California

A new bill in California aims to better support the state’s minority and female farmers. The Farmer Equity Act of 2017 “applies to producers that have been federally classified as ‘socially disadvantaged,’ which includes people in groups whose members have been subject to racial, ethnic, or gender prejudice,” says Civil Eats.

Researchers at the University of Southern California are in the early stages of an experiment to farm seaweed for biofuel in the Pacific Ocean. Kelp can grow two to three feet a day without fertilizer, pesticides, fresh water, or arable land — making it an ideal product for the biofuel industry.

The 2018 farm bill should “promote the connection between food production and food access, while ensuring that we take care of the land,” says Karen Ross, the California state agriculture secretary, in releasing the state’s recommendations for the legislation. California is the No. 1 farm state in dollar value of production.

At least 57 groups, ranging from local governments to crab boat owners, filed suit against the mammoth twin-tunnel project in the Sacramento River delta, using "one of the most powerful legal weapons found in any courtroom — the California Environmental Quality Act," reports the Sacramento Bee. "History suggests that suing under the California environmental law won't be enough to kill the tunnels."

With avocado production in California down nearly 50 percent from a year ago, prices are climbing, says the LA Times. Extreme heat and drought last summer affected the fruit that’s maturing this season. “When the heavy rains finally arrived in the winter, it was too late,” the report said.

With a shortage of farmworker labor and growing concerns about food safety, one of the largest produce companies in the Salinas Valley of California is turning to mechanized harvesting and robotic processing of its vegetables, forever replacing the workers who once performed these jobs, says the San Francisco Chronicle.

Researchers at UC-Riverside say desert winds are picking up dust from the widening beaches created as the Salton Sea shrinks, says public broadcaster KPBS in San Diego. The dust from the "playa," as the former lake bed is called, is saltier and higher in some trace elements, although "it was not especially toxic compared to desert soils."

California Gov. Jerry Brown has extended the state’s climate plan for another decade by signing into law a bundle of bills meant to lower greenhouse-gas emissions. “The legislation puts California at the forefront of plans by mostly Democratic governors to reduce carbon emissions and adhere to the goals of the Paris climate change accord after Republican President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the pact,” says Reuters.

For the first time in it’s 164-year history, the California state fair will includes a farmworker exhibit, celebrating the people who have keep the state’s $47-billion industry running. “The exhibit features the stories of pioneers who founded the United Farm Workers of America: Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta and Filipino union leader Larry Itliong,” along with information on modern-day labor laws like the one signed by Gov. Jerry Brown last year, guaranteeing overtime pay after an eight-hour workday for farmworkers, says Lake County News.

Dairy farmers in three counties in California's Central Valley have temporary permission from local officials to bury or compost hundreds of cows that died in a June heat wave, says the Fresno Bee. Ordinarily, the dead animals would be sent to a rendering plant, but there are too many carcasses and a mechanical malfunction reduced the plant's capacity.

Already more than a decade in the planning, California’s proposal to build two massive tunnels stretching 35 miles beneath the Sacramento River delta has received an important green light from federal wildlife experts.

The Trump administration is canceling a proposed rule that would have shut down any gill net fishery that killed or seriously injured sensitive species like sea turtles, whales and dolphins in West Coast fishing nets. The rule — proposed in 2015 by the “14-member Pacific Fishery Management Council, which manages fisheries in California, Oregon and Washington”— was deemed unnecessary and a cost burden to fishermen by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The waters off the U.S. Pacific Coast are suffering from ocean acidification “hot spots,” says a new study of 600 miles of coastline. The study recorded some of the lowest pH levels ever found in surface water.

Months after suspending work, the Food and Drug Administration "has resumed its first-ever endeavor to evaluate how much of a controversial chemical is making its way into the U.S. food supply," says a blog post by Carey Gillam of U.S. Right to Know. The FDA began the "special assignment" last year but stopped the work because of a disagreement over a standard methodology for the agency's laboratories to use.

A coalition of seven states from California to New York states filed a challenge that asks the EPA to end the use of the insecticide chlorpyrifos, widely used in agriculture but criticized as a risk to children and farm workers. EPA administrator Scott Pruitt denied in March a petition by environmental groups to ban the chemical and said his decision was based on sound science.

Guest farmworkers recruited to the U.S. under the H-2A visa program are guaranteed a free place to stay, with the costs covered by their employer. But many towns in California don’t want to see non-native workers living in their midst, fearful that the newcomers will bring crime and traffic and lower property rates, says Los Angeles Times.

Starting this summer, the state of California will pay farmers to return nutrients to their soil that were lost to monocultures and tillage. The first of its kind in the country, California’s Healthy Soils Initiative will give growers grants to add “compost on rangelands or [seed] fields between harvests with so-called cover crops such as grasses and mustards, which add organic matter to the soil,” says The New York Times.

In FERN’s latest story, published with Switchyard Magazine, reporter Robert Kunzig takes us to the upper Mississippi River Delta, where the idea of growing more fruits and vegetables — to ease the burden on California in the climate-change era — is taking root.