Environmentalists, farmers take water quality fight to state: Debate centers on agricultural wastewater regulation [Santa Cruz Sentinel]
WATSONVILLE - A long-running battle over agricultural pollution of Central Coast water has moved to Sacramento. The Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board spent more than three years working on rules governing the discharge of agricultural wastewater before approving a plan in March. But now both sides in the debate are appealing to the State Water Resources Control Board to make changes.
Your salad: A search for where the wild things were [NPR/The Salt]
When you tear open a bag of prewashed salad greens, do you worry that this superhealthful fast food could actually make you sick? The companies that sold you that salad do worry about it. Because no matter how much they try to keep dangerous microbes out of that bag, they can't seem to guarantee that they've caught every one.…In a quest to find out why contamination remains a problem, and what companies are doing about it, I went to one of America's great centers of salad-greens production: the Salinas Valley of California….But making sure it never happens again is really hard because, despite an intensive investigation, no one knows exactly what caused it to happen the first time….Fighting microbes, in fact, is a little like boxing blindfolded. You can't see those disease-causing bacteria, but you know that they're out there, in lots of places.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/04/19/150875315/the-great-salad-microbe-hunt-california-style
Government takeover of farm subsidy would save billions, economist says [NPR/The Salt]
Arithmetic can be quite enlightening sometimes. One of the country's top agricultural economists just fiddled with the government's balance sheet on crop insurance, and arrived at a shocking conclusion: We'd spend billions of dollars less than we do now if we just gave away a simplified version of the insurance for free…."It is truly amazing, which is why I needed to write this up," says Bruce Babcock, the economist at Iowa State University who authored the new study, commissioned by the Environmental Working Group, a long-time critic of farm subsidies. The results suggest farmers would also end up with more money in their pockets. The only losers, apparently, would be the companies that currently sell those subsidized crop insurance policies to farmers….With the government short of money, there's pressure to cut farm subsidies, and one program — so-called "direct payments" to farmers — probably will disappear. Many farm groups have drawn the line at crop insurance. They're pushing hard to keep the program and even expand it. Kenneth Dierschke, president of the Texas Farm Bureau, calls it " the last vestige of a safety net for American agriculture." And Mary Kay Thatcher, Director of Congressional Affairs for the American Farm Bureau Federation, points to the program's popularity among farmers as evidence that it should be renewed. "It's working," she tells The Salt.
Editorial: Enforcement-only approach to immigration has made problems worse [San Jose Mercury News]
U.S. Rep Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, always has worked for comprehensive immigration reform. But at a House hearing Wednesday in Washington, she offered a particularly compelling argument against the enforcement-only approach some are promoting: It has actually made the nation's immigration problems worse. Lofgren was speaking to the subcommittee on immigration about a proposal by Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, to make the E-Verify system mandatory….Mandatory E-Verify doesn't appear to have the votes to pass in this Congress. But neither does real reform, largely because anything smacking of amnesty is politically toxic….We're disappointed that President Barack Obama has failed to live up to his campaign promise to tackle immigration reform….Perhaps after this election, reform will be possible. In the meantime, the least Congress can do, as Lofgren says, is avoid making things worse with horrors like E-Verify.
Specialty prunes may be Mid-Valley boon [Marysville Appeal-Democrat]
It's called "shee-may," and it might be a salvation to the prune industry's struggles. During recent trips to China, Terry Barton was pleasantly surprised to learn the Chinese love California prunes. But their appetite is not for the large dried plums westerners are accustomed to, rather, it's smaller dried fruit with intact pits that are steadily increasing in demand. "They love American products," he said. "It's time for us to be putting emphasis on that product."
http://www.appeal-democrat.com/news/prunes-115547-china-growers.html
Farmers and grocers start thinking outside the wax box [Santa Cruz Sentinel]
Farmers and grocers are thinking outside the box - the wax-lined box, that is. The produce industry - which uses tons of the nonrecyclable paraffin-coated cardboard boxes each year to ship fresh fruits and vegetables all over the world - is weighing a greener, wax-free option. Thursday, Lakeside Organic Gardens of Watsonville shipped a small load of iceberg lettuce to New Leaf Community Market in Santa Cruz using cardboard boxes lined with a sustainable alternative.
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/ci_20437350/farmers-and-grocers-start-thinking-outside-wax-box
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