Analyze

California’s Central Valley is arguably the most productive agricultural region in the world. Despite making up only 1% of all farmland in the United States, it produces 250 different crops that make up a quarter of all food consumed in the U.S., including close to half of all fruit, nuts, and table foods. The map included below shows the variety and intensity of this kind of cultivation. This level of agricultural production has been made possible by the dominance of industrial agriculture interests at all levels of government, resulting in one of the most physically altered landscapes in the world. These alterations focused in large part on water, the biggest limiting factor for industrial agriculture in a region technically classified as a desert. Over the course of the 20th century, the largest body of freshwater west of the Mississippi–Tulare Lake–was drained to make more land available, the Central Valley Project and State Water Project built thousands of miles of canals and tens of dams to control the supply of water for irrigation, and massive groundwater aquifers were pumped nearly dry during drought years. These transformations were accomplished through the utilization of rhetoric that emphasizes the centrality of the farmer identity to the American political imaginary (despite the massive distance between Californian industrial agriculture and the Jeffersonian agrarian ideal) and the unique importance of providing the nation’s food. This kind of exceptionalism has characterized agriculture across the United States since its inception and has repeatedly produced other forms of social injustice (e.g., the exclusion of agricultural laborers from U.S. labor protections) that compound the hazardous effects of its environmental injustices.

Source

Vo, Katie, Taranjot Bhari and Margaret Tebbe. 2023. Industrial Agriculture in California's Central Valley. In 4S Paraconference X EiJ: Building a Global Record, curated by Misria Shaik Ali, Kim Fortun, Phillip Baum and Prerna Srigyan. Annual Meeting of the Society of Social Studies of Science. Honolulu, Hawai'i, Nov 8-11.

California’s Central Valley is arguably the most productive agricultural region in the world. Despite making up only 1% of all farmland in the United States, it produces 250 different crops that make up a quarter of all food consumed in the U.S., including close to half of all fruit, nuts, and table foods. The map included below shows the variety and intensity of this kind of cultivation. This level of agricultural production has been made possible by the dominance of industrial agriculture interests at all levels of government, resulting in one of the most physically altered landscapes in the world. These alterations focused in large part on water, the biggest limiting factor for industrial agriculture in a region technically classified as a desert. Over the course of the 20th century, the largest body of freshwater west of the Mississippi–Tulare Lake–was drained to make more land available, the Central Valley Project and State Water Project built thousands of miles of canals and tens of dams to control the supply of water for irrigation, and massive groundwater aquifers were pumped nearly dry during drought years. These transformations were accomplished through the utilization of rhetoric that emphasizes the centrality of the farmer identity to the American political imaginary (despite the massive distance between Californian industrial agriculture and the Jeffersonian agrarian ideal) and the unique importance of providing the nation’s food. This kind of exceptionalism has characterized agriculture across the United States since its inception and has repeatedly produced other forms of social injustice (e.g., the exclusion of agricultural laborers from U.S. labor protections) that compound the hazardous effects of its environmental injustices.

Vo, Katie, Taranjot Bhari and Margaret Tebbe. 2023. "Industrial Agriculture in California's Central Valley." In 4S Paraconference X EiJ: Building a Global Record, curated by Misria Shaik Ali, Kim Fortun, Phillip Baum and Prerna Srigyan. Annual Meeting of the Society of Social Studies of Science. Honolulu, Hawai'i, Nov 8-11.

According to its mission statement, "The American Red Cross prevents and alleviates human suffering in the face of emergencies by mobilizing the power of volunteers and the generosity of donors.​"

Approximately 90 percent of the American Red Cross membership is volunteer, drawing people from all ages, ethnicity, and background. These volunteers respond to nearly 70,000 disasters every year, mostly home and apartment fires. They also put on training programs and blood drives.

The Red Cross is a large national organization with fixed sets of stockpiled resources which they adapt and apply to each disaster response they face. They set up shelters, distribute emergency supply kits and provide food and medical service in the aftermath of disasters. 

This organization does not claim to have new or novel way of responding to disasters, however their uniqueness lies in the sheer number of disasters of all sizes they respond to. This is best characterized by the information found on their page titled "Disaster Relief," which states the following:

"We respond to an emergency every 8 minutes

The American Red Cross was founded in 1881 with the experiances of the Civil War still fresh on people's minds. After touring Europe and seeing the swiss Red Cross in action, Civil War nurse Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross to provide disaster relief and first aid both on the homefront and the front line. Early on, the Red Cross served to educate the public about topics such as first aid and water safety, while starting nursing programs and providing assistance to the military and military families. As new needs, such as blood donation, made themselves apparent, the Red Cross met these needs, starting donation programs and doing labratory research on the blood dontation technology and techniques starting in the 1960's.

Funding for the American Red Cross comes primarily from individual and corporate donations. They are funded by the people to serve the people.

The Red Cross opened a Red Cross R&D in 1961 to further existing research on blood component technology, blood safety, plasma-derived therapeutics, transfusion medicine, and biomedical science. Red Cross R&D has made accievements in the following areas, listed on their website:

• Developed a technique to freeze red blood cells, preserving their viability for up to 3 years, helping to ensure a steady supply of red cells for patients needing rare blood types. (1971)
• Contributed to the development of bar-coding for blood products. (1977)
• Developed procedures for large-scale purification of therapeutic blood proteins like gamma globulin and factor VIII. (1978)
• Collaborated with scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to define the window period—the length of time between infection with the virus and the earliest stage in infection that can be detected by a test—for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) following implementation of universal HIV testing of donor blood. (1994)
• Investigated the prevalence of blood-transmitted diseases like human T-lymphotropic virus-1 (HTLV-1) and Chagas disease, providing key data that led to implementation of testing for these diseases. (HTLV-1 in 1987, Chagas disease in 2008)
• Continue to facilitate improvements in bacterial testing of blood products.
• Investigated the role of antibodies in female-source plasma in causing transfusion-related acute lung injury (TRALI), leading to reduction in the incidence of TRALI by providing male-predominant plasma for transfusion. (2009)
• Modified height and weight restrictions for donors younger than 19, which has significantly reduced adverse reactions among young donors. (2009)

The red cross relies on notification systems of disaster to mobilize their volunteers such as those created by FEMA, NOAA, and other goverment services, transportation infrastructure and technology to move supplies and people from place to place, established red cross infrastructure of supply stockpiles, specialized vehicles, and training centers.