Methyl Iodide was approved almost a year ago by the State of California to be used in the production in many different crops but most widely known in the growing of Strawberries. It's been a controversial decision ever since and many State and National organizations have been pushing for not only the State to reconsider this approval but has sued the State and California has also asked the EPA to ban the toxic pesticide all together because of it is a known carcinogen and often used in the laboratory to create cancer.
California Watch has uncovered more evidence that the State's approval was due to influence by the pesticide's manufacturer Arysta LifeScience and they went to great lengths to influence the scientific evidence on whether to ban their pesticide due to safety concerns. And there are many safety concerns.
The Feb. 16, 2010, memo by an executive of methyl iodide manufacturer Arysta LifeScience said maximum exposure levels that the state's scientists had recommended for workers and people who live near agricultural fields were unacceptable to the company because they were too low.
"It is essential to revisit the toxicology assessment to come up with less conservative assumptions," wrote John Street, the company's global head of development and registration.
The memo was addressed to Jim Wells of Environmental Solutions Group, a Sacramento-based consulting firm that Arysta hired to help win regulatory approval for methyl iodide in California. Wells served as director of the Department of Pesticide Regulation in the 1990s.
Street recommended a range of exposure levels Arysta would support and laid out the calculations state pesticide regulation managers could make to arrive at those levels.
Eight months later, DPR managers overruled their own toxicologists - and a panel of expert scientists the department had commissioned to review the toxicologists' work - and approved the use of methyl iodide at so-called regulatory target levels nearly identical to the lowest levels Street said would be acceptable to Arysta.
Arysta got to dictate what levels of Methyl Iodide are safe for human exposure even though in reality the Department of Pesticide Regulation set those standard much lower. Why would they do that? I mean, why would DPR set such low levels? Oh that's right, we have such regulations set forth in order to protect human health and environmental resources like water and soil but hey, if the manufacturer of the product, who is set to make a hefty profit by the sale of the pesticide says it's safe, it must be safe!
Over and over again we are seeing the regulating arms of our Government, that are there to protect consumers, workers and those who live near agriculture (because in the case of methyl iodide, it's not just about the people who eat the food its treated with, it's a great health risk to those who work with it and live near it) being bought and sold by lobbyists of the Corporations set to profit dearly.
Ultimately this is not just about a broken system of who gets to say what is done where, but a broken food system that is far too dependent on artificial fertilizers and pesticides that not only puts our health at risk but our very precious resources as well. We often think of water in California since it's such a highly demanded commodity but soil should also be seen as a nonrenewable resource. Healthy, untainted soil is also important to growing food and we are taking that resource for granted.
Unfortunately, Gallegly’s zeal to get tough on immigrants would have profound consequences for California and the rest of the United States.
California’s agriculture and food production are the envy of the world. The state’s farmers not only help feed the world, but keep prices low and jobs here in the United States. Yet this great agricultural machine is under assault by one of California’s own members of Congress: Elton Gallegly. Instead of embracing the business-labor compromise bill known as AgJOBS that would legalize farm workers and make changes to the H-2A guest worker program, Gallegly is trying to divide the business community from labor leaders and destabilize the agriculture industry in the process.
Senator asks for 60-day delay in vote to debunk flawed figures used to support pollution
SAN DIEGO -- Reacting swiftly to reports that the California Air Resources Board would vote tomorrow to allow farmers an additional two years to pollute Central Valley skies by burning agricultural waste, Senate Majority Leader Dean Florez (D-Shafter) is calling on CARB to rethink an action he says would contribute to childhood asthma and negatively impact public health.
CARB was expected to vote tomorrow to extend the June 1 deadline for a ban on burning vineyard and orchard waste for another two years. Florez authored historic legislation in 2003 to outlaw the practice and provide farmers with incentives to explore alternative clean disposal methods that would actually generate electricity. He has called for a 60-day delay of CARB's vote, so his Senate Select Committee on Air Quality can meet and debunk false assumptions and inflated numbers Valley air district staff have cited in a report to support the delay.
In its report, San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District staff contend that the lifespan of a grape vineyard or citrus orchard is only ten years. They use this figure to support their claim that alternatives to burning would prove too expensive for farmers. In fact, the lifespan of a vineyard is 22 years, while the lifespan of a citrus orchard is 45 years, rendering the district's cost analysis of disposal completely false.
"My Senate Bill 705 was very deliberately written to give farmers ample time to comply," said Florez. "Given that they have had seven years, I am disturbed by this last ditch effort to support continued polluting with flawed numbers. Valley residents need relief from the pollution that is driving up our rates of asthma and heart disease now, not in another two years."
Florez has already called on the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Subcommittee No. 2 - which oversees environmental protection - to make ag burning alternatives more cost-effective for farmers and withhold funds from the SJVAPCD if they allow continued open-field burning of vineyard and orchard waste.
Today I was working in the garden when - surprise! - I found a brown garden snail. A thorough check of nearby lettuce yielded three more snails. I brought them inside and put them in a jar to let the kids see them. These snails are actually the same species you pay top dollar for in fancy French restaurants. I found escargots in my salad. According to a little bit of internet research, the snails were brought to America by an enterprising Frenchman hoping to make money selling escargots during the Gold Rush, but the French delicacy didn't really catch on. With his business idea a failure, he tossed out his snails... and they became an established pest here in the U.S.
This is rather interesting, in light of some research I've been doing about California's efforts to eradicate the light brown apple moth (LBAM), an invasive pest from Australia. They were found in northern California a few years ago and the state's Department of Food & Agriculture (CDFA) decided almost immediately to institute frequent aerial spraying in several counties. The CDFA's plan runs entirely counter to science for a number of reasons. First, LBAM isn't that serious a pest anywhere in the world - and the moths have many natural predators.
Now more than ever a comprehensive U.S. immigration reform is key in helping rebuild our country and giving back American working families the prosperity and equality they deserve. When we allow a group of people to be exploited and discriminated against, it negatively impacts American workers by driving down wages, benefits and working conditions.
President Obama recently announced he will pursue immigration reform that would allow the millions of undocumented workers already living in the country now to "come out of the shadows." For that to happen, they need to be able to speak up and report abuses, organize and come to the bargaining table without fearing deportation. The reality is that most of these millions of workers have already established families in their communities and are part of our society as much as any U.S.-born American.
Substantial cutbacks in water deliveries from the delta to Central Valley farms will severely reduce the region's income, employment, revenues and farm acreage, according to a new report from the University of California's Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics.
The report projects potential economic impacts for 2009 as the state grapples with its third drought in the last 30 years...
Based on projected allocations, Central Valley farmers could sustain revenue losses from $1.2 billion to $1.6 billion this year, depending on their ability to increase groundwater pumping.
Across the valley, towns are already seeing some of the worst unemployment in the country, with rates three and four times the national average, as well as reported increases in all manner of social ills: drug use, excessive drinking and rises in hunger and domestic violence.
With fewer checks to cash, even check-cashing businesses have failed, as have thrift stores, ice cream parlors and hardware shops. The state has put the 2008 drought losses at more than $300 million, and economists predict that this year's losses could swell past $2 billion, with as many as 80,000 jobs lost.
"People are saying, 'Are you a third world country?' " said Robert Silva, the mayor of Mendota, which has a 35 percent unemployment rate, up from the more typical seasonal average of about 20 percent. "My community is dying on the vine."
This is a double whammy hitting the Central Valley. They have been the hardest-hit region in the entire country, perhaps the entire world, by the housing bust. The economic crisis alone leads to reduced demand for farm products, but the drought is going to make a bad situation much, much worse.
The Central Valley is at the leading edge of the 21st century crisis, brought about by California's overdependence on debt and sprawl. As I've explained before, the "debt" is not merely financial - California has lived beyond its natural resource means for some time, overpumping water to slake the thirst of new suburbs AND to water the fields to feed the suburban consumer.
This is much the same problem that hit the Dust Bowl in the 1930s. 50 years of farming the marginal lands of the Great Plains eroded the topsoil, creating an environmental catastrophe at the very moment that a collapse in farm prices and wages led to a massive foreclosure wave. The place they headed to escape the crisis was the Central Valley.
Some farmers would like to just keep pumping the water, and cut off fish (which are already in severe distress) or cities (which are already facing mandatory rationing), and others believe a Peripheral Canal is the solution. But if this is the leading edge of climate change, those solutions will be the deck chairs on the proverbial Titanic.
I personally believe it's important to maintain agriculture as an industry in California. But we need to find a way to make it sustainable. Continuing the methods of the past is no longer an option, as the Steinbeckian scenes now unfolding in the Central Valley should make clear to us all.
Happy cows may produce better milk, but most cows in California aren't happy cows. They are factory farmed cows, like these ones here:
Compare that picture with this one, from the "Real California Milk" ad campaign:
In 2007, California had 2165 dairy farms with an average of 850 cows apiece. This represents significant consolidation since 2002, when they had 2793 dairy farms with 589 cows apiece. In 2007, over 90% of the cows lived on dairy farms that had more than 500 cows. In fact, the largest group of dairy farms - farms with over 500 cows - had an average of 1656 cows apiece. I can promise you, those cows were NOT grazing in pasture for the simple reason that it's impossible.
Yet yesterday I passed a billboard for California milk showing a picture of a handful of cows grazing in pasture! What??? How about some truth in advertising, California?
(This is cross-posted from my site La Vida Locavore, which covers food politics and all news related to food. Stop by and check us out if you're ever wondering what Tom Vilsack's up to, what really happened to all the peanut butter, or where California milk REALLY comes from... hint: not the happy cows in the pictures.)
The news in California is bad. Well, mostly bad. After all, the Oscars are tomorrow. But the budget's a mess, the economy sucks, and on top of that there's a drought. What's next, an earthquake?
To manage water in the face of the drought, the federal government is cutting off water to many California farms for at least three weeks in March. The amount of time without water will depend on whether we get rain in the next few weeks. In the San Joaquin Valley, the drought will cause an estimated $1.15 billion (with a B) in lost agriculture-related wages and 40,000 lost jobs in farm-related industries. And if that ain't bad enough, the New York Times reports that the problems go beyond food in affected towns:
Across the valley, towns are already seeing some of the worst unemployment in the country, with rates three and four times the national average, as well as reported increases in all manner of social ills: drug use, excessive drinking and rises in hunger and domestic violence.
California farms receive 80% of their water from federally-managed supplies and the rest from the state. The feds are turning off the tap, but farmers may still receive some water from the state. Unfortunately for the farmers, some of the water may be legally unavailable to them due to laws or rulings protecting endangered species.
(Meanwhile, in the parts of the state where I hang out - San Diego and Los Angeles - I've seen idiots who let their automatic sprinkler systems water their already wet lawns on rainy days recently.)
• A conservative student got the Alliance Legal Defense Fund (the same folks who helped out on the legal case to protect Prop 22) to help him sue LA City College for the response from his teachers critical of his speech supporting Prop 8. Apparently several students, and then the teacher, got visibly angry over his public speaking assignment.
• The Meg Whitman for Governor campaign gets a somewhat agnostic review from the LA Times' Michael Hiltzik. He thinks the jury is out. Well, I suppose an open mind is nice, but during the budget disaster her statement against any tax increases is simply out of touch with reality. She would be even worse of a failure than Arnold Schwarzenegger. In other words EPIC FAIL.
• Here's a balanced report on Los Angeles' Measure B, the solar power initiative, from Grist. If I were an LA city voter I honestly don't know how I'd vote on this - there are valid arguments on both sides.
• California is the leading producer of dairy products in the nation. So, the collapse in milk prices is hitting the state pretty hard. In the short term, a lot of farmers are turning to slaughtering their dairy cows for meat because they cannot afford the feed.
• Ok, this is budget related. Sorry. It looks like one of the items that got chopped was the UC Riverside medical school. The school needs a boost of cash to gets going, but will now have to look to other sources to get started.
• For a lot of reasons, the increased enrollment at Adult Schools is a really good thing. Unfortunately, it is clearly a symptom of the terrible economy, and it will put an additional strain on the budget. The schools were originally intended as a sort of retiree FunEd, but have now become a great system providing GED classes and support, literacy training, and vocational training.
• Finally, I think this story just about sums up California these days: During this weekend's budget lockdown, Lance Armstrong came to Sacramento to participate in the Tour de California. And then, after the race, his bike was stolen from the truck.
Bonus: Marie Lakin at Ventura County Star's Making Waves Blog has a good take on the budget disaster vis a vis Grover Norquist.
I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that the entire State Legislature is in need a new cerbral cortex. They are not thinking straight. We are in a budget crisis and can come to no agreement between Democrats who are afraid that the unions will recall them and Republicans who are afraid that they will be booted out of the party if they vote for a new tax.
Personally, I would rather listen to a scientist like Dr. Chu. At least when he speaks you have more of a chance to hear a fact rather than some BS designed to make you think that the legislature is on your side.
In the 1930s two crises hit the Great Plains at once - 50 years of overfarming marginal lands had destroyed the topsoil and created what we know as the Dust Bowl, and at least twenty years of economic pressure to overfarm (to pay debts and make up for collapsed prices) had created an untenable financial situation for the farmers. Either one was going to end in disaster - the land would give out or the overuse of credit would end in deflation and ruin. As it happened, the crises both occurred at exactly the same time, producing a social catastrophe from which several states have still not recovered.
California now faces the same problem. For 60 years we have based our economy on the production and consumption of sprawl. This worked well enough until the late 1970s, when those who had prospered the most from this model decided to stop reinvesting profits in the state and in society, and took their ball and went home. The next 30 years were dominated by even more sprawl, financed by massive amounts of debt and by eating the state's seed corn by slashing the government programs that built prosperity in the first place.
This was always bound to end in disaster, and as we are well aware, that disaster - in the form of economic depression and government bankruptcy - is now here. But the massive sprawlconomy binge had another set of costs whose bill is now coming due - water.
California had an unusually wet 20th century, and we exploited that to the fullest. To have a society built on sprawl and consumption, we needed to siphon as much water as possible to give not just to the new housing developments, but to the sprawling farms. Sprawl is a farming phenomenon as well - wasting land and water resources on resource-intensive crops grown to enrich shareholders, instead of sensibly using land and water to grow crops for subsistence and food security. California was in a water bubble, just as the state was experiencing a financial bubble. We have been living well beyond our means.
Ultimately the water bubble was going to burst. And just as in the 1930s Great Plains, it is bursting at the same moment as the economic bubble. For the least year or so you could drive down the backroads of the Salinas Valley, Salad Bowl Of The World, and see shuttered warehouses and laid off packing workers.
Now that water is less available the agricultural recession is shifting into higher gear. The highest unemployment rates in California are in our agricultural counties - 22.6% in Imperial, 14.3% in Tulare, 13.7% here in Monterey County. (Note: those stats are for nonfarm jobs, and yet the correlation between ag and the rest of the county economy is obviously very strong.)
The water crisis is now about to come to the rest of California. Sitting here in Monterey, in summer-like weather in January, I am inclined to believe the claims that this is the worst drought ever in the state's recorded history:
California teeters on the edge of the worst drought in the state's history, officials said Thursday after reporting that the Sierra Nevada snowpack - the backbone of the state's water supply - is only 61 percent of normal.
January usually douses California with about 20 percent of the state's annual precipitation, but instead it delivered a string of dry, sunny days this year, almost certainly pushing the state into a third year of drought.
The drought exacerbates the problems caused by our overuse of water resources. To prevent a total environmental collapse in the Delta massive reductions of water flows will be required. And for those of us who live in counties that don't get our water from the Delta - places like Sonoma, Marin, and Monterey - the situation is going to be worse. Water managers in those counties are planning to 50% cutbacks in urban water use, which is an amount that will dramatically change how we live. We could let every lawn die and stop hosing down every driveway and still not get anywhere close to 50% reductions.
The Monterey Peninsula has been under Stage 1 water rationing for ten years now. You rarely see water wasted here, and new development has been at a standstill (how many towns have vacant lots and abandoned homes within a mile of the beach as we do?). But a 50% cut will force dramatic changes in how we live, as it will around the state.
Those changes ARE coming. There is no way around the fact that the way California was organized in the 20th century - politically, economically, and especially in terms of our land use and water use - is over. Done. Gone.
The question for us now is will we try to actively transition California to a more sustainable future? Or will we do nothing and let the chips fall where they may? The first option at least allows us a chance of rebuilding widely shared prosperity by funding local food, sustainable farming, and urban density. The latter would produce widespread immiseration while allowing a small aristocratic elite to enjoy a semblance of the 20th century lifestyle.
(It was disappointing, but not particularly surprising, to see Arnold axe AB 2386. It should have been signed. - promoted by Brian Leubitz)
We need to share some very disappointing news with you and then ask you to e-mail Gov. Schwarzenegger and let him know how you feel. Last week, the Governor vetoed AB 2386, a vital bill to reform secret ballot elections for farm workers. With this single stroke of his pen, the governor denied farm workers the tool they need to protect themselves. While we are disappointed with the Governor's veto, sadly we are not surprised.
When the governor vetoed a bill with similar goals last year, his veto message said:
"I am directing my Labor and Workforce Development Agency to work with the proponents of this bill to ensure that all labor laws and regulations are being vigorously enforced, and to make it absolutely clear to all concerned that my veto is premised on an expectation that agricultural workers receive the full protections of the law."
Tragically this has not happened. During the black summer of 2008, as many as six farm workers died due to heat-related causes.
Well, that's it, I guess California can be bought off for the right price. California produces vast amounts of produce, but most of it doesn't fall under the subsidies of the farm bill. Most of that goes to making sure that corn syrup is vastly underpriced so that Coca-Cola can continue to rot our teeth. Well, to get concessions on the farm bill, some of the big farm bill legislators have tossed California a bone:
Senate Democrats announced a breakthrough in a long-stalled farm bill Wednesday that would provide billions of dollars for California fruit and vegetable marketing, farm conservation and food stamps - but would maintain costly, traditional crop subsidies for corn, wheat, cotton, rice and soybeans. (SF Chron 10/18/07)
All well and good, but it doesn't really go to the heart of the issue. Flip.
(The more I look at this post, the more I like it. I think I want to go learn more about the farms of our state. - promoted by Brian Leubitz)
Last week, I spent a few days working on an organic farm. I should admit right now, I use the word "work" loosely. I was probably more of a pest than a help, even though my intentions were good.
When I first got into blogging about food, I was primarily concerned with the foods we eat and how they affect our health. It was a bit of a revelation to me that our food actually comes from a farm, not a factory, and it grows in dirt, not plastic wrap. Agricultural policy is never something I thought I would care about, but I've learned that you can't separate issues of food consumption from the issues of food production. This is especially true in California, where we produce a large percentage of the food for the entire country (particularly "specialty crops," i.e. not commodity crops like corn and soy).
Since I'm painfully aware of my ignorance when it comes to farming, I was eager (and a bit nervous) to spend a few days working on a farm. The opportunity presented itself when an organic farmer named Phil at my local market told me he participated in the WWOOF program (Willing to Work on an Organic Farm). He provides room and board in exchange for labor. After exchanging a few emails, the plans were in place.
I must admit, I'm hardly the expert agriculturist, but I do know that the farm bill currently pending in the United States House could go a long way towards determining what our farms and food supply looks like for the next ten years. The Bill emerged from the Agriculture Committee as some sort of Frankenstein-type thing with grafts of "reform" stuck to it. You know, like a nose of "income limits" and a kneecap of "loophole closures" except the underlying fact remains that this bill must undergo a lot more work before we can truly declare, "It's Alive"
“The Farm Bill represents a critical first step toward reform by eliminating payments to millionaires, closing loopholes that permit evasion of payment limits, and promoting our nation’s family farmers.
“This bipartisan bill provides a safety net for America's farmers, promotes homegrown energy and conservation initiatives that will help us achieve energy independence, and invests in nutrition and healthy eating. I look forward to supporting farm country by passing the Farm Bill on a bipartisan basis.”
See, while there are reforms in this bill, it still leaves much to be desired, more over the flip.
(Surf Putah, which you will find in the California friends of our blogroll, is a great site for Yolo Cty. politics. - promoted by Brian Leubitz)
Well, I've made the cut, having been linked in the "Yolo Blogs" category over at Republican Yolo County Supervisor Matt Rexroad's new website (which looks quite nice, really). Along with the link (a good web resource for Yolo County in its own right), Rexroad gave this site this little introduction:
If you want to know what the people at the far end of the spectrum in Davis are doing....surf Putah. I really can't explain this stuff. Generally, if you find an opinion expressed here Matt Rexroad will be on the other side.
Since I've been identified as the far end of the spectrum, I figure that it's as good a time as any to lay out what us inexplicable far-out Davisites are thinking about Yolo County. Ironically enough, I find myself to the center, or at least in a slightly different direction, from many self-defined "progressives" here in Davis, especially on the issue of development, the axis which city politics seems, rightly or wrongly, to revolve around. Mostly, though, I find that the perpetual battle over political labels to be a fairly useless one, since it assumes a coherent binary political debate, when in fact things tend to be far more complex in real life. I believe that governments ought to balance their budgets responsibly, instead of borrowing and spending with bond measures; am I a conservative? I believe that people generally ought to mind their own business, and that government and religious beliefs are best kept separate where neither can mess the other up; am I a liberal? I believe that all people are created equal, and ought to be treated as such; am I a progressive?
So for the benefit of both Rexroad and those who might follow his link to my site I'll toss out where this inexplicable far-left blogger would like to see Yolo County headed:
I must admit, I'm hardly the expert agriculturist, but I do know that the farm bill currently pending in the United States House could go a long way towards determining what our farms and food supply looks like for the next ten years. The Bill emerged from the Agriculture Committee as some sort of Frankenstein-type thing with grafts of "reform" stuck to it. You know, like a nose of "income limits" and a kneecap of "loophole closures" except the underlying fact remains that this bill must undergo a lot more work before we can truly declare, "It's Alive"