By Chris Scheuring, senior counsel for water policy at the California Farm Bureau

Wendell Berry famously said that eating is an agricultural act. That makes all of us into farmers, and nowhere is that more true than in water terms.  

For farming is irreducibly the process of mixing dirt, water and sunshine to bring forth from the ground what we need to eat. And no matter who you are, it’s true:  somebody, somewhere, must devote a lot of water to the process of feeding you.

Some have been sidestepping this fact in the ongoing policy evolutions over the way we must capture, store and move water in California. Yet even the most ardent urban environmentalist finds herself at the local grocery store or the farmers’ market – filling her basket with California-grown nuts, fruits and vegetables.  

Some of these crops can only be grown here, or in one of the few similar agricultural climates around the world, in an irrigation-based agricultural economy.

Take almonds, now and then the whipping-post of California water use: They cannot be grown in a place where it rains in the summer. Iowa, for example, is awfully cold in February – which is precisely when almonds need mild Mediterranean winter weather for their blossoms to be pollinated. Mediterranean crops need a Mediterranean climate, which usually means mild winters and hot, dry summers.

Beyond that, the case for California agriculture is made by our farming practices and their regulatory backdrop, whatever natural reticence California farmers may have about being regulated. We do it more efficiently here, and with more oversight, than in most alternative agricultural venues around the world. I would compare a California avocado favorably to an avocado anywhere else in the world, on those terms.

That’s why I have always thought that a subtle strain of NIMBYism runs through the retrograde ideas that some have about “reforming” agricultural water rights here and constraining the water projects that ultimately deliver food to the world.  With nearly 8 billion people on the planet, pinching off California’s agricultural water supplies is a game of whack-a-mole which will cause the same water issues to arise elsewhere.

Without question, we must continue on our trajectory of making California farming more water-efficient. If you have been watching California agriculture for a generation, you already know that much of the landscape has transitioned from old-fashioned flood and sprinkler irrigation to more efficient drip and micro-sprinkler techniques – even in the case of row crops. We must continue this path; new technologies related to irrigation continue to be developed, including better monitoring of applied water and crop water use.

We must also recognize inherent conflicts between agricultural water use and the flora and fauna that are dependent upon our rivers and streams. 

Gone are the days in California when a grizzly bear might paw a salmon out of the Suisun Marsh, but we can work together to find non-zero-sum water and habitat solutions that would take advantage of opportunities to protect and rehabilitate species of concern, where it can be done without disproportionate human impact. Again and again through public enactment, California has demonstrated its will to keep the environment in mind as we move forward.

Further, we must also carry forward processes to develop new water supplies for California’s farms and growing cities, whether those are storage facilities above ground or below ground, or stormwater capture and aquifer recharge, or desalination or recycling. In the face of a changing hydrology and the expected loss of snowpack, we simply cannot accommodate serious discussion on the demand side of water questions without working on the supply side. Otherwise, we are chasing a receding goalpost – and we will not get there.

Finally, remember that farming is not a question of “if,” but “where.” We’re going to eat – all of us around the world – and we’re going to farm in order to do so. So we should protect California’s agricultural water supplies, because the case for California water being used on California’s farms is strong.  

Link to item on CalMatters web site

A letter from Secretaries Ross and Kim to the leading companies shipping to California ports

We are writing to request that ocean carriers take full advantage of underutilized California ports, including the Port of Oakland, to ease congestion in the San Pedro Bay. U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack recently made a similar request and we wholeheartedly concur with them.

California Governor Gavin Newson’s Administration has been working closely with the Biden-Harris Administration’s White House Supply Chain Disruption Task Force, and California has taken a series of actions to address supply chain disruption caused by COVID-19. We have also been working directly with the Port of Oakland and California agricultural exporters to ease access to international markets for agricultural exports. It is our strong belief that restoring ocean carrier service to the Port of Oakland would ease congestion in the San Pedro Bay and better enable American agricultural products to be exported.

In October 2021, Governor Newsom signed Executive Order N-19-21 to address supply chain challenges. Since then, California state agencies have taken multiple steps, including temporarily issuing overweight trucking permits for international shipping containers, doubling Commercial Driver’s License testing capacity, identifying state-owned properties that can be available to address short-term cargo container storage needs, and many others. We are also planning major long-term investments that will make our internationally significant goods movement infrastructure more efficient and resilient. These actions and investments benefit ocean carriers and all those utilizing California’s global gateways in international trade.

At the same time, we have heard similar concerns expressed by Secretaries Buttigieg and Vilsack, namely that U.S. agricultural shippers have seen reduced service, uncertain return dates, and inadequate access to shipping containers to export their goods. We agree that the situation may require further intervention by the Federal Maritime Commission, and would also note that the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed California Congressman John Garamendi’s bipartisan H.R. 4996, the Ocean Shipping Reform Act of 2021, which strengthens the Federal Maritime Commission’s statutory authority to promote reciprocal trade and regulate ocean carrier service standards in the public interest.

Thank you for working with us to relieve the supply chain disruption caused by COVID-19. We urge you to help agricultural shippers of U.S. exports by restoring services to the Port of Oakland.

Sincerely,

David S. Kim
Secretary
California State Transportation Agency

Karen Ross
Secretary, California Department of Food and Agriculture

CDFA’s Inspection Services Division has released its Annual Report for 2021 (Fiscal year ’20-’21).

The report gives an overview of programs within the Inspection Services Division (ISD), as well as information about boards and committees; a fiscal year summary; and the mission, vision and goals of ISD employees. Pictures and statistics illustrate how programs fulfill the CDFA Strategic Plan goals of: promoting and protecting agriculture, maximizing resources, providing engagement and education, remaining dedicated to customer service, and investing in employee development.

Highlights include:

• The Direct Marketing Program reported 2,427 Certified Producer Certificates were issued and there were more than 627 Certified Farmers’ Markets operating in California.
• The Center for Analytical Chemistry developed 13 new scientific methods while satisfying the regulatory and monitoring needs of 30 public agencies.
• The Fertilizer Research and Education Program (FREP) Grant Program awarded more than $2 million to universities and agricultural organizations for research, demonstration and education projects related to the environmentally safe and agronomically sound use and handling of fertilizing materials.
• The Farm to School Incubator Grant Program awarded $8.5 million to 60 farm to school projects in California to support local and regional farm to school projects that promote nutrition education, sustainable food production and procurement, and high-quality student engagement through experiential learning.

Visit the Inspection Services Division homepage to learn more about its mission to provide professional services that support and contribute to a safe, abundant, quality food supply; environmentally sound agricultural practices; and an equitable marketplace for California agriculture.

From the Cal Poly web site

Cal Poly universities’ Stargrazers float, which brought to life a scene from the classic Mother Goose rhyme “Hey diddle, diddle,” received the Animation Award at the 133rd Rose Parade, held New Year’s Day.

The honor, announced two hours before the start of the parade, recognizes the most outstanding use of animation, said Regina Chapuis, the Cal Poly SLO team president.  

The entry aimed to exemplify the parade’s 2022 theme of “Dream. Believe. Achieve.” — a celebration of education’s ability to open doors, open minds and change lives.

More than 80 students, equally split from each university (Pomona and SLO), worked to finish the float during the COVID-19 pandemic and last year’s parade hiatus. While the Cal Poly campuses are multi-decade veterans of the Pasadena classic, this year’s entry overcame a number of administrative challenges and achieve some milestones: It is the first “two-year float”; and this is the first time that student float leaders who initiated the project had to hand over completion responsibilities to a new group, said Chapuis, whose duties as club president include promoting communication between various departments, heading team events and facilitating the float move to Pomona.

Read more here

Proposition 12, California’s Farm Animal Confinement Initiative, was approved in 2018 with 63 percent of the vote. The voters enacted Prop 12 for the stated purposes of treating farm animals humanely and taking precautionary measures to promote food safety by reducing animal density in confined areas. Specific requirements for veal calves and egg-laying hens went into effect on January 1, 2020.  The final phase of Prop 12, with additional requirements for egg-laying hens and a minimum confinement space of 24 square feet for breeding pigs, goes into effect on January 1, 2022.

CDFA’s role in the enforcement of Prop 12 is to establish a uniform and transparent method to implement the law through the promulgation of regulations in partnership with the California Department of Public Health.  While Prop 12 itself states what confinement standards are required to comply with the law, these regulations create a more streamlined administrative mechanism for demonstrating compliance and will thus ensure that consumers have confidence that products subject to Prop 12 are compliant with the law.  It is important to note that the pursuit of criminal and civil penalties for violations of Prop 12 is under the jurisdiction of local district attorneys, city attorneys, county counsels, and the Attorney General’s office.   

The state is working to complete the regulatory process as quickly as possible while meeting the legally required steps for issuance of new regulations. CDFA and the California Department of Public Health began this work in December 2018, weeks after the proposition passed. Since then, the agencies have gathered input from stakeholders, held informal workshops and meetings to discuss proposals, conducted an in-depth economic impact study, ensured a complete review of the draft and supporting documents, published draft regulations for comment, held a comment hearing, reviewed comments and amended as appropriate, and republished for comment, all as required by California’s Administrative Procedure Act. 

Next steps you can expect to see:

• Comments on the draft regulations are being reviewed following a recently completed 15-day public comment period. Review is expected to be completed by mid-January, 2022.
• If comments require substantial changes to the regulatory package, we may open another comment period on the updated language.
• When this part of the process is complete, we will send the final draft regulations, along with all public comments and our responses to them, to California’s Office of Administrative Law (OAL).
• Upon approval by OAL, the regulations will be sent to the Secretary of State’s office to be published, the final step of the process.

As we head into 2022, we have had many discussions with pork producers who are planning not only to be compliant, but to expand their operations. Additionally, we believe there is sufficient product already in the supply chain to carry through for a number of months.

Proposition 12 reflects the will of California voters, and it is a law that will likely influence food purchases in our state for years to come.

Read more about Proposition 12 here

California accounts for 36 percent of all organic production in the United States, leading the nation, and organic production and organic sales are expected to continue to grow.

According to the must recent figures, organic sales in 2020 totaled $11.99 billion, which is an increase of 14 percent from 2019. The top five counties in terms of overall gross sales for 2020 were Monterey County, Los Angeles County, Santa Cruz County, Kern County and Merced County.

Between 2014 and 2020, California farmland in organic production increased 22 percent, from 1,796,080 acres to 2,186,551 acres.

The information mentioned above and more may be found in the California Agricultural Organic Report for 2020-2021, which is scheduled to be published in early 2022. A link to the the 2019-2020 report may be found here.

California State Veterinarian Dr. Annette Jones has granted a 24-hour permit clearing all brand inspection and health requirements for nine reindeer scheduled to visit California on the evening of December 24 and in the early morning hours of December 25.

The permit application was filed via email and followed by a Zoom meeting bringing together CDFA Animal Health Branch staff and a rotund, jolly man with a red suit, white beard, and a pocketful of candy canes. The signature on the application reads, “K. Kringle.”

State law mandates that all animals entering California be individually identified. The nine reindeer named on the permit are: Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donder, Blitzen and Rudolph.

The permit was granted with two conditions: the nine reindeer may not co-mingle with other reindeer in the State of California, and the visiting reindeer may not be used for breeding purposes while in the state. They are, however, invited to partake of the Golden State’s famous and varied agricultural bounty if they need to refuel.

“We are pleased to issue this permit to Mr. Kringle,” said CDFA Secretary Karen Ross. “We wish him safe travels and plenty of California milk and cookies as he and his reindeer make deliveries to the good children of our state.”

With COVID-19 firmly in mind, Santa Claus recently shared the safeguards he is taking to meet health and safety requirements around the world.

Earlier today CDFA updated one of its Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) related to Proposition 12. All the existing FAQs, first published in March 2021, remain in effect.  The update includes an addition to an existing FAQ emphasizing that CDFA’s implementation priority has been and remains focused on the upcoming January 1, 2022 effective date for requirements for cage-free for hens and twenty-four square feet per breeding pig. The updated FAQ is available here.

Over the past week or so, California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) Secretary Karen Ross, Undersecretary Christine Birdsong, and members of their senior staff have been making the rounds, visiting each of our Sacramento-area offices and laboratory facilities.

Sharing a cup of hot chocolate, adding to the department’s collection for the annual food drive, and swapping stories about work and family have become part of CDFA’s holiday tradition over the years. We also share thoughts of the many farmers and ranchers around our state who are gathering with their farmworkers, neighbors, friends and family during this season, in barns and cellars, over potlucks and around barbecue pits, celebrating the season’s harvest and the many more to come. From our CDFA family to yours, happy holidays!

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Just last week, CDFA’s Healthy Soils Incentives Program received more than $4 million in funding requests.

A total of nearly $40 million has been requested so far in the full application period, which began on November 1st. Up to $67.5 million is available in this round of funding.

As a reminder, applications will be accepted on a rolling basis until 5 PM on February 25, 2022 or until available funds are expended. Don’t delay! Get your application in today!