President Jamie Johansson opened the California Farm Bureau’s annual meeting in Reno on Monday recapping a year of wins in Sacramento water policy while outlining the many battles to come in 2024.
“We faced extraordinary events that put all of California's farmers and ranchers at risk,” said Johansson. “There has to be a better way.”
He charged that the state and federal administrations put too much of the blame on climate change for the many issues facing farmers and ranchers—from record input prices to labor scarcity, congested ports and supply chain disruptions. Yet he cheered Gov. Gavin Newsom’s executive order to streamline environmental permits for capturing flood flows to recharge aquifers, noting it was the first time the governor “held back water instead of going straight to the ocean.” Johansson also thanked Newsom and legislators for approving a budget trailer bill that would later enable agencies to fast-track the Sites Reservoir proposal through the approval process.
Yet he warned of more waves in water policy headed their way. Johansson urged his members to engage in ongoing public hearings at the State Water Resources Control Board over updating its Bay-Delta Water Quality Control Plan. He lamented that “the deck was stacked against us” in the first hearing, when environmental groups bashed agriculture and a voluntary alternative to the aggressive unimpaired flows approach.
“They refuse to talk with us,” he said. “Because we know that their ultimate goal is to see agriculture not only minimized but basically eliminated from California.”
This year the farm bureau began conducting its own research into water and pesticide issues through its nonprofit California Bountiful Foundation. One of the new studies attempted to flip the narrative on agricultural water use by demonstrating that the environment uses 80% and the industry just 15% of the total water passing through the state. The farm bureau has “spent a lot of time and money in PR efforts” to get that message out to policymakers and the public.
Advocating for a science-based approach was also a theme in pesticide policy. The common refrain that California’s winds of change always blow east rang true for Johansson as he visited the Michigan Farm Bureau under the invitation of American Farm Bureau President Zippy Duvall. Michigan, he explained, is similarly feeling pressures from cheap imports coming in from countries with relaxed environmental standards. He urged the farm bureaus to work together on this issue.
With pesticide issues, he again put the Newsom administration in the crosshairs, this time for failing to follow through on a commitment to find alternatives to chlorpyrifos after banning the insecticide early in the governor’s tenure. With the regulatory process holding up new product registrations, farmers have relied on alternatives that require more applications, increasing the risk of exposure. That drove Johansson to be apprehensive of the administration’s new plan to phase out the use of other pesticides, dubbed the Sustainable Pest Management Roadmap. He blasted the strategy as a wolf in sheep’s clothing and argued it ignores the practices farmers have long deployed through integrated pest management.
Johansson accused Newsom of being a roadblock to implementing new pesticide and technology innovations, but cheered the governor’s signature on a farm bureau-backed bill easing training requirements for drone pesticide applications.
He reasoned that California agriculture is “too big to ignore.” With regard to tech hurdles, he added that the farm bureau will be challenging Cal/OSHA on the workplace safety agency’s decision to block the use of autonomous tractors in California.
The farm bureau is also expanding its efforts in local policy battles, specifically with a ballot initiative by animal rights activists to ban livestock operations in Sonoma County. He shared that the farm bureau’s board of directors has approved $100,000 to run an opposition campaign and he is rallying the American Farm Bureau to get involved—now that Proposition 12 has established a roadmap for expanding such policies to the rest of the nation.
“It is time for everyone across America to start looking at supporting California agriculture and the California Farm Bureau,” he said.
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The state has also raised national alarms over efforts at the Air Resources Board and in the Legislature to eliminate credits for dairy digesters from the Low Carbon Fuel Standard. An appropriations committee killed a bill on that this year, but Johansson anticipates it will return at some point. Through the Dairy Cares coalition, the farm bureau has learned some “sobering news” on the growing influence of the environmental justice groups that advocate for such policies. Johansson acknowledged that the estimated $1.4 billion in fundraising from the groups is “a big number to overcome” but pointed to public opinion research indicating most Americans trust farmers and ranchers. He urged his members to seize on that and “stand up and be heard.”
The farm bureau has also partnered with business trade groups on tax issues. Such an alliance helped to defeat a property tax proposal in 2020. Seeing the power of agriculture’s voice in that campaign, the California Business Roundtable has now asked the farm bureau to back an initiative for the November 2024 ballot that would make it harder for local governments to pass new taxes and for agencies to approve new fees.
“No more of having regulators—who are not accountable to the voters—simply increase our licensing fees or taxes,” he said. “There has to be accountability.”
California’s Democratic leaders strongly oppose the initiative. The Legislature has passed a separate measure to block it and teamed up with Newsom to file an emergency petition with the California Supreme Court to remove it from the ballot. Johansson said he looks forward to engaging his members in the battle.
He thanked his county farm bureaus on the front lines of many of the policy fights and pledged to keep supporting them.
“It takes a lot of work. It can get difficult at times standing up and you can feel alone,” he said. “But at California Farm Bureau you're never alone.”
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