Senate
expected to pass farm bill next week; House has work to do [Fresno Bee]
Californians
score some wins, losses and split-decisions in the big Senate farm bill set for
long-awaited approval Monday. The state's fruit and vegetable growers will
still harvest research and block grant funding. Cotton, rice and wheat growers
will lose one subsidy, but keep another. Food stamp recipients will face
tighter standards, but not as much as House conservatives want….The Senate's
latest bill largely continues several specialty grant, research and trade
promotion programs that benefit California's fruits and vegetables producers.
Formally called the Agriculture Reform, Food and Jobs Act, the legislation
seems destined for straight-forward Senate passage Monday…. The expected Senate
approval will move the action over to the House, where lawmakers hope to finish
their own version before the July 4 recess.
Which
comes first: California's egg rule, or everyone else's? [Los Angeles Times]
…A
fight has broken out over how egg-laying hens should be treated — and
specifically whether California can be blocked from requiring that eggs
imported into the state be produced under voter-approved standards ensuring
that the chickens can spread their wings. This being Congress, the measure
pushed by Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) is not just about eggs. It has morphed into
a dispute over the rights of the states versus those of the federal government,
with a host of laws governing food and even animal welfare potentially in the
balance….King is taking aim at California's Proposition 2, a much-debated 2008
initiative that requires California farmers to give egg-laying birds enough
room to stand and spread their wings….Two years after it passed, then-Gov.
Arnold Schwarzenegger signed legislation and added a requirement that, when the
initiative takes effect in 2015, all eggs sold in the state come from farms
that meet the California standards. King and his allies contend that California
is essentially setting a national standard for treatment of hens and stepping
into Congress' authority to regulate interstate commerce.
As
Senate takes up immigration reform, land mines lurk [Los Angeles Times]
…Immigration
reform has eluded Congress in the decades since President Reagan signed the
last substantial overhaul. But this time may be different. Top Republicans have
begun to join Democrats in supporting a path to citizenship for the estimated
11 million people in the country illegally. With a vote to start debate set for
Tuesday, the legislation faces a gantlet of amendments that could attract
needed Republicans or upset the delicate balance celebrated that night on the
Senate steps….In exchange for the path to citizenship, deals were cut to stem
future illegal immigration by dramatically expanding guest-worker programs,
including for farm laborers and highly skilled professionals. But these
compacts reached in backroom talks between business and labor have come under
fire from opponents who say they taint the bill, which has grown from 844 pages
to 1,077.
Delta
could get saltier if tunnels are built [Sacramento Bee]
The
two giant water diversion tunnels Gov. Jerry Brown proposes building in the
Delta would be large enough to meet annual water needs for a city such as
Newport Beach in a single day's gulp from the Sacramento River. That gulp,
however, would also prevent a lot of fresh water from flowing through the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. This would likely make water saltier for farms
near Isleton and cities such as Antioch, which draws some of its drinking water
from the Delta. This marks just one of the complex trade-offs sprinkled through
the Bay Delta Conservation Plan, the massive proposal to re-engineer
California's primary water delivery system that includes the two tunnels.
Federal
protection of gray wolves may be lifted, Agency Says [New York Times
Gray
wolves, whose packs now prowl through the northern Rockies and the forests
along the Great Lakes, no longer need endangered-species protection to prevent
their extinction, the Obama administration said Friday. The Fish and Wildlife
Service unveiled a proposal to eliminate the remaining restrictions across the
country, saying wolves are flourishing again. The only populations to have
protection, under the proposal, would be Mexican wolves in southern Arizona and
New Mexico and a small experimental population in North Carolina. The
announcement by Daniel M. Ashe, the director of the Fish and Wildlife Service,
marked the imminent end of 50 years of controversial efforts to bring back a
predator that once roamed the continent but had been all but exterminated in
the United States by the mid-20th century.…States like California, Colorado and
Utah have few, if any, packs now. It is unclear, if the proposal is made final,
whether migrating wolves from the Rockies could flourish there.
Turning
cow dung into electricity [Los Angeles Times]
…
A decade or so ago, dozens of California dairy farmers built million-dollar
systems called methane digesters that convert manure into power. Then,
unexpected pollution problems, regulatory roadblocks and low rates of return
killed most such digester systems, leaving only a handful in operation. All
that could be changing as renewable energy companies develop new ways of
running digesters to boost profits. They're improving technology to meet tough
smog-control rules. At the same time, the state is trying out a streamlined
permitting process to help remove costly regulatory hurdles. Koetsier will be
the first dairy farmer to install a digester under the state's program. He said
he is optimistic that this go-around — his third attempt to make a system work
— will finally pay off.
Ag
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