Friday, September 26, 2008

Hello Ag Council & Friends

My commitment to California agriculture stems from my lifetime involvement on my father’s family ranch in Lodi. We have sheep & cattle there, and it’s been in the family for 4 generations so far. My mom’s family farms tomatoes, beans and alfalfa in Tracy, so I have always been surrounded by agriculture and the lessons that go with it. Some of my fondest memories are of both of my grandfathers lecturing to me about politics one way or another, so here I am.

I am very excited to begin my tenure with Ag Council and am quite thankful for the opportunity. Most of my political and legislative work has been with the federal government and with Congress, so dealing with the state legislature is a daunting, but exciting challenge for me. I really do believe there is promise for this industry, but the underlying need to know how to navigate the legislative and regulatory waters will remain critical.

I arrived at Ag Council by way of California Farm Bureau, where I worked on many issues including biotech, estate taxes, cargo securement and the Farm Bill. I learned many lessons there about the grassroots process and member-involvement, and am looking forward to utilizing many of these tools here. If you are in or around Sacramento, please look me up and say “hi.” If not, I may be contacting you soon!

Emily Robidart, Vice President

Congratulation’s Nat!

Nat DiBuduo, president of Allied Grape Growers and Ag Council board member, will receive this year’s Distinguished Alumnus Award at Cal State University, Fresno. Nat is one of 15 recipients receiving special recognition from the Fresno State Alumni Association. The Distinguished Alumnus Award is the association's highest honor, first awarded in 1953. Past recipients include former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, former California Secretary of State Bill Jones and former Houston Mayor Lee Brown. Nat graduated in 1972 and made a career in agriculture, but never lost a loyalty for California State University, Fresno. That loyalty runs deep in his family. He said that more than 50 of his extended family have attended or graduated from Fresno State since the late 1930s. Nat will receive his recognition at the annual Top Dog Alumni Awards Gala on October 10 at the Save Mart Center.

Co-op Director Seminar

Once again CoBank, the California Center for Cooperative Development and USDA are sponsoring a special educational seminar primarily for directors of agricultural cooperatives. The topics will include a number of topics relating to cooperative governance and financing. The instructors are Dr. David Barton and Dr. Michael Boland from Kansas State University. Also, Jim Tischer, from the California Water Institute at Fresno State, will discuss Integrated Regional Water Management Plans. The program is scheduled for:

November 13-14, 2008
Visalia Conference Center
303 Acequia Ave, Visalia

For further information contact Joe Slagle at CoBank (916) 431-3025 or jslagle@cobank.com
 

State Budget

As everyone knows by now, Governor Schwarzenegger finally signed the latest budget in California history. The 2008-2009 budget appropriates $103.4 billion in General Fund spending after the Governor exercised his line-item veto authority to cut about $510 million from the version passed by the Legislature last Friday. CDFA actually received a $7.5 million increase (only $407,000 from the General Fund) to fund 117.5 positions to operate all Border Inspection Stations on a full time basis, inspecting all vehicles, commercial and private, entering California. However, CDFA also had to absorb its share of the “pain” by taking cuts in several important programs:

• Red Imported Fire Ant:    $500,000
• Pierce’s Disease:    $230,000
• Diaprepes Eradication:    $1.7 million
• Animal Health:    $703,000
• Meat Inspection:    $216,000
• Milk & Dairy:    $200,000

Legislative Update

The Governor has five days to either sign or veto over 800 bills currently pending on his desk. Any bill not signed or vetoed before Sept. 30 will automatically become law. Needless to say, the Governor and his staff will be burning the midnight oil in order to properly deal with the unusually large number of bills that must be acted upon before the deadline. Given the back-up, there’s little information regarding the status of the bills that are of interest to agriculture at this time. We’ll have a completer summary next week.

AB 32 Compliance

On Wednesday we joined with representatives from the California League of Food Processors, Pacific Coast Producers and other food processors in a meeting with several officials from the California Air Resources Board. Our purpose was to discuss the potential impact of green house gas emission regulations on the California food processors. A proposed scoping plan is due October 3.

The staff was not at liberty to discuss the scoping document in great detail. But, it’s clear there is still much confusion as to whether specific businesses will have to implement technologies and other practices to reduce emissions, or whether or not industry segments are going to have to act as a group to achieve results. There were assurances that early adopters would get “recognized” but not clear as to how. There are a lot of unanswered questions, which hopefully will be addressed next week. We were assured that there is still a lengthy implementation process, in which we can continue to provide feedback and guidance as to what can work and will not work.

I did find it interesting (on a personal level) that they acknowledged the concern of food processors moving out of the country or going out of business, due to being out-priced by competitors, as our input costs would continue to rise. Will these types of arguments hold in the long-run? As regulators get increasing pressure from environmental groups to increase the regulations on our industry, it is hard to say. I think it would behoove us to measure the improvements we’ve made already, and try to study the impact of what these regulations could have on agriculture, so we are armed with good data when it’s time to discuss our “plan.” Stay tuned…this will be another interesting ride.