drawn down in the San Joaquin Valley by 1930?

5. Where did the migrants from Oklahoma (Olkies) during the Great Depression go?

6. Why would the Central Valley Project not have been built if it hadn’t been for Franklin Roosevelt?

7. What was the purpose of the Central Valley Project?

8. What was the purpose of the Reclamation Act of 1902?

9. Who was the largest land owner in California who eventually benefited the most government subsidized water?

10. What was the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River?  What happened to it?

11. What is the driest part of the San Joaquin Valley called?

12. Who was supposed to settle the Westlands according to a local congressman?

13. What were some of the negative effects of large-scale farming in the Central Valley?

14. What did President Carter do that no other president had attempted?

15. What was the environmental time bomb that went off that changed the political history of the Central Valley Project?

16. What were the poisons that contaminated the Kesterson Wildlife Refuge and where did they come from?

17. What did President Bush do before he left office that changed farming in the Central Valley?