Farm delegation kicks off legislative year

By Caleb Hampton

Farmers and ranchers gathered at the state Capitol in Sacramento last week to advocate on policies impacting agriculture, from groundwater management to wildfires to technology.

As they met with lawmakers and staff during the annual Capital Ag Conference, which marks the start of the legislative year, the delegation of California Farm Bureau members focused particular energy on trying to rescue a program that provides financial compensation to ranchers whose livestock are impacted by wolves.

In 2021, the state budget allocated $3 million to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife for a Wolf-Livestock Compensation Program. But amid the historic state budget deficit, money ran out for the pilot program, which was created to soften the economic damages of wolves attacking and killing livestock or causing stress that results in weight loss and lower pregnancy rates.

“Having this funding is crucial,” Taylor Hagata, a Lassen County rancher and Farm Bureau board member, said in a meeting with Assembly Member Mike Fong, D-Alhambra. Farmers asked lawmakers to approve another $3 million to continue the compensation program through this year.

Another issue on the Farm Bureau’s agenda was its opposition to a proposed increase in the pesticide mill fee to raise $33.3 million over three years for the California Department of Pesticide Regulation.

The mill fee, which for more than two decades remained at about 2.1 cents for every dollar spent on pesticides, is assessed at the first point of a pesticide sale and is responsible for about 80% of DPR’s funding. It is primarily paid by farmers when they purchase pesticides to protect their crops.

If approved, the fee would increase to more than 2.8 cents per dollar spent on pesticides, amounting to about a 27% increase in the DPR budget. The money would be used to fund 117 new positions at the department that would conduct a range of functions, including registration of new pesticides, increased monitoring of pesticides and more engagement on public health impacts.

The department says it lacks the funds necessary to regulate pesticides and protect people and the environment. But farmers facing increased production expenses and shrinking margins say they should not have to bear those costs alone.

“It seems a little out of the ordinary,” Norm Groot, executive director of the Monterey County Farm Bureau, said in a meeting with Jacob Moss, legislative director for Assembly Member Joaquin Arambula, D-Fresno.

“It’s a little incongruent that you have one particular set of stakeholders funding an agency’s expansion when the rest of the state is trying to manage a budget deficit,” Groot said. He added that because farmers of many commodities sign contracts with processors or retailers a year in advance, the added fees would “not be something we could pass along in the cost of our product. That’s something that would have to be absorbed.”

Farmers also encouraged legislators to reject a proposed law, Assembly Bill 828, that would exempt some entities from groundwater management requirements. The bill, authored by Assembly Member Damon Connolly, D-San Rafael, would exempt privately managed wetlands and vulnerable communities from pumping reductions and fines under the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act.

If approved, the bill would allow those water users to pump as much groundwater per year as they did on average from 2015 to 2020. It would also excuse them from paying pumping fees to a groundwater sustainability agency.

The bill is supported by wildlife and environmental groups, which argue the exemptions are needed to safeguard wetland habitat for birds and clean water accessibility for small communities that rely on a single source for their water. According to Connolly, the pumpers that would qualify for the exemption account for less than 2% of the Central Valley’s groundwater use.

The agricultural delegation argued the proposed law, which sunsets at the end of 2027, could open the door to further exemptions and undermine the state’s efforts to achieve groundwater sustainability.

“We are concerned that if you crack the door open on a few types of groundwater pumpers, then it just allows more exceptions to come in the future, and it will be that much harder to have sustainable groundwater basins,” said Alexandra Biering, policy advocate for the California Farm Bureau.

In addition, Biering said, to fund their GSA, farmers would bear the cost of paying the fees others would be exempted from and would face added pumping restrictions to compensate for the extra water pumped by others.

“If you give special carve-outs like this, it raises the bar for reaching sustainability for every other groundwater pumper in the basin,” she said. “You still have the same financial requirement to operate a GSA. You’re just asking a smaller group of groundwater pumpers to pay it, so they have to all pay more.”

Farmers also advocated for two bills the Farm Bureau is sponsoring. AB 1969, authored by Assembly Member Gregg Hart, D-Santa Barbara, would direct the California Air Resources Board to include drones used for crop data collection and pesticide applications in its Clean Off-Road Equipment voucher program. The bill would enable farmers to access state-funded incentive payments for buying drone equipment.

Senate Bill 945, authored by state Sen.Marie Alvarado-Gil, D-Jackson, and sponsored by the Farm Bureau, would require state agencies to maintain a data platform tracking the impact of wildfire smoke on public health.

Farmers support the Wildfire Smoke and Health Outcomes Data Act, as the bill is called, to shed light on a health issue that has impacted rural farm communities and to garner support for wildfire fuel reduction efforts undertaken by California foresters.

(Caleb Hampton is an assistant editor of Ag Alert. He may be contacted at champton@cfbf.com.)