California almond farmers, lured by high profits to expand orchards, face a drought struggle [Sacramento Bee]
…Almonds
have become California’s miracle food. Growing consumer demand has driven up
prices and created a profitable $4 billion-a-year crop….Drought, however, has
brought big problems to the almond industry, perhaps more than any other
segment of California agriculture….The plight of California’s almond growers
has economic implications across the state….The drought has intensified
century-old rivalries over how water is allocated in California, and the
explosion in almond farming has given rise to complaints about overuse.
Drought’s latest
effect? Sacramento Valley farmers fallow rice land [Sacramento Bee]
A
number is written in red marker on a white board in Ed Sills’ office in
Pleasant Grove. It marks the day, May 5, when the last rain fell on the 3,000
acres where Sills grows organic rice, beans and popcorn. In a normal year,
Sills gets allocated 2 acre-feet of water per acre from the South Sutter Water
District. This year he is getting half that….Sills isn’t the only rice farmer
taking land out of rice production….Across the Sacramento Valley, as much as
100,000 acres of the roughly 566,000 acres devoted to rice in the state last
year will likely be fallowed this year, said James Morris, spokesman with the
California Rice Commission.
Editorial: State needs to monitor use of underground water [San
Francisco Chronicle]
…Farmers
and developers are understandably protective of their property rights and
apprehensive about state oversight, yet everyone concedes the state must put in
place sustainable groundwater management. The question is how do we get there
and avoid battling it out in the courts?...The state also needs to guide local
decision-making so underground water doesn't fall under the control of those
with the most acreage. Groundwater has always been the driver in California's
water wars. It's time to end them. An important step: Discard the pork-filled,
$11 billion bond measure on the November ballot and replace it with a slimmer
measure with some funding for underground water management. That deadline
approaches: The Legislature needs to act by late June.
California farmer
locked in battle with union [Associated Press]
Six
months ago, workers at one of the largest fruit farms in the U.S. went to the
ballot box to decide if they would continue to be represented by the United
Farm Workers, which won that right two decades ago but never forged a labor
contract. The ballots, still uncounted by state officials and locked in a safe,
sit at the center of a dispute between the union launched by iconic farm labor
leader Cesar Chavez and Gerawan Farming, Inc., which hires more than 5,000
workers annually to tend and harvest nectarines, peaches and plums….Dan
Gerawan, who runs the family business in Central California and claims it pays
the highest wages in the industry, said the union and a runaway state labor
board are in collusion, using what he considers to be an unconstitutional state
law to take control of his business and rob his workers of their choice of
whether to be represented.…UFW's National Vice President Armando Elenes said
farm workers need protection today more than ever from abuses such as low
wages, exposure to harmful pesticides and working in extreme heat.
Big data means big
profits, risks for farmers [USA Today]
…Agribusiness
giants, such as Monsanto and DuPont Pioneer, are spending millions of dollars
to help farmers mine ever-increasing amounts of data from their fields through
"precision agriculture" technology to help them boost yields, lower
their costs and reduce their risk, all the while increasing the amount of
revenue they squeeze out of every acre….To be sure, farmers have been
collecting data and making decisions based on their own information and
observations in the field for years. But smart phones, iPads, apps and faster
wireless networks have provided a catalyst for the information gathering and
increased its usefulness for the farm community. While farmers have started to
embrace the promise of the technology, they have grown increasingly concerned
the data about their operations could be sold to traders or commodity brokers
even though no cases of abuse have been found….The American Farm Bureau
Federation has said data collected from individual farms is valuable and should
remain the property of the farmer.
Opinion: Oyster farm appeals to Supreme Court
For
reasons known best to themselves – because they’ve mostly eschewed reasoned
argument for slogans, fabrications and junk science – the federal government
and environmental groups have waged a crusade against a family-owned oyster
farm in the waters off Marin County, Calif. So far, the oyster farm owners and
employees are losing: Their last hope is a pending appeal to the U.S. Supreme
Court. The law does not appear to be in the oyster farmers’ favor, but it’s
still the kind of thing that gives liberal activists and their bureaucratic
enablers a bad name….Unless the Supreme Court intervenes, Drakes Bay Oyster Co.
will be no more. That’s not a national tragedy. For all I know, real wilderness
is the best use of that estuary. But if the preservationists prevail they will
have done so by Machiavellian motives and tactics (i.e., that the ends
justified the means), and they are not likely to stop at Point Reyes National
Seashore.
Kern Farm Bureau's
new executive director looks to the future [Bakersfield Californian]
The
new executive director of the Kern County Farm Bureau says her primary goal is
to give a voice to farmers who would otherwise go unheard. She is the daughter
of a Shafter farmer and grew up around the industry and the laborers who are a
part of it.…This year marks the Kern County Farm Bureau's 100th anniversary,
and Espericueta Sanders, 33, is the bureau's first female executive director
and the first Hispanic to hold the seat.….Espericueta Sanders previously worked
in finance, spending five years with McKinsey & Company, a global financial
consulting firm in New York City. In her new position she hopes to bring the
Farm Bureau in contact with the political officials that impact agricultural
decisions.
Ag
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