The Resilient California Summit took place in Sacramento, CA from October 20-22, 2026. The Summit aimed to convene people to not just talk about the challenges facing our State but also create policy, partnerships, and practice-based solutions and act on them to accelerate resilience building in California.
Over the three days, attendees focused on first exploring the challenges and potential solutions, imagining a successful future, and catalyzing people and actions to take action to realize these success.
As part of the imagine plenary presentations on day two, keynote speakers focused were asked to describe what the future could look like if our state is successful in creating resilient communities, economies, and environments.
Austin Stevenot, the Director of Tribal Engagement for River Partners, imagined a future where agriculture and our natural environment are not at odds, but instead all part of a functioning and thriving ecosystem and economy.
“Markets had to change. Incentives had to change. And our understanding of productive land had to change. We didn’t stop farming. We began thinking differently about what to grow, where to grow it, and how to support the people doing the growing.”
Deborah Bloome, a Senior Policy Director from Accelerate Resilience L.A., imagined a focus on the state of our soils, where healthy soils are the foundation of our society. And Alvaro Sanchez, Blueprints for Belonging Senior Fellow from Just Solutions Collective, highlighted how bioeconomy investments are not just the future but happening now, in our agricultural communities in San Joaquin Valley through Jobs First Initiative Funded work with Beam Circular.
Across the Summit, sessions touched on worker training, our fiber systems, and sustainable agricultural-based economies highlighting the connected nature of California agriculture with our economy, community, and the environment.
Earlier this year, CDFA released the first ever Resilience Strategy for California Agriculture. The Strategy builds upon California’s Ag Vision 2030, which prioritizes “fostering climate-smart, resilient, and regenerative food systems” which can help mitigate climate change, improve soil health, restore biodiversity, enhance ecosystems, and contribute to human health. The document provides a comprehensive overview of state actions designed to help the agricultural community prepare for, respond to, and thrive under the many conditions imposed by climate change, from uncertainty about water supply and drought to extreme weather events, wildfires, flooding and more.
At CDFA, our climate-smart agriculture programs are committed using the best available science and knowledge from the agricultural community to design and implement practical solutions to California’s natural resource challenges that improve the environmental and economic sustainability of producing nutritious food, fiber, and energy. CDFA has awarded more than 4000 projects and 700 million dollars to farmers, ranchers, and block grant organizations to implement climate-smart agriculture.
CDFA is excited to catalyze the ideas from the Resilient CA Summit to keep working towards a resilient future for California agriculture.