California Healthy Soils Week 2022 will kick off December 5 with United Nations’ World Soil Day. CDFA and Agriculture and partner organizations from across the state will host a series of events highlighting soil health and biodiversity. CDFA Secretary Karen Ross will provide opening remarks via video on Dec. 5.
This year’s theme is “Stronger Soils: Biodiversity Below the Surface Builds Soil Resilience,” which highlights the importance of soil health across farms, ranches, urban landscaping, and home and community gardens.
A number of agencies and organizations are joining CDFA for the weeklong event. There will be webinars, live streams, panel discussions, and at-home how-to activities. Healthy Soils Week partners will be posting, tweeting, and sharing on social media throughout the week to reach as many people as possible with information about building soil health and fostering climate resilience.
Among the many benefits of soil health practices are the following:
Improved plant health and yields;
Increased water infiltration and retention;
Sequestered carbon and reduced greenhouse gases (GHGs);
Reduced sediment erosion and dust;
Improved water and air quality; and
Improved biological diversity and wildlife habitat.
Visit the Healthy Soils Week website to see the full lineup of events and partners. To follow along on social media, watch for and use the hashtags #SoilHealth and #HSW2022.
At today’s signing — from right, CDFA Secretary Karen Ross, UC ANR Vice-President Glenda Humiston, NRCS California State Conservationist Carlos Suarez, and CARCD board president Don Butz.
Secretary Karen Ross participated in an a signing ceremony today committing CDFA to an agreement with partners including the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS), the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR), and the California Association of Resource Conservation Districts (CARCD).
A memorandum of agreement binds the parties together as the California Conservation Planning Partnership. The signatories will work together to streamline their services when assisting land managers like farmers, ranchers, and foresters who are implementing conservation and climate-smart agriculture practices on their lands.
While these organizations have worked together for many decades, there is significant coordination required to ensure they are providing services to historically underserved farmers and ranchers; offering coordinated advice about on-farm practices; and working to provide on-the-ground technical assistance providers with the resources they need to rapidly scale up climate-smart practices to address climate change.
The partners will provide joint trainings and materials, work to address barriers to the adoption of practices, and collaborate to better disseminate the latest research to technical assistance providers. Follow-up workshops will be held in January and March.
(Left) CDFA Secretary Karen Ross with Assistant Vice Minister Guido Landheer, NL Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality; (Right) Participants in the Netherlands – California Sustainable Dairy Summit
California and the Netherlands continue their longstanding partnership on Climate Smart Agriculture, first established in 2015 with a visit by CDFA Secretary Karen Ross to the Netherlands. The two governments share opportunities for innovation within the food sector to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, enhance a circular agricultural economy, and further on-farm practices for sustainability.
The Netherlands-California Sustainable Dairy Summit this week in Sacramento connected government, business and academia around policy and research priorities related to dairy farming and a sustainable dairy sector. CDFA’s Office of Environmental Farming and Innovation (OEFI) was one of the key presenters at the event, sharing information about manure management programs at the agency.
Citrus is a way of life for our state! California leads the nation in tons and value of citrus production., and the US is also among the top-five citrus producers in the world. Of course, citrus depends on responsible water stewardship, and many California growers use advanced technology with soil moisture monitors and micro-sprinklers to water their trees. Read more about the water efficiency of California commodities at the California Farm Water Coalition web site.
More than a quarter of the world’s biodiversity lives belowground, in our soils. And about a third of the biodiversity in the United States is right here in California.
California farmers and ranchers understand the fundamental importance of the soil that is the foundation of their work – and scientists are working to help all of us understand it even better. Join a panel of experts on Monday, December 5 for a free webinar: Building Belowground Biodiversity.
The California Department of Food and Agriculture is working alongside our growers to improve soil health, in part by convening the Belowground Biodiversity Advisory Committee, made up of world-renowned scientists, to generate recommendations on biodiversity indicators as a proxy of soil health and ecosystem functions. Four of our committee members make up our webinar panel for this special Healthy Soils Week event. Presenters will also share some of the work they have completed.
Click here to register for “Building Belowground Biodiversity” scheduled for World Soil Day, Monday December 5, at 10 am.
The importance of biodiversity and healthy soils is memorialized in Governor Gavin Newsom’s Executive Order N-82-20, which directs the California Department of Food and Agriculture and partner agencies to work to support our biodiverse natural ecosystems, including our soils.
USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) mailed an invitation to respond online to the 2022 Census of Agriculture on November 22. A paper questionnaire will follow in December and responses are due February 6, 2023 either online, by mail, or telephone. This is your chance to have a voice in the future of agriculture in our state and the U.S. The ag census is required by law, but more importantly, good data means good decisions about policies, programs, disaster assistance, finance, and more. If you only fill out one survey this year, this is the one to do.
By Karen Ross, Secretary California Department of Food and Agriculture
Photo courtesy of California Grown/BCMA
The dictionary defines gratitude as the state of being grateful: THANKFULNESS. It is important to express appreciation to people every day, but especially at this time of year – a time to celebrate the harvest by gathering around the table with family and friends.
Our farmers, ranchers, farmworkers and others who make up the agricultural sector in California have faced a number of stressful challenges this year. These include a third year of severe drought and a record breaking extreme heat event impacting harvest, in addition to continued disruptions in the supply chain, significant price increases for every input needed for production, and ongoing barriers to shipping product to valuable overseas markets. And, yet, California agriculture did what it always does – innovated, adapted, persevered. Our agriculture community is special not only for the crops it produces, but for the way they are grown to high labor, environmental, public health and safety standards.
It is an honor to serve in my position as Secretary of Food and Agriculture and to represent our state and this industry here at home, across the country and around the world. Just last week, Deputy Secretary Virginia Jameson and I returned from the UN Conference on Climate COP 27 where, for the first time, there was a day featuring agriculture. A number of sessions centered on the question of how we feed the world in a changing climate. There were too many extreme weather events in 2022 that showed how fragile food security is, in too many countries, for too many people. There were numerous discussions about how important it is to expand the adoption of climate smart agricultural practices and embrace innovation and technology to ensure resilient food production systems, nourish a fast-growing world population and help small-scale subsistence farmers move out of poverty and end hunger.
The entire experience reminded me once again how fortunate I am to live and work in California, where I have the opportunity to collaborate with kind, dedicated staff, talented colleagues and inspiring leaders working to make our industry and our state even better. I am grateful for the bounty of our harvest that includes our youth – the NextGen talent – who are excited about the future. California agriculture is remarkable! It is good to reflect on all that we have to be thankful for – the practice of gratitude.
Estimated $2 billion in GDP and 19,414 jobs lost to drought in 2022
Aerial view of the Enterprise Bridge over Lake Oroville in Butte County, August 2022. (Kelly M. Grow / California Department of Water Resources)
Any way you look at it – precipitation, temperature, the amount of stored water available – the past three years have been the driest period on record, and one of the hottest, with roughly 68% of the 20th century average precipitation. Researchers estimate that in 2022 alone, California’s agriculture and food processing industry has lost 19,414 jobs and $2 billion in value added (Gross Domestic Product or GDP) due to the ongoing drought.
The report also shows how the impacts of climate change have worsened the effects of this drought by increasing the evaporative demand from vegetation by 3-5 inches. That means the gap between the water we need and the water we have is even wider than in previous droughts – and not just for agriculture, but also for ecosystems and communities across the board.
The results of this research also confirm the importance of California’s comprehensive slate of actions taken in response to this and previous droughts, and given the new, hotter and drier “normal” brought about by climate change. Those actions, ranging from modernizing water management to accelerating water supply projects to adopting emergency water conservation measures, are detailed at https://drought.ca.gov/state-drought-response/.
The Newsom Administration announced its water strategy in August with a document called “California’s Water Supply Strategy, Adapting to a Hotter, Drier Future.” The strategy calls for investing in new sources of water supply, accelerating projects and modernizing how the state manages water through new technology.
Over the last three years, at the urging of the Governor, state leaders have earmarked more than $8 billion to modernize water infrastructure and management. The historic three-year, $5.2 billion investment in California water systems enacted in 2021-22 has enabled emergency drought response, improved water conservation to stretch water supplies, and enabled scores of local drought resilience projects. The 2022-23 budget includes an additional $2.8 billion for drought relief to hard-hit communities, water conservation, environmental protection for fish and wildlife, and long-term drought resilience projects.
The Report
The Central Valley’s net water shortage increased from 1.8 million acre-feet (MAF) in 2021 to 2.6 MAF in 2022. Compounding effects of the 2020 and 2021 water years also worsened water supply conditions in the Sacramento Valley, where the shortage doubled in 2022 (1.5 MAF) compared to 2021 (0.76 MAF). Some places in the San Joaquin Valley saw slight relief due to some recovery in reservoir water storage from 2022 winter rains, but deficit conditions remain the norm.
Impacts on our farms and ranches vary widely by region, and adaptations undertaken by our farmers and ranchers included crop shifting and idling land. Some crops, such as rice and other field and grain crops, showed extensive fallow land from project water allocations, or curtailments. In some cases, water transfers and planting insurance provided some relief and made it possible to keep higher-value commodities in some areas in the Central Valley. Areas outside the Central Valley experienced some fallowing, but yield losses in vines and some vegetable farms were due to dry and warm conditions.
There is no getting around the fact that California remains in an extended, severe drought, and severe consequences including fallowed land and shifted crops continue to put farms, farmers, workers and downstream industries in jeopardy. The food processing sector often receives less attention during droughts, but this report estimates the cascade effects of decreased production of some crops, with direct impact losses of $845 million in GDP (and $3.5 billion in gross revenues) estimated for 2022 in the Central Valley, with a decrease of nearly 7,400 jobs.
Idle Land
An additional 752,000 acres of California farmland has been idled in the 2022 dry year. 563,000 acres were idled in 2021, and an additional 190,000 acres in 2022. The Central Valley accounts for 695,000 of the total.
Farm Losses
Losses in revenue to California farms and ranches are estimated at $1.3 billion for 2021 and $1.7 billion for 2022 (using 2019 as the most recent non-drought baseline). The largest proportion of these losses is in the Central Valley due to drought-idled land. Other agricultural regions suffered losses from fallowing, and also from yield losses due to excessively dry and warm conditions. The severity and duration of temperature extremes – hallmark effects of climate change – worsened these losses.
Farms are by no means the only victims of this drought, or of the climate change factors that are worsening it. Our communities that rely on both permanent and seasonal jobs in agriculture are especially vulnerable in these extended drought conditions. Water access and water quality may be the obvious impacts of drought in these communities – but the longer this or any future drought endures, the broader and more severe the social, economic and health impacts will be as well.
Innovation has always been an important element of California’s reputation for global agricultural leadership, and our reliance on science and creative solutions will be even more important as we face drought in the years to come. By supporting this research, and through a broad slate of related efforts, CDFA and California’s agricultural community are working to identify, quantify, and combat the effects of this drought and help California become more resilient in preparation for the future droughts that experience tells us are certainly coming.
California farmers and ranchers, including veterans and beginners, are invited to attend a Farmer & Rancher Grant Writing Workshop 10 a.m. to noon Dec. 1 via Zoom. The workshop is being offered by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Office of Partnerships & Public Engagement in partnership with the Fresno State University Jordan College of Agriculture and Division of Research and Graduate Studies.
Dr. Ricardo Gaitán (center-left) and Dr. Everardo Mendes (center-right) with the Animal Health and Food Safety Services Division, conduct outreach with two farmers. Their discussions throughout the event covered meat, poultry and dairy products, antibiotics, vaccines, animal diseases, rendering, and mobile slaughter operations.
Representatives from across CDFA divisions and programs were on hand at the Latino Farmer Conference in Escondido on November 17 and 18. The event was held at the California Center for the Arts with an emphasis on sustainable agriculture, equity, and resources for underserved farmers and ranchers. The Latino Farmer Conference is an annual event for Spanish speaking farmers and ranchers.
The conference brought together approximately 200 participants from the farming community, industry, and advocates for sustainability and agribusinesses for workshops in Spanish. The event included a farm tour of local and sustainable farms. The National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT) and the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) host this annual event.
CDFA is proud to have had representation from the following areas:
