Lake Oroville, 2014

By Fenit Nirappil, Associated Press

The federal government is making available up to $50 million in drought-relief funds for western states, with the largest portion earmarked for parched California, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell and Gov. Jerry Brown announced Friday.

The additional funding includes about $20 million for the Central Valley Water Project for efforts such as water transfers, drought monitoring for endangered species and diversifying water supplies. California is entering its fourth year of drought.

“California is ground zero for the drought. There is no state that is worse off,” Jewell said.

Farmers and local water departments can also compete for another $14 million for projects to help reduce water use and develop response plans to continuing drought conditions.

The funding announcement came as the first major storm of 2015 moved into Northern California, bringing with it the potential for up to 10 inches of rain in places. It arrived after an exceptionally dry January. Last week’s survey of water in the snowpack, California’s primary water source, found only a quarter of its normal level.

The Department of Interior funding is a sliver of previous drought-relief commitments. Last February, President Barack Obama pledged $183 million, mostly for farmers who lost livestock and food banks to help unemployed agriculture workers. Brown in March signed a $687 million drought-relief package, including for emergency drinking water and accelerating infrastructure supplies.

Efforts to pass a federal drought-response bill in Congress failed late last year. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and other Republicans say the Obama administration’s approach to dry conditions continues to prioritize fish over farmers and other residents in California.

The State Water Resources Control Board announced this week that Californians cut monthly water use by 22 percent in December, meeting Brown’s call to slash residential water use by 20 percent for the first time. The board may impose further limits on outdoor water use as the state tries to protect supplies, but Brown said he’s not ready for mandatory restrictions statewide.

“I’m reluctant to expand the coercive power of state authority,” Brown said. “In a democracy, it is fundamental that citizens be the driving force. It’s my job to encourage and inspire and monitor, but before we have, you know, full-scale rationing we have to have a few more problems than we currently have.”

California is only delivering 15 percent of the water requested from the state’s vast reservoir system to farmers and local agencies this year. The Interior Department will announce how much water it will send to Central Valley farmers under a separate reservoir system later this month.

Link to story

Registration is open for the Western Governors’ Drought Forum Webinar Series, which will feature regional experts on water and drought management.

The series will offer five in-depth discussions on topics that have arisen during the first six months of the Drought Forum, the Chairman’s Initiative of Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval. In addition to providing a closer examination of the emerging challenges in drought management, the webinars will enable the Drought Forum to reach a wider audience of those facing drought in the West.

Each of the five webinars will include a 40-minute panel discussion by three expert panelists, followed by a 20-minute opportunity for questions and discussion for all attendees. The schedule:

• Feb. 11: “Once Marginal, Now Crucial: The Growing Demand for Re-used, Produced, and Brackish Water” will explore the technological and regulatory obstacles to utilizing re-used, produced, and brackish water. Panel moderator will be Michael Teague, Oklahoma Secretary of Energy & Environment. The panelists: Dr. Jeri Sullivan Graham: New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department’s Brackish Water Work Group/Los Alamos National Laboratory; Paul Swaim: Vice President, Senior Principal Technologist and Global Technology Leader for Water Treatment, CH2M HILL; Ken Knox, Senior Advisor & Water Resources Manager, Noble Energy.
• Feb. 25: “Community Outreach and Consumer Technology for Municipal Water Use” will highlight how utilities, technology developers, NGOs, and citizens are teaming up to reduce municipal consumption of water. Panel moderator will be Dave McGimpsey, Host of the Water Values Podcast and Special Counsel, Lewis Roca Rothgerber LLP. Panelists will be Robb Barnit, Founder & CEO, Dropcountr; Jeff Tejral, Manager of Water Conservation at Denver Water.
• March 11: “Tip of the Spear: The Horizon for Drought Data, Modelling, and Mapping Technology” examines how scientists use data to understand drought and help policymakers anticipate dry conditions. Register.
• March 25: “Managing Forest Health for Water Resources” explains the latest science on forest management for water resource needs as well as best practices to add security to water portfolios.Register.
• April 8: “One Size Doesn’t Fit All: Why Variation in Hydrology and Legal Structures means that Drought Looks Different across the West” will highlight how solutions tailored to the needs of specific communities can be utilized across the region.

 Register

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has designated 55 counties in California as primary natural disaster areas due to damages and losses caused by a recent drought.

The counties are: Alameda, Alpine, Amador, Butte, Calaveras, Colusa, Contra Costa, El Dorado, Fresno, Glenn, Humboldt, Inyo, Kern, Kings,  Lake, Lassen, Los Angeles, Madera, Marin, Mariposa, Mendocino,  Merced, Modoc, Mono, Monterey, Napa, Nevada, Orange, Placer, Plumas, Riverside, Sacramento, San Benito, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Joaquin, San Luis Obispo, San Mateo, Santa Barbara, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Shasta, Sierra, Siskiyou, Solano, Sonoma, Stanislaus, Sutter, Tehama, Trinity, Tulare, Tuolumne, Ventura, Yolo and Yuba.

Farmers and ranchers in Del Norte, Imperial and San Francisco counties in California also qualify for natural disaster assistance because their counties are contiguous.

Farmers and ranchers in the following counties and city in Arizona, Nevada and Oregon also qualify for natural disaster assistance because their counties are contiguous. Those counties are:

Arizona
La Paz and Mohave

Nevada
Carson City, Clark, Douglas, Esmeralda, Lyon, Mineral, Nye and Washoe

Oregon
Jackson, Josephine, Klamath and Lake

All counties listed above were designated natural disaster areas on Feb. 4, 2015, making all qualified farm operators in the designated areas eligible for low interest emergency (EM) loans from USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA), provided eligibility requirements are met. Farmers in eligible counties have eight months from the date of the declaration to apply for loans to help cover part of their actual losses. FSA will consider each loan application on its own merits, taking into account the extent of losses, security available and repayment ability. FSA has a variety of programs, in addition to the EM loan program, to help eligible farmers recover from adversity.

Additional programs available to assist farmers and ranchers include the Emergency Conservation Program, The Livestock Forage Disaster Program, the Livestock Indemnity Program, the Emergency Assistance for Livestock, Honeybees, and Farm-Raised Fish Program, and the Tree Assistance Program. Interested farmers may contact their local USDA Service Centers for further information on eligibility requirements and application procedures for these and other programs. Additional information is also available online at http://disaster.fsa.usda.gov.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) and National Institute for Food and Agriculture (NIFA) have announced a partnership through the Agricultural Marketing Service Technical Assistance (AMSTA) Project to conduct workshops that will help potential grant applicants understand, develop, and submit their federal grant applications for the Farmers Market and Local Food Promotion Program.

“The Farmers Market and Local Food Promotion Program is a key to USDA’s efforts to revitalize rural economies by supporting local and regional food systems,” said AMS Administrator Anne Alonzo. “The grant workshops will ensure that more communities and businesses across the country can participate in the competitive grant process with proposals that create real economic opportunities and help meet the growing demand for locally and regionally produced food.”

Cooperative Extension System educators will provide training in all regions of the country, and NIFA will conduct outreach to raise awareness of AMS grant opportunities and increase participation in the programs. The AMS and NIFA collaborative effort for this innovative national training project will be directed by Dr. Stephan J. Goetz of the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development based at Penn State University.

A list of upcoming grant workshop dates and locations can be found at http://www.amsta.net. More workshops will be added soon, and the State representatives listed on the website can be contacted for additional information about upcoming workshops. Some of the workshop sessions will be recorded and available for online viewing for those not able to attend in person.

With $30 million authorized annually by the Agricultural Act of 2014 (Farm Bill) through fiscal year 2018, AMS’s Farmers Market and Local Food Promotion Program awards competitive grants to develop new market opportunities for farm and ranch operations serving local and regional markets. The Farmers Market Promotion Program supports farmers markets and other direct producer-to-consumer activities, while the Local Food Promotion Program supports enterprises that aggregate, store, distribute and process local and regional food.

USDA’s Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food Initiative (KYF2) coordinates USDA’s support for local and regional food systems. Projects aligned with these efforts can be found on the Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food Compass. For more information on AMS visit www.ams.usda.gov, and for more on NIFA visit www.nifa.usda.gov.

Link to news release

By Katie Orr

California’s urban water conservation rate reached 22 percent in December, exceeding the 20 percent conservation goal set by Governor Jerry Brown. Heavy rain led to reduced outdoor watering. But the State Water Board’s Katheryn Landau says nature isn’t the only explanation for the savings.

“It also indicates that the water conservation efforts that we’ve taken, such as turning off the outdoor sprinklers, not over watering our lawns and etc, are having a really positive impact on our conservation efforts,” she says.

The water board reports daily water use is also declining statewide. In December the average person used about 67 gallons of water per day. That’s down from about 89 gallons in November.

But an exceedingly dry start to 2015 has officials reminding Californians they must continue conserving. Governor Jerry Brown says while California is doing its part to save water, the drought is far from over.

The water board says it is likely emergency conservation regulations will be extended and possibly tightened. Water board staffer Eric Oppenheimer says local regulations vary widely.

“Not all mandatory restrictions are created equal,” he says. “And some of these mandatory restrictions are limits on, you know, you can’t water during the day. While others go as far as limits on days of the week and minutes per station.”

The current emergency regulations expire in April.

Link to article

US Trade Representative Michael Froman

On Monday, February 2, US Trade Representative Michael Froman spoke to the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture at its Winter Policy Conference. 

Link to speech

Excerpts of speech:

…”American agriculture creates positive ripple effects through the whole economy, value added at every step between farm and table. In 2012, for example, every dollar of agricultural exports stimulated another $1.27 in business activity elsewhere in the economy.

“This positive ripple effect is precisely why our record-setting ag exports have been such an important driver of our overall economic comeback. Since 2009, U.S. ag exports have increased roughly 40 percent. In 2013, which is the most recent year we’ve got full-year data for, exports hit nearly $150 billion, the record high, and we’re still waiting on the data for 2014, but we expect that those numbers will be even higher. Taking all these exports together, U.S. exports contributed one third of our overall recovery since 2009.

“It’s not just the macro figures, not just the GDP contribution, it’s the kind of jobs these exports support. In total, our exports supported 11.3 million jobs, an increase of 1.6 million jobs since 2009. And ag exports supported over a million jobs. We know that on average, export-related jobs pay up to 18 percent more than non-export related jobs. So we’re supporting more jobs, and these are good, high-paying jobs helping to increase wages for millions of Americans. At a time when so many Americans haven’t seen a bump in their paychecks in far too long, our trade policy has an important role to play in increasing wages and strengthening the middle class across the country.

“In 2009, there were 525 million middle-class consumers in the Asia Pacific region. That number is expected to grow to over 3 billion in by the year 2030. Put differently, in just 15 years, two out of every three middle class consumers in the world will call the Asia Pacific their home.  And we know that the first thing that middle class consumers want is more protein, better nutrition, and safer foods.

“So to win in the future, we need to serve not only tables here at home, we need to get into the markets where 95 percent of the global consumers live outside the United States.

“As President Obama said recently, we’re now into the fourth quarter of his presidency, and as we saw last night (Sunday night – the Super Bowl), exciting things happen in the fourth quarter. With the contours of a final TPP agreement coming into focus and strong expressions of bipartisanship support for increasing ‘Made-in-America’ exports, it’s looking like some of that excitement will be in the area of trade policy.

“An important part of our fourth-quarter push involves working with Congress to secure Trade Promotion Authority- to renew that, update it, make it relevant for the 21^st century. Beginning with FDR and the New Deal Congress, Democrats and Republicans have worked together for decades to forge trade deals that support good jobs.

“To borrow from football, TPA is a playbook for putting the national interest above narrow special interests. It’s how Congress helps define our negotiating objectives, how Congress determines how we work with them before and during the negotiations, and how Congress sets out the process by which it will approve or disapprove an agreement when it’s finally done and after it’s been broadly and publicly debated.

“The fact is, Congress hasn’t updated Trade Promotion Authority since 2002, before the digital economy emerged as a major factor in global trade, before state-owned enterprises began to play the role they play in the global economy, and before there was a recognition that labor and environmental standards should be a major part of any trade agreement.  It’s time to update the playbook.”

U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Deputy Secretary Krysta Harden (USDA) has announced more than $18 million in grants to educate, mentor, and enhance the sustainability of the next generation of farmers. The grants are available through the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program (BFRDP) administered by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), which was authorized by the Agricultural Act of 2014 (Farm Bill).

“As new farmers and ranchers get started, they are really looking to their community for support. The Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program empowers these farmers and ranchers to bring innovative ideas to the table when it comes to addressing food security, creating economic enterprises, and building communities,” said Deputy Secretary Krysta Harden. “As we celebrate the first anniversary of the 2014 Farm Bill, programs like these are evidence that an investment in beginning farmers and ranchers is an investment in our future”.

The grant announcement was made at Recirculating Farms Coalition in New Orleans. Recirculating Farms received a BFRDP grant to develop training sessions focusing on soil-based production and aquaculture for new and beginning farmers in New Orleans.

The BFRDP program, first established by the 2008 Farm Bill, aims to support those who have farmed or ranched less than 10 years with workshops, educational teams, training, and technical assistance throughout the United States. NIFA awards grants to organizations that implement programs to train beginning farmers and ranchers. Today’s announcement was funded by the 2014 Farm Bill, which continued authorization of this program.

The 2014 Farm Bill mandated at least five percent of BFRDP funding support veterans and socially disadvantaged farmers. Among today’s announcement, more than 15 percent of the funded projects have a substantial component that supports veterans and farming, while about 50 percent of the projects focus mainly on socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers. A fact sheet with a complete list of awardees and project descriptions is available on the USDA website.

More information about USDA support for new farmers and ranchers is available at www.usda.gov/newfarmers.

The Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program is currently accepting applications for the 2015 grant cycle. Applications are due March 13, 2015.

Link to complete news release

The California State Fair is expanding its commercial competitions for 2015 to include a competition for extra virgin olive oil. Of all the olive oil produced in the United States, California produces 99 percent of it.

Extra virgin olive oils in more than 15 different classes and divisions, including blends and flavored olive oils will be judged during the competition. The entry deadline is April 1, 2015. The California State Fair Extra Virgin Olive Oil Competition is open only to California olive oil producers.

From July 10-26 the State Fair will feature a special California extra virgin olive oil exhibit with the award-winning extra virgin olive oils on display, interactive educational exhibits, free tastings and market research surveys.

On average, the world consumes approximately 2.25 million tons of olive oil each year and annual consumption in the United States has increased from 30 million gallons to nearly 70 million gallons a year over the last two decades.

Producers wishing to enter the Extra Virgin Olive Oil competition should visit CAStateFair.org to view the competition handbook for rules and entry information.

This project is supported by the Specialty Crop Block Grant Program, which is funded by the USDA and administered by CDFA. The goal of the project is to promote the awareness and availability of award-winning California extra virgin olive oils.

By Mike Hornick

An effort to double California grower contributions to food banks is underway.

The California Association of Food Banks and the California State Board of Food and Agriculture have set a goal to increase annual contributions from 100 million pounds to 200 million in 2015, according to a news release.

More than 100 California growers participate in the association’s Farm to Family program, sharing surplus foods or items that are unmarketable. More than 50 fruit and vegetable varieties are donated to food banks throughout the state.

California Grown, which is managed by the Buy California Marketing Agreement, is backing the effort with a campaign aimed at getting an additional 1 million pounds of produce donated to food banks through social media activity. Consumers who share a photo of a product grown in the state on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram with the hashtag #CAGrown, will generate a 1-pound donation through a California Grown member.

“We know one in four children and one in six adults in California regularly go hungry, and collaboration between farmers and food banks can help turn those numbers around,” Karen Ross, secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture, said in the release. “The Farm to Family program is a unique opportunity for California farmers and ranchers to strengthen their communities.”

Interested growers can contact the California Association of Food Banks (http://www.cafoodbanks.org/) which handles donation transportation and logistics. Some growers and ranchers may be eligible for reimbursement of modest picking and packing costs, or for a state tax credit incentive.

Link to story