As a 4-H kid who loved the annual county fair growing up, I have a special appreciation for our state’s fairgrounds and the people who operate them.  I am especially grateful for the evolution of these properties into a critically important part of our infrastructure to support local communities in emergency situations.   

In 2020, the impact of COVID-19 negatively affected the ability of fairgrounds to generate revenue.  Revenue comes from holding mass gatherings for social, commercial, and community events, including an annual fair.  The annual fair event is the primary revenue generator for a fairground to cover the expenses for the event, and it funds the costs of daily operations and payroll for the year.  At the same time, fairgrounds continued as a part of our emergency network, serving as base camps and shelter during fires, COVID-19 testing sites, and food bank distribution sites.

The COVID-19 pandemic has negatively impacted fairgrounds but also has created an opportunity to explore new models to respond to diverse community needs while continuing to serve as critical emergency response infrastructure. 

I am very grateful for these state assets that mean so much to their local communities and for the incredible dedication of the managers, directors and staff who help so many under a variety of emergency situations.  

I appreciate Deputy Secretary Arturo Barajas and the great Fairs & Expositions team led by John Quiroz for finding creative ways to support local fair boards to safely proceed with virtual livestock exhibitions and auctions in support of youth projects.

Although we can’t know when, we do know fair season will return.  In the meantime I salute the Network of Fairs as we work together to stabilize funding and look for more efficient and effective ways for the operation of these important facilities.

Through the many challenges of 2020, I am exceptionally thankful for the leadership of California farmers and ranchers who are implementing climate-smart agriculture practices and embracing innovation for climate and water resiliency.  These adaptations are essential if California is to remain a world leader in food production throughout the 21^st century and beyond.   

At CDFA, our Office of Environmental Farming and Innovation (OEFI) partners with hundreds of farming and ranching families with incentive programs and technical assistance to support land stewardship, mitigate climate-warming greenhouse gases (GHGs), advance on-farm renewable energy production, enhance water use efficiency, and promote sustainability and resiliency. 

These projects are funded through the California Climate Investments program. In the last two years we have awarded more than $155 million in grants for manure management, healthy soils, and water and energy efficiency; and we have achieved annual GHG reductions that are the equivalent of removing 713,000  vehicles from roadways!  

We augment this grant funding with a technical assistance program that can be key to the success of small or socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers who may not have the resources or technical expertise to complete the application process and implement improved on-farm practices. In this year alone we have assisted more than one-thousand farmers and ranchers in this way, in English, Spanish, Chinese, Hmong and Portuguese.

Another focus of OEFI is a commitment to biodiversity in support of California’s farmers and ranchers as foremost stewards of our working lands through a number of important practices, such as planting pollinator species, growing cover crops for soil health, avoiding practices that disrupt nesting of bird species, providing winter habitat on rice fields, helping endangered species thrive, and  participating in large-scale habitat corridors.

I am grateful to the OEFI staff and the members of the Environmental Farming Act science panel that advises CDFA on these programs, as well as Resource Conservation Districts,  UC Cooperative Extension, and USDA’s Natural Resource Conservation Service for their work as important technical assistance providers. And, I salute our farmers and ranchers who are leading us into a more sustainable, climate smart future. 

Governor Gavin Newsom today issued an executive order addressing a variety of issues in response to the pandemic, including extending the availability of housing for migrant agricultural workers, providing a 90-day extension on tax returns and tax payments for small businesses and updating Cal/OSHA requirements related to quarantine guidelines. 

The order allows migrant farm labor centers managed by the Department of Housing and Community Development to continue housing agricultural workers and their families beyond the statutory occupancy period, which for several would be this month. It also suspends the requirement that these workers reside outside of a 50-mile radius from the migrant farm labor center for three months of the preceding six months.  

The order allows the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration (CDTFA) to offer a 90-day extension for tax returns and tax payments for all businesses filing a return for less than $1 million in taxes. Small businesses will have until the end of July to file their first-quarter returns.  

In addition, the order updates the Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) emergency temporary standard in keeping with new guidance from the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) related to quarantine guidelines. 

The text of the Governor’s executive order can be found here and a copy can be found here. 

The California Farmworker Foundation has joined a pilot project with the state of California to administer COVID-19 tests in the field for farmworkers.

On October 30^th, Governor Newsom announced the opening of the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) Valencia Branch Laboratory, designed to add additional testing capacity will allow California to better serve schools, health care providers and hard-to-reach communities like essential workers, those in congregate settings and communities of color, who are at higher risk of contracting COVID-19. 

CDFA is part of the state team, partnering with companies and organizations like the California Farmworker Foundation to increase testing availability in agricultural communities. The pilot project, which began last month and is available to employers and employees upon request, utilizes a mobile unit to visit sites in Kern County and is being praised for the ease and efficiency of the testing process from swab to results.

The Foundation is collecting between 200-250 samples per day and is uniquely positioned to achieve this through established relations with both Ag employers and farmworkers, and an ability to reach remote working communities that may not otherwise have access to fixed COVID-19 testing sites.

Many of the individuals tested are Spanish-speaking only and may not have access to a cell phone, email/internet, or a personal vehicle, and they may be hesitant to interact with the state directly. The foundation’s pre-established relationship is essential to providing education and outreach on COVID-19 to this vulnerable population and will also help build bridges for future collaboration with the state, such as for vaccinations.  

CDFA will continue to build out testing partnerships with the state lab and the food and ag community. For more information about the lab, the testing process and how to partner, please visit the Valencia Branch Laboratory website.

Some of the good news to emerge from 2020 included the eradication of Virulent Newcastle Disease (VND), a deadly bird illness that poses a threat to avian populations across the country.

The outbreak began in Southern California in 2018 and was eliminated after two years of hard work and cooperation between CDFA, the USDA, the California Animal Health and Food Safety Laboratory System, the poultry industry, and backyard bird owners. But it came at a significant cost – more than one-million birds were euthanized and the eradication effort cost state and federal governments $70 million, with significant economic impacts on poultry farms and suppliers.

I watched our division of Animal Health and Food Safety Services with nothing less than awe as veterinarians and other outbreak specialists devoted an enormous number of hours to the incident, and staff members left their homes and families for weeks at a time to fill key roles at command centers in San Bernardino and Riverside counties.      

And they succeeded. We succeeded. We are now enjoying a return to poultry health, and I am very grateful for that.  

One of the first issues to emerge in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic was a food emergency. Farmers and ranchers who supplied restaurants, hotels, schools and other institutional food service customers suddenly saw those channels shut down. On the other side of things, the number of families seeking assistance from food banks due to job losses increased dramatically.  In all, farmers and ranchers lost 50 percent of their markets, and food banks saw a 73 percent increase in demand year-over-year.

I am grateful that Governor Newsom and CDFA were able to leverage a long-standing partnership with the California Association of Food Banks’ Farm to Family Program to minimize the amount of food that may have been wasted and redirect it to food boxes for families. So far this year, the program has received donations of more than 134 million pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables.

Farmers have been feeding the need, and several members of the ag family – from Grimmway Farms, Pacific Coast Producers, Sunkist, Lundberg Farms and so many more have donated to this statewide effort. This is an example of how California farmers work every year to make healthy California Grown food available to families in need with donations to their local food banks and through these two statewide programs.

I am also thankful for strong partnerships with the California Department of Social Services and the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services’ Food Supply Task Force. We are working together to assist in the management  the state’s response to the pandemic. 

I am especially grateful for the creativity in rapidly standing up another beneficial state program – Great Plates Delivered – which helps meet the food needs of quarantined seniors by delivering restaurants meals.  It comes with the added benefits of helping to keep restaurant workers employed as the industry has struggled to avoid closures, and helping small farmers who are their suppliers.  More than 19.5 million Great Plates Delivered meals have been served this year.

Additionally, CDFA was able to quickly pivot its Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Program, which provides vouchers for produce from farmers’ markets to needy seniors.  Quarantined seniors weren’t able to visit the markets but CDFA, in collaboration with the California Farm Bureau, the California Alliance with Family Farmers, and the Farm to Family Program of the California Association of Food Banks, facilitated the distribution of 20,242 produce boxes containing 506,050 pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables to more than 20,000 low-income seniors.  I am thankful to CDFA staff members Crystal Myers, Josh Eddy and Monica Pedigo. They were relentless in finding this alternative way to the delight of seniors who were the recipients! 

I am grateful every day for the bounty of California agriculture and especially for the generosity and commitment of farmers, food banks, our sister agencies and dedicated CDFA staff to ensure that every Californian has access to this bounty.

The many challenges of 2020 have included dramatic changes in the ways that CDFA employees—as well as a large number of workers in the public and private sectors—do their jobs. We have asked our employees to telework, or work from home, and many of them have done so while balancing family life, including children who are distance-learning and perhaps a partner also working from home. It hasn’t been easy.

I am grateful to our employees for how quickly they pivoted to this new way of working, and for how much they have been able to accomplish under these circumstances. The work continues at CDFA, from invasive species prevention to animal health; from our Division of Measurement Standards regulating commerce to our Marketing Division overseeing a range of commodity marketing programs; from the regulation of California’s legal cannabis market to our Division of Inspection Services working on issues like organic licensing and compliance, healthy foods in schools, and efficient use of fertilizer; from our Fairs Division working with local fairs to meet community needs to our environmental farming programs teaming up with farmers and ranchers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  

Many of these important functions could not be accomplished remotely and staff adapted with new routines to ensure they could safely do their part in keeping the food supply chain open and meeting the needs of consumers.

Underpinning all of this is the outstanding work from the staff of our Departments of Administrative Services and Information Technology. Their dedication and hard work allowed us to effectively transition to a remote working environment, while implementing safety precautions for those who cannot telework, through new office lay-outs and the availability of PPE and extra sanitation precautions

Thank you, CDFA employees! I am grateful to have the opportunity to serve with you to meet the needs of all Californians. 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) has released the 2019 Census of Horticultural Specialties report, the only source of detailed production and sales data for floriculture, nursery, and specialty crops for the entire United States.

The data show that horticulture operations in California sold a total of $2.63 billion in floriculture, nursery and specialty crops in 2019, down 9% from the sales in 2014. California sold 19% of the total U.S. horticulture sales of $13.8 billion in 2019, more than any other state. In addition to sales, the number of horticulture operations in California decreased 22% during this time to 1,331, and the number of operations in the United States decreased 11% during this time to 20,655.

“The horticulture census is a vital tool that highlights the contribution horticulture growers bring to our local, state, and national economies,” said Pacific Region Director Gary R. Keough. “It shows changes and trends in the industry over the past five years and beyond.”

Horticulture production occurred primarily in 10 states, which accounted for 66% of all U.S. horticulture sales in 2019. California ($2.63 billion), Florida ($1.93 billion) and Oregon ($1.02 billion) led the nation in sales.

The top five commodities in California horticulture sales in 2019, and compared to 2014, were:

• Nursery stock, $831 million, down 13%
• Potted flowering plants, $322 million, up 7%
• Transplants for Commercial Vegetable and Strawberry, $266 million, up 4%
• Cut flowers & cut lei flowers, $249 million, down 26%
• Annual bedding/garden plants, $232 million, up 6%

Other key findings for California from the 2019 Census of Horticultural Specialties report include:

• Family- or individually-owned operations made up the largest number of operations, accounting for 48%, but corporately-owned operations accounted for 80% of sales ($2.11 billion).
• Total industry expenses were at $2.21 billion in 2019, with hired labor being the largest cost, accounting for 36% of total expenses.

The Census of Horticultural Specialties is part of the larger Census of Agriculture program. It provides information on the number and types of establishments engaged in horticultural production, value of sales, varieties of products, production expenses and more. All operations that reported producing and selling $10,000 or more of horticultural crops on the 2017 Census of Agriculture were included in this special study.

For more information and to access the full report, visit www.nass.usda.gov/AgCensus. 

As challenging a year as 2020 has been, there is much to be grateful for, and I would like to share that with all of you in the “12 Days of Gratitude,” between now and December 24th.

Our first day of gratitude is for our essential farmers, ranchers and farmworkers. Their work has continued through the highly stressful events of this year, making sure that the food supply remains plentiful for all Americans.

COVID-19, heat waves, power shut-downs, wildfires and long-lasting pervasive smoke created unique circumstances for that work.  I’m grateful that our dedicated CDFA staff was able to team-up with agricultural commissioners and community based organizations to deliver much-needed PPE to farmers and farmworkers.  To date, more than 6.3 million N-95 masks have been distributed, along with more than 14 million surgical masks, two-million cloth masks, 1.8 million pairs of gloves, and 313,000 unites of hand sanitizer.

I’m also thankful to the Governor and for the support of our sister agencies to stand-up the Housing for the Harvest Program.  I am grateful to Undersecretary Jenny Lester Moffit for her tireless work with 15 California counties and local social service providers to offer lodging and other essential services to farmworkers who need to isolate due to coronavirus exposure.

This is clearly a year like no other but we are in it together!  Through it all there is a whole new appreciation for the importance of farmers, ranchers and farmworkers in how they touch our daily lives.