UFW legacy [Bakersfield Californian]
If you drive by the many farms along Kern County highways at a certain time of year, you'll see portable toilets, barrels of drinking water and tents or shade umbrellas. The absence of such health and safety measures risks sanctions from the California Department of Industrial Relations' Occupational Safety and Health division. If they're common and unremarkable today, that's to no small degree the legacy of the United Farm Workers of America, which has struggled for decades to improve farm laborer work conditions, wages and benefits…The UFW remains a political powerhouse in Washington, D.C., and to a lesser extent in Sacramento. But membership has fallen 14 percent over the last decade to about 4,264 as of last year, according to figures reported to the U.S. Department of Labor…Last year, a major test of the UFW's strength failed to yield victory. It has been trying for years to pass so-called card-check legislation making it easier to establish union representation…Those hopes were dashed when Gov. Jerry Brown, who famously supported the UFW in 1975, vetoed the bill last year…Another challenge facing the farmworker movement is the spector of infighting.
http://www.bakersfieldcalifornian.com/local/x148505804/UFW-legacy
Supervisors to look at impact of bypass flooding on ag land [Davis Enterprise]
Plans to increase the frequency and duration of flooding in the Yolo Bypass to preserve fish habitat likely can be done with minimal impact to Yolo County’s agricultural industry, says Supervisor Jim Provenza of Davis. Provenza and his colleagues on the Yolo County Board of Supervisors will receive a report Tuesday from UC Davis researchers that outlines the impact of increased flooding on crop yield and the regional economy. The flooding is a major component of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan but has raised concerns about the impact on Yolo County’s economy if significant portions of the county’s ag land were to remain underwater and unplanted… Working with county staff as well as farmers, the researchers found the impact on Yolo County’s agricultural economy increases as the period of flooding extends later and later into the year. If flooding ends by Feb. 15, the report says, “agriculture is largely unaffected.”
Farmland use is key, experts say at California Women for Agriculture forum [Palm Springs Desert Sun]
The worldwide demand for food will double by 2050, presenting opportunities and challenges for the desert's farming community, a U.S. Department of Agriculture spokesman said
this past week.The urbanization of communities across the globe means more people will be consuming — and less will be producing — the crops needed to sustain a hungry world, said Robert Tse, Community Planning & Development specialist for the USDA. Tse was one of the panelists at a California Women for Agriculture-sponsored forum, “California — Feeding the World,” at the Boys & Girls Club in Mecca… CWA presented the event in cooperation with the Riverside County Farm Bureau and the California Hispanic Association of Professionals in Agriculture.
State court rejects appeal in Watsonville farmworker firing: Dutra Farms due in court Monday on contempt charge [Santa Cruz Sentinel]
An appeals court on Friday rejected a bid by a Pajaro Valley raspberry grower to stay a lower court ruling requiring the reinstatement of a farmworker allegedly fired for union organizing. The decision is the latest turn in what's considered a test case of a new state law aimed at strengthening the rights of farmworkers to unionize. Monday, Dutra Farms is due in Santa Cruz County Superior Court to explain to Judge Paul Marigonda why it shouldn't be held in contempt for failing to give Dalia Santiago her job back.
USDA to test beef for more strains of E. coli [Washington Post]
While most of the outbreaks that have riveted the public for nearly two decades involved one strain of E. coli, the government will soon outlaw another six strains in the same family of bacteria, including the one that killed Kayla. Next month, the Agriculture Department will begin testing raw ground beef for the “Big Six” at meat plants in order to keep these pathogens off people’s plates. The decision comes four years after scientists and government experts warned of the dangers these germs pose to the nation’s food supply. Since then, the Big Six have been repeatedly tied to multi-state outbreaks and illnesses. Most of those illnesses were not linked to beef. They were linked to sprouts or lettuce or no source at all. The meat industry argues that it is being unfairly targeted. Only once before — with the notorious E. coli O157:H7 — have regulators banned a pathogen from fresh meat.
Editorial: Water contractors need to get real [Sacramento Bee]
What these contractors should be seeking is what state law calls for – better reliability of water deliveries, not more total supply. Properly designed and operated, a canal or tunnel could be a better environmental alternative than the current Delta pumps and would likely save water exporters from the huge dips in deliveries they currently experience. But if exporters see BDCP as a conduit for hoarding more water than ever, the project will face overwhelming opposition, get tripped up in the courts and be a waste of six years and $150 million in planning.The task now falls on Brown to manage expectations his team has so far failed to corral. If he can't, the Bay Delta Conservation Plan is doomed.
http://www.sacbee.com/2012/05/13/4484650/water-contractors-need-to-get.html
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