Category: Vegetables

More than 800 bills faced the Legislature’s fiscal gatekeepers last week, and about a third failed to pass. The biannual Appropriations culling brought some relief on the agriculture front, but also disappointments.

Bills marked as costing the state at least $50,000 to implement or requiring $150,000 or more from special funds were placed in suspense files. Likened to an auction, the committees then dispensed with the files on Thursday, ticking through the votes in a single sitting and without public debate. Some discussions took place in earlier hearings but were strictly limited to the potential costs—any debate on the merits of a bill was forbidden. The opaque nature of the votes allowed the Democratic majority to stall less savory legislation and avoid public infighting.

While some of the bills were controversial, one lawmaker was the likely target of the legislative culling in one case. Sen. Marie Alvarado-Gil of Modesto took a bold step a week before the hearings and left the Democratic Party to join Republicans on the other side of the aisle, drawing scorn from her former colleagues. As many anticipated, she suffered a slew of setbacks in the Assembly Appropriations Committee, which held her measure sponsored by the California Farm Bureau. Senate Bill 945 would have created a data platform for state agencies to track the health impacts of wildfire smoke. The aim was to better assess the effectiveness of forest health and wildfire mitigation strategies.

Another bill blocked from advancing would have allocated potential climate bond funding to improving water infrastructure for communities in high fire hazard zones.

Alvarado-Gil viewed the defeats as “a stunning display of political retribution.”

“I can take whatever heat is coming my way and fully recognize it comes with the territory of leaving a supermajority that operates like a mob,” she said in a statement. “They can attack me all they want, but the people of California do not deserve to suffer because of political vendettas.”

A fellow moderate familiar with having bills blocked in Appropriations, Sen. Melissa Hurtado, D-Bakersfield, has long drawn the ire of leadership, dating back to her first years in the Capitol when she pushed for water infrastructure investments. Last week Hurtado lost four bills indirectly related to agriculture, though no industry groups took positions on the measures. She proposed to set new requirements on lobbying by foreign entities, increase fines for trade violations, protect critical infrastructure from cybersecurity attacks and expand food assistance to undocumented immigrants aged 55 or older.

Another agriculture-sponsored bill was AB 2827, which would have made it a priority for CDFA to detect and eradicate invasive species. California Citrus Mutual backed the measure in response to the spread of citrus greening in the Inland Empire. Several farm groups signed on, and it sailed through committees with unanimous bipartisan support.

While CDFA estimated the bill would not have a direct fiscal impact, since the department already performs the duties, it did warn that expanding those efforts could cost tens of millions of dollars. Adding to skepticism over the need for the bill, committee staff noted the Legislature and the governor had already agreed to $22 million in emergency funding to combat fruit fly infestations.

Other bills held in committee drew a sigh of relief from agriculture.

Assembly Bill 560 would have required the Department of Water Resources to review settlement agreements in groundwater adjudications before final approval. Assemblymember Steve Bennett, D-Ventura, argued powerful corporate agribusinesses are sidestepping local groundwater sustainability agencies through the court adjudication process. The California Chamber of Commerce countered that the adjudication process is already complicated, expensive and lengthy and that AB 560 would exacerbate those issues.

In the realm of public safety, AB 2149, following a child’s death at a playground, would have enacted new inspection requirements for gates. A large agriculture coalition led by the Wine Institute opposed the measure, claiming it would saddle small businesses with a significant regulatory burden. Cal/OSHA is also considering new safety standards for gates at workplaces.

A battle over defensible space fizzled away last week with the demise of SB 610. The Newsom administration bill would have reformed the way the state draws maps for fire hazards. Proponents argued it would have standardized fire mitigation requirements across state and local boundaries. But the bill came late in the session, when Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, gutted a previous measure and inserted the new language.

Groups like Rural County Representatives of California and the California Farm Bureau were apprehensive about enacting such sweeping changes in a shortened time span, while environmental groups worried the bill would expand urban development into hazardous regions.

Many other bills took amendments in the Appropriations committees and will advance to floor votes. Lawmakers have until the end of August to send measures to the governor.

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

Environmental justice advocates are growing frustrated with California’s pace in solving one of the most perplexing water problems in the West. Nitrates in fertilizer and from dairy manure—some decades old—have led to groundwater contamination in drinking water wells in the San Joaquin Valley.

Yet state officials worry a heavy-handed approach would drive farms out of business.

In 2019 the State Water Resources Control Board gave the green light to a regional salt and nitrate control program known as CV-SALTS, knowing it could take as long as 35 years for certain areas to reach compliance. Five years later, the regional water board for the Central Valley has yet to pin down the magnitude of the problem and how exactly to address it.

That has led to frustrations from Laurel Firestone, a state water board member and former environmental justice advocate for community drinking water issues. She co-founded the Community Water Center in 2004.

“We’re not doing enough to make sure people without safe drinking water now impacted by nitrates have safe water,” said Firestone, during a recent state water board hearing on CV-SALTS. “We need to figure out how we make that, how we do justice to the problem and the people that we’re trying to address.”

After sampling wells throughout the valley, the state has determined that around 3,800 are above the safe level of 10 milligrams of nitrates per liter of water, with at least 7,000 people affected. About half receive bottled water or have access to filling stations in their communities.

Officials and advocates alike recognized the Herculean effort to implement CV-SALTS. The regional water board designated six nitrate management zones spanning more than 1.4 million irrigated acres and encompassing more than a thousand permitted dischargers—from farms and dairies to wineries, food processors and wastewater treatment facilities. Those dischargers established five nonprofit organizations to manage the plans and to develop the necessary funding mechanisms, hire technical consultants, conduct outreach, test wells and deliver bottled water, according to Tess Dunham, a water quality attorney for Kahn, Soares & Conway who has engaged in the issue for more than a decade.

“It’s just astonishing when you think about what the management zones have accomplished in a very short timeframe,” said Dunham.

State water board member Sean Maguire was excited about the activity and the potential solutions to come, but acknowledged the “huge lift” the state faces with reigning in water quality issues more broadly. In June the state water board published a drinking water needs assessment that detailed a funding gap of $5.5 billion over the next five years for clean water grants and a nearly $14 billion cost to communities and private well owners to achieve the state’s goal of providing safe and affordable water to all Californians.

Dunham cautioned the nitrate issue is “far more complicated” than simply developing long-term solutions for impacted residents. Nitrates may be just one of a variety of artificial or naturally occurring contaminants, and each area has its own unique set of problems, she explained.

Firestone, however, believed the management zones could accelerate the outcomes if they leverage resources already available through the state water board’s drinking water program and through closer collaboration with local groundwater sustainability agencies as they assess aquifers.

“The more we remain in our silos and programs, it just slows it down and leads to frustration,” she said.

Board chair Joaquin Esquivel pointed out that California is decades ahead of other states in tackling nitrates and acknowledged the breadth of issues at play.

“Nitrates are one slice of what is a complex pie out there,” said Esquivel, who, like Firestone, probed for ways to speed up the process. “Of the solutions here, what’s appropriate so that it doesn’t lag behind here?”

Patrick Pulupa, executive officer of the Central Valley board, responded that staff are still in the midst of negotiating implementation plans for the highest priority management zones.

“We’re currently going back and forth to figure out whether those are reasonable, whether they can be accelerated in some areas or not,” said Pulupa, who explained how a small staff is tackling a significant workload. “We’re eating the whale one bite at a time on our end.”

While the regional board’s traditional “wheelhouse” has been to find ways to reduce the nitrate load, it has also been racing to test wells and deliver replacement water to impacted communities.

“We’ll figure out the rest—the funding packages, the long-term solutions—later,” he said, while stressing the need to prevent any potentially life-threatening disorders from water contamination. “The last thing we want is a child with methemoglobinemia to show up in the valley. That is our single driving effort.”

Pulupa also took heat from environmental justice advocates over the timeline.

“We need to figure out how to stop the pollution and clean up the basin,” said Jennifer Clary, state director at Clean Water Action. “We have to start taking action quickly, because the longer we take to start moving the needle, the more of a problem we’ll have to solve.”

Clary pushed for more enforcement and a tighter timeline.

“How can a dairy be required to reach a nutrient balance in 10 years, but then still take 35 to reach compliance?” she asked.

Her colleague Kjia Rivers, a policy advocate at the Community Water Center, called that approach “neither aggressive nor justified,” since the dairies would not need any new technologies to reach an earlier milestone.

“I do beg to differ there,” responded Pulupa, who argued it would be “detrimental to the valley as a whole” to force farmers to cut their fertilizer applications in half by next year. “If you did that, you would see dramatic reductions in crop productivity across virtually all sectors of the agricultural industry in California.”

He asserted that no technology is available to enable farmers to comply while maintaining productivity. He assured the board his team is trying “our very best to make sure that the applicable timeframes are as short as practicable for every single sector.”

Firestone, however, maintained that collaboration has eroded in CV-SALTS as private entities in the management zones have taken the program out of the public eye and created a process more antagonistic to environmental justice communities.

“We really need to think about holistically doing a reset on dynamics here,” said Firestone. “I am troubled by the way I feel things have not been inclusive.”

Pulupa noted that many community voices have expressed gratitude for the program and that the regional board tries to be as open as possible.

“We’re doing our best to rectify the problem with the tools we have,” he said.

For more news, go to Agri-Pulse.com.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz will address the Democratic National Convention tonight to formally accept his nomination to be vice president.

Other speakers tonight, the convention’s third day, include former President Bill Clinton, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

In the hallways: We caught up with Minnesota Democratic Rep. Betty McCollum, a senior House appropriator, who criticized cuts in the Republicans’ Agriculture spending legislation. Agri-Pulse Publisher Sara Wyant with Cathy Burns (left) and Rebekah Adcock of the International Fresh Produce Association on the sidelines of the DNC.

“Some of the numbers that they cut, like the Food and Drug Administration and the safety inspectors and all that, take us backwards years and years for where the funding should be,” she said.

At the United Center: Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, went after corporate consolidation in his speech Tuesday night. “We must take on Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Ag, Big Tech and all the other corporate monopolists whose greed is denying progress for working people.”

Farmer at DNC: Avoid regulatory approach

Anthony Flaccavento, a Virginia farmer who’s executive director of the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative, said in an interview on the sidelines of the Democratic convention that he hopes Harris and other candidates start reaching out again to farmers and other working people.

But Flaccavento also warns that Democrats need to avoid a regulatory approach when it comes to addressing climate change. Many farmers believe they’ll be hurt by efforts to address carbon emissions. “They’ve experienced regulation as people coming to them and telling them what not to do, rather than coming to them saying, ‘Hey, we have a problem, can you help us figure out how to fix it?’”

Farmers should be incentivized to implement climate-smart practices, “whether they’re running animals on pasture, whether they’re raising fruits and vegetables, whether they have a big grain operation,” he said.

The Democratic platform calls for getting to net zero in ag emissions by 2050.

EPA herbicide plan met with mixed response

EPA’s first strategy to address potential harm to endangered species from crop protection chemicals is drawing predictably different responses from environmental and commodity groups.

J.W. Glass of the Center for Biological Diversity, which sued EPA to force it to develop the herbicide strategy, says the agency was “taking a critical step to finally address its decades-long failure to protect endangered species from toxic herbicides.”National Pork Producers Council President Lori Stevermer with Sara and Agri-Pulse’s Lydia Johnson. 

But North Dakota farmer Josh Gackle, who is president of the American Soybean Association, says his group still has “concerns as to the type and affordability of runoff mitigations EPA has provided, the potential distance of spray drift buffers, the number of mitigations farmers will need to adopt, and whether these requirements are supported by the best available science, as the law requires.”

USDA sees sluggish meat demand from China

China’s imports of pork are likely to remain flat next year, while imports of beef grow only marginally, according to an analysis by USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service.

Citing industry sources, the report says traders have adequate stocks of pork and that consumer demand is weak because of a sluggish economy.

As for beef, growth in imports will be limited “owing to economic headwinds and strong volumes of imported beef in previous years,” the FAS forecast says.

Take note: Pork’s share of overall meat consumption has declined over the past 14 years even as total meat consumption has grown by more than 20%, according to the FAS report. “Pork remains a staple meat, but consumers are increasingly exposed to other animal protein sources such as beef, poultry, and seafood – many of which are perceived as healthier,” the report says.Deputy Ag Secretary Xochitl Torres Small

Kroger sues FTC over administrative process blocking merger with Albertsons

Kroger is suing the Federal Trade Commission, arguing it’s unconstitutional to use an in-house agency tribunal to challenge the grocery giant’s planned $24.6 billion merger with Albertsons.

The company has filed a motion for a preliminary injunction in a Cincinnati federal court, citing a Supreme Court decision issued this summer, SEC v. Jarkesy, which restricts agencies from handling cases internally without a jury.

“We stand prepared to defend this merger in the upcoming trial in federal court – the appropriate venue for this matter to be heard – and we are asking the Court to halt what amounts to an unlawful proceeding before the FTC’s own in-house tribunal,” Kroger Chairman and CEO Rodney McMullen said.

FTC announced it would challenge the merger in February, arguing it would reduce competition and raise grocery prices for consumers.

Food industry giant to begin implementing traceability measures 

Sysco Corp., a major global food distributor, has released its plan for complying with FDA’s traceability rule. The rule issued under the Food Safety Modernization Act requires additional recordkeeping for certain foods. The intent is to make it easier to identify and remove potentially harmful foods from the market. 

Sysco will begin implementing “advanced traceability measures” and will take steps to also help its suppliers comply, according to a press release. Through its traceability initiative, Sysco will partner with iFoodDS, a food safety and quality management solutions group, to give the company’s network interoperable options for sharing the required data. 

The company also plans to establish an internal task force to monitor compliance and improve traceability. 

Colorado River water cut levels to remain in place next year

New projections from the Bureau of Reclamation indicate states in the Lower Colorado River basin are likely to remain in Level 1 shortage conditions next year.

Under previous agreements, this means Arizona will need to conserve 512,000 acre-feet of water, while Nevada will need to conserve 21,000. 

Those states and California will have already conserved an additional 1.5 million acre-feet of water by the end of 2024 under a supplemental agreement. The states agreed to preserve a collective total of 3 million acre-feet between 2023 and 2026.

Final word: “We won’t get as much pushback from farmers and rural people, if they see that the regulations are taking their needs and concerns to heart.” – Anthony Flaccavento, a Virginia farmer who’s executive director of the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative, speaking to Agri-Pulse at the Democratic National Convention.