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Silicon Valley Billionaires Purchase 52,000 Acres of California Farmland to Build a New City from Scratch (marinij.com) 199

Posted by EditorDavid from the we-built-this-city dept.
An anonymous reader shared this report from the New York: In 2017, Michael Moritz, a billionaire venture capitalist, sent a note to a potential investor about what he described as an unusual opportunity: a chance to invest in the creation of a new California city. The site was in a corner of the San Francisco Bay Area where land was cheap. Moritz and others had dreams of transforming tens of thousands of acres into a bustling metropolis that, according to the pitch, could generate thousands of jobs and be as walkable as Paris or the West Village in New York.

He painted a kind of urban blank slate where everything from design to construction methods and new forms of governance could be rethought. And it would all be a short distance from San Francisco and Silicon Valley... Since then, a company called Flannery Associates has been buying large plots of land in a largely agricultural region 60 miles northeast of San Francisco. The company, which has little information public about its operations, has committed more than $800 million to secure thousands of acres of farmland, court documents show. One parcel after another, Flannery made offers to every landowner for miles, paying several times the market rate, whether the land had been listed for sale or not...

Brian Brokaw, a representative for the investor group, said in a statement that the group was made up of "Californians who believe that Solano County's and California's best days are ahead." He said the group planned to start working with Solano County residents and elected officials, as well as with Travis Air Force Base, next week... The land that Flannery has been purchasing is not zoned for residential use, and even in his 2017 pitch, Moritz acknowledged that rezoning could "clearly be challenging" — a nod to California's notoriously difficult and litigious development process. To pull off the project, the company will almost certainly have to use the state's initiative system to get Solano County residents to vote on it. The hope is that voters will be enticed by promises of thousands of local jobs; increased tax revenue; and investments in infrastructure like parks, a performing arts center, shopping, dining and a trade school.
Moritz's 2017 email had argued their project "should relieve some of the Silicon Valley pressures we all feel — rising home prices, homelessness, congestion etc."

SFGate estimates the group now owns 52,000 acres — "an empire that is nearly double the size of the city of San Francisco" — and notes that some details emerged when the group filed a document to repond to a lawsuit. "It claims it told landowners that they could keep 'existing income streams from wind energy and natural gas storage,' could 'continue using these properties rent-free for decades,' and would receive 'significant grants from Flannery for charitable giving, to be used at the [landowners'] discretion to support local schools and other non-profits.'"

"Tech billionaires reportedly backing mysterious Solano County land grab," reads the headline on SFGate's latest article: SFGATE reported earlier this week that a survey had circulated to Solano County residents asking for their opinions on the potential development of "a new city with tens of thousands of new homes, a large solar energy farm, orchards with over a million new trees, and over ten thousand acres of new parks and open space."
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Silicon Valley Billionaires Purchase 52,000 Acres of California Farmland to Build a New City from Scratch More

Silicon Valley Billionaires Purchase 52,000 Acres of California Farmland to Build a New City from Scratch

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  • I'm sure the billionaires will do great here. If you're any of the disposable scum they hire to do their scutwork, maybe not so much.

    I'm kind of sad that this isn't quite the potboiler Rapture is because dumbasses who sign up can actually escape if they really want to.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Sarusa ( 104047 )

      Edit: Then again, on looking at the maps, maybe a lot of them would be utterly incapable of walking the 2-3 hours to the next town, if they could even get the directions right. Better to just cry moar on your Twxxtxr account and post lots of frown emojis on Insta. And then have those both taken down because they violate the EULA you signed when you moved to New Rapture.

    • I look forward to seeing how they handle low-income/affordable housing requirements.

      I also think they'll be surprised at the cost of transforming farm land into a livable area - infrastructure isn't cheap - sure, they can play the "everyone installs solar panels" game and avoid building a power grid, but sewage, water, roads, police, fire, ems, a hospital etc are going to add up quickly.

      "But they're rich, they can afford it"

      Sure, they can build a home and a city 60 miles inland from the SF Bay Area and then

      • Well they don't want to be too far away from CA's tech hot spots, but they do want all the benefits they get with private islands or places where they can buy off the local police. No commoners anywhere near them and local authorities that answer to them, so keep the unwashed poors out and look the other way on silly rules they shouldn't have to follow, like laws banning slave labor, underage hookers, paying the homeless to let them beat them up, and other activities the 0.001% considers fun.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by kenh ( 9056 )

          Who will landscape, house clean, wait tables, bus tables or cook the food in the local restaurants, who will staff the boutique shops along their Main Street, etc?

          This is nothing like a private island, this is flat damn farmland in a place where no housing developer ever wanted to build.

    • ....but will there be hookers and blackjack? -Bender

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by dfm3 ( 830843 )
        This sounds an awful lot like Night City from Cyberpunk 2077, so likely yes, it'll have that and more.
      • But if course, the hookers and dealers will be allowed after they sign a air tight NDA. They will not even be allowed to say they were there.

    • If you're any of the disposable scum they hire to do their scutwork, maybe not so much.

      If they don't like the job they're hired to do, they could work somewhere else.

  • Mysterious Company Buys California Ghost Town for $22.58 Million

    https://www.nbclosangeles.com/... [nbclosangeles.com]

  • Nightmare future (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rujiel ( 1632063 ) on Sunday August 27, 2023 @03:54AM (#63800720)
    An entire city of renter precariets toiling for their overlords. What else would you expect? I couldn't imagine writing an article about this with such a hopeful tone.

    • Re:Nightmare future (Score:5, Funny)

      by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Sunday August 27, 2023 @05:09AM (#63800790)

      An entire city of renter precariets toiling for their overlords. What else would you expect? I couldn't imagine writing an article about this with such a hopeful tone.

      Wait until he names it "Raccoon City" ... :-)

    • I'm sure the environmental impact of the works have been carefully considered, and weighed against the likely upsides of this project? NOT.

      Anyone with control of 52,000 acres should have to do some sort of environmental stewardship course - and not passing the exam at the end means losing the land.

      The world is littered with failed "new cities" - all an environmental disaster, a CO2 production machine and all absolutely crack-pot wrong from the outset.

      My favourite example: https://www.cntraveller.com/ga... [cntraveller.com] -

      • My guess is that there's another reason for its failure that the article doesn't mention: if you're rich enough to buy something like that, even as a vacation home, you're not going to want to buy something that looks like it was stamped out by a cookie cutter. There should not only be several different floor plans, there should also be a limited amount of external customization, with each one built to order. Sure, that's going to take longer and cost more, but if you're going to buy in to something like
    • What's the difference between this and what's already happening with renters?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Rujiel ( 1632063 )
        If all that land is owned by one person, why would he sell residential housing to anyone when he can make it no all rental properties, just like what the BREIT demons are trying to push the country towards?
  • This sounds like Disney's plan for EPCOT, except Disney wasn't really doing it for the purpose of making money. The summary doesn't mention what all of these investors are expecting to get in return.

    Also, Disney's plan for EPCOT for never really very feasible and it failed and got turned into a theme park instead.

  • So this time around, we try it at home? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Sunday August 27, 2023 @04:14AM (#63800742)

    Ford [wikipedia.org] tried something like that in Brazil.

    Didn't exactly work that well.

    • Re:So this time around, we try it at home? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Sunday August 27, 2023 @05:18AM (#63800808)

      Indeed. These "visionaries" usually do not even understand the basics of what they are setting out to do. Being super rich makes you stupid. Whenever I read something like that, I have to think of former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt that said about these people "Those who have visions should consult a medical professional".

      • Re:So this time around, we try it at home? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Sunday August 27, 2023 @05:44AM (#63800838)

        Being rich doesn't exactly make you stupid, but it by and by detaches you from the reality of "normal" people because you are surrounded by people of comparable wealth, status and thus thinking. It makes you ask stupid questions like "if they don't have bread, why don't they just eat cake?"

        And you're not even snide about it, you genuinely wonder why they don't just substitute that bread they lament they don't have with something better.

        And it's amazing that Schmidt coined that phrase. I thought I was the one who came up with it (then again, I would have been kinda surprised if I had been the one). I'm quite honored that Schmidt had the same sentiment: If you have visions, get professional help.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          Being rich doesn't exactly make you stupid, but it by and by detaches you from the reality of "normal" people because you are surrounded by people of comparable wealth, status and thus thinking. It makes you ask stupid questions like "if they don't have bread, why don't they just eat cake?"

          That did not work out so well for her, now did it? But to me, getting disconnected from reality to that degree strongly implies "stupid". There are enough ways to stay somewhat connected and realistic even when most the people you interact with are disconnected. I basically classify extreme ongoing disconnect as a high-value indicator for stupidity. It may be stupidity of 2nd order, i.e. choosing to be stupid because you have to ignore a lot of available facts, but it is stupidity (i.e. incapability to deal

          • Re:So this time around, we try it at home? (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Sunday August 27, 2023 @06:39AM (#63800920)

            I wouldn't call it stupid. I prefer to call it "ignorant", which is, at least in my books, way more damning. If you're stupid, there's nothing you could do about it, and nothing I could blame on you. You are just stupid. That's unfortunate, but not your fault. Not everyone is born with a great mind, and some are just unlucky. It happens. The best I could offer you is to work around your limitations and find a way to give you dignity and usefulness in our society by handing you a task that needs to be done and that is within your capability.

            Ignorance is way more damning, because it is something you could fix but refuse to. If you are ignorant, you could go and get the information to rectify that, but you do not want to. I have zero sympathy for people who are willfully ignorant.

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by gweihir ( 88907 )

              Well, yes. If we want to get more specific. But that should then be "willfully ignorant", because simple ignorant can also be the result of simple stupid and the one suffering from it is not responsible.

              • I don't blame people who are ignorant and willing to learn. People who don't know something but want to know it and had no chance to do so are not someone I'd blame for their shortcomings. They had no chance to change their situation, and if given the chance they do so, I'm the first to applaud their choice.

                I have disdain for willfully ignorant people. People who have every chance and opportunity to improve their knowledge but refuse to do so.

          • Being rich doesn't exactly make you stupid, but it by and by detaches you from the reality of "normal" people because you are surrounded by people of comparable wealth, status and thus thinking. It makes you ask stupid questions like "if they don't have bread, why don't they just eat cake?"

            That did not work out so well for her, now did it?

            Since Marie Antoinette never actually said that, it's unclear who is "detached from reality" here.

            https://www.britannica.com/sto... [britannica.com]

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by gweihir ( 88907 )

              I am well aware. She does get framed for having said it routinely though and hence my statement is perfectly valid taking that into account because the real Marie Antoinette is actually completely irrelevant for this exchange. No, I do not expect you to understand. That is probably way outside of your capabilities.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by tragedy ( 27079 )

            That did not work out so well for her, now did it?

            Historically, the notion that Marie Antoinette said "let them eat cake" (actually brioche, which isn't really cake, per se) is a bit dubious. It appears to be a bit of propaganda. A creative slander used to promote her overthrow by playing up the spoiled, disconnected princess angle. By most accounts, for a queen, Marie Antoinette was actually quite compassionate to the plight of the common people and interested in understanding the lives of people beyond her sphere.

        • Poor Marie, smeared by her enemies.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].

          • Re:So this time around, we try it at home? (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Sunday August 27, 2023 @06:43AM (#63800928)

            The thing is, though, I could even imagine her saying it. Much like I can see her husband, Louis XVI write "rien" (nothing) into his hunting book at the day of the Bastille, because he didn't hunt anything, it wasn't him saying that nothing important happened that day.

            It was simply and plainly detachment from reality. Much like the Romanovs were detached from the reality in their Empire. These people have no connection to the reality of the common folks because they are being shielded effectively from them by people who'd have a lot to lose if these people realized just how badly run their empires are by those cronies they handed the power to.

            Reminds me a bit of some CEOs, come to think of it...

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by gweihir ( 88907 )

            I believe it is customary to do so, no?

        • This will go as well as the Zuck's metaverse (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Somervillain ( 4719341 ) on Sunday August 27, 2023 @12:07PM (#63801336)

          Being rich doesn't exactly make you stupid, but it by and by detaches you from the reality of "normal" people because you are surrounded by people of comparable wealth, status and thus thinking. It makes you ask stupid questions like "if they don't have bread, why don't they just eat cake?"

          I have never met someone who uses the word "entrepreneur" who isn't a moron with greater ambition than intelligence. Elon Musk is an entertaining example, but anyone I've met who is successful in real estate is very much the same way. I can't say for certain, but i am confident the whole lot of them are dumb AF. It's the same line of thinking that prosperity gospel adherence spout. "I am successful, thus I am talented." "I made a 500% return on 10 million dollars 'loaned' to me from my father, thus I know a lot about business."

          Success is where preparation meets opportunity. Most successful people are lucky and applied some of their skill to do great things, but with any individual, you never know the ratio of success to luck.

          However, for them, as you hinted, they're around "yes men" and sycophants who tell them constantly how great they are and then hang out with other people with a dozen fawning assistants and execs flattering them hoping to get a promotion.

          Nothing atrophies the brain faster than lack of challenge and being told you're great 24/7. Elon Musk will forget he took over a fully functioning car company and Zuckerberg forgets Facebook wasn't his idea. Their success is a ratio of their talent + their luck...and rich people ALWAYS conveniently forget the luck part....especially when you hear them mouth off about how lucky society is to have them and how they shouldn't pay taxes and those damn regulations keeping them from contributing even further to the housing crisis by buying up speculative real estate in popular housing markets.

          They think they're a hit machine like Taylor Swift or Beyonce, but in reality, they're nearly all a one-hit-wonder...which is fine...I just hate it when they try to ruin everyone else's life and feel virtuous doing so. The level of self-delusion with that lot is off the charts...especially once they start talking politics.

          If building Utopia was something one had a decent chance of doing, it would have happened many times in the past. He's not the first guy who had a "good idea" and enough money to buy a ton of land. I wish him luck, but I suspect this will go as well as Zuck's metaverse plan.

          • Well said. I also see many famous get there via someone like a David Foster. I have a friend who was totally into real housewives. Apparently there was one housewife who couldn't sing, had someone else write the song, auto-tuned it and because of real housewives the song "made it" and she thought she was a fantastic singer/songwriter. I just shook my head that my friend watched such drivel.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by gweihir ( 88907 )

            Indeed. Well said. The thing these fuck-ups forget is that for everyone of them, there are 1000s of people with just as much (lack of) skill that did not luck out and did not make it. So yes, they got lucky. No, that is not a qualification, skill or accomplishment.

      • These "visionaries" usually do not even understand the basics of what they are setting out to do.

        Neither did Jim Jones [vintag.es]. Unless this was his plan all along.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by skam240 ( 789197 )

        The housing market is so over priced in California right now I don't see how they could fail to be honest. Clearly there is shit ton of housing demand not being met

      • We haven't even seen the plan so how can you make such speculations?
    • Real whatever this is has never been tried.
  • New law: Anyone that crosses a wealth limit of say, 100 million USD, is going to be forced to sit down and learn about the long, storied, and utterly stupid history of "I'm a rich guy that's going to build a new city in California/Nevada/Brazil/etc." and they get a 100% tax rate if they don't pass a test about it.

    I can understand doing new stupid things with your ridiculous amounts of money. But let's stop doing the exact same stupid thing over and over again.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Indeed.

      Fro this specific case, I think we currently have several reference failures. Also refer to the demented "Linear City", the Saudis are building. Only thing that will do is make a pretty ruin and separate the stupid rich there from their money.

    • What's the problem? Not a single one of these ever goes anywhere or has a single resident or ends up as anything but a press release.

      I see this as "a fool and his money are soon parted" and a way to recycle some of their money back into the economy. Other than wasting their own money, what real harm are they doing with their foolishness?

    • As far as I understand it, when $billionaires have tried to implement projects like this, they haven't worked out well.

      However, in the UK, the govt have successfully established new towns & cities, e.g. Milton Keynes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] & Welwyn Garden City: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] I've been to both & they're pleasant places, at least to visit. Not my cup of tea to live in though. Also, the capital of Brazil, Braziia has been a resounding success: https://en.wikipedia [wikipedia.org]

    • So never try anything new because something similar failed in the past?

      You can try something new. Build an university in the center and only allow high density development around it, then build villages around it one at a time for regional farm workers and remote workers. The university is a relatively safe bet, a new village is a bigger bet (can't build it as a suburb, because there is no city core to provide services) but if you build it one at a time, how much is there to lose really?

      The old way of city

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) *

        The University is a great idea.

        All STEM and Classics, no marxist activism.

        We need respectable degrees again.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      Unfortunately, they are going to trash a lot of productive farmland for their exercise in ego-mania.

  • I prefer Musk: When he goes to Mars at least we are rid of him.

    This is essentially people mistakenly believe that because they have money they are somehow fundamentally superior and understand everything. And also that money can solve every problem, when in actual reality all it can do is fund slow research (that then often fails) or purchase already known solutions. What money can also do is get you a lot of "yes-men" that always tell you how great you are and that your ideas are great, no matter how stupi

    • Except for my staff, of course. They're absolutely right when they tell me how wonderful & wise I am & that I can do anything I put my mind to.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sinij ( 911942 )

      I prefer Musk: When he goes to Mars at least we are rid of him.

      Musk won't go alone, a lot of talented people will follow him. This means regardless if they succeed or fail, Mars will be where humanity's best put all their energy toward.

      • So a very expensive version of "Heaven's gate" in california in the late 90's. Pity. Maybe not Earth's brightest after all.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sinij ( 911942 )
          There is a reason Wisdom and Intelligence are two different stats in D&D. Intelligence is in ability to do complicated technical things, Wisdom is knowing when you shouldn't do some of these.

  • Reminiscent of California City (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mal-2 ( 675116 ) on Sunday August 27, 2023 @05:16AM (#63800802) Homepage Journal

    This sounds to me like it might be the California City scam [santafenewmexican.com] all over again.

    • Exactly. Build a wonderful place and no one moves there.

    • This is exactly what came to mind when I read this. Unlike China, who built out cities in the middle of nowhere, where those are actually starting to work out because populations are moving there now, California City didn't have anything to get people to move there.

      If I were starting a city in the desert, the first thing I'd be doing, after I had a plan in place, is getting with Jeff, Tim, Elon, Larry, and other CEOs, and seeing about making offers for them to locate over there. Once the big guys start mo

      • Yes, water pretty much rules out the entire southwest. I even think it would be wise for areas like I live (central TX) to start worrying about it like the burb in Phoenix that requires developers to show where the water will come from before they can develop,. I've seen the lakes here get down to 32% storage (2013-14) and there has been massive expansion in the area and continued plans for more massive development. Many districts that pull water from the lakes have built new "straws" in the lake that are d

  • California? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by wallyh010 ( 1736650 )
    Putting this new city in California is their first mistake

  • Then tell me you think this doesn't need to be quarantined.

  • yet another billionaire pretending building a well curated super smart city from hell that no one will want to live in...

    • > curated super smart city from hell that no one will want to live in...

        Their point of comparison is San Francisco.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sxpert ( 139117 )

        They are the cause for the mess in San Francisco. they should be thrown in jail and all their properties be seized and redistributed.

  • This may be an old question, but I'll ask it anyway. The city is worth more than the farmland because realtors can divide the map up and say so. But the farmland is worth more as farmland when it comes to creating food supplies. If you think that the west coast located state of California doesn't have enough water for farming, then where will it get the water for the demands of X amount more of people?

  • Hilarious on many levels (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TJHook3r ( 4699685 ) on Sunday August 27, 2023 @08:33AM (#63801026)
    This plan is crazy on so many levels. Firstly we have the hilarity of the sellers of the land realising that they 'only' got double the value of their land, rather than making the most of the opportunity to extort more. Then we have the prospect of a new city being built to escape the dregs of society that their last causation attracted, ie San Francisco... as though you can stop the poor from living beside you. Then there is the challenge of creating a brand new city in an area short of water - electricity should be fine but good luck getting drinking water. Much as the billionaires want a city peopled solely with Alphas - how are they going to get rubbish cleared and food cooked for them? Androids possibly?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sinij ( 911942 )

      as though you can stop the poor from living beside you

      You can, if the entire city is on a private property and works as a gated community.

    • Illegal labor of course.

    • Their property is within a mile of the San Fransisco Bay estuary, so they can produce water with desalinization. They will need to get creative with their effluent disposal though since they can't just dump concentrated salt water into mud without an ecological impact. If they keep the desalinated water in a closed system for human consumption (e.g. don't use it for watering the inevitable golf course) then mixing the concentrated salt water back into the treated sewage before dumping reduces the salt con
  • I hate to tell them, history is replete with tin-pot dictators.

  • So much could be improved (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Sunday August 27, 2023 @09:58AM (#63801150)

    But nothing will be. These people know nothing about building a better city except what they've had artists render to sell a city on massive tax breaks for a new 'campus'. They care nothing about other people except how much money they can extract from them.

    Imagine a walkable /bikeable city with everything fairly evenly distributed so you don't need to travel much. Imagine having it built to perfectly suit the local conditions so buildings last a very long time with minimal maintenance. Imagine mixing agriculture with suburban and urban spaces, a city of small towns.

    Now throw that all away as they build a small neighbourhood for their mansions (with a small private airport), and the rest of the city is built to maximize profits from their investments in the near future, with no real concern about the long term. Imagine the shitty infrastructure you get when a team of billionaire tech bros tell engineers what to do, and those engineers... well, they want their payday.

    If it gets built at all, it will almost certainly be a disaster.

  • that is reall y going to help the water situation.
  • I don't see how converting Californian farmland, one of the most productive agricultural land in US, into a city could be seen as anything but environmental disaster.

  • In practice, it's hard, really hard
    Not only is it inherently hard to predict how people will actually live in a designed city, the design will be constrained by water, cost, laws and the opinions of its backers, that may or may not be sensible
    I wish them success but the odds are long

  • Are you ready to sign up to join our Chinese Communist owned Ingsoc Utopia? A heavenly city of tomorrow, a better Amerika where equity and social credit scores dictates your quality of life. Our Ministry of Truth knows that your children are our future so you can have the peace of mind knowing that only the freedom of a Newspeak curriculum will be taught in schools. Our Ministry of Love guarantees a zero crime rate as dirty proles and unpersons will not even be accepted on our glorious streets. For recreati

  • Soâ¦. They want to play SimCity for real? Save a few bucks by buying an old copy of the game and playing that.
  • "Flannery" filed an antitrust suit against a number of the landowners, claiming that they conspired to control pricing. Given that secret sneaky buyer behavior has been routine in parcel assemblage for ages, using shell corporation names and timing of purchases, a buyer asserting antitrust is shit icing on a cake full of broken glass.
  • Drop in the bucket when it comes to city-level construction. Building an entire new city is more like a cool trillion nowadays. And that requires REAL dollars. Not crypto. Not inflated equity in some Silicon Valley company. Real hard cash. Better to leave that sort of utopian dreaming to the sheiks in the Middle East. If theyre even slightly wrong on their geography or timing, thats a quick and easy way to lose a trillion dollars. And, again, that would be REAL dollar losses, not a paper loss.

  • new forms of governance could be rethought

    Oh, so this is just Walt Disney's original vision for EPCOT: A "city" that was painted as utopian, except it was privately owned and if you weren't employed by anyone (it was meant for Disney employees, but wouldn't have just been them) you'd get thrown out of it. I bet a lot of what Moritz has in mind lines up pretty well with what Disney envisioned, even to the point of using one or more shell companies to buy up the land over time.

    Defunctland did a great video ab

  • Speaking from Solano County (Score:5, Informative)

    by Whatever Fits ( 262060 ) on Sunday August 27, 2023 @02:22PM (#63801596) Homepage Journal

    I'm sitting here reading this from Solano County right now. While I live just down the road in the capital city, much of my family lives right here. This is agricultural land, not the arid brown hills that's referred to in the article. Yes, during the late summer right now, anything not irritated is probably brown. That is not that it is desolate here. It is where your tomatoes are grown, your almonds, all kinds of fruit and vegetables, alfalfa for the livestock, plus the ranching of that livestock.

    Building a sprawling suburbia where our food used to be produced is not wise. California feeds us. Rural California that is. Destroying our farms and ranches is not safe for long term maintenance of a growing society. There are plenty of areas around that are currently fallow due to their inability to effectively grow crops. Please stop destroying our farms.

  • They bought farmland to build a city? (Score:3)

    by ve3oat ( 884827 ) on Sunday August 27, 2023 @04:29PM (#63801840) Homepage
    Well that is just stupid. I hope this new "city" will include some, or rather a lot of, food production facilities. Oh, I forgot, all the people in this new city will eat food produced (by some as-yet undeveloped process, but that is what tech is all about) from city waste and leftover fossil fuels. No need for more farmland! Right? Ah, total success!

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