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Conservation and Specialty Crop Needs Highlighted
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A.G. Kawamura |
After months of public listening sessions and deliberation, the California Department of Food & Agriculture
(CDFA) has released its long-awaited position paper on the state’s priorities for the 2007 Farm Bill. At the top of the wish list is more money for resource conservation programs and for the research, marketing and other needs of fruit, nut and vegetable growers. CDFA Secretary A.G. Kawamura, an Orange County fruit grower, explained that, “The farm bill is not a cost to society. It’s an investment. What California is seeking is a proportional share of the nation’s investment in agriculture.”
A Farm Bill For California?
The CDFA position paper, entitled 2007 Farm Bill: The California Perspective, calls for maintaining agriculture as a strategy national resource through policies that will help make it more competitive in a global economy, while providing an effective safety net for commodity producers. It also asks for permanent funding of the Specialty Crop Competitiveness Act, for increased emphasis on nutrition through government school lunch purchases of fresh fruit and vegetables, and for more attention to pest surveillance and food safety. All of these priorities would benefit California agriculture because it produces so much of the nation’s fruits and vegetables.
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San Joaquin Valley oranges grow in the
shadow of the Sierra Nevada |
And help is sorely needed because, as AFT California Director, Edward Thompson, Jr. explains, ““Until about a decade ago, California agriculture seemed to be on cruise control. It was doing very well and didn’t need much help. Now, however, it faces a perfect storm of challenges: increased foreign competition, greater exposure to insects and diseases from freer trade, tougher environmental regulations and relentless pressure from urban sprawl. Together, they threaten to overwhelm the most productive and entrepreneurial agriculture the world has ever seen. Never before has California agriculture more desperately needed assistance from the federal government and, indeed, all the nation’s taxpayers it feeds.”
California’s Fair Share: What’s Wrong with This Picture?
The imbalance between what California agriculture produces and the help it receives from the federal government is a major theme of the CDFA position paper. In 2005, for example, California, the nation’s leading agricultural state, produced $33.8 billion worth of farm products, more than the combined total of the 22 smallest farm states. Yet, farmers in those states collectively received two-and-a-half times as much financial support from the farm bill than the $650 million received by California growers. Other examples of the imbalance:
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Herons and wildflowers thrive in
vernal pools on rangeland near Fresno - Photo by Edward Thompson, Jr. |
• Fresno County, the nation’s leading farm county, produces $4.6 billion a year in farm products. If it were a state, it would rank 27th in U.S. agricultural production, yet the states that rank below it collectively received 13 times as much federal farm support.
• Monterey County, known as the nation’s “Salad Bowl,” out-produces seven states that received eight times as much in federal farm support.
• California received only 3 percent of all federal agricultural conservation investment in 2005, ranking it 12th in the nation. Eight other states collectively received 46 percent of the total conservation pie.
Natural Resource Challenges Particularly Acute
for California Producers
According to the CDFA position paper, “California is the nation’s agricultural leader with arguably the most pressing environmental challenges of any state in the nation. As the most populous and fastest growing state, California loses between 40,000 and 50,000 acres of the nation’s best farmland each year to residential and urban development. Air quality in the San Joaquin Valley, the nation’s most productive agricultural region, is among the most degraded in the nation. Water resources in important agricultural areas of the state are impaired, limiting widespread usage. Invasive species threaten agricultural production throughout the state and wildlife habitat continues to be lost to development. Yet California has historically received far less assistance through the conservation title [of the farm bill] than many other states.”
The position paper specifically calls for targeting “California’s priority conservation challenges: loss of agricultural land due to land subdivision and urban development; spread of invasive species; air and water pollution; loss and degradation of wildlife habitat; declining forest and rangeland health; floodplain protection; and greenhouse gas emissions.”
If you would like to submit comments or position papers regarding a California perspective on the 2007 Farm Bill, please email farmbill@cdfa.ca.gov. Comments may also be submitted to: California Department of Food and Agriculture, 1220 'N' Street, Suite 214, Sacramento, CA, 95814.
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