Commentary

By Leah Groves

When you get called by the media for an interview, do you know how to answer the tough questions? Do you know how to talk about what Farm Bureau is and what it represents? Do you know how to create a message and connect with your audience?

I had the pleasure of attending the Women’s Communications Boot Camp hosted last month by the American Farm Bureau Federation in Washington, D.C. It is an intensive four-day training for any female Farm Bureau member interested in building skills to communicate about agriculture and Farm Bureau.

Each spring and fall, 15 women from across the nation are selected. In this class, we were personally coached and trained by AFBF staff on advocacy, public speaking, communicating with elected officials, social media strategy, targeted messaging and working with the media. We focused on current issues facing agriculture. The topics of focus for this session were sustainability, the farm bill and taxes. We were asked to choose a topic and stick to our message through the session.

The training, hosted by the Farm Bureau Women’s Leadership Program, was led by Women’s Leadership Committee Chair Isabella Chism and Vice Chair Lorenda Overman. We heard their farm story, how they are involved and where it has led them today.

As part of the experience, the group toured Washington, D.C., and heard about the preparation that occurs before an election. We spoke with AFBF President Zippy Duvall and Executive Vice President Joby Young. We heard from Cynthia Iglesias Guven from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Foreign Agricultural Service about the upcoming International Year of the Woman Farmer in 2026.

In our sessions, we talked about how to tackle the tough topics and how to craft a message, but most importantly, how to prepare for a media interview. We participated in mock radio interviews, mock TV interviews and public speaking situations. The goal in each scenario was to stick to the topic and guide the message.

We went to Capitol Hill to meet with our representatives to talk about issues facing agriculture. This opportunity not only helped me learn more about Farm Bureau but more about how to present myself.

Trainings like these are important to build skills to be able to create a baseline on having a clear message. Interviews can be tough. When you are passionate about something and maybe feel attacked or misunderstood, it can be easy to get sucked into the negativity or some of the negative wording, which can lead the interview in the wrong direction.

As an advocate, it is important to stay calm, ask questions to create a shared value, use positive language and don’t be afraid to guide the conversation. I know this is an area that is a challenge for me, so I have to think, how can I take a step back and connect with the person and give them key positive wording but get my message across.

This can be as simple as understanding that everyone wants safe, affordable, reliable food or we all care about the environment and protecting the land.

Being able to tell a story that is relatable and remembering that most people don’t understand or know “ag” terms, it is important to describe what you are doing and why. When you are planting that cover crop, what is it doing? How is it helping? A word I use a lot is “operation” when I should simply say “farm” or “ranch.”

In California, we have such a wide variety of agriculture that not all stories and situations are the same. But being able to tell your personal farm or ranch story or what you do in your role makes an impact, and that needs to be known and heard.

That’s where I feel the beauty of Farm Bureau is and why I advocate for Farm Bureau. It is important to learn more about what is happening on a national level and the value and impact of being a grassroots organization. It is important to hear from other states about what they are doing to share the diversity of stories from across the nation. We are all unique, but we come together to share a bond of agriculture. Farm Bureau is the trusted voice of agriculture and supports all farms, ranches and rural families everywhere.

Applications open in December for the 2025 spring session of the Women’s Communications Boot Camp.

(Leah Groves is program manager of Agriculture Innovations for the Siskiyou Economic Development Council and works on her family’s vineyard and winery in Trinity County. She may be reached at groves.leah12@gmail.com.)

By Tricia Stever Blattler

My husband, Robert, died this past April by suicide. His death was tragic, and unnecessary, and I wish I could say it could have been prevented. But to be honest, I don’t know enough yet about suicide to truly understand the forces that were at play in his mind and body on that fateful morning when he took his life.

What I do know and have come to learn in the six months since he has been gone is this: Suicide continues to be one of the most difficult experiences to navigate as a grieving spouse and also as someone trying to understand the stressors in his life at the time this horrible situation unfolded. 

Robert was a 45-year-old agronomist for a large farming company in the southern San Joaquin Valley. His job involved normal kinds of farm stress, but he struggled with his work life and often held on to stress in an unhealthy way. 

He was also struggling with hypertension, depression and anxiety, and had migraines and vertigo episodes, and required a variety of medications to control his symptoms. When some of those medications quit working, the situation changed rapidly.

I will never know what caused Robert to end his life that Sunday morning. But I can choose to use his tragic death to further illuminate and elevate the conversation around mental health, stress, anxiety and triggers we see in the farming industry. I want his life to be remembered in a way that helps carry a message to others to find help sooner and fight harder to stay alive. 

Farm stress is at an all-time high across the heartland of America. In small farm towns across the country, a rising number of stressors impact farms. And behind those farms are families struggling with immense pressures. These include failing crops, extreme weather, shifting political tides, high interest rates, inflation and production costs that seem to never stop rising. In California, you can add overregulation and a never-ending stream of new legislation and regulations that contribute a tremendous amount of stress and expense to every farmer’s bottom line. It’s the perfect storm for farm stress to skyrocket and suicide risks to increase. 

According to a Pennsylvania State University Extension report, more people die every year from suicide than homicide. From 2000 to 2021, the suicide rate increased by 36% nationwide. In rural America, the suicide rate among farmers is much higher than the national average of 14.1 deaths per 100,000 population. In rural America, is a staggering 43.7 deaths per 100,000. This places farming in the top 10 occupations that suffer an increased rate of death by suicide.

Farm suicides are more isolated and talked little about. Farmers often internalize their struggles, feel hopeless and shameful, and do not seek counseling or care soon enough. While external factors on the farm impact stress behaviors, simply accessing care is a major stressor and one that men probably find even more difficult. Farmers are perhaps more unlikely to pursue treatment and care early. 

I want Robert’s life and his tragic passing to be a reason to take pause and consider this important topic. We all lead lives that seem to have unending pressures and stresses that never get easier. 

Stressors in agriculture are plentiful, and the physical demands of the work can take a heavy toll on a person. Rural access to mental health resources is also usually very limited or nonexistent. For these reasons, we must take more direct action to help when we see someone struggling in our farm community. Reach out early and often and keep reaching out until you see them getting the help they need. 

I want to acknowledge that the farm community has embraced my loss and has been a stalwart supporter of my grief and recovery. Being part of the Farm Bureau community has provided me with pillars of strength, support, friendship and a family that has supported me on the most difficult days. 

That is true of our farm community across America. Farmers are resilient, and each year they risk huge economic certainty to do what they do. I remain touched daily by acts of kindness, compassion and empathy as I go about my work at the Tulare County Farm Bureau. I would pray that in an industry with this level of fight, hardiness and tenacity, we could lift up our neighbors who are struggling most and help them in their greatest times of adversity. Be the lifeline, be that friend, be that neighbor and start the conversation. 

The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is a national network that provides free and confidential support 24/7. Additionally, PsychologyToday.com is a confidential web tool to find mental health providers and resources in your region.

(Tricia Stever Blattler is the executive director of the Tulare County Farm Bureau. She may be reached at pstever@tulcofb.org.)

By Amrith Gunasekara and Laurel Marcus

It’s harvesttime for many farmers in California. Harvesting crops in the nation’s leading agriculture state requires partnerships and collaborations, which come in different forms.

These may include business agreements, equipment sharing, mentoring, university advice from agricultural cooperative extension services, recommendations from pest and crop advisors, and governmental compliance, to name a few.

These collaborations remain key to successfully grow and sustain an agricultural business in California, where environmental laws and regulations on water and air quality are some of the strictest in the U.S.

Environmental efforts on farms also require partnerships and collaborations to be successful and sustained into the future.

For example, if growers are interested in planting hedgerows around a crop at field borders, they will need a host of collaborators, including agencies or nonprofits offering funding for the project, so the grower does not have to cover the entire cost of what could be an expensive project.

It would also include technical expertise, such as suitability of plant species for the climatic zone, third-party verification that the hedgerow project is implemented, fertigated and irrigated, reporting to a funding agency on financial and performance metrics, ongoing technical advice, evaluating the project for the potential to reduce greenhouse gases through carbon sequestration and potential marketing opportunities. All these different moving parts could be a daunting task for growers.

Herein lies the benefits of collaborations on environmental projects. Consumers want greater transparency on how their food was produced and how the environment was addressed in its production.

In 2019, the California Land Stewardship Institute and the Sonoma County Winegrowers Association partnered to enroll a limited number of large and small farms across Sonoma County to develop a climate adaptation certification program that can be used for environmental performance reporting to consumers and product marketing purposes. The program collects and uses information on soil types, energy use, tillage, cover crops, fertilizer use, irrigation, site agricultural history and natural areas to calculate greenhouse gas emissions and carbon sequestration.

The sophisticated models used in the program provide growers with the data needed to allow flexibility in creating climate benefits. The program plans propose easily implementable changes to the soils, crop and conditions of the site, including planting cover crops, using limited tillage, installing native plant hedgerows or trees, composting and reducing nitrogen fertilizer.

All these practices can be funded through a number of programs, such as the California Department of Food and Agriculture Healthy Soils Program. The climate plans relate the farms’ practices to carbon sequestered in soil, trees, hedgerows and habitats, and can define that carbon in relatable terms of car emissions offsets. Additionally, by using sophisticated and highly accurate modeling of carbon sequestration, the program sets growers up to sell carbon credits.

Following the California Land Stewardship Institute’s completion of modeling and climate plans, growers met and discussed the best management practices that provide the highest levels of carbon sequestration but are flexible enough to allow for economically efficient farming, even during droughts. The institute also identified the most accurate models to use in calculating greenhouse gas emissions and carbon sequestration.

Currently, the climate adaptation certification program enrolls growers in Mendocino, Sonoma and Napa counties, reaching enrollment of more than 20,000 acres. Climate concerns are front and center for younger wine drinkers, so the program provides growers use of a certification logo to display on site, on the bottle and online.

The institute is partnering with the California Bountiful Foundation to provide third-party certification that the farms’ information is consistent with what is in the plan and on the site. The foundation is the 501(c)(3) nonprofit science and research organization of the California Farm Bureau. Certification of the climate farm plan includes reviewing the plan, visiting the farm, identifying greenhouse gas reductions or carbon sequestration on the farm, compiling a certification letter with proposed changes if needed, and signing off on the plan.

Understanding the climate adaptation certification plans requires a good scientific understanding of how models such as COMET-Farm work. The model calculates greenhouse gas reductions.

The partnership and collaborations also highlight the importance of multiple organizations working together to support programs that further enhance the marketability of products from agricultural operations and achieve environmental outcomes.

The institute is working to expand the climate adaption certification program to additional counties and crops. The program includes the Fish Friendly Farming Environmental Certification Program that has more than 220,000 acres enrolled statewide and is the only certification that also provides regulatory compliance, reducing paperwork. To learn more, contact Chris Kelley at chrisk@fishfriendlyfarming.org or Connor Bennett at connorb@fishfrieindlyfarming.org.

(Amrith Gunasekara is the director of science and research for the California Bountiful Foundation. He may be contacted at agunasekara@cfbf.com. Laurel Marcus is the retired executive director of the California Land Stewardship Institute. She may be contacted at laurelm@fishfriendlyfarming.org.)

By Matthew Viohl

Late in September, lawmakers in Washington, D.C., successfully avoided a government shutdown by passing what’s known as a continuing resolution. This short-term funding measure will keep the lights on for the federal government through at least Dec. 20, meaning they will need to pass yet another extension before the end of the year.

Unfortunately, this now gets tossed on top of what is already a full slate of priorities needing attention in the “lame duck” period, which begins after the election in early November. Historically, the level of activity during this time has varied. Some sessions end relatively quietly, while others are a mad dash of competing interests.

We anticipate this year will lean heavily into the latter of these scenarios. On the docket is a mix of bills that are deemed necessary or extraneous depending on who you ask. This includes the National Defense Authorization Act, an agricultural appropriations bill, a full or partial reauthorization of the farm bill, natural disaster assistance for 2023 events, Federal Emergency Management Agency support for Hurricane Helene, foreign aid for overseas conflicts and the aforementioned government funding extension.

Lawmakers have five weeks to potentially address all of these priorities, which is a painfully small window given the legislative hurdles required of most of them. While Congress has certainly shown the ability to pass thousand-page bills in short order, juggling so many large bills with so little time to operate means several of these endeavors could fall short of the finish line.

A full five-year reauthorization of the farm bill remains a top priority for the California Farm Bureau and most other agricultural organizations. The 2018 iteration faced expiration last year before a one-year extension kept it afloat. Many in agriculture warned that trying to pass a farm bill in 2024 would prove even more challenging due to it being a major election year.

Despite this, several key lawmakers are hopeful it can pass in the coming month and a half. Recent economic reports showing a continued downturn in America’s overall farming output reignited discussions about the need for immediate assistance—possibly even outside the farm bill.

Several groups are referring to this as an “economic assistance” package that would likely provide a one-time infusion for certain producers in some direct method. Few concrete details have been unearthed at this time though, likely in part because of the overlying need for a full farm bill reauthorization.

Likely to impact these issues are the results of the 2024 elections. No matter where your political loyalties lie, we are certain to have a new president in 2025 and a Congress that will have slim majorities in either chamber. In addition, potential changes in who holds the gavel in either chamber might encourage or discourage the parties to work together before the congressional session ends.

Until then, we are in a state of limbo since lawmakers are in home districts campaigning for the remainder of October. They may come together for an emergency session to provide additional funding for Hurricane Helene recovery efforts, but it remains unlikely for now.

What does this mean for farmers and ranchers across the country? It means we’re mostly in the same place we’ve been for the past year and a half, waiting on a historically inactive Congress to make a genuine effort to pass bills.

While the volume of passed bills certainly isn’t an indicator of overall success (we can look to Sacramento for evidence of that), there is a balance between doing a lot and doing very little. The legislative ask is substantial for our lawmakers this fall, and they should not expect or plan to have it easy as the sun sets on the 118th Congress.

I often recall a humorous line from former President George W. Bush during the 2006 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in which he quipped, “I object to those stories that say I’m a lame duck. I’m not a lame duck. I’m a sprinting duck, I’m a hustling duck, I’m a leadership of the free world duck.”

Jokes aside, Congress would do right to replicate that sentiment as we head into November. Farmers and ranchers are hurting across the country. Thousands are still waiting for disaster assistance from January 2023 storms, and we’re limping along with a farm bill that relied on outdated agricutlural data from 2016 and 2017.

Needless to say, it’s high time Congress put on their running shoes as the slow meandering race turns into a sprint to the finish. We need a D.C. filled with sprinting and hustling ducks this November so that meaningful wins are delivered to the American people.

(Matthew Viohl is director of federal policy for the California Farm Bureau. He may be contacted at mviohl@cfbf.com.)

By Kimberly Sinclair Holmes

Many years ago, I was singing “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” with a toddler member of my family. I prompted the child by singing “Old MacDonald had a….” At first, he responded, “a chicken.” The second time, it was “a pig.” At the third time, a shift apparently occurred in his mind, and he excitedly responded, “a tractor.”

Naturally, his interest in agriculture had merged with his interest in machines. I laughed and agreed with him that a tractor was indeed very important to both Old MacDonald and the farm.

As a person who has worked in education for nearly 20 years, I cannot overstate the importance of introducing youths to agriculture and its relationship with STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). Introducing children as early as possible sets a strong foundation upon which we can coach and guide their minds into any number of exciting possibilities in agriculture, from agriculture literacy to agriculture careers to agricultural innovation.

More frequently in the past few years, I find myself using a broader term coined by others—STEAM—expanding traditional STEM to include agriculture to acknowledge the longstanding and deep contributions of agriculture to the health, well-being and prosperity of our nation and the world.

Here’s where things get really exciting. Through STEAM projects, there are endless opportunities to provide training to youths that have real-world applications. For example, young people can learn how to use robotics to solve agricultural challenges such as endemic pests and diseases or predatory animals in agricultural and working landscapes.

The integration of STEM and agriculture has led to phenomenal innovations in precision agriculture and other technological breakthroughs: machines that sort produce based on size and color, machines that plant seeds at carefully calibrated depths and distances apart, and even machines that milk cows based on their preferred schedule.

The University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources just received a $750,000 grant funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture. The grant aims to spark teenagers’ interest in food and agriculture by using cutting-edge drone and mapping technologies.

How do we nurture and encourage the natural inclination of youths to combine the strengths of agriculture, engineering and other aspects of STEAM?

California 4-H is a leading youth development program serving young people ages 5 to 19. Administered by UC ANR, California 4-H offers innovative projects, activities and events that bring youths together, while building and strengthening life skills and skills in a host of areas that can prepare them for a career—animal science, robotics, computer science/coding, natural resource management, fine arts and more. Since 2001, California 4-H youths have been building robotic systems to learn scientific concepts, the engineering design process and technology creation.

The life skills we teach in California 4-H include critical thinking, problem solving, effective communication and positive relationship building. The training topics we offer include leadership and civic engagement, healthy living, STEAM and inclusive programs that foster a sense of belonging. Through 4-H clubs, project teams, after-school programs and online training, California 4-H reaches youths where they are and guides them toward reaching their full potential.

As the new director of California 4-H, one of my primary goals is to ensure that all youths across California who seek support with their academic and social growth and development have access to our programs. I also want to grow our programming in agriculture and STEM/STEAM, as these are critical areas of need for our communities and our state’s economic vitality.

Research on the outcomes of youths who engage in 4-H programs is very clear. Studies have shown that youths who engage with 4-H programs are more likely to:

• Achieve academically.

• Serve in leadership roles in school and community.

• Engage in some form of community service.

Moreover, young people who engage in STEAM-related activities are generally more likely to study STEAM-related majors in college or enter STEAM-related jobs after high school. This increases the pipeline of professionals in agricultural communities who will assist producers in their efforts to optimize efficiency and profits, and better steward the land and natural resources.

Support for youths who engage in STEAM also has the potential to lead to innovations in agriculture-related extension and education.

Join our statewide effort to help young people find their “spark” by attending the Future of AgTech 4-H Breakfast at 7:30 a.m. Oct. 24 at the Yolo County Fairgrounds in Woodland. For details, visit https://bit.ly/4-HFIRAEvent. To learn more about 4-H in your community, visit https://4h.ucanr.edu.

I am convinced that by working together, our dreams of STEAM will produce an extraordinary environment in which all youths are able to plant their seeds of inspiration in the soil of education—and yield a greater quality of life for all of California.

(Kimberly Sinclair Holmes, Ph.D., is California state 4-H director. She may be contacted at ksholmes@ucanr.edu.)

By Katie Harris, Tehama County trout farmer 

We are gearing up for our busy season, which is mid-October through June. In the summer, most of the water in California is too warm to stock trout, so we’ve been trying to grow trout as fast as we can to get ready for the markets to start opening.

I’m getting all our contracts in place and all our stocking schedules put together for our Northern California deliveries. Most of our fish end up in Southern California. We are feeding fish to try to get them to market size as we get closer to the kickoff of trout season. When things cool off, we are in Southern California twice a week, all winter long, starting about Nov. 1 and going through mid-April. Then we’ve got a lot of springtime customers in Northern California that have fishing derbies once a year, so we don’t start slowing down until the middle of June.

All our farms are spring fed. We don’t pump any water, and we don’t pull any out of the water table with a well. In low precipitation years, those springs don’t produce as much water, so we can’t raise as many fish. The last few years, the springs have been pretty darn good. So far, we haven’t been too constrained. We’ve got the water, but we don’t necessarily have enough oxygen to support all the fish. One big new addition to our company has been the introduction of liquid oxygen into one of our facilities, and we’re expanding that into another.

There definitely is more demand than supply in the recreational fishing market, which is a good thing for us. We’re not taking on any new customers because we simply don’t have the fish to meet the demand, which means prices will go up. We’ve only got so many fish, and we need to get them to market size. That’s what we’re trying to do, is push them to get to that top market size.

By Lisa A. Smittcamp

As California grapples with crime, much of the media’s attention has focused on high-profile smash-and-grab incidents in places such as San Francisco and Los Angeles. While these stories may dominate the headlines, an equally concerning trend is unfolding in the state’s agricultural and rural communities.

Unfortunately, farmers and ranchers are increasingly finding themselves in the crosshairs of criminals. With valuable equipment and commodities on site, agricultural businesses are attractive targets for theft, which often has costly consequences for farmers and ranchers—something I am all too familiar with as district attorney in Fresno County.

Rural areas have always presented unique challenges for law enforcement. The vast expanses and remote locations that characterize California’s agricultural heartland make it difficult for law enforcement to maintain a strong presence. A local sheriff described the challenge in a recent warning: “Crime is not confined to the cities. It is a growing problem in rural areas.”

One recent example underscores just how costly the problem is. Thieves made off with 200 beehives near Fresno valued at approximately $40,000 and had stolen hives worth about $150,000 from other businesses in the area. Unfortunately, these thefts are not isolated events but a broader trend. The lack of accountability in the law is encouraging this behavior among the criminal element.

Cargo theft is another major challenge. California is ranked as the top state for losses, and cargo theft costs nationwide are estimated at $15 billion to $30 billion annually. For California’s agricultural sector, these thefts can be devastating. One San Joaquin Valley pistachio company lost $170,000 in products in an incident, while another saw 40 loads of nuts stolen valued at several million dollars.

In response to this growing threat, law enforcement agencies across California ramped up efforts with dedicated agricultural crime prevention programs. Public-private partnerships such as the California Rural Crime Prevention Task Force was created to coordinate across communities and provide training. While these efforts are vital, they are not enough on their own.

To truly address rural crime, changes in state law are needed that a popular ballot measure, Proposition 36, aims to deliver.

The initiative is set for a statewide vote this November and offers commonsense reforms designed to crack down on theft and strengthen the tools available to law enforcement. Proposition 36 has garnered bipartisan support from mayors, sheriffs and district attorneys hailing from large and small agricultural counties across the state. It includes provisions that will be beneficial to farmers and ranchers who are the victims of rural crime.

One of the most significant aspects of the initiative is its focus on increasing accountability for high-value thefts. California does not permit additional jail time for thieves who steal more than $50,000 worth of property. With agricultural thefts sometimes extending into the millions, this is a glaring hole in current law. Proposition 36 seeks to change that by allowing judges to impose additional penalties depending on the value of the stolen property—ranging from $50,000 to more than $3 million. This new provision is crucial to deter criminals who target high-value agricultural equipment and commodities.

The ballot measure also addresses the issue of coordinated thefts, a tactic often employed by organized crime groups. It would allow judges to add one, two or three years to the sentence of any offender who steals property while acting in concert with at least two other individuals. This provision is particularly relevant for agricultural thefts in which multiple perpetrators often work together to steal large quantities of goods or equipment.

Beyond protecting the agriculture industry directly, Proposition 36 offers broader benefits that will help retailers and other businesses that purchase products from farmers and ranchers.

California has a notorious loophole that allows repeat offenders to nearly avoid any consequences by stealing less than $950. Proposition 36 fixes this problem by permitting the cumulative value of stolen property from multiple thefts to be combined together, allowing for felony charges for the career thieves who exploit this legal gap.

The measure will also allow prosecutors the authority to file felony charges against repeat offenders with two prior misdemeanor theft convictions. It includes provisions to include stiffer penalties for fentanyl sales and trafficking—issues that, unfortunately, have not spared rural areas.

Proposition 36 will be 2024’s most important California ballot measure.

It is the most relevant piece of legislation we have seen in more than a decade that would start to swing the pendulum of overly excessive criminal justice reform back to the center and demand responsibility and accountability in the law. It would offer real solutions for reducing rural crime and protecting California’s farmers and ranchers. Please join me in voting yes on Proposition 36.

(Lisa A. Smittcamp has served as Fresno County district attorney since first being elected in 2014. She may be contacted at lsmittcamp@fresnocountyca.gov.)

By Mike Wade 

The draft environmental impact statement for the long-term operation of the federal Central Valley Project and State Water Project has raised alarm bells for farmers and urban water users who depend on these water projects.

Based on the document released July 26 for public review, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service seem to be pushing a regulatory agenda that prioritizes environmental objectives to the detriment of agricultural, municipal and industrial water needs.

The CVP and SWP were originally constructed with multiple purposes in mind, central to which was the provision of water for uses such as irrigation and drinking water.

But the operational plan under consideration for the water-delivery systems seems to elevate environmental protections, despite the 2009 Delta Reform Act, which established “coequal goals” of ensuring a reliable water supply for California while protecting and restoring the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta ecosystem.

Instead of a balanced approach, the preferred proposal by Reclamation and the California Department of Water Resources tilts heavily in a direction that could leave California’s communities and farmers gasping for water.

This imbalance between environmental and water-supply priorities is not only bad for California’s rural economy, which depends heavily on agricultural productivity, it also disregards the legislative frameworks that were established to ensure fair and equitable water distribution.

In 1992, the Central Valley Project Improvement Act was enacted to create a balance among competing demands on CVP water, which includes agricultural, municipal and industrial needs alongside environmental concerns such as fish and wildlife protection. The CVPIA was designed to give equal priority to irrigation use and fish and wildlife restoration.

Despite these clear guidelines, the current proposed operational plan evaluated in the draft EIS for the CVP and SWP seems to neglect this intended balance.

The plan appears structured to prioritize the protection of native fish species such as the delta smelt and Chinook salmon, with little consideration for the impacts on the ability of the CVP and SWP to deliver water to the agricultural and municipal users that depend on it.

This lack of balance in the proposed water management plan stands to exacerbate the water supply shortages already being felt by communities across the state.

The effects of such prioritization are far-reaching. Water shortages will not only harm California’s farmers—who produce the largest share of the nation’s food supply—but they will also impact municipal water supplies and, by extension, the broader economy.

Adding to the complexity is the fact that the proposed operations seem to include actions designed to bring the State Water Project into compliance with the California Endangered Species Act. However, the state ESA does not apply to the federal Central Valley Project. That raises the question of why federal water operations are being shaped by a state law that holds no legal authority over them.

This blending of state and federal regulations in the management of California’s water resources has left many stakeholders concerned that the needs of agricultural and municipal users are being cast aside in favor of environmental goals that could be addressed through other means.

Another example is a delta water-quality objective called Fall X2, a component of the Summer-Fall Habitat Action plan. This federal action releases upstream water from reservoirs to push against tidal flows, keeping the salt line in the delta at a place biologists believed was beneficial to delta smelt.

However, no scientific evidence supports that hypothesis, which in 2023 resulted in the loss of an estimated 734,000 acre-feet of water that was valued at $557 million on the open market and provided no observable benefits for fish. This is unjustifiable.

The proposed operations and associated biological opinions must be reconsidered. It is imperative that the regulatory framework established to govern the CVP and SWP strikes a balance between environmental protection and the essential water needs of California’s farms and municipal water users.

These water projects were not built solely to protect fish. They were constructed to sustain an entire state’s economy and its people. Water supply for irrigation and domestic and industrial uses should be balanced with stated environmental objectives.

If California is going to meet future water supply and food security demands, it requires federal and state water management strategies that balance the needs of people and the environment.

(Mike Wade is executive director of the California Farm Water Coalition. He may be contacted at mwade@farmwater.org.)

By Bryan Little

The California Legislature’s 2024 session yielded a small number of bills that stand to exacerbate the legal and regulatory challenges faced by California farm employers.

Senate Bill 399, by state Sen. Aisha Wahab, D-Hayward, is California’s version of legislation Big Labor has been trying to pass in several states to restrict employer communications with employees in the workplace. As often happens with legislation, the devil is in the details, and actual legislative language can be much broader in scope than its proponents are willing to acknowledge.

SB 399 would expose an owner of a winery hosting a political candidate’s fundraiser to abusive lawsuits if one or more of his employees happens to dislike that politician. It could create legal peril for the operator of a packinghouse who posts a campaign sign opposing a ballot initiative one of his employees happens to support.

The measure’s scope is broader than advertised by its proponents because of the wide range of topics an employer is prohibited from talking to employees about, and the communication impacted by the bill would not be limited to employee meetings. The bill defines prohibited communications as employees “receiving” communications related to a very broad definition of political issues.

Ironically, as officials of the California Labor Federation were walking the halls of the Capitol pushing legislators to pass SB 399, the organization was urging its members and activists to campaign for their favored candidates and causes at workplaces across the state. That is exactly what it seeks to prohibit employers from doing in their workplaces!

The Legislature passed SB 399 on Aug. 30, and it’s not clear whether Gov. Gavin Newsom will sign or veto it. Whatever its fate, it seems likely it will be subject to legal challenges for its infringement on employers’ First Amendment right to communicate with their own employees.

The Legislature has also finished its work on another measure, Senate Bill 1299, by state Sen. Dave Cortese, D-San Jose. The bill, passed Aug. 28, would create a presumption that a farm employee’s incidence of heat illness is automatically work-related and therefore would entitle the employee to receive workers’ compensation benefits.

That standard would apply if the employee performed any work in a week or pay period during which weather conditions would have invoked the requirements of the California Occupational Safety and Health’s Heat Illness Prevention standard, or HIP. It wouldn’t matter whether the employee’s heat illness arose at work, at a weekend soccer game or on a day-hike on the employee’s day off.

SB 1299 would apply only to farm employees and not any other type of worker working outdoors in hot weather. That reveals the political nature of the bill. When Cortese’s staff was asked about the limitation to farm employees, the answer was that the bill’s sponsor is the United Farm Workers, and that’s what it wants.

Workers’ compensation carriers have a history of receiving and paying claims related to heat illness, and the bill’s proponents failed to offer any meaningful indication that workers are suffering from uncompensated heat illness, despite evidence anyone can see of HIP standard compliance while driving roads through rural California where farm employees are at work.

Gov. Newsom has a history of vetoing bills expanding rebuttable presumptions of work-relatedness, and we’ll have to see what action he takes.

To help farm employers cope with such challenges, the California Farm Bureau created Farm Employers Labor Service. Since 1970, FELS has assisted thousands of agricultural employers, providing information, including training videos, assistance with bureaucratic paperwork and its instructive FELS Newsletter for farm employers, supervisors and employees.

FELS provides labor management consultants who are bilingual and bicultural and who offer an important bridge of understanding to our agricultural workforce. FELS was an early adopter of the internet in 1995, and we continue to work to find new ways to communicate with Farm Bureau members, farm employers and others who need to understand and find solutions to farm employers’ challenges.

Our new website, www.fels.net, features resources for farm employers trying to understand California’s new indoor heat illness standard, implications of avian flu for dairy and poultry operations and the new Workplace Violence Prevention Plan requirements passed by the Legislature in 2023.

Our FELS Newsletter exclusive content includes bilingual documents for workplace violence prevention plan, a violent incident reporting form and violence hazard assessment form, as well as instructional topics for training employees.

Farm Bureau is working every day to add value for its members, while helping farmers, ranchers and agricultural businesses meet the bureaucratic demands and other tests of operating in California.

FELS’ value-added services can help farmers become an employer of choice and avoid regulatory and legal challenges before those challenges become expensive.

(Byran Little is director of employment policy for the California Farm Bureau and chief operating officer for the affiliated Farm Employers Labor Service. He may be contacted at blittle@cfbf.com.)

By Zippy Duvall

Late summer is here, which means for Farm Bureau, our policy development process is heading into full swing. As a grassroots organization, this is the time when our members speak up on challenges they face on the farm and within their communities.

Those concerns become policy resolutions, which work their way up through the county, state, and ultimately, the national level. Every policy resolution brought to the floor at the delegate session of the American Farm Bureau Convention in January started with one farmer speaking up.

Farm Bureau stands as the voice of agriculture, thanks to this active participation by our members. From the farm bill and agricultural labor reform to infrastructure and rural broadband, your American Farm Bureau team is working diligently on a wide array of issues in Washington, D.C.

We rely on you to guide our policy because you know better than anyone what works and what doesn’t on your farm. That is also why our nation’s leaders and elected officials know that when Farm Bureau speaks, we are speaking for farmers and ranchers.

As I wrote recently, time is running out for Congress to pass a modernized farm bill this year. Families—on and off the farm—cannot afford a delay. As members of Congress have returned home for the August recess, our members have shared how important this legislation is for our country.

Americans in every region, state, small town and big city are counting on our farmers and ranchers to keep our nation’s food supply secure—and we’re counting on Congress to deliver a farm bill so that we can do just that.

Occasionally, there are also new or emerging issues that impact farmers and ranchers, but we don’t have specific policy to guide our work. This is when our team in Washington asks for direction directly from our grassroots members via the policymaking process.

With many critical tax benefits for farm and ranch families set to expire in 2025, we are now asking members to ensure we have clear policy in light of the potential for severe economic consequences.

We have a second ask of you, and it’s important. We need farmers and ranchers across the country to meet with lawmakers this year, so they act swiftly to implement the tax reform farmers and ranchers need in 2025.

Tax reform is crucial for ensuring the economic sustainability of our farms and ranches. Lower tax rates, small business deductions and higher estate tax exemptions help our farm families manage finances more effectively, provide opportunities for investment and even help ease the difficult planning for succession.

That is also why we have our eyes fixed on this quickly approaching deadline that will place many of these critical benefits at risk. Without renewal of these benefits, farmers face a steep tax increase and potentially tough decisions going forward.

Our farm and ranch families need a permanent tax code that provides stability and recognizes the unique financial challenges farm businesses face as they work to provide a secure food supply for our nation.

At Farm Bureau, the call for tax reform has come in many forms over the years, and we continue to work with and on behalf of our members to get a solution before the 2025 deadline. That is also why addressing the tax concerns through the policy development process is a top priority.

We want to hear from our members about how these issues impact your farms and ranches directly. This feedback not only helps us work on your behalf but also gives us farmer and rancher stories—powerful testimonials—we can share to ensure all lawmakers understand the impact of tax reform on farm and ranch families across the country. (California Farm Bureau members may offer input by emailing Federal Policy Director Matthew Voihl at mvoihl@cfbf.com.)

This is your Farm Bureau, and these are your policies. Together, we will continue to shape the future of American agriculture and ensure that our farms, ranches and rural communities thrive for generations to come.

I am deeply grateful for the hard work and dedication you put into shaping our great organization at the local, state and national levels and am eager to see what comes from this year’s policy development process.

(Vincent “Zippy” Duvall, a poultry, cattle and hay producer from Georgia, is president of the American Farm Bureau Federation. This commentary is adapted from Aug. 7 and July 31 editions of his column, The Zipline, which appears online at www.fb.org/the-zipline.)

By Roger Cryan and Betty Resnick

The farm bill is already a year late. The stakes are high and time is running out.

The last five-year farm bill expired Sept. 30, 2023, so American agriculture has been working under a one-year extension. Six years of tumult—including the highest inflation in 40 years, geopolitical disruptions to markets and rising expectations for what farmers can and should do for the planet—have left key parts of the 2018 Farm Bill outdated.

The world is undeniably different from when the last farm bill was written. Here are five things that farmers will miss out on if an update doesn’t happen this year:

1. Farmer safety net: The safety net for farmers includes support when prices fall to unsustainable levels. This helps farmers get through the bad years so they can continue producing the food, fuel and fiber that the nation—and the world—relies on.

Part of this safety net is the crop insurance program, which is permanent and wouldn’t go away without a new farm bill. But it needs some improvements to make it more affordable to all farmers. Unfortunately, a big part of the farmer safety net is tied to the renewal of the farm bill and depends on reference prices for key crops, which were set in 2014.

A price escalator was added in the 2018 Farm Bill based on recent years’ market prices. But the resulting effective reference prices have not kept up with inflation, leaving the safety net so close to the ground that it provides little or no protection. Farmers are taking a hit while waiting for Congress to act.

2. Help for dairy farmers: Dairy farmers rely on occasional help through the Dairy Margin Coverage program, which they help pay for. Anticipated improvements in this program include opportunities to buy coverage for a higher nominal milk-over-feed-cost margin to cover some—but not all—of the inflation of the past six years.

In 2018, the average farm produced about 5 million pounds of milk. Today, the average farm produces more than 8 million, so dairy farmers are hoping to increase the amount of a farm’s annual production that gets extra risk coverage. They are also counting on the farm bill to ensure the fairness of milk price formulas. By delaying the farm bill another year, Congress would be delaying help that could slow the rate of dairy farm consolidation.

3. Agricultural sustainability: Most farmers and ranchers live and raise their families on the land they work, often for many generations, so they naturally care for the land. But farmers are increasingly being asked to make up for the environmental impacts of the rest of us. The Inflation Reduction Act dedicated new federal budget dollars to conservation programs aimed at helping farmers support their own land’s sustainability but over a limited time period. There is an opportunity to incorporate those IRA conservation and climate dollars into a new farm bill as part of Congress’ permanent baseline for future farm bills.

4. Research: Even more critical to the sustainability of agriculture—and to its capacity to clean up the planet—is growing agricultural productivity as farmers are being asked to do more with less. But the U.S. has been falling behind the rest of the world’s major agricultural producers in public investment in agricultural research. In real terms, our investment has fallen by more than a third since 2002.

Commitment to agricultural research in a new farm bill could provide investment in research facilities, a boost in the search for a solution to citrus greening—which has devastated Florida’s citrus industry and remains a concern in California—and new funding for specialty crops research.

5. Food security is economic and national security: Let us count the ways that the farm bill contributes to our security, at home and around the world. The farm bill ensures American production is available to provide families in America—and beyond—access to safe, affordable and nutritious food.

The farm bill is overdue. A second one-year extension of the 2018 farm bill would leave us working under a 7-year-old plan in the much-changed world of 2025.

Reference prices for crop farmers and margin support for dairy farmers would be another year out of date and less effective after years of inflation. Research funding would be stagnant in amount and direction. Billions of dollars of conservation funding would be lost for farmers and the rest of us. And our security would be weakened by all of the above.

These are the stakes.

(Roger Cryan is chief economist and Betty Resnick a staff economist for the American Farm Bureau Federation. This article is condensed from their Market Intel report, “Five Things We’ll Miss Without a New Farm Bill,” which can be found at fb.org/market-intel.)

By Norm Groot 

Early in 2023, the Salinas Valley and Pajaro Valley regions of Monterey County experienced extensive flooding during a series of atmospheric river storms.

Along the Salinas River, floodwaters flowed over levees, washing away valuable topsoil and leaving substantial amounts of debris and trash. The Pajaro River levee system experienced a catastrophic failure, inundating the Pajaro community and flooding vast acres of strawberry fields and other farmland.

More than 20,000 acres of farmland went underwater during these flood events. Fields needed remediation. Levees needed rebuilding; debris needed clearing. Pathogen testing for food safety compliance had to be completed before fields could be replanted. For many of these acres, growers lost their first crop of the season because of the extensive process needed to get fields back into production.

Then, the region experienced cooler spring and summer season weather, delaying crop growth and harvest. In particular, the winegrape harvest season was delayed into October and November due to the cool weather pattern that persisted.

Recently, the 2023 County of Monterey Crop and Livestock Report was released. The report noted a decline in production value of nearly 7% due to weather conditions that growers faced. While the value of crops produced exceeded $4.35 billion in 2023, it was a decline of nearly $300 million in crop production from 2022.

Overall, the drop in production impacted vegetables and leafy green crops the most. A majority of the top 10 crops lost production value due to the uncooperative weather. Added together, the weather assumed control of how much farmers could produce for much of the year. In addition to the reduction in crop value, the loss of production and costs of remediation from this extraordinary year impacted the bottom line of many farming operations.

But despite the disappointing figures, farmers in our renowned vegetable growing region—critical for America and the world—showed their resiliency in cleaning up, renourishing their fields and continuing their vital agricultural production.

Even with reduced output, this past year’s production values highlighted the diversification of our local agricultural economy. Monterey County farmers and ranchers produce more than 150 different crops each year, managing market demand dictated by consumers in California and far beyond. As a result, Monterey County’s agricultural sector balances out crops that are underperforming each year with those that have improved production and marketability.

Not only is our nation’s marketplace important, Monterey County growers export more than 268 million pounds of products to countries as diverse as Taiwan and Saudi Arabia. Monterey County is a global marketplace that contends with multiple risks and market fluctuations each year.

Producing a wide range of crops each year tends to even out the fluctuations in the individual crop pricing, demand and production challenges. What farmers and ranchers experienced in 2023 was a perfect storm of weather-related challenges. Impacts of weather have always had control over production values, and when multiple weather disasters happen in one year, the result is a wider economic impact.

It goes without saying that farmers cannot control the weather, but they can do their best to manage some of the risks involved in growing quick-turn crops each season. Last year demonstrated that management of these risks can overwhelm the best of farm production practices.

The Monterey County crop report takes a theme of “Together We Rise” by highlighting the recent decade of challenges that farmers, ranchers and viticulturalists have endured—drought, wildfires, flooding and the pandemic. But those are not the only challenges. California’s 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act forces increasingly difficult conversations about water use, farming practices, crops produced and resource development projects. The long-term costs and impacts of SGMA have yet to be fully realized.

Also, there is the ongoing battle that farmers must wage with exotic pests and diseases that evolve and plague our crops each year, challenging the viability of farms throughout our state.

While our crop report shows a decline in production values, the character and resolve of our community is evident in the continued optimism of our farmers that the next year will always be better. Yes, farmers may be eternal optimists. But that lies in their determination and innate ability to adapt.

Our farmers in Monterey County and the Salinas Valley are renowned as leaders in employing new technologies that enhance the agronomics of farming. They are innovators in implementing smart-farming practices in the face of a changing climate and extreme weather events. They instill pride in specialty crops, producing foods that enhance our daily diets and health.

Our farmers do it all, no matter how fickle the weather patterns or how furious the storms may be. They keep farming—for all of us.

(Norm Groot is executive director of the Monterey County Farm Bureau. He may be reached at norm@montereycfb.com.)

By Peter Ansel

Far too many Californians have been impacted by a worsening insurance market crisis, which creates confusion and anxiety as it imposes ever higher costs in America’s most expensive state to live.

The insurance crisis delays housing production and impedes real estate transactions. It curbs discretionary spending, making it harder to raise local sales taxes. It stresses retirees on fixed incomes, forcing many to consider resettling out of state.

In 1988, California voters passed Proposition 103, which promised transparency and fairness in the rating plans process that determines the cost of insurance. The measure admirably kept insurance costs low, providing Californians with largely affordable property insurance rates.

But in 2017, amid a then-record year for wildfire destruction in California, insurers faced massive property loss claims exceeding their ability to meet reasonable profit expectations and conduct business. The challenge deepened with new record fire years in 2018 and 2020.

Meanwhile, the California Department of Insurance struggled to timely approve new rate plan filings due to issues including staffing levels and legal challenges. By the early 2020s, it was no surprise that insurers were taking actions to create a new market dynamic to restore profitability to their California portfolios.

It may be hard to describe nonrenewals or cancellations of residential and commercial property insurance policies as a strategy. But those are the levers insurers have used to make their case to California that the state market is broken.

The California Fair Access to Insurance Requirements, or FAIR Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort, has faced surging demands to provide insurance alternatives, which often come at high costs. This is because residential and commercial property policyholders—including farmers and ranchers—have faced market cancellations or nonrenewals, even for properties outside high fire-risk areas.

Insurers rely on satellite imagery and drone flyovers to identity reasons for nonrenewing property insurance policies without providing consumers with photographs, video or even a report on how to mitigate those issues. Nonrenewal determinations could be based on insurers’ internal guidelines, such as a 1-mile proximity to high-risk fire areas that fails to exempt structures surrounded by row crops or consider defensible space, proactive home hardening or other nonflammable aspects of those parcels.

The Department of Insurance says it has an agreement with insurers on new regulations to restore their ability to conduct business in our broken market. But nonrenewals are expected to increase during the next two years, with still more FAIR Plan policies being issued to address the fallout. The situation is unsustainable.

Insurers will be allowed to submit rating plans based on new catastrophe modeling, which may bring higher rates to all policyholders in the state. State Farm asked for a 30% rate increase in early July just to stay in the market, arguing that the increase would fend off insolvency issues. Obviously, insurers need to be able to pay incurred claims, which include high costs of rebuilding in California.

Last year, the California Farm Bureau sponsored state Senate Bill 505 to help commercial insurance policies in the FAIR Plan participate in a clearinghouse program to move back to the competitive insurance marketplace. In July, Farm Bureau worked with Cal Fire and offices of Gov. Gavin Newsom and state Sen. Scott Weiner, D-San Francisco, to amend Senate Bill 610. The measure directs the Office of the State Fire Marshal to create new wildfire mitigation area maps that change a current tiered fire-risk map delineation to better reflect overall “fire-hazard severity” in state and local responsibility areas.

Farm Bureau’s amendments would require the fire marshal to consider excluding areas such as working rangelands and cultivated, plowed and irrigated agricultural properties with a low risk of wildfire propagation when developing the new maps.

The Department of Insurance plans to use the maps to identify distressed areas to track where insurers are competing for business and to move policies out of the FAIR Plan during the next two years. By recognizing the low risks of agricultural properties, many of those properties should move out of the FAIR Plan and back into the competitive insurance marketplace.

The 2025-26 legislative session kicks off in just five months. While the past year largely saw the Legislature defer to Department of Insurance efforts to address the crisis, constituents are making daily calls to elected officials complaining about being nonrenewed by insurers. When those nonrenewals fail to account for actual property risks, consumers may rightly conclude the market is undertaking an exercise in expectancy confirmation, in which insurers will land the market exactly where they want it.

Farmers and ranchers deserve fair treatment when the characteristics of working agricultural lands—with cleared properties, low fuel loads and minimal wildfire risk—warrant a nonflammable classification in the state’s wildfire mitigation area mapping, as those same maps determine a consumer’s access to affordable insurance.

(Peter Ansel is a senior policy advocate for the California Farm Bureau. He may be contacted at pansel@cfbf.com.)

By Daniel Munch

In U.S. history, narratives of vast swarms of locusts ravaging farmland are often recounted. Not all grasshoppers are locusts, and the swarms aren’t quite as big as they were in the 1800s, but grasshoppers and Mormon crickets remain a persistent risk to agriculture, inflicting significant damage to rangeland and crops.

Almost 400 native species of grasshoppers inhabit the Western U.S., though only a small fraction—about 12 species—are considered pests. Grasshoppers compete with cattle and other herbivores for forage and are more likely to become a threat in areas with less than 30 inches of rainfall annually. They can consume up to 50% of their body weight each day in forage—with just 30 pounds of grasshoppers devouring as much as a 600-pound steer in a day.

Grasshoppers are an even bigger menace to crop farmers and ranchers on public and private lands when drought conditions are added to the mix. Grasshopper and cricket outbreaks not only result in the physical destruction of forage and crops but also contribute to soil erosion and degradation, disrupt rangeland nutrient cycles and impede rangeland water filtration, which can have lasting impacts on rangeland ecosystems.

Western landowners face heightened risks from grasshoppers due to the substantial amount of federally owned land in the region. Pest infestations on federal lands reduce the quantity and quality of forage available for those with public lands grazing leases. In the absence of grasshopper and cricket management on federal lands, insects can migrate onto private lands, undermining the effectiveness of common private pest management efforts.

In Northern California’s Modoc County alone, the agricultural commissioner estimated more than $52 million in crop and rangeland losses due to severe grasshopper infestations in 2023. This included $16 million in damage to alfalfa, which had a yield decrease from 6.4 tons per acre to 4.48 tons per acre. Other Modoc County impacts included $15 million in grain hay yield losses, $6 million in lost pasture forage value, $2 million in small grain yield losses and $1.8 million in other hay yield losses.

In neighboring Siskiyou County, conservative estimates of crop and forage yield losses exceeded $32 million. In Plumas County, they were more than $1 million.

Alfalfa has been particularly impacted. Conservative estimates put production value losses in 2023 due to grasshopper infestations at $318 million in western states. This represents a baseline number with true impacts likely hundreds of millions of dollars higher. Losses of this magnitude are detrimental to operations already operating on small and often negative margins and reveal the true threat of these insects on farmers’ and ranchers’ livelihoods.

Another way to pinpoint some grasshopper damages is through federal Risk Management Agency indemnity data that show payments made on crop insurance policies triggered from an insect-related cause of loss. In Montana, for instance, there were $7.7 million in indemnity payments made for crops lost to insects in 2023. This includes more than $5 million in wheat, more than $1.6 million in dry peas and $439,725 in barley.

The Rangeland Grasshopper and Mormon Cricket Suppression Program, administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal Plant Health Inspection Service, covers 100% of the treatment costs on federal and tribal rangelands. It pays 50% of costs on state lands, with the state picking up the rest, and 33% on private rangeland, with state and landowners sharing remaining costs.

It’s important to note that APHIS is unable to conduct suppression programs for grasshoppers and Mormon crickets on private croplands. However, they do perform rangeland suppression treatments in areas where federally managed rangeland is directly adjacent to private croplands.

APHIS may apply insecticides using several different methods, including using ground equipment by distributing baits usually made out of wheat bran or rolled oats and carbaryl or aerially by spraying ultra-low-volume applications on treated acres. Most commonly, APHIS uses a method of integrated pest management for grasshoppers and crickets called reduced area and agent treatments to limit costs and insecticide use.

Between 2019 and 2023, APHIS protected over 3.33 million acres across eight Western states, with 2.8 million acres treated for grasshopper control and 482,000 acres for Mormon crickets. This has corresponded to $5.68 million in program treatment expenditures during the five-year span.

Even in the 21st century, outbreaks of grasshoppers and Mormon crickets pose a threat to Western U.S. agriculture. Efforts to manage and mitigate grasshopper populations involve sophisticated monitoring and targeted treatments. Continued coordination and efforts among the federal government, states and private landowners is essential to safeguarding the livelihoods of farmers and ranchers against these small but hungry pests.

(Daniel Munch is an economist for the American Farm Bureau Federation. This article is adapted from his report, “Grasshoppers Eating into Western Farmers’ and Ranchers’ Bottom Lines,” which may be found at fb.org/market-intel.)

By Matthew Viohl

In the alphabet soup of federal government agencies, farmers and ranchers are well familiar with agency acronyms such as USDA, BLM, EPA and the IRS.

While we may often prefer to forget the latter of those exists, employers are now learning of a different bureau housed under the U.S. Department of the Treasury—the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN.

The reason for learning what FinCEN is comes almost exclusively as a result of the Corporate Transparency Act. Signed into law in late 2021, the legislation imposed a new regulation that requires applicable businesses to submit a Beneficial Ownership Information Report, or BOIR, by Jan. 1, 2025.

Per the Treasury Department, roughly 32 million businesses are expected to be liable for filing such a report, including many farms, ranches and agricultural businesses.

Now, I know you’re probably thinking, “I don’t recall anyone from the Treasury Department ever calling me up to let me know about this.” My guess is you’re not alone. In a recent hearing, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen revealed that fewer than 3 million reports have been filed. That is less than 10% of total expected reports through nearly much of the open filing period.

You are also probably wondering what a report is exactly and whether it applies to you. Let’s start with the first piece. FinCEN is trying to establish those who identify as a “beneficial owner” for a given company. A beneficial owner is anyone who either directly or indirectly exercises substantial control of the company or owns or controls at least 25% of a company’s interests.

Any such person who meets this threshold will be required to submit the following on a BOIR: name, date of birth, address and identifying number, which could either be from a driver’s license, passport or even a unique FinCEN ID. Put all of these together for each beneficial owner and you have an official BOIR ready to file.

Own a family business where ownership is split evenly between four individuals? Then that’s four individuals whose information needs to be collected.

As for which businesses this applies to? The answer is: quite a lot.

The Corporate Transparency Act gives exemptions to 23 specific types of entities, which can be found on the CTA FAQ portal. The most relevant may be the large operating company exemption, which excuses companies with at least 20 full-time employees.

The devil is in the details though, so it is best to go online and examine the requirements and exemptions yourself. FinCEN has a robust webpage, www.fincen.gov, that has answers to many questions, as well as contact details if you’re still unsure about your potential obligations.

You are going to want to figure out your potential liability because of what could happen if you choose to not file a BOIR. Willful failure to submit this report could lead to civil and criminal penalties. This includes fines of up to $10,000 and even jail time.

Secretary Yellen has reiterated that the CTA was not formed for the purpose of going after mom-and-pop shops that forget to file reports. The original intent behind the legislation was to help FinCEN detect, prevent and punish financial crimes carried out by money launderers, including those enabling financial terrorism and other bad actors.

While this is all well and good, a legal requirement remains a legal requirement. The federal government may not intend to go after small businesses, but many feel targeted. Not only that, but many people are rightfully leery of providing even more private data to an agency they may be just hearing about and don’t understand.

What is being done to alter this quickly approaching deadline? Some congressional efforts have begun to try to reverse what Congress did just three years ago. But the prospects of legislative relief seem dim at this point.

However, on the judicial front, the National Small Business Association successfully sued the Treasury Department on behalf of its members. In March, a U.S. District Court ruled that the Corporate Transparency Act was unconstitutional and unfairly burdened small businesses by requesting this personal data. While the Treasury Department is appealing that decision, NSBA’s 60,000 members are no longer required to file a BOIR, at least for now.

This still leaves more than 31 million businesses on the hook for filing a BOIR by the end of the year. While I cannot say for certain if that includes your farm or ranch, my guess is there’s a good chance it does.

A counterpart of mine in Washington, D.C., recently quipped, “The federal government seems intent to make 30 million felons overnight.” Rest assured, that’s not the case.

You’re largely safe from becoming one, unless you happen to be a money launderer. Still, I would urge you to go online and determine your legal obligations so that you can avoid any fines or penalties that could result if you fail to file.

(Matthew Viohl is director of federal policy for the California Farm Bureau. He may be contacted at mviohl@cfbf.com.)

By Fritz Durst

From prolonged drought to excessive flooding, water conditions in California have been anything but consistent during the past few years. That’s a problem for one of the world’s leading agricultural regions.

With climate change threatening one of California’s biggest industries, we need to invest in a truly resilient and reliable water future. We need Sites Reservoir.

After the worst drought on record in 2022, historic, wet winters in 2023 and 2024 produced record rain that filled reservoirs and aquifers above average levels. It was a welcome change for California’s farms, which were relying on depleted wells and aquifers in the previous two years. But it wasn’t enough to overcome losses from the state’s large groundwater deficit.

If it were already operational, Sites Reservoir—a 1.5 million acre-feet off-stream water storage project planned for rural Glenn and Colusa counties north of Sacramento—would be 100% full as of this past spring.

As California is predicted to get more precipitation in the form of rain, we need to capitalize on wet periods and store excess water for the inevitable dry periods that will follow. Thankfully, Sites Reservoir is specifically designed to adapt to our changing climate, providing significant benefits to our local agricultural economy.

It will capture and store water during storm events for use during severe dry periods when it is needed the most, increasing the flexibility, reliability and resiliency of our statewide water supply. The irrigation districts, urban water agencies and natural resource agencies investing in Sites Reservoir will have flexibility to use their storage space and stored water in a way that makes sense for their communities.

For our farmers and ranchers, it will provide additional water to sustain farming and food production, especially as hotter and drier weather becomes more frequent.

By capturing and storing water during wet periods, farms will be able to tap into a savings account during dry periods instead of leaving land fallow or forgoing planting and seeding, as they’ve had to do in recent years. This will create a stronger agricultural economy, which creates a ripple of benefits for our rural communities that depend on this way of life.

There will be economic benefits, too. Sites Reservoir will create an estimated 2,000 direct jobs at the peak of construction. The Sites Project Authority is committed to training and hiring local workers and businesses throughout construction, ensuring that Colusa and other Sacramento Valley counties benefit from this job creation.

Once operational, Sites Reservoir will bring more people to Colusa County for camping, boating and similar activities, which means increased activity at local restaurants, retail stores and other businesses.

We’re eager to deliver these benefits to California’s farms and communities, so last year, we set out to achieve significant funding, planning and permitting goals for Sites Reservoir. Thanks to collaboration, local engagement and support from our state and federal partners, we did just that.

Last fall, after extensive review, we certified the Final Environmental Impact Report for the project—one of the most comprehensive environmental analyses ever done for a water supply project.

Sites Reservoir was also the first project selected by Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state Legislature for streamlined judicial review under Senate Bill 149. We’re also thankful to have won a recent environmental court case, which found the final EIR fully complies with the California Environmental Quality Act.

On the permitting front, the California State Water Resources Control Board deemed the project’s water right application complete. That moved Sites Reservoir through to the next phase of the process, during which the board will determine whether to issue a water right permit for the project.

Finally, the project, which is 100% funded by local, state and federal public dollars, has secured significant investments in the past few years. More than $517 million in federal funding is committed to the project. Sites is also eligible for $875 million in funding from the state under the Proposition 1 initiative approved by California voters in 2014.

On top of these direct investments, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency also invited Sites to apply for a $2.2 billion loan through the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act. This low-interest loan will save millions of dollars during the life of the Sites Project.

The project has hit many milestones during the past few years, and we’re excited to be this close to the finish line. The state water board is considering the Sites Reservoir water-right permit, and we expect that decision in 2025.

With a permit in hand and other key requirements met, we hope to start construction in 2026. It’s time to build Sites now— and we are closer than ever.

(Fritz Durst is a Yolo County farmer and chairman of the Sites Joint Power Authority. He may be contacted at fdurst@rd108.org.)

By Betty Resnick

After decades of substantial U.S. agricultural trade surpluses, staggering agricultural trade deficits during the past two years have caught the nation’s attention.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service projects a record $32 billion agricultural trade deficit for the 2024 fiscal year. This follows a record deficit of $16.7 billion in 2023 and would be only the fourth agricultural trade deficit in the past 50 years.

Agricultural trade is essential to our nation’s food security and benefits farmers and consumers alike. Farmers find export markets eager to buy U.S. products that we grow in abundance, such as grains, oilseeds, meat and more. American consumers have become used to eating fresh fruits and vegetables year-round, much of which would be impossible without imports from our southern trading partners.

The category with the largest trade deficit is horticultural products—predominantly specialty crops, including fresh fruits and vegetables. Accounting for 49% of all imports by value, it has increased by $22 billion since fiscal year 2020. In part, the increase in horticultural products reflects a thriving U.S. economy, the strong U.S. dollar and America’s focus on healthy diets.

However, rising imports are both a cause and effect of the reduction in U.S. fresh fruit and vegetable production. These sectors have declined in volume by 10% and 23%, respectively, since 2000. This is due to a multitude of factors, including land loss due to urban encroachment, diseases such as citrus greening and, probably most importantly, a lack of affordable and available farm labor.

For fruit and vegetable production, labor costs account for more than 38% and 28% of input costs, respectively. Increasing costs and decreasing revenues make for an unprofitable business and a further reduction in U.S. fruit and vegetable production.

The phenomenon is demonstrated in the U.S. table grape industry. More than 99% of all U.S. table grapes are grown in California and are available in stores from May to January. While only 2% of all table grape imports occurred between July and November in 2004, the share had grown to 13% in 2023. For the months of July, October and November, imports have grown an overwhelming 1,126%.

Meanwhile, two major factors have contributed to the decline of the value of U.S. exports since 2021: falling commodity prices and the strong U.S. dollar. As corn and soy prices fell, the export value naturally decreased.

The strong U.S. dollar is also making U.S. products less competitive on currency exchange alone. For instance, Japan is consistently a top-five market for U.S. agricultural products. The Japanese yen is the lowest it has been against the dollar since 1990.

While this exchange rate is great for U.S. tourists visiting Japan, it is very difficult for Japanese consumers seeking to purchase quality U.S. products.

U.S. grain and oilseed exports are seeing headwinds from rising competition from Brazil. Efforts by China to become less dependent on agricultural imports from the U.S. are also having an impact. In fact, fiscal year 2024 is forecasted to be the first year that Mexico is the top destination for U.S. agricultural exports.

There is also a growing trade deficit in animal fats and vegetable oils spurred by rapid market—and policy-driven—growth demand for feedstocks for renewable diesel production.

It does not help that the U.S. has not entered any new free trade agreements with new trading partners since 2012 as the rest of the world has continued to sign more FTAs. For example, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, formed by the other partners in the aftermath of the U.S. abandoning the negotiated but unratified Trans-Pacific Partnership, is quickly slashing tariffs for other exporters in major U.S. export markets on the Pacific Rim.

This is causing U.S. market shares to shrink for products ranging from frozen fries to blueberries to pet food.

USDA Market Access and Foreign Market Development programs support agricultural exports by providing matching funds to industry groups that promote U.S. agricultural products abroad. But funding has not been increased since 2006 and 2002, respectively. The farm bill passed in the House Committee on Agriculture seeks to double MAP and FMD funding.

The expanding trade deficit reflects some serious challenges imposed on U.S. agriculture, including lower commodity prices, stress in domestic specialty crop production and less competitive access to many traditional U.S. export markets, among other factors.

Policy changes to stem rapidly increasing farm labor costs, increase exports by negotiating lower tariffs and better market access and more international market promotion funding could help return the U.S. to agricultural trade surpluses.

(Betty Resnick is an economist for the American Farm Bureau Federation. This article is condensed from her Market Intel report, “Record U.S. Agricultural Trade Deficit Forecasted to Keep Growing,” which may be found at fb.org/market-intel.)

By Edward Ring

Practical solutions to California’s energy and water shortages will always have a better chance of being implemented if they adhere to the limitations placed upon them by those concerned about climate change. A solution that should work for everyone is forest thinning. It will save our forests, with the added benefit of increasing our water supply.

Wildfires have become catastrophic because the California Legislature funds fire suppression at the same time as it has regulated timber harvesting nearly out of existence. We are very good at squelching wildfires before they get started. But if ignited, our overgrown forests can now fuel infernos that were once unfathomable.

California’s forests today have tree densities that are many times what is historically normal, and conditions are more dangerous because we’ve reduced our annual timber harvest from 6 billion board feet per year in the 1990s to around 1.5 billion board feet today.

In past millennia, fires caused by lightning strikes routinely burned off undergrowth and a high percentage of small trees, leaving the larger trees to survive. Today, trees and undergrowth are so crowded that everything is stressed. Light, soil nutrients and water are shared by anywhere between two and six times as many trees and plants as these ecosystems naturally evolved to support. Observations of excessive tree density are corroborated by numerous studies, testimony and journalistic investigations.

This is why fires have gotten so bad. Anyone concerned about climate resiliency who cares about the health of our forests should be demanding forest thinning.

Examples of success with forest thinning are readily available. When the Creek Fire tore through the forests of Fresno, Madera, and Mariposa counties in 2020, 20,000 acres around Shaver Lake were spared. The fire engulfed an estimated 380,000 acres but inflicted almost no damage in these 20,000 acres of managed forests. For decades, Southern California Edison protected the watershed feeding into the 135,000 acre-foot Shaver Lake reservoir by forest thinning via selective logging and controlled burns. Significantly, the wildlife counts in these managed forests were consistently higher than average.

That forests subject to responsible logging actually report more robust populations of wildlife, including the endangered spotted owl, is rarely acknowledged. But comparisons between commercially managed forests in California’s Northern Sierra and adjacent national forests that are off limits to logging confirm this assertion. Even clear cuts, when implemented on a multi-decade rotation and with each cut limited in area, are beneficial to wildlife. They temporarily create meadows that create forage for deer, in turn creating food for mountain lions. These open areas also help owls and other raptors spot prey. When the slash is furrowed along level contours, runoff is contained and percolates.

Logging has come a long way. It’s time to bring it back to save the forests. But what about water? It turns out that forest thinning also reduces the amount of water that is immediately taken up by the roots of overcrowded trees and undergrowth and transpired into the atmosphere. Instead, more of this water can run off into tributaries or percolate to recharge springs. How much water?

A 2011 study by experts from the University of California, Merced, and UC Berkeley provides enough data to begin to answer that question. It reports that 60% of the state’s consumptive water comes in the form of Sierra runoff, and when forest cover is reduced by 40%, total runoff increases by an estimated 9%. California’s consumptive use of water, including urban and agricultural use but not including diversions for ecosystem health, is around 40 million acre-feet per year. That means if California’s forests were thinned appropriately, 2.2 million acre-feet of water would be added to California’s water supply in an average year.

This is not a trivial increase, particularly because it could be realized at no expense to taxpayers. In fact, reviving California’s timber industry would create thousands of jobs and industry profits, which would increase state tax revenues.

Another benefit would be the obvious upside of having an additional 2 million acre-feet of water to deliver to California farmers. That’s enough to irrigate at least a half-million acres, with all the jobs, food and tax revenues this productive farmland would contribute to California.

Restoring California’s forests to a healthy density is a win for everyone. It will restore wildlife habitat at the same time as it revitalizes California’s logging industry. It will sequester carbon in lumber products, generate fuel for biomass energy and prevent super fires. By transforming California’s forested watersheds, it will increase California’s water supply, boost hydroelectric power generation and, most importantly, help maintain California’s status as America’s food basket.

What are we waiting for? If you harvest more timber, you can harvest more water.

(Edward Ring is a senior fellow with the California Policy Center and author of the “The Abundance Choice: Our Fight for More Water in California.” He may be contacted at ed@edwardring.com.)