House budget bill has lots for California [Sacramento Bee]
California
lawmakers used their power of the purse this year to kill an Obama
administration plan for conserving the state’s sprawling foothills. Capping
several years of study and controversy, and facing a funding cutoff, the
administration threw in the towel on the proposed California Foothills Legacy
Area….Lawmakers also used the omnibus to rhetorically encourage “a strategy of
providing a combination of additional storage, improved conveyance, and
increased efficiencies in the uses of water both for agriculture and potable
purposes.” The omnibus does not, however, include the 20-plus pages of explicit
California water language negotiated primarily by House Republicans and
Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein….The omnibus includes funding for land
acquisition in the Southern California Desert, modestly boosts funding for
specialty crop pest research, retains $65 million for grants assisting
restoration of Pacific salmon populations and orders the Interior Department to
make recovery of the California condor a top priority.
Almond growers lose
trees to storm damage [Bakersfield Californian]
Be
careful what you wish for, right? The storm that hit the Central Valley late
Thursday and early Friday may have helped ease the drought, but it also brought
heavy winds that uprooted thousands of Kern County almond trees. In what some
called the worst damage to California almonds in a decade or more, growers
reported significant losses, especially in mature orchards. "We finally
get our rain and it comes wrapped in brass knuckles," said grower Don
Davis, who reported losing about 100 trees in his orchards west of McFarland.…Some
areas were hit harder than others, with damage in the western portion of the
valley said to be worse than in the east. People in the industry also said
crops such as pistachios and citrus weathered the storm much better than
almonds, which are top-heavy and have relatively shallow, weak root systems.
Government is being a
drip on the drought [Los Angeles Times]
There
are two things very annoying about the deluges that have been drenching
California. And neither involves nature. Both involve government. One is that the
downpours are routinely dismissed by bureaucrats and water professionals as not
very important….What's really aggravating — and a turnoff for the ears — is
being continually lectured about conservation….And if California is to ever
truly meet its water needs without further stealing from one region — the Owens
Valley, the delta — for the benefit of essentially arid lands, it eventually
must reprioritize water usage and regulate crops. Government long has regulated
land use for shopping malls, factories and dumps. Why not also for crops based
on their water use?
Egg market disrupted in
U.S. as cages made roomier [Bloomberg News]
Eggs
are about to get more expensive, as California moves to make sure hen houses
are roomy enough to allow the birds to lay down, stand up, extend their wings
and dance around. Farmers nationwide who want to continue selling to the most
populous U.S. state are moving to comply with a new law, taking effect next
month, that requires the larger cages. They either must build more hen houses,
or house fewer birds in the ones they have, raising their costs. Wholesale egg
prices already average a record $2.27 a dozen nationally, up 34 percent from a
year earlier. With the new law, the price Californians pay may jump as much as
20 percent for shell eggs in three to six months, according to Dermot J. Hayes,
an agribusiness professor at Iowa State University in Ames. The rest of the
country will probably follow suit, he said.
Farmworker children
uprooted by California rules [Associated Press]
…This
December, thousands of migrant farmworker children are making their annual trek
to new schools in California, but they do so also at other times throughout the
country. During growing season, their parents rent low-cost housing in
federally subsidized labor camps, but state rules mandate that families move at
least 50 miles away when the camps close for the winter….A state lawmaker this
year tried to change the 50-mile rule, but the bill died in committee….The idea
behind the 50-mile rule was to provide seasonal housing for families who come
to an area to work only during picking season. State officials say that despite
a sharp drop-off in the past decade of migrating farmworker families, the
seasonal housing should not be occupied year-round and hence unavailable for
the next season's pickers and planters.
Editorial: Want to help Mexican farmworkers? Tell stores to carry
fair trade products [Los Angeles Times]
Because
of an investigative series in The Times, American consumers are more aware that
a “Product of Mexico” label on their tomatoes or broccoli might mean that the
produce has been picked by people living in squalid conditions in farm camps
far from their homes, unable to leave because of their contracts. Some workers
are held against their will, forced to live behind barbed-wire fences. Some are
children. What has become clear, from readers' responses, is that many
consumers are dismayed and want to know what they can do….Perhaps the easiest
and most reliable way to know that farmworkers have been treated decently is by
buying what are known as fair trade products….But some stores have only a few
such products; they would stock more if consumers requested them.
Ag
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