California is the nation's top agriculture state and has been so for 50 years. I asked my friend Mike Sencer to tell me how the price of energy has affected his business. Mike's firm manages egg ranches which produce and distribute 10.8 million eggs each week. Egg production, like most modern farming, is a highly mechanized process. Everything is managed by computers.
Buildings are climate controlled.
Feed is distributed by machines. Eggs are collected by conveyor systems and waste is collected and disposed of mechanically. All of this takes power, lots of it. Mike told me that in January 2000 his firm was paying 3.2 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity. In December 2000 it paid 39 cents.