Category: Produce

The California Department of Water Resources is opening applications for the California Stream Gage Improvement Program (CalSIP), allowing local agencies to install or upgrade stream gage systems in their areas. 

Stream gages help measure, record and transmit data on water flow, temperature and dissolved oxygen levels. DWR estimates that there are currently 1,000 active gages across California. Live stream data will be made available to the public through the California Data Exchange Center, which will be certified by a civil engineer or hydrologist annually.

According to CalSIP guidelines, proposed projects can cover the costs of installing new gages, incorporating existing data into public databases, reactivating older gages, upgrading existing gages, purchasing other stream gaging equipment or maintaining gages.

The deadline to fully execute agreements is June 30, 2025. Eligible entities for the project include city and county agencies, “special districts,” which includes groundwater sustainability agencies, colleges and universities and federally recognized tribes. Local agencies will have to independently install and operate the gage, according to the release.

High food costs have become major talking points in the upcoming presidential election, with both sides citing different reasons for rising grocery store prices over the past four years. Economists say a number of factors have been at play, depending on the type of food. 

Vice President Kamala Harris, who is running for president, vowed last week to limit food inflation with a federal ban on food price gouging. Her proposal would give the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general new authority to investigate and penalize companies that violate the ban.

On the other side, former president Donald Trump has worked to connect inflation and high food prices to the Biden-Harris administration’s economic policy. 

Food and agriculture economists say the supply chain disruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic played a role in inflation, especially with processed food products like bread, crackers and cookies that are in the supply chain longer and are susceptible to upstream challenges. But fuel and labor costs as well as the spike in commodity prices that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have also played a role. 

“It’s hard to find a product that hasn’t experienced a significant increase in price at some point over the past four years,” said David Ortega, a food economics professor at Michigan State University. 

It’s well known that the pandemic had a significant impact on agricultural productivity, from the ability to harvest crops to the functionality of beef and pork processing plants, said Ricky Volpe, a professor of agribusiness at CalPoly and former economist with USDA. 

During the pandemic, there were also coordination issues with transportation and storage, with global ports eventually becoming overwhelmed by imports and exports. This resulted in longer wait times, all while grocery demand had skyrocketed as consumers paused eating out at restaurants, Volpe told Agri-Pulse. 

Since 2020, the price of corn, soybeans and wheat have been elevated, which contributes to inflation through the raw commodity cost, said Scott Irwin, agricultural marketing professor at University of Illinois. This only represents a portion of the total price, however, and only equates to a limited impact on overall food costs. 

The main sources for the increases consumers see at the store are associated with the cost of processing, distributing and marketing food products, Irwin said. These have increased due to higher gasoline and diesel prices and labor costs. 

Some of these issues, such as truck transportation and labor, already existed, and were simply heightened by the pandemic, Volpe said. These two issues, along with unpredictable weather, are the main reasons Volpe believes food prices are still high despite a reprieve in inflation. 

“We can’t pin those problems on COVID,” Volpe said. “We already had them and we still do.” 

Upstream costs, like increased energy and trucking rates and labor shortages, eventually filter down to retailers, even if that’s not apparent to consumers. Volpe said retailers are aware their vendors are dealing with these persistent upstream challenges in the supply chain.

“Those go a long way towards sort of demotivating retailers from actually lowering prices when they’re dealing with these persistent input costs that are sort of unpredictable and always sort of nipping at their heels,” Volpe said. 

Retailers also have to factor in the high costs associated with changing prices, like printing new tags and marketing tools.

The pandemic is not the sole global event at play with food prices. Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine pushed commodity prices up, as some countries placed export bans on certain goods. Additionally, the increased crude oil price exacerbated transportation issues. 

While some of those impacts have cooled, it takes time for changes to fully work through the supply chain to the retail level, said MSU’s Ortega. 

Climate change and extreme weather over the last several years have also affected the food supply, which in turn alters food prices at the grocery store, Ortega said. For example, extreme drought out west in 2022 impacted leafy green, specialty crop and beef production. 

During this period, Ortega said it became more costly for beef producers to keep their animals and livestock, so they sold a portion of their herd at the time. This caused beef prices to decrease slightly in 2022, but those are now rising again because many producers got rid of the breeding stock needed to grow future beef supply. 

The egg market also took a hit starting in 2022 and 2023 due to highly pathogenic avian influenza, Ortega said. The impacts of the flu were compounded by higher feed costs, which also affected the price of chicken and turkey. 

Consumer reaction and purchasing have also influenced the food price ecosystem. When pandemic-era stay-at-home orders took effect, some restaurants and the food service sector experienced major challenges and may have shut down quickly. Ortega said that the abruptness led to supply chain pressures. 

Additionally, consumers started to spend more on food at grocery stores and restaurants starting in 2022 after households accumulated savings during the pandemic due to the shutdowns and government stimulus checks, Ortega said.

“You have these supply shocks, you have increasing consumer spending on the demand side, and so prices have nowhere to go but up,” Ortega said. 

As prices went up in 2022 and early 2023, shoppers began changing their buying habits, substituting food items or going to different stores because of price differences, said Steve Markenson, vice president of research at FMI-The Food Industry Association, which represents major food retailers such as Kroger, Albertsons and Walmart. 

Some shoppers have also started considering different factors in selecting food items, Markenson said. Rather than just looking at the prices of a store, consumers may consider the shopping experience, ease of access, or the sustainability and quality of a product. Consumers have also gravitated more toward premium, private products. 

Barring another major geopolitical event or shock to the food system, food price increases are expected to be on par with pre-pandemic level inflation. USDA predicts food at-home prices will increase by 1% in 2024 and by 0.7% in 2025, according to its latest report. 

Fortunately for consumers, wages are beginning to catch up with the price increases Americans have seen over the last several years, Ortega said. 

Economists said price gouging is not the primary driver of high food prices, and action taken to address it could have unintended consequences for producers and consumers. 

“I appreciate the focus on ensuring that consumers have access to an affordable food supply,” Ortega said. “But focusing on price gouging and using price controls is not an effective policy to achieve that.”

Pushing prices below the market equilibrium can increase demand, but make it more difficult to maintain supply. It can also lead to a decrease in product quality if producers have to cut corners to meet demand, Ortega said. 

Irwin said that if price gouging is defined as taking advantage of supply disruptions to charge excessive prices, there is little evidence of that actually happening. 

“I grew up with the Nixon era price controls in general, including on food, and it didn’t work then, were widely considered to be a disastrous policy by a Republican administration,” Irwin said. “I don’t see why you would expect anything different today.”

For more news, go to www.agri-pulse.com. 

Democrats insist they plan to win in November by campaigning everywhere, including rural America, where they have lost considerable ground in recent elections. They also are unabashedly embracing labor unions, abortion rights, and action on climate change.

“We’re going to leave out no part of America,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear told an enthused crowd at a Democratic National Committee Rural Council meeting Tuesday at the party’s convention in Chicago.

“We’re going to fight for every community, every county, every part of this country. All of our people deserve great leadership,” he said, adding that “the moment we win, we take those [Democratic] hats off, and we serve every single American.”

Beshear and other Democrats who have spoken at the convention thus far have preached unity and hit Donald Trump and running mate JD Vance hard for divisive rhetoric.

“We’re at a boiling point in this country, and we deserve better,” the Kentucky governor said. “Every day, it’s the back and forth. We’re asked to pick a side on everything from the car we drive to the beer we drink. But we know that the most important issues aren’t necessarily D or R, red or blue. We deserve an America where we remember that we are Americans first.”

The ticket of Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz may only need to make modest gains, former North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp told the same group.

Heitkamp told the audience that when Walz was picked to be Harris’s running mate, “I could hardly contain myself,” so pleased was she that the governor of a mostly rural state had been chosen.

“What does this mean for our ability to take back rural America?” she asked. “I’m not a political genius, but I do know a little bit about winning campaigns in pretty tough states. And what I believe is, if we can just do 5% better, and then the next time do 10% better, and the next time do 20% better and bring back rationality.”

Data compiled by Pew Research Center show a steady shift of rural voters toward the Republican Party. In 2000, the GOP held a narrow 51%-45% advantage over Democrats among rural voters who were Republicans or leaned Republican.

However, “that grew substantially over the next decade,” Pew said. “By 2010, the GOP’s advantage had widened to 13 percentage points. It has nearly doubled since then, and the Republican Party now holds a 25-point edge over the Democratic Party.”

Anthony Flaccavento, a Virginia farmer and executive director of the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative,  told Agri-Pulse in an interview on the sidelines of the convention, that he hopes Harris and other Democratic candidates send a message to rural voters that “we screwed up by not investing in the people who grow our food, who who bring our timber to market and build our homes. … And we’re not going to make that mistake again.”

Fighting for family farmers and other working people is “essential to the well being of our country, it’s just critical, and at the same time, it’s the message that can actually start to win back more working folks and rural people,” he said.

Speaking at the Rural Council meeting, Beshear drew cheers when he explained how he governs a rural state: “I’m a proud pro-union governor, I’m a proud pro-public education governor, I’m a proud pro-choice governor, I am a proud pro-diversity governor, and I’m a proud pro-Kamala Harris for president governor.”

Democrats continue to embrace the labor movement, whose members turned out heavily for a Labor Council event Monday that featured leaders of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), the AFL-CIO, American Federation of Teachers and others.

Offering a glimpse into a future that will probably only become reality if Democrats can keep the White House, hold onto the Senate, and recapture the House of Representatives, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said, “We’re going to improve health care, we’re going to make sure we have more job training, we’re going to support union apprenticeship programs. We’re going to pass the PRO Act.”

The PRO Act is short for The Protecting the Right to Organize Act, legislation that “restores the right of workers to freely and fairly form a union and bargain together for changes in the workplace,” the AFL-CIO says. The Senate has not acted on it since it was reported favorably from the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee about a year ago.

Democrats also plan to lean into environmental issues, particularly climate change, by pointing to government initiatives funded by the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

Most voters say climate change is important to their vote, said Danielle Deiseroth, executive director of Data for Progress, a progressive think tank, at a meeting of the Democratic National Committee’s Environmental & Climate Crisis Council.

In fact, she said, surveys conducted by DFP show that “over 60% of voters want Vice President Harris to carry the legacy that she’s established with President Biden of tackling climate change head-on, and voters want to see her continue passing ambitious climate action.”

Michelle Chan, vice president of programs at Friends of the Earth, said polling shows that 72% of young voters who say they care about climate issues are “extremely likely” to vote, compared to 57% of young voters overall.

“So we know that people who care about climate are more likely to vote,” Chan said. “So, that’s a great reason to go out and lead with that.” For those wondering if that makes sense, she said the 2024 election, like the one in 2020, is likely to be close, and could be decided by small margins in multiple states.

Lydia Johnson contributed to this report. 

For more news, go to www.Agri-Pulse.com

Senate Republican Whip John Thune said Wednesday that another one-year farm bill extension will likely be needed amid the ongoing partisan gridlock over current proposals.

Passing an extension would enable lawmakers to “start fresh” in a new Congress next year, Thune told reporters in his home state at DakotaFest in Mitchell, South Dakota.

Thune ranks second in the Senate GOP leadership and is a leading contender to replace Mitch McConnell as Senate GOP leader, 

Thune said he has not seen any signals from Senate Ag Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., indicating she intends to move a bill through committee, or from Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., about putting a farm bill on the floor.

“I just don’t see any evidence that any of that’s happened,” Thune said. “I wish it were otherwise, but it seems to me that we do another year, another extension, and this gets punted to January.”

Last fall, lawmakers extended the 2018 farm bill by one year. Authority for some programs is set to expire as soon as Sept. 30. Lawmakers would need to act on extension by the end of the end of the year to avoid triggering laws dating back to 1938 and 1949 that would force USDA to take steps in 2025 to dramatically raise the price of milk, wheat and other commodities. 

What the farm bill process could look like next year will depend on the outcomes of this November’s election.

Republicans have a shot at winning back control of the Senate. If that happens, Arkansas Republican John Boozman would become chair of the Senate Ag Committee and could pursue a different farm bill than the one proposed by Stabenow this spring.

“I don’t like the fact that we’re kicking the can down the road again, but I do think that next year we’re going to be in a better position to get a bill that’s more to our liking,” Thune said.

Democrats currently hold a 51-49 majority in the Senate, though West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin’s retirement in a deep red state could easily bring it to a 50-50 split, in which case the vice president would break partisan ties, according to race ratings from the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter.

Two incumbent Democrats, Jon Tester of Montana and Sherrod Brown of Ohio, are prime targets for Republicans, and several other Democratic seats are at risk as well. 

If Democrats perform well in the upcoming election in both the House and Senate, Thune said it was “not outside the realm of possibility” that Republicans would try to iron out a deal with the current majority by the end of this year. But he said it would take several weeks to agree on and move the legislation.

“Depending on how the election comes out, could it happen? Yeah, possibly,” he said. “Is it likely? I think the answer is no, but we’ll see.”

For more news, go to www.agri-pulse.com.