Senate
passes immigration bill [Associated Press]
With
a solemnity reserved for momentous occasions, the Senate passed historic
legislation Thursday offering the priceless hope of citizenship to millions of
immigrants living illegally in America's shadows. The bill also promises a
military-style effort to secure the long-porous border with Mexico. The
bipartisan vote was 68-32 on a measure that sits atop President Barack Obama's
second-term domestic agenda. Even so, the bill's prospects are highly uncertain
in the Republican-controlled House, where conservatives generally oppose
citizenship for immigrants living in the country unlawfully….Agricultural and
farm worker leaders praised Thursday's passage of the bill….Paul Wenger,
president of the California Farm Bureau Federation, praised the bill as an
important step to help farmers and ranchers address chronic problems in hiring
"an adequate, legal immigrant workforce." "People who work on
California farms make a big contribution to our state and its economy,"
Wenger said in a statement. "It's time we provide immigrant farm employees
with a system that recognizes their contributions and permits them to work
legally on our farms and ranches."
Robots
rising in ‘Salad Bowl of the Earth’ [Financial Times]
The
“help wanted” signs dotting the farms in the Salinas Valley are going unheeded.
Even immigrant labourers are not taking the gruelling jobs Americans have long
proven they do not want, leaving a dwindling number of people willing to be
hunched over in the hot California sun to pick strawberries and lettuce by
hand. Instead there are machines. High-tech contraptions are in development or
being tested in the fields to address the farm labour shortage. For example,
automated lettuce harvesters that require half the number of workers usually
needed in the field to operate – and allow those workers to stand upright, in
the shade of the machine, to do their job.…Where state and federal government
has been slow to pass immigration reforms and other food safety regulations,
market pressures and competition have forced companies like Taylor Farms to
develop new technologies. A host of new innovations coming out of Silicon
Valley – from sensors to big data and even drones – are gaining momentum among
agriculture companies who are desperate to address these challenges.
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Farmworkers
face rape - and a system that doesn't aid them [California Report]
It's
no secret that farmworkers do some of the hardest jobs in California:
sweltering under the summer sun, picking grapes or harvesting lettuce. But one
secret about life in the fields is the problem of sexual harassment--verbal
abuse, even assault and rape. Yet many immigrant farmworker women are afraid to
report abuse….Bill Tamayo is regional attorney for the San Francisco office of
the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency charged with
protecting workers from gender-based discrimination. He says that in the fields
a woman is vulnerable to sexual assault because her supervisor has the power to
retaliate if she refuses sexual favors or complains….Over the last 15 years,
the EEOC has handled more than 186 charges of sexual harassment in
agriculture-related industries in California – far more than any other state.
Cost
of battling wildfires cuts into prevention efforts [New York Times
…As
another destructive wildfire season chars the West, the federal government is
sharply reducing financing for programs aimed at preventing catastrophic fires.
Federal money to thin out trees and clear away millions of acres of deadfall
and brittle brush has dropped by more than 25 percent in the budgets for the
past two years, a casualty of spending cuts and the rising cost of battling
active wildfires. The government has cut back on programs to reduce fire risks
in areas where homes and the wilderness collide. The United States Forest
Service treated 1.87 million acres of those lands in 2012, but expects to treat
only 685,000 acres next year….Trimming trees and clearing brush can make blazes
less destructive, and the Forest Service said it had treated more than 26
million acres since 2000. But as the government spends an increasing amount to
battle wildfires, critics say it makes little sense to cut back on prevention….
Comment: What happens with
farmers, food stamps and the USDA with no farm bill? [Washington Post]
…Setting
aside the debate over who is to blame for the farm-bill failure, we wondered
what would happen if lawmakers don’t agree on a replacement measure this
session. The Federal Eye asked Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to answer some
of those questions.…Lawmakers essentially have three options now: Enact a new
plan, approve another extension of existing policies, or do nothing and let the
current extension expire, which would leave the 1949 farm bill to fill the
void….Congress will miss an opportunity to improve farm-subsidy guidelines if
it doesn’t pass a new farm bill, Vilsack said….SNAP is part of permanent law,
so it would stay intact if the farm bill expires, even though it was not part
of the 1949 legislation. The food stamp program is flawed too, and Congress
would miss an opportunity to overhaul it by failing to act during this session.
Crop insurance is permanent law, so it would continue without a new farm bill.
But again, lawmakers could miss a chance to revise it.
Comment: Farmers pay heavy
price for nuisance litigation [Manteca Bulletin]
In
general, we don’t take kindly to the government busting down our door and
telling us how to live. Yet in 2010, the government did exactly that in a major
way: a federal district court judge ordered the uprooting of over 250 acres of
biotech-enhanced sugarbeets in Oregon….In an effort to avoid repeating
disasters like this, real and effective steps have been taken by our
representatives in Congress to provide a necessary safeguard for those our
farming communities: the Farmer Assurance Provision (FAP). Signed by the
President in early 2013, the provision prevents judges from issuing such
drastic measure and farmers can rest assured that their right to earn a living
won’t be held hostage by senseless legal battles. While the FAP is an
incredibly powerful protection for regions like ours where the economy and
workforce relies so heavily on agriculture, it is under attack by those in the
anti-biotech lobby. And the claims of these activists are often flagrantly
wrong. For example, they refer to the FAP as the “Monsanto Protection Act,” due
to their incorrect perception that the law acts to shield corporations, rather
than producers. The FAP was crafted to protect farmers who would otherwise be
powerless against unfounded legal assaults;
Ag
Today is distributed to county Farm Bureaus, CFBF directors and CFBF staff, for
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