By CDFA Secretary Karen Ross

The year 2020 has delivered enough heartbreak and uncertainty to last us for the rest of this new decade. COVID-19 coupled with recent civil unrest has shaken the bedrock of stability that many Americans take for granted. However, it should be noted that one piece of our foundation, while definitely strained at times, is holding firm – our food supply. But that’s not something to take for granted, either. Our federal lawmakers should act now to put provisions in place to keep our food supply stable through whatever unknowns may still lie ahead, and they should make sure that food producers of all sizes benefit from those provisions. True equity in the recovery from these setbacks has never been more important.

Our rural communities and communities of color never fully recovered from the recession of 2008-09.  Yet the essential workers who have shown up every day to grow, harvest, package and transport our food; stock grocery shelves; fulfill online food delivery orders; and hand us our carry-out meals are part of these communities.  As we move from COVID-19 response to economic recovery, let us focus on people first and engage stakeholders in building resilient regional economic development strategies. We cannot have a real, lasting recovery without confronting the challenges to shared prosperity that we faced long before COVID-19 – a precariousness that left workers and our economy so vulnerable to a shock like this pandemic. Serious work to combat inequality in health, wealth and education can help us create a stronger, more prosperous and more resilient future for all citizens.

This, of course, includes our farmworkers who are at the beginning of the food supply chain. Their needs must be addressed with regard to worker health and social safety net programs. 

For example, a study this year by the Center for American Progress (chaired by former South Dakota U.S. Senator Tom Daschle) found that few rural businesses were created in the recovery from the last recession and that most of the recovery occurred in metro areas. The study recommends that the federal government work with local governments to initiate the creation of new businesses in rural and underserved America, and I couldn’t agree more. Our policymakers must recognize the value of this commitment in communities where drug use, job loss, and the absence of health care infrastructure cause an array of social problems that economic recovery can help remedy.   

In agriculture, some level of recovery from COVID-19 setbacks is already underway, but it’s only the beginning. Assistance to agriculture is being provided through the CARES Act (and more proposed in the HEROES Act passed by the House). However, there have been challenges with access to those programs, especially for small-scale farmers supplying local restaurants, schools and farmers’ markets.

If our small farmers are driven out of business, there’s a risk that farmers’ markets will go out of business, as well, and that would deprive consumers of essential outlet for fresh and healthy foods. Those farmers must have access, as well as new and beginning farmers, urban farmers, and traditionally underserved farmers.

So now state departments of agriculture across the country are rallying behind the bipartisan Farming to Support States Act. It’s just the type of thing needed in California and elsewhere. It will augment federal assistance already received. But again, it must be accessible to ALL farmers and ranchers and especially assist rural areas and communities of color.    

The Farming to Support States Act will assist in several important ways:

Keeping Workers & Food Safe: Enhanced access to PPE and COVID-19 testing for food and agriculture workers. Maintain appropriate staffing levels and critical operational functions for: food safety inspections, plant pest surveys, laboratory diagnoses, animal health inspections, etc.

Local & Regional Food Systems: Craft relief programs with the specific needs of small/micro agricultural producers in mind. Support market development efforts to expand sales opportunities for small producers. Ensure charitable food organizations have access to agricultural products to meet community need.

Expansion of Food Processing and Distribution: Investments in local processing infrastructure. Defraying transportation costs of commodities that must be re-routed to other processing/distribution facilities. Provide incentives to fund capital equipment investments, such as automated systems, or conversion of product lines for new marketing outlets (e.g., wholesale packaging to retail packaging). 

Support for Rural Recovery Efforts: Collaborate with extension and other state agencies to provide economic assistance to farmers, ranchers, and rural communities. Develop tools to address farmer stress and expand farmer mental health services. Fund agriculture workforce development and job creation workshops.

Let’s make the Farming to Support States Act happen and make it accessible to all, so that it may provide a crucial extra measure of support for our food supply, and begin true economic recovery for communities still reeling for more than a decade.

Karen Ross has served as the Secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture since 2011. Before joining CDFA, Secretary Ross was chief of staff for U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. Secretary Ross grew up as a 4-H kid on a farm in western Nebraska. She and her husband, Barry, own 800 acres of the family farm where her younger brother, a fourth-generation farmer, grows no-till wheat and feed grains, incorporating cover crops and rotational grazing for beef production.

Link to article on AgriPulse web site.

By Hannah Pagel

Soil scientist Dr. Rattan Lal has been selected as this year’s World Food Prize Laureate and will receive a $250,000 award for his work in promoting soils for sustainable development.

Lal is known for translating his research findings to help bridge the divide between governmental institutions and farmers and communities, especially as it relates to a soil-based approach to increasing food production while also considering conservation and climate change mitigation.

Lal grew up as a refugee living on a small subsistence farm in India. His passion for education and his determination to learn helped him begin his research career at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in Nigeria, where he developed soil health restoration projects across Asia, Africa and Latin America.

He focused on techniques such as no-till, cover cropping, mulching and agroforestry and found these techniques protected the soil from elements, conserved water and returned nutrients, carbon and organic matter to the soil. The agricultural practices Lal cultivated are now at the heart of efforts to improve agriculture systems in the tropics and globally.

In 1987, he returned to his alma mater, The Ohio State University, where his research showed how atmospheric carbon can be sequestered in soils, transforming the way the world saw soils.

In 2007, he was among those recognized with a Nobel Peace Prize Certificate for his contributions to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Lal now serves as a professor of soil science and founding director of the Carbon Management and Sequestration Center at Ohio State.

“Achieving hunger-free humanity, soil degradation neutrality, negative emission farming and pollutant-free water are among principal challenges which can never be ignored … Sustainable management of soil and agriculture is also essential to keeping global temperatures within the safe range and restoring the environment,” he said.

Lal is also one of the authors of a report rebutting a recent World Resource Institute blog post that questioned the potential for farmland to sequester carbon on a large scale. Read the rebuttal here.

Link to article on Agri-Pulse web site

CDFA’s Office of Environmental Farming and Innovation (OEFI) administers Climate Smart Agriculture grant programs, and the COVID-19 pandemic has not stopped this team’s commitment.

Staff members are working safely from their homes, ensuring that grant recipient invoices are paid in as timely a manner as possible, and that new grant awards, contracts and notices are being issued.

In addition, a new online project verification process has replaced in-person verifications. During a recent Alternative Manure Management Program (AMMP), the farmer was unable to log in to the scheduled teleconference. OEFI staff had a “make it work” moment, shown here, with one staffer patching in the farmer in via FaceTime to verify construction of a compost-bedded pack barn and other measures. The result was a completed verification and happy farmer!

By Brent Bible

U.S. farmers have been on an economic roller coaster for the past decade. Whether the shocks have come from demand destruction from recent trade wars, extreme weather like the heavy precipitation we saw in 2019, or supply chain disruptions like the ethanol facility and meat plant closures we’re seeing this year from COVID-19, it’s become clear to many of us that diversified revenue streams are the key to our survival.

To better weather these shocks, farmers like me will benefit from having access to multiple markets for a wide variety of crops and livestock. Steady, ongoing revenue streams will help smooth the ups and downs, and that’s where environmental markets have real potential to boost both economic and environmental resilience.

Farmers already use conservation practices like cover crops or conservation tillage that build soil health and provide environmental benefits such as reducing emissions or creating wildlife habitat. These same practices would also generate a valued commodity that could be sold to companies that want to offset impacts from their operations.

In the past, the cost and complexity of certifying credits has kept many farmers from participating in greenhouse gas markets, a common type of environmental market. That could be about to change, thanks to the Growing Climate Solutions Act. 

The Growing Climate Solutions Act would simplify and standardize the certification process for generating credits and help farmers realize more returns on their investments in credit-worthy practices.

The bipartisan act — introduced by Sens. Mike Braun (R-IN), Lindsay Graham (R-SC), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) — would require the U.S. Department of Agriculture to “certify the certifiers.” USDA would review the science and define the rules of the road. Then approved private sector certifiers would work directly with farmers to find value in the conservation practices farmers choose to use. 

These certifiers would be akin to the crop consultants and extension agents that farmers already work with closely. Yes, farmers would need to pay for these services, but participation is voluntary, and I can say that for me, personally, the ease of working with a private sector expert instead of having to navigate the certification process myself would be worth it.

The economic rollercoaster that farmers are on seems to be speeding up every year, with higher highs and lower lows. Revenue from providing environmental benefits would be like a seat belt on the rollercoaster, helping farm businesses stay safe across the ups and downs, reducing future risks and shocks, and setting a good example for other stewards of the land.

Agriculture has a tremendous opportunity to lead by example with impactful, common sense climate solutions. Farmers also want to make our farms as resilient as possible so that they survive for generations to come. By opening the door for farmers to engage in voluntary environmental marketplaces, this bill meets both of those needs.

Brent Bible is a first-generation grain farmer in central Indiana. He is an adviser to Environmental Defense Fund and member of the Soil Health Partnership.

Link to item on Agri-Pulse web site

News Release from Duke University

A new study by researchers at Duke University and RTI International finds that reusing oilfield water that’s been mixed with surface water to irrigate farms in the Cawelo Water District of California’s Kern County does not pose major health risks, as some opponents of the practice have feared.

“We did not find any major water quality issues, nor metals and radioactivity accumulation in soil and crops, that might cause health concerns,” said Avner Vengosh, professor of water quality and geochemistry at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment, whose lab led the new study.

Faced with increasing droughts and water shortages, some farmers in the Cawelo district have used diluted oilfield produced water (OPW) for irrigation for their fields for more than 25 years, as permitted under California Water Board policy.

While the oilfield-mixed water contains slightly elevated levels of salts and boron relative to the local groundwater, those levels are still below the standards set by the state for safe drinking water and irrigation in the Cawelo district, Vengosh said.

Boron and salts from the OPW have however, accumulated over time in the irrigated soil. The district’s farmers will need to plant boron-tolerant crops and keep mixing the OPW with fresh water to avoid boron toxicity and salinity buildup in their fields, and also to remain within state guidelines. “But all things considered, this is good news,” Vengosh said.

The researchers published their peer-reviewed findings May 18 in the journal Science of the Total Environment.

The new study should help allay fears that contaminants in the Cawelo OPW, which is produced as a byproduct of oil and gas extraction at sites adjacent to many farm fields in the district, could impact water and soil quality, harm crop health or pose risks to human health, the researchers said.

“Those concerns assumed that the OPW generated by oil and gas wells in the Cawelo district contains similar mixtures of salts, metals and naturally occurring radioactivity as OPW generated in oil fields in other regions. But our study shows that’s not the case,” said Andrew Kondash, a research environmental scientist at RTI International, who led the study as part of his 2019 doctoral dissertation at Duke.

“The OPW produced in Kern County is much more diluted and low-saline than common OPW from other parts of the country, so it can be used for irrigation if it is mixed with surface water,” Kondash said.

Determining whether it is safe to use OPW for irrigation in other locations would require a similar suite of water and soil testing, Kondash said. “You can’t assume that the results in this study could be applied to OPW from other oilfields, where the salinity is typically much higher.”

To conduct the new study, the researchers collected and analyzed soil samples, irrigation water samples, OPW samples and groundwater samples from sites across the Cawelo Water District from December 2017 to September 2018 and analyzed them for a wide range of contaminants including, salts, metals and radioactive elements.

###

The study was part of a research project funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture (grant #2017-68007-26308) and included a policy analysis section led by Erika Weinthal of Duke’s Nicholas School.

Other authors were: Jennifer Hoponick Redmon and Elisabetta Lambertini of RTI International, Laura Feinstein of the Pacific Institute, and Luis Cabrales of California State University at Bakersfield.

In addition to earning his PhD in Earth and Ocean Sciences from Duke’s Nicholas School, Kondash also earned a Master of Environmental Management degree in Energy and Environment at Duke in 2013.

Link to study on ScienceDirect website

By Melissa D. Ho, World Wildlife Fund; John Piotti, American Farmland Trust; and Joel Berg, Hunger Free America

The COVID-19 crisis has exposed weaknesses in our nation’s food system—something so fundamental that most people take it for granted. Most of us don’t think about how and where we get our food. We simply expect supermarkets to be fully stocked, and we hope those in need will be able to turn to food banks and federal food assistance programs for help. But as schools and businesses shuttered their doors, more than 38 million people have since lost their jobs, and one in three U.S children are now going hungry, making the gaps in the system evident.

These gaps have always existed—for too long we have prioritized low-cost and most efficient over fair-priced, local and regional—but now the gaps are magnified. Dairy farms have dumped thousands of gallons of milk; perishable fruits and vegetables have been plowed over or left to rot; and fishermen can’t sell their catch. All this while food banks and social service agencies face unprecedented demand, and child hunger is five times the rate it was before this crisis. Our food system isn’t just cracked; it’s broken.

We’re thankful that government programs are being expanded, while volunteers, religious groups, chefs, not-for-profits, private donors and aid organizations are stepping in, trying to get food to the people who need it and supporting our local and regional producers. But these patchwork solutions aren’t nearly enough in the short-term, or sustainable in the long-term.

Many organizations, ours included, are turning to solutions that address the root causes. With additional public support and leadership from the private and public sectors, we have the potential to emerge from this crisis stronger. Here are four actions that need to be taken.

First, we must act immediately to protect farmers and ranchers, especially small- and medium-sized producers of specialty crops, livestock and dairy. The Farmer Relief Fund and state and local emergency mini-grant programs are providing some immediate assistance, but much more is needed. As part of the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program funded largely through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act (CARES), the USDA announced that it will provide $16 billion in direct payments to farmers and ranchers, plus an additional $3 billion in purchases of agriculture products, including meat, dairy and produce. The USDA must act quickly to distribute this funding to impacted farmers and ranchers who need help the most, prioritizing small- and medium-sized operators and those most negatively affected from the closure of direct to market sales.

Second, we need to increase income, food purchasing power and safety nets for Americans in poverty. There should be immediate revisions in the eligibility restrictions on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and future incentives for the purchase of fresh, locally grown foods. States and cities should allow for farmers markets to operate in low-income communities with safe social distancing, and there should be future investment in new markets to provide these communities with affordable, nutritious food. Federal and state regulations must also be relaxed so idling assets can be mobilized and food can be redirected not wasted. For thousands of school districts, more flexibility will allow for efficient execution of emergency feeding plans, which may need to continue through the summer. USDA should be taking additional steps to ensure farmers and ranchers can expand existing partnerships to respond to urgent needs.

Third, we must build resilience and sustainability in our food system. We need to rethink how and where we grow, process, distribute and access healthy and affordable food. We need to develop business models and financial tools for farmers to produce more food for their local and regional markets so that supply chains will be adaptable and resilient to future shocks. We need to protect farmland and water resources. Future farm bills and policies should include a safety net for smaller, more diversified producers and specialty crop farmers; reform commodity, price support and insurance programs to level the playing field across all commodities; and incorporate incentives for conservation and regenerative and sustainable practices for all producers. Policies must also place fundamental value on farmland, not just for growing food but for safeguarding the natural resources that provide habitat for wildlife, clean water and resilience to extreme weather.

Finally, in all these measures we must value people—those who produce our food and those who consume it. It’s important that once we’re on the other side of this pandemic we don’t become complacent and relegate these issues and communities to the back burner. As a society, we have the means, motive and opportunity. Our response now will help shape the resilient and just food system we so desperately need.

Link to item on Farm Journal web site

In 2018 California’s farms and ranches received almost $50 billion for their output. This represents a slight increase compared to 2017. California remains the leading US state in cash farm receipts.

California’s agricultural abundance includes more than 400 commodities. Over a third of the country’s vegetables and two-thirds of the country’s fruits and nuts are grown in California. California’s top-10 valued commodities for 2018 are:

• Dairy Products, Milk — $6.37 billion
• Grapes — $6.25 billion
• Almonds — $5.47 billion
• Cattle and Calves — $3.19 billion
• Pistachios — $2.62 billion
• Strawberries — $2.34 billion
• Lettuce — $1.81 billion
• Floriculture — $1.22 billion
• Tomatoes — $1.20 billion
• Oranges — $1.12 billion

We would like to note that, for the first time, the Agricultural Statistics Review includes summary data about organic production, a significant segment of California agriculture.

California agricultural statistics derive primarily from the United States Department of Agriculture/National Agricultural Statistics Services (USDA/NASS) reports. CDFA collaborates with the University of California at Davis to produce statistics for California agricultural exports. For county-level reporting please see the CDFA County Liaison site.

Initial crop statistics for 2019 are expected later this year.

Link to full 2018 crop report