In California, The Agricultural Rural Economy Is Falling Apart

In the Central Valley and the Imperial Valley, two of the biggest agricultural regions of California, the agricultural rural economies are falling apart. In El Centro, in the Imperial Valley east of San Diego, abutting Mexico, unemployment is over 26%. That's Great Depression level unemployment. The Central Valley, which we travelled a year ago, is dotted with small rural market towns, off the main freeways. Their shops are shuttered, houses abandoned and in disrepair, and unemployed men stand around at dusty street corners, not looking for work, not looking for hope and change; looking, rather, blankly at nothing, like the unemployed workers photographed during the Great Depression by Walker Evans and others.