The California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery has awarded $11 million in grants to 36 local projects that prevent waste, reduce pollution, and combat climate change by getting good food to Californians who need it. 

CalRecycle’s Food Waste Prevention and Rescue Grant Program aims to reduce methane emissions by keeping edible food out of California landfills through food waste prevention, donation, and redistribution to the 1 in 8 Californians (including 1 in 5 children) who lack the resources to guarantee their next meal. 

The estimated 93 million pounds of food diverted from landfills by these projects equates to about 78 million meals, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. 

“Edible food disposal is a humanitarian tragedy and a tremendous waste of California’s resources,” CalRecycle Director Scott Smithline said. “These local food waste prevention and rescue projects make our communities healthier and help California combat climate change by getting us closer to the revolutionary methane reduction targets required under California’s new Organics Recycling and Food Waste Prevention law.”

Food waste makes up nearly 20 percent of California’s disposal stream. 

• When sent to landfills, food and other organic waste decomposes and generates methane, a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change.
• Besides the opportunity to feed Californians in need, what’s also lost with food waste is money spent along the food production chain, including the cost of energy, water, fertilizer, harvesting, production, storage, and transportation.

CalRecycle’s Food Waste Prevention and Rescue Grant Program is part of California Climate Investments, a statewide initiative that puts billions of Cap-and-Trade dollars to work reducing greenhouse gas emissions, strengthening the economy, and improving public health and the environment—particularly in disadvantaged communities. 

Projects eligible for the grant program must be located in California; result in permanent, annual, and measurable greenhouse gas emissions reductions; and increase the quantity of California-generated food materials prevented, reduced, or rescued from disposal. Many of the following grant recipients serve multiple counties.

Link to grant awardees here

By CDFA Secretary Karen Ross

In addition to speaking at the awesome and amazing 91st annual meeting of the FFA leadership conference in Anaheim late last month, I also toured The Giving Farm at Westminster High School.

Wow! What an inspiring model partnership between the Orange County Food Bank and the Huntington Beach Union High School District! An 8-acre farm (that’s a lot of farm in this very urban area) for the Ag program; fresh produce to the Food Bank; and an annual harvest day for the whole school to inspire students about community service!

I could go on and on. But something as good as this doesn’t happen without visionaries like my friends, Mark Lowry of the Food Bank, my predecessor–Orange County farmer A.G. Kawamura–and his farming buddies. It has strong support from the school district’s board of trustees, the superintendent, and the Westminster High School principal.

The Giving Farm has a passionate and committed Ag teacher and students who are discovering the wonder of growing food and sharing it with community members in need. Oh, and the program has helped the school increase the numbers enrolled in the Ag program and FFA!

Is that win-win-win or what?!

NOTE -May 5-11 is Public Service Recognition Week.

Wendy McNaughton is a New York Times writer/illustrator who creates the column “Meanwhile” in the paper’s Sunday Business Section. She recently spoke with CDFA Secretary Karen Ross about healthy soils, their essential place in food production, and their vital role in adapting to climate change. The story is told in the images above and below. A quote from Secretary Ross is featured in two separate slides: “It’s easy to take the soil beneath our feet for granted because it’s always been there. We need to pay attention to what’s feeding our soil so it can continue to feed us.”

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Today is the seventh annual School Lunch Hero Day, a time to honor those who work tirelessly to bring healthy meals to American school children. During the production of CDFA’s Growing California video series, we profiled a School Lunch Hero making a difference in Riverside, Rodney Taylor. While Taylor has since moved on to a school district in the Washington DC-area, his story in Riverside, “Salad Bar Superstar,” is worthy of sharing once again.

The California Department of Food and Agriculture is celebrating its 100^th anniversary as a state agency in 2019. Throughout the year this blog will feature a number of items to commemorate this milestone. Today we continue with the Centennial Reflections video series, featuring CDFA employees remembering their histories, and the agency’s.

From the California Farm Bureau Federation

Despite taking a variety of steps to alleviate chronic shortages of agricultural employees, California farmers and ranchers continue to report problems in hiring enough people for on-farm jobs. A survey released today shows 56% of participating farmers had been unable to hire all the employees they needed at some point during the previous five years.

The voluntary survey of 1,071 farmers and ranchers, conducted by the California Farm Bureau Federation in collaboration with the University of California, Davis, also indicated worsening problems the past two years. Of those farmers reporting employee shortages, at least 70% said they had more trouble hiring employees in 2017 and 2018.

“The survey shows farmers have tried and are trying all the tactics available to them, such as increased wages, changes in farming and cropping patterns, use of the existing H-2A visa program and automation where appropriate,” CFBF President Jamie Johansson said. “The missing element is an improved agricultural immigration system, to match willing employees with farm employers.”

The great majority of California farmers responding to the survey—86%—said they had raised wages in efforts to hire enough people. Sixty-one percent reported they had hired a farm labor contractor to recruit employees. More than half reported they have started using mechanization and of those, 56% said it was due to employee shortages. Thirty-seven percent said they had adjusted cultivation practices, for example by reducing or delaying weeding and pruning. About one-third, 31%, said they are switching acreage. More farmers have also sought to hire people via the H-2A agricultural visa program, but only about 6% of surveyed farmers said they had enrolled in it.

“Through the years, the H-2A program has proven inadequate for farms in California and throughout the nation,” Johansson said. “Farm Bureau will continue to work with Congress to create a secure, flexible, market-based immigration program that works better for both farmers and farm employees.”

In terms of the proportion of farmers reporting employee shortages, the 2019 results are similar to a CFBF survey in 2017, which showed 55% of farmers experiencing shortages.

A full survey report is available on the CFBF website at www.cfbf.com/2019survey.

As climate change continues to threaten the state’s water infrastructure and reliability, Governor Gavin Newsom today signed an executive order directing his administration to think differently and act boldly by developing a comprehensive strategy to build a climate-resilient water system.

The order seeks to broaden California’s approach on water as the state faces a range of existing challenges, including unsafe drinking water, major flood risks that threaten public safety, severely depleted groundwater aquifers, agricultural communities coping with uncertain water supplies and native fish populations threatened with extinction.

“California’s water challenges are daunting, from severely depleted groundwater basins to vulnerable infrastructure to unsafe drinking water in far too many communities. Climate change magnifies the risks,” said Governor Newsom. “To meet these challenges, we need to harness the best in science, engineering and innovation to prepare for what’s ahead and ensure long-term water resilience and ecosystem health. We’ll need an all-of-above approach to get there.”

The order directs the secretaries of the California Natural Resources Agency, California Environmental Protection Agency and the California Department of Food and Agriculture to identify and assess a suite of complementary actions to ensure safe and resilient water supplies, flood protection and healthy waterways for the state’s communities, economy and environment.

The order directs the state to think bigger and more strategically on water by directing the agencies to inventory and assess current water supplies and the health of waterways, future demands and challenges. The agencies will seek input over the coming weeks and months through listening sessions, information workshops and other public meetings to help inform the water resilience portfolio that will be recommended to the Governor. 

A copy of the order issued by Governor Newsom today can be found here.

Our week-long recognition of Earth Day continues with photos of some California farms. CDFA secretary Karen Ross reminded us earlier this week that farming is both a creative art and a productive process. It’s also a commitment to sustainable stewardship of working lands.

Photos by Ventura County agricultural commissioner Ed Williams.