Valley residents to rally for water in Sacramento [KFSN-TV, Fresno]
Hundreds
of residents across the Valley are heading to the state capitol to rally for
water. Farmers and other activists say the state is experiencing a water
crisis. More than 50 people gathered at the Fresno County Farm Bureau in
Central Fresno early Thursday morning to board a bus bound for the state
capitol. A total of 16 buses are planned from cities and towns across the
Valley from Orange Cove to Madera.
Activists
hope to explain how crucial a reliable water supply is to the Central Valley,
and all of California. They plan to emphasize 2014 short term solutions such as
water storage development, Delta sustainability, and clean water for
disadvantaged communities.
Commentary: Locals remain wary as state secretary pushes water plan
[Bakersfield Californian]
Gov.
Jerry Brown and his administration put on a full-court press this week on
Brown's plan to fix California's water woes.…And Secretary of the Natural
Resources Agency John Laird made a string of calls to members of the media.
Whether BDCP improves water supplies in Kern County, where most of our
west-side farming is dependant on water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin delta,
depends on how you look at the situation, Laird told The Californian
Wednesday.…That wasn't good enough to convince some locals that BDCP is worth
its gargantuan price tag. "There's no defined (water) supply that we'd be
buying," explained Eric Averett, general manager for the Rosedale
Rio-Bravo Water Storage District. "We'd be buying protection that our
water wouldn't diminish, but there is no guarantee that it wouldn't," he
said.
Citing health risks,
California lawmakers push to limit antibiotic use on livestock [Sacramento Bee]
…Now
California legislators are invoking public health as they seek limits on
feeding antibiotics to livestock. They cite science that links overuse of
antimicrobial drugs on farm animals to the prevalence of hardier bacteria.
“It’s a problem that I think we’re seeing more effects of,” said Sen. Jerry
Hill, D-San Mateo. Hill and Assemblyman Kevin Mullin, D-South San Francisco,
have introduced bills that would restrict the use of antibiotics on livestock.
Both lawmakers point to a growing body of evidence indicating that overuse of
livestock antibiotics – often to help animals gain weight – has allowed
drug-resistant bacteria to prosper and spread….Building a barrier to obtaining
preventive medicine is short-sighted, according to Noelle Cremers of the
California Farm Bureau Federation. Cremers said the tightened standards Mullin
proposes will delay treatment, comparing it to forcing a family to wait for a
doctor to make house calls. “Farmers and ranchers want to make sure that
antibiotics remain effective for human health and animal health,” Cremers said,
but “there’s a recognition that we need to prevent disease, and antibiotics
applied through feed can do a really good job of preventing disease.”
Despite legal
setbacks, officials say California high-speed rail on track [Sacramento Bee]
State
and federal officials assured lawmakers on Capitol Hill Wednesday that
California’s $68 billion high-speed rail system would move forward despite
recent legal setbacks that have created new uncertainties for the embattled
project. In a three-hour hearing in the House Transportation and Infrastructure
Committee, six lawmakers from California testified before their own colleagues,
with Democrats supporting the project and Republicans opposing it. The exchange
between the lawmakers and their colleagues stirred a long-simmering debate
about whether California needs high-speed rail, whether the project costs too
much and whether the funds could be better spent on other needs.
Editorial: U.S. dairy industry wants price protections in the farm
bill [Washington Post]
DOWN
ON the farm, the latest news is the battle over dairy policy that thwarts
passage of a new five-year package of federal subsidies for agriculture — and
the nutrition aid for low-income families that is attached to the bill. The
conflict pits the Democratic-majority Senate, which wants to boost dairy farm
incomes in part by limiting milk supplies, against the Republican-led House,
whose leader, Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio, calls the Senate approach
“Soviet-style.” This story of partisan bickering — true enough as far as it
goes — does not quite do justice to the wasteful absurdity of the entire
dairy-subsidy effort….Neither bill contains a convincing explanation of why the
dairy industry deserves government-guaranteed prosperity. The industry’s real
problem is that it has become phenomenally efficient at producing huge
quantities of a substance Americans no longer want as much as they used to:
per-capita consumption of fluid milk is down 30 percent since 1975. The
Agriculture Department expects that to continue. Congress can write all the
farm bills it wants, but it can’t repeal the law of supply and demand.
Editorial: A matter of pride, planning [Santa Maria Times]
…A
recent study updates the 2011 annual crop report for California, pegging
agriculture’s current contribution to the county’s economy at nearly $3 billion
a year….In our North County view, it seems evident that, while it is critically
important to protect this region’s environment, it is equally important not to
create policy that has even the potential to derail such an integral segment of
the county’s economic fortunes….All of which makes it abundantly clear that the
Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors, whose members received these latest
numbers at their meeting Tuesday in Santa Maria, must give the highest priority
to both facilitating and protecting local agricultural operations. A major
reason for that is it is common knowledge that communities with a vibrant,
diverse agriculture industry are capable of standing up against all but the
most virulent economic downturns.
Ag
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