Governor Gavin Newsom has reshuffled the chairs in a board that has often served as an impediment to scaling up agtech adoption in California. And the change may be paying off for the industry.
Joseph Alioto, a trial attorney, took over in June as the new chair of the standards board governing the Division of Occupational Safety and Health, or Cal/OSHA. The appointment was an attempt to ease the tension between the administration and the board. Last March the board was set to approve new rules for indoor heat protections, despite industry outcry over the potential implementation costs. Yet the looming financial hit to corrections facilities drove the Department of Finance to pull its support for the draft regulation the night before the hearing. Dave Thomas, board chair at the time, voiced his frustration over the decision at the hearing, calling it “just bullshit” and shouted at protestors to “stop this shit right now.”
The chaotic meeting came on the heels of business groups pleading for “less vitriol” towards employers by agency staff. Helen Cleary, director of the Phylmar Regulatory Roundtable, said she had “never in my career felt such a lack of trust or disregard” for the concerns of the business community.
The governor’s office did not respond to requests for comment over Thomas’ outbursts but quietly demoted him three months later and removed another board chair, who similarly criticized the administration’s decision, while installing Alioto.
One of the new chair’s first acts was to back a petition for new requirements to prevent sliding gates from falling and injuring workers, while taking a slightly different approach to crafting the regulation. The board has for years shot down attempts to revise a longstanding ban on autonomous tractors and last year dismissed calls by the agriculture industry to establish a stakeholder advisory committee to examine the issue in more depth. Alioto’s board immediately established a committee to examine the sliding gates petition and agricultural representatives eagerly volunteered to serve on it.
Under Alioto, the standards board has also reopened the conversation over regulating emerging technologies in agriculture and, rather than criticizing agencies like the finance department, has reached out to its fellow regulators for inspiration. At its most recent hearing, the board invited the California Department of Pesticide Regulation to explain an innovative new program for exploring emerging technologies in partnership with manufacturers and academics.
“I really wanted this group to be a collaborative effort between different regulators in and outside of California who are working on these technologies,” said Emily Bryson, a senior environmental scientist at DPR. “Regulators are all running to keep up with the pace of these technologies and how quickly they're evolving.”
Bryson has built on her experience from serving on a two-year U.S. EPA work group on emerging technologies. She assembled a cohort composed of University of California researchers and extension specialists in the fields of agricultural engineering, business innovation and weed science. She brought in several officials at DPR, Cal/OSHA and the California Department of Food and Agriculture, while attracting interest from the Department of Water Resources.
Through guest presentations and roundtable discussions, the group has begun to gather information about a range of technologies, from unmanned aerial vehicles to retrofitted tractors. The equipment must relate to pesticide application and, while laser weeders “are very cool,” they do not fall within the department’s jurisdiction, explained Bryson. They also review current and proposed state and federal policies and “a lot of international regulations,” particularly with the popularity of pesticide drones in Asia.
“Looking at what they've done really has laid some of the groundwork for us,” said Bryson.
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She is sharing the findings with pesticide regulators in other states, who are often an overwhelmed staff of two in “tiny departments.”
While still early in the process, the discussions so far have revolved around technologies in development, worker and bystander safety, potential regulations to address specific tech issues, and how well the current regulatory framework fits the products coming to market.
“We’re trying to keep our finger on the pulse of what's happening and ensure that if we are drafting regulations, we try not to do anything too prescriptive, so we don't inhibit future progress and eventually make this process safer,” she said.
Connectivity came up as one surprising issue in the discussions. Rural areas often lack adequate broadband access for wireless connections and satellite links can have a lag time in sending signals to remote machinery, raising concerns for spray drift during applications. Bryson discovered the technologies tend to have multiple layers of connections and several fail safes in place, immediately shutting off the equipment at signs of danger.
The group has hosted thornier discussions around liability. DPR does not regulate the equipment but the person on it. With artificial intelligence and machine learning, deciding when and where to apply, however, “it gets a lot trickier.”
“We're a department of scientists. We're not engineers,” said Bryson. “So we really had to learn on the fly with a lot of this, and that's why it was really important to gather this information.”
The work has also informed the industry. Established manufacturers like John Deere have made significant inroads into the agtech space, but so have small Silicon Valley startups new to agriculture.
“[The startups] don't necessarily have the on-farm experience and a lot of them aren't even aware that DPR exists,” she said. “They don't know that the second their machine starts spraying pesticides, they're subject to an entirely new set of regulations.”
The state has issued 386 licenses for aerial applications, encompassing either drones or manned aircraft. That number has been rising since Newsom signed a bill last year, sponsored by the California Farm Bureau, to modernize the training process for drone applicators.
Every time someone visits a healthcare facility anywhere in California for a potential pesticide exposure or they call poison control, DPR receives a report. From 2017 to 2021, the state logged 582 cases of pesticide exposure to bystanders during ground-based applications in agriculture — with that number more than doubling for all agricultural pesticide exposures. Yet no cases have been reported for any of the emerging technologies on Bryson’s radar.
While the level of safety increases, environmental impacts drop. Breakthroughs in precision agriculture have led to more targeted applications, moving away from broad sprays along every row. Some agtech equipment can cut pesticide use in half by simply stopping applications between trees within an orchard and sensing tree height to prevent overspraying, explained Bryson. Such technologies dovetail with the administration’s goal of reducing use through its sustainable pest management strategy.
To industry trade groups, Bryson’s presentation was nothing new. Farmers have long eyed agtech solutions to lower labor costs and reduce expenses on pesticides, fertilizers and water — and several agricultural representatives had previously briefed the board on the safety and environmental benefits as well.
“We've been talking about autonomous equipment for quite a while,” said Michael Miiller, director of government relations at the California Association of Winegrape Growers. “The best way to really protect people from [pesticide] products is to scale back the use of the product.”
He noted that some machines can scan vineyards for diseases like red blotch and spray only the spots with problems, drastically reducing applications while eliminating the potential exposure to people. Through such practices, growers can more readily comply with DPR’s requirements, while supporting CDFA’s pursuit of lowering inputs through regenerative agricultural practices and adhering to pending zero-emission mandates from the California Air Resources Board. That agency has offered incentives for farmers to upgrade to electric tractors, equipment that typically comes paired with autonomous systems — potentially aligning it with Cal/OSHA’s workplace safety rules.
The standards board under Dave Thomas, however, routinely sided with labor groups in opposing automated farm machinery.
“This is an emerging technology and we need to go very slowly,” said Anne Katten, a policy advocate for the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation.
Katten argued workers still face the risk of exposure when loading autonomous sprayers or when operating partially automated equipment and said retrofitted tractors pose issues with quality control and liability. She also worried about environmental impacts. While the precision tools use less pesticide individually, more machines in the field could put more pesticide in the air, she reasoned.
Alioto was the only board member to take part in the discussion, asking Bryson probing questions about where the two agencies may overlap in their regulations. In some cases, traditional equipment, for instance, has sprayed and struck a bystander at the same time.
While the conversation was light, it was more positive than discussions last year, when board members criticized manufacturers for a lack of worker safety data specific to California and echoed labor concerns that autonomous technologies are still too dangerous.
Alioto and the board will learn more about the emerging agtech trends later in October, when they take part in a tour of the FIRA USA robotics conference in Woodland. At last year’s conference, the outgoing executive officer for the standards board, Christina Shupe, brought the debate to farmers when she defended the agency’s cautious approach to technology.
“A lot of times government gets a bad rap for being folks in an ivory tower who are not educated about what's going on in the real world, boots on the ground,” said Shupe. “When we pass regulations in California, these are laws. We in particular at the standards board know how critical it is to make sure they work and are feasible, that they're reasonable and that they're enforceable.”
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