By Daisy Nguyen

For a few frenzied weeks, beekeepers from around the country truck billions of honeybees to California to rent them to almond growers, who need the insects to pollinate the state’s most valuable crop.

But as almond trees start to bloom, blanketing entire valleys in white and pink flowers, so begin the beehive thefts that have become so prevalent that beekeepers are now turning to GPS tracking devices, surveillance cameras and other anti-theft technology to protect their precious colonies.

Hive thefts have been reported elsewhere in the country, most recently three hives containing about 60,000 bees taken from a grocery chain’s garden in central Pennsylvania. They happen at a larger scale and uniquely in California this time of year because bees are most in demand during the largest pollination event in the world.

In the last few weeks, 1,036 beehives worth hundreds of thousands of dollars were reported stolen from orchards statewide, authorities said. The largest heist involved 384 beehives taken from a field in Mendocino County, prompting the state beekeepers association to offer a $10,000 reward for information leading to their recovery.

“It’s hard to articulate how it feels to care for your hives all year only to have them stolen from you,” Claire Tauzer wrote on Facebook to spread the word about the reward. A day later, an anonymous tipster led authorities to recover most of the boxes and a forklift stolen from Tauzer’s family business some 55 miles away, at a rural property in Yolo County. One suspect was arrested.

Investigators also found frames, of the kind used to hold honeycombs, belonging to Helio Medina, another beekeeper who lost 282 hives a year ago.

Medina said the theft devastated his apiary, so this year he placed GPS trackers inside the boxes. He also strapped cable locks around them and installed cameras nearby. As the almond bloom approached and the hives became most valuable, he drove around patrolling the orchards in the dark.

“We have to do what we can to protect ourselves. Nobody can help us,” Medina said.

Thefts usually happen at night, when no one is in the orchard and the bees are back in their hives. The rustler is usually a beekeeper or someone familiar with the transportation of bees.

“More often than not, they steal to make money and leave the bees to die,” said Rowdy Jay Freeman, a Butte County sheriff’s detective who has been keeping track of hive thefts since 2013.

A tightening supply of bees and soaring pollination fees — jumping from less than $50 to rent a hive two decades ago to as much as $230 per hive this year — are likely motivating some beekeepers to go rogue.

The demand for bees has steadily risen over the last 20 years as the popularity of almonds turned California into the world’s biggest producer of the healthy, crunchy nut. Accordingly, the amount of land used to grow almonds has more than doubled to an estimated 1.3 million acres.

Beekeepers have been keeping up with that growth by providing an ever-increasing proportion of the nation’s available stock of hives. This year, a survey of commercial beekeepers estimated that it would take 90% of honeybee colonies in the U.S. to pollinate all the almond orchards.

“What that means is that beekeepers are coming from as far as New York and Florida, and to get them to come all that way, pollinator fees have to rise,” said Brittney Goodrich, an agricultural economist at UC Davis.

But bee populations are notoriously unstable because of a host of problems, including disease, loss of habitat and insecticides.

The drought that gripped Western states last summer also weakened colonies. The lack of rain ravaged wildflowers that provide the nectar that bees turn into honey. Beekeepers had to artificially supplement their diet with sugar solutions and pollen substitutes — and incur more costs.

For beekeepers, the loss of a hive means the loss of income from honey production and future pollination, not to mention the expense of managing the hive throughout the year. They say they hardly break even.

“For every $210 paid to rent a beehive, we put close to that much into it the whole year feeding the bees because of drought. We do all the health checks, which is labor-intensive, and we pay our workers full benefits,” Tauzer said.

Denise Qualls, a pollination broker who connects beekeepers with growers, suspects the thefts are happening because some beekeepers can’t provide the strong colonies they promised and therefore turn to stealing. The thieving beekeepers sell their loot and collect the money from the grower, “and then they leave the hives,” Qualls said.

“The grower is just as responsible when they accept them,” she said.

To help her clients track their investments, Qualls merged her business with tech startup Bee Hero to equip hive boxes with a GPS-enabled sensor.

Freeman, who got into beekeeping after investigating his first hive theft, said he advises beekeepers to use security cameras and put their names and phone numbers on the boxes.

He said some beekeepers have tried tagging their boxes with SmartWater CSI, a forensic tool used to help police trace recover stolen property. The clear liquid is visible only under UV light, even through layers of paint, so police can ascertain the rightful owner even when thieves try to disguise boxes.

To raise the crime’s severity, Freeman worked with prosecutors in 2016 to charge a man accused of stealing 64 beehives with theft of livestock. Under California law, theft of property worth $950 or less is classified as a misdemeanor. But the theft of any agricultural product worth at least $250 is considered a felony.

“Stealing one or 10 or 100 hives would result in the same charge,” he said.

The man pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 90 days in jail and three years’ probation.

The California State Beekeepers’ Assn. urges beekeepers to communicate regularly with growers about where their hives are placed, and encourages growers to hire reputable beekeepers who can show proof of ownership of their hives.

The almond industry, meanwhile, is trying to reduce its dependence on bees by growing “self fertile” almond varieties that require fewer bees for pollination and by investing in research and other initiatives aimed at improving their health.

The Almond Board of California also joined a coalition of agricultural, environmental and government groups to create habitat for wild bees, butterflies and other pollinators on privately owned working lands such as cattle ranches and orchards. The state government is funding $15 million toward the effort, calling it an investment in “climate smart agriculture.”

Link to story on Los Angeles Times web site

Link to CDFA’s Pollinator Protection page

Taken from a UC Merced announcement

In 2021, the drought cost the California agriculture sector about $1.1 billion and nearly 8,750 full-time and part-time jobs, according to estimates in a new analysis led by UC Merced researchers as part of a California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA)-funded research project.

The $1.5 million project partnered UC Merced with the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) to assess the impact of the drought. The project is also enhancing an existing web-based platform to examine economic impacts of drought to agriculture. 

Once the effects on other economic sectors are considered, total economic impacts are estimated at $1.7 billion and 14,634 full-time and part-time jobs lost. 

The Economic Impacts of the 2021 Drought on California Agriculture Preliminary Report, released today, analyzes the impacts of last year’s drought in the Central Valley, the Russian River Basin and northern intermountain valley areas. The researchers developed these preliminary estimates of economic impacts using surveys, reviews of hydrological information and remote sensing data gathered from those areas and comparing them to average conditions, as well as to the 2012-2016 drought.

The report identifies at least additional 395,000 acres of idledland — roughly 385,000 acres in the Central Valley alone with respect to pre-drought conditions due to drought-related water cutbacks. 

Several regions in the Sacramento valley, the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, Tulare County and Kern County were the most affected. Other drought-affected areas include the Russian River Basin and intermountain agricultural areas in Siskiyou, Shasta and Modoc counties. The crops most significantly affected by increased fallowing include rice in the Sacramento Valley, cotton in the San Joaquin Valley, and grain and field crops statewide.

“In comparison with the 2012-2016 drought, conditions were much worse for the Sacramento Valley and the Russian River Basin, yet the statewide impacts have not been as severe as in 2015— the deepest point in the last drought,” said School of Engineering Professor Josue Medellín-Azuara, lead author of the report. “Should dry conditions persist throughout 2022, a higher tier of adaptation measures may come into play to reduce economic impacts on agriculture and communities that host thousands of households relying on agriculture for living.” 

The report also highlights strong commodity prices that have helped mitigate some economic costs of the 2021 drought. Milk prices rose because of global demand, raising revenues and offsetting some of the drought-related effects of higher production costs. The dairy sector also explored alternatives to hay and winter grains that, in some cases, increased cow milk productivity. The beef cattle sector also had to adapt to scarce winter pastures and higher forage prices, but the state’s beef cow herd increased, as did its share of the national cow herd, leading to potential revenue gains.

While Californians are familiar with drought, the 2020-21 water years were the second driest two years on record. Although precipitation deficits were widespread, drought conditions were more severe in the Sacramento Valley and the North Coast regions. A lack of atmospheric rivers and a below-average snowpack depleted most reservoirs and aquifers in 2021, the report states.

“This has been a fast-paced drought and it shows how climate change increases the challenges we face in managing water in California,” said researcher and co-author Alvar Escriva-Bou, an engineering and policy expert at the Public Policy Institute of California. “Sadly, we are going to see more and more droughts like this, so we need better tools to anticipate and minimize the socio-economic impacts.” 

But drought is not only defined by the water supply, the researchers wrote. Warmer temperatures and already-dry conditions increased crop irrigation demands and widened the gap between water supply and irrigation needs.

“Warming has impacted seasonal water availability, namely through reducing spring snowmelt runoff and through increasing atmospheric thirst,” said Professor John Abatzoglou, climate expert and co-author in the report. “These factors in concert have intensified drought severity and impacts in the state and increased the need for actionable solutions to cope with drought.”

 “This report differs from previous drought impact analyses in that it draws information from multiple areas of the state in addition to the Central Valley, and it places impacts in the context of changing climate conditions — higher temperatures, earlier irrigation needs, higher evapotranspiration — as well as SGMA implementation,” said CDFA Secretary Karen Ross. “I would like to thank our partners at UC Merced and the PPIC for this very important work and we look forward to continuing our collaborative efforts statewide as we continue to adapt to a changing climate and manage drought to mitigate impacts on agriculture and our rural communities.”

The drought hit during the early implementation of Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) sustainability plans. The Act is designed to avoid the undesirable consequences of unsustainable groundwater use. Groundwater sustainability plans for critically overdrafted basins were submitted in 2020 and plans in other priority basins are due early this year. These plans remain in progress throughout the state for these and other priority basins. California’s increasingly variable supply of surface water and overdrafted groundwater aquifers present serious challenges for meeting societal needs, the report points out.

“It is no surprise that California leans more heavily on groundwater to help meet its water supply needs during drought. SGMA is now well underway, and it is shaping how we respond to drought, especially in the Valley. Despite the very real economic impact, this report also indicates an enormous capacity for innovation and adaptation in the agricultural industry, not limited to augmenting cattle feed with almond hulls —typically a byproduct — and also direct investments in aquifer recharge techniques and technologies,” said report co-author Professor Joshua Viers. “These innovations, coupled with better information about water application and use, will ultimately help us manage scarce water supplies more effectively.”

Funded by the $1.5 million research grant from CDFA, Medellín-Azuara, Abatzoglou, Viers and Escriva-Bou have worked since last fall to develop this economic analysis, along with decision-support tools for the agriculture industry during droughts. Other authors include UC Merced Environmental Systems graduate students Spencer Cole and José M. Rodríguez-Flores and Professor Daniel A. Sumner from UC Davis.

Building on the California Comeback Plan’s $5.2 billion investment over three years to support immediate drought response and long-term water resilience, the Governor is proposing more than $300 million in the 2022-2023 state budget to bolster on-farm water efficiency and conservation through the State Water Efficiency and Enhancement Program; support land repurposing to deliver co-benefits for communities and the environment; provide direct water assistance; advance groundwater recharge projects across critically over-drafted basins; and provide technical assistance for the development of farm conservation management plans and groundwater management, with a focus on supporting underserved producers. 

“In the weeks to come, the research team will work with its expert advisory panel, stakeholders and partner groups to update ongoing drought conditions and impacts on the agricultural sector, as well as data and assessment tools, to inform drought management and decision making,” Medellín-Azuara said.

Link to announcement on UC Merced web site

Building on her commitment to ensuring California children have the best start in life, First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom today announced the release of Planting the Seed: Farm to School Roadmap for Success, a report promoting the expansion of farm to school programs across California to advance child well-being, equity, economic growth, and environmental resilience. 

“Last year, California made history as the first state to establish permanent universal school meals. Through farm to school programs, we are going one step further to ensure children don’t just have access to free meals in school, but that those meals are healthy, nutritious, and locally-grown,” said Governor Newsom.

Access to high-quality, fresh foods can increase students’ consumption of fruits and vegetables and support children’s physical health, while hands-on experiential learning opportunities like gardening and cooking serve to improve educational outcomes and support whole-child development. Farm to school programs allow students to learn about the relationships between food systems and the environment. 

“Schools play a crucial role in feeding California children and communities, with school meal recipients consuming almost half of their daily caloric intake from school meals alone,” said First Partner Siebel Newsom. “Planting the Seed is a roadmap to strengthen the state’s school food systems, nurture children’s minds and bodies, and cultivate a healthier, more equitable, climate smart California for all.”

School meals are crucial sources of nutrition for children and an important tool to improve food access and nutrition security among children and their families, especially in communities of color. During the pandemic, approximately one in four low-income families in the state relied on food from schools to cover food shortages. Nationally, people of color are more likely to experience food insecurity, hunger, childhood obesity, and diabetes in both rural and urban communities. 

“California, which produces over a third of the nation’s vegetables and two-thirds of the country’s fruits and nuts, is well-positioned to improve child health and well-being through the expansion of farm to school programs,” said California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) Secretary Karen Ross.

Farm to school programs promote economic growth in local communities through local procurement, and incentivize climate smart, regenerative agriculture practices. 

Planting the Seed outlines specific recommendations to advance the expansion of farm to school programs across the state, including: 

• Allocating funding to scale up farm to school programs that encourage and prioritize equitable, climate smart procurement. 
• Investing in school food careers and scratch cooking infrastructure to ensure school nutrition teams can prepare delicious, nutritious, and locally-sourced meals.
• Developing optional model K-12 food education standards to help students understand how food impacts health, culture, biodiversity, and climate. 
• Strengthening relationships between schools and producers to improve food system equity and promote climate smart, regenerative agriculture practices. 
• Expanding and creating inclusive access to school food markets for a wide range of California producers, especially small and mid-scale producers, producers that are Black, Indigenous, or people of color, and producers that utilize climate smart, regenerative agriculture practices. 
• Investing in evaluation and research, and developing an annual California farm to school census. 

Today’s announcement follows the state’s investment of nearly $70 million for the California Farm to School Incubator Grant, a program championed by the First Partner and administered by CDFA, to provide competitive grants to support innovative local and regional farm to school projects. In the 2021-22 budget, the state also invested $150 million to upgrade kitchen infrastructure and train food service employees. Aligned with the report’s recommendations, the Governor’s California Blueprint proposes an additional $30 million to support the grant program and $450 million to upgrade school kitchen infrastructure and equipment to incorporate more scratch-cooking and use of fresh, minimally processed, California-grown foods in school meals. 

Planting the Seed is the result of a collaboration, led by First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom and CDFA Secretary Karen Ross, among a number of state agency leaders, education professionals, and farm to school experts and practitioners. Planting the Seed: Farm to School Roadmap for Success can be found here.  

California Agriculture Day returns to the West Steps of the State Capitol on Wednesday, March 23, 2022. Are you ready? We can’t wait to see you!

One of Governor Gavin Newsom’s highest priorities for California is equity. At CDFA, that means equity across all of the department’s divisions and programs, including the access that stakeholders have to our funding and resources.

Grant Funding

In recent years, we have redoubled our efforts to improve access for historically underserved producers to grant programs such as those offered through our Office of Environmental Farming and Innovation (OEFI). For example, 25 percent of available funds for the Healthy Soils Program are awarded to projects that benefit socially disadvantaged farmers or ranchers. In the State Water Efficiency and Enhancement Program (SWEEP), 41 percent of the projects awarded funding last year were for socially disadvantaged and/or priority populations.

That’s real, tangible action toward equity in public funding and government resources at CDFA. And these are examples, not exceptions.

Technical Assistance

“Technical assistance” sounds simple enough, but in our experience it can be the difference between a farmer from an underserved group securing a grant, or failing in the initial application phase. CDFA has a longstanding commitment to technical assistance as part of its climate smart agriculture programs – more than $11 million has been provided for this essential activity. The funding goes to organizations that help farmers with a variety of tasks, from applying for CDFA grant programs to providing on-farm, one-on-one technical assistance to evaluate irrigation system efficiency, test pumps, manage nutrient flows, and more. These services are free and prioritize socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers, and farms of 500 acres or fewer.

A specific example of our investment to build capacity to serve this priority population is our partnership with the University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources to fund 10 Climate Smart Agriculture Community Educators, most of whom are bilingual. We believe this will result in long-term benefit for these historically underserved farmers and ranchers and strengthen our communities with the equitable implementation of climate smart agricultural practices.

CDFA Secretary Karen Ross is a member of the California Strategic Growth Council (SGC), which consists of members of the Governor’s cabinet and public members, and which strives to coordinate the state’s public agencies around sustainability, equity, economic prosperity, and quality of life for all Californians. At its January 26 meeting, the council passed a resolution to support building capacity through technical assistance across all agencies, with Secretary Ross leading the way as one of its technical assistance champions. CDFA will join SGC’s a capacity building working group to advance this initiative, sharing staff experience and knowledge of best practices.

Underserved/Small Producers

Another example of this commitment is the California Underserved and Small Producer Program, established in 2021 to assist underserved and small-scale producers across the state with access to resources such as business planning and marketing strategies, as well as information needed for economic relief due to COVID-19. The program was created based on the needs of producers and technical assistance providers.

Equity Lifts Us All

We are determined to make sure that socially disadvantaged and small-scale agricultural producers receive equitable access to CDFA programming. It’s simply a foundational responsibility of a government agency to do that. And it’s also just good business: as underserved producers gain access and influence and become more integrally involved at CDFA and throughout government, our programs will more accurately reflect and respond to the true needs of our whole industry.

California’s agricultural producers grow more than 400 commodities. That “crop diversity” is something we should all be proud of, of course. The same reasoning applies to the diversity of our farmers and ranchers themselves: it adds strength, resilience, creativity, innovation. It also means a broader, deeper, stronger “crop” of new farmers and ranchers – something our aging industry desperately needs. And, at CDFA, it means a department that is not just prepared but, indeed, designed to serve all of California agriculture, equitably and accountably.

We’ve made progress – but we’re not resting here. There is much more work to be done.

CDFA Secretary Karen Ross is one of several business and government participants in USDA’s first agricultural trade mission since 2019. The mission is underway in Dubai, home to Gulfood – the largest annual food show in the world.

“This event is such a tremendous opportunity for participants not just because of its sheer size, but also for the quality of all the contacts and serious buyers who are here from some of the world’s fastest-growing markets,” said Secretary Ross. “We’re seeing pent-up demand for ‘California Grown,’ so it’s especially good to be here celebrating these opportunities for trade.”

Secretary Ross joined USDA FAS Administrator Daniel Whitley in some pre-trade mission visits to California and U.S. exhibitors at Gulfood.

While in Dubai, Secretary Ross will visit trading partners and participate in promotional events highlighting California agriculture. The UAE is a key market within the GCC, California agricultural exports to UAE are estimated at more than $500m. Leading exports include tree nuts, fresh fruit and dairy. As the United States’ largest agricultural producer and exporter, California produces a diversity of agricultural products for consumers around the world. 

Nono Zhang and Maya Horvath, two California students, had the opportunity to join CDFA Undersecretary Christine Birdsong and Natalie Krout-Greenberg at the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture (NASDA) Winter Policy Conference in Washington D.C. Nono is from China and attends UC Davis. Maya is from Southern California and is studying at the University of Kentucky. Both students participated in a scholarship program supported by CDFA, the NASDA Foundation and the Minorities in Agriculture, Natural Resources and Related Sciences (MANRRS) organization.

NASDA and the NASDA Foundation, along with CDFA, are committed to building a sustainable workforce to support a resilient agriculture and food supply chain. This partnership is not only working to increase minority college students’ exposure to employment, education and business opportunities through state departments of agriculture, but is also committed to providing resources for students seeking to enter the agricultural workforce.

By Karen Ross, Secretary
California Department of Food and Agriculture

The most visible elements of what we do at CDFA are about today: inspecting today’s harvest, stopping today’s invasive pest or animal disease, or responding to the latest emergency. And all of that is important, even urgent. Has to be done now; has to be done well.

But the other side of that coin – the forward focus – is every bit as important. As we’ve gone through this historically strange and trying and indeed mournful time, with COVID-19 and wildfires and drought all doing their worst, it is the focus on a better future for our farms and our families that pulls us through.

Governor Gavin Newsom’s leadership is helping this department and this industry incorporate equity and climate change not just in our policies but in our daily decisions and conduct. That’s the kind of resolute and forward-thinking leadership we need to build a future that is proudly, distinctly Californian.

While CDFA is here to protect our state’s agriculture and environment from what threatens today, we also help you develop on-farm practices that will improve yields, save water, reduce inputs, and adapt to climate change. We help farmers and ranchers prioritize research, pool resources, conduct demonstration projects, convert to new tech. That’s helping farmers make their own futures.

This report, “California Agriculture: The Focus is Forward,” is by no means an exhaustive list of everything CDFA did in 2021. We would need a lot more pages for that. What it is, though, is a representative expression of our value to producers, consumers, the environment, and the state. I’m proud of this work. Most of all, though, after more than a decade of service as California’s Agriculture Secretary, I am proud of the people in this department who, like the farmers and ranchers we serve, know both the meaning and the reward of “a good day’s work.”