While the Trump administration has halted climate spending and banned the word at USDA, California is doubling down on its climate goals. The Legislature has revived an ambitious but potentially costly proposal that has raised alarms among farm groups.
Lawmakers are considering stringent targets for 2030 and 2045 to sequester carbon and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the natural and working lands sector.
Driving the legislation is a Newsom administration report expounding the benefits of nature-based solutions for building climate resilience and outlining a set of policy actions to boost the practices.
The report — leaning on a policy framework from the California Air Resources Board — calls for converting at least 20% of California agriculture to organic practices within the next 20 years. Currently more than 5% of the cropland is dedicated to organic farming, significantly higher than the national average of 1% and accounting for more than a third of the nation’s organic sales, according to USDA and the California Department of Food and Agriculture.
The report also details the need for improving forest health to maintain the state’s largest carbon sink, which carries the additional benefit of reducing the risk of catastrophic wildfires. The goal highlights prescribed grazing as one of several activities, attracting interest from ranchers.
The long policy push for climate targets
Tapping nature to combat climate change has been an enticing strategy for a state racing to stay on track with its 2045 carbon neutrality goal. California’s working lands have the potential to sequester up to 100 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year, or about a quarter of the state’s annual greenhouse gas emissions, according to The Climate Center, an environmental advocacy group.
Progressive lawmakers have for years sought to enact state mandates for the sector in statute but have continuously run against heavy opposition from the agriculture industry. In 2019 Assemblymember Robert Rivas, D-Hollister, who is now Assembly speaker and a former Agriculture Committee chair, hit a roadblock for two years in a row with his proposal for setting targets. His fellow Democrats were skeptical over expanding CARB’s authority, and the bill quietly died in an Appropriations committee.
Meanwhile, Governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order in 2020 that put more regulatory might behind nature-based solutions, deploying the multibenefit approach as the framework for his 30x30 pledge, which aims to conserve 30% of the state’s land and coastal waters by 2030.
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Then in 2022 former Asm. Cristina Garcia, D-Bell Gardens, took the mantle from Rivas with setting targets. When her bill stalled in the same committee, she cannibalized another and revived the legislation just three days before the end of the 2022 session, circumventing the committee. By then the effort was reduced to a study bill. Assembly Bill 1757 tasked the California Natural Resources Agency with establishing an advisory committee to identify a range of potential actions to harness nature-based solutions for achieving carbon neutrality and for fostering climate adaptation and resilience. The recommendations laid the groundwork for the administration’s report last year.
Asm. Damon Connolly, D-San Rafael (Connolly office photo)Along with boosting organic farming and forest management, the report proposes to expand CDFA’s Healthy Soils Program to cover 140,000 acres in the next four years and 190,000 by 2045. Since its inception in 2016, the incentive program has reached about 130,000 acres, with the governor asking the Legislature for up to $85 million a year for the grants, rapidly upscaling the program. The plan also seeks to set aside nearly 20,000 additional acres for conservation easements by 2045.
Converting conventional farms to organic
Asm. Damon Connolly, D-San Rafael, has seized on the report. Through AB 491, he wants to ensure it is not left on the shelf but embedded within state law.
“Climate change cannot wait,” said Connolly in a statement introducing the bill. “The people of California deserve a safer, more resilient future, and we must harness the power of our forests, wetlands and farmlands to combat this crisis.”
Connolly claims California is “lagging behind” on its climate goals and needs to triple its rate of reducing greenhouse gases through 2030. He argues the state must steadily cut more emissions as it nears its carbon neutrality target to ensure the effort does not stall out at the finish line.
The Healthy Soils practices underlining Connolly’s bill have gained strong backing from organic farmers in the state, since cover cropping and minimizing tillage carry the promise of reducing the need for pesticides. That dovetails with Connolly’s ongoing push for incentivizing organic farming.
For the past two years, the Marin County progressive has unsuccessfully pushed to consolidate reporting processes for organic producers, modernize the California Public Health Department’s registration and payment system for organic food processors, and prioritize organic practices in Healthy Soils grants. He has also sought to protect organic incentive funding from budget cuts and has been an ardent critic of the use of conventional pesticides like glyphosate.
This year he has filed a measure to establish a grant program for easing the organic transition. It would dedicate a quarter of the technical assistance money from the Healthy Soils Program to farmers undergoing the transition and authorize CDFA to fund their conservation management plans.
Connolly has worked closely with environmental advocacy groups like the California Climate & Agriculture Network to push for farming practices that sequester carbon and reduce emissions from pesticides and tractors. AB 491 has gained the backing of several influential conservation groups as well.
“Frankly, we have been addressing this crisis with one hand tied behind our back,” said Laurie Wayburn, president and co-founder of Pacific Forest Trust, who testified last week in support of the bill. “Natural and working lands have the capacity to reduce net emissions more quickly, less expensively and with more co-benefits than any other actions we can take.”
Wayburn reasons that California “has made great strides” in reducing emissions in the energy and transportation sectors and that applying similar targets to natural and working lands would provide greater certainty for those climate investments. Last November voters approved a $10 billion climate bond, and Newsom is planning to spend $134 million of it in the next fiscal cycle on CDFA’s climate-smart grants.
Wayburn believes the state can make enormous strides in reducing emissions over the next five to 10 years for carbon dioxide as well as methane released from forest debris and other decaying matter.
“All of these targets are with actions that are proven feasible and scalable,” said Wayburn. “They do not require lengthy R&D or investment in startups or scaling, per se, to show that they are feasible.”
Biodiversity from ridgetop to river mouth to cattle country
She found the most promise with the forest management actions, since promoting the growth of older trees would cut down on fire risk and store carbon for longer periods of time. The administration’s report aims to manage 11.9 million acres of forests for carbon storage by 2045. The advisory committee found that updating the management practices on a portion of the state’s private forestlands could absorb an additional 300 million metric tons of CO2 within the next decade.
Richard Filgas, California Farm Bureau (LinkedIn photo)The work would entail thinning, active reforestation, reconnecting forests to aquatic habitats and other conservation projects. The proposals to aggressively and proactively treat fire fuels through livestock grazing and prescribed burning drew applause from the California Cattlemen’s Association. CCA has long stressed “the vital role livestock producers play in stewarding the state’s grassland ecosystems,” according to CCA Vice President Kirk Wilbur, in a statement to Agri-Pulse.
The association has registered its support for AB 491, seeing it as a vehicle for spurring further action to reduce barriers for grazing permits and prescribed burning on state-owned lands.
Yet farm groups have expressed concern over mandating specific targets for the industry, when agriculture stands at the mercy of extreme droughts, volatile markets and escalating pest pressures. Previous bills raised fears of undermining existing sustainability practices while adding more costs onto farmers.
The California Farm Bureau is again leading the opposition, with more trade groups likely to flesh out the coalition as AB 491 progresses through the Legislature. The farm bureau supports several of the actions within the report but worries about the ramifications of installing the targets in statute.
“Many of the factors that control the scale and pace at which these climate-smart practices are adopted on farms and ranches are uncontrollable,” said policy advocate Richard Filgas in his testimony. “That will complicate achieving the targets established at a single point in time.”
With the push for more organic farming, Filgas explained that growers must consider a variety of factors when making that decision — from commodity markets to land use patterns and access to natural resources.
“They often lead a grower not to transition,” he said. “We believe market demand should drive increased organic acreage.”
Despite the concerns, the Assembly Natural Resources Committee swiftly approved the measure largely along party lines. Chair Isaac Bryan, D-Los Angeles, called it “a fantastic bill” and praised Connolly for running point on the climate bond when the Legislature drafted the proposal last year.
Lawmakers are racing to take stock of more than 2,000 bills introduced since February, with more taking shape ahead of committee hearings. The debates have overlapped with informational hearings on key political issues and with lengthy budget discussions on climate bond spending and on complex accounting mechanisms to rein in a stubborn state deficit. This while Sacramento’s attention is fixated on Washington, D.C., and the Trump administration’s dramatic reforms to government. It has left little energy in the state Capitol lately for debating the nuances of organic farming and commodity markets at issue in AB 491.
The measure will now face a key fiscal gauntlet with the Appropriations Committee, where lawmakers and the governor tend to shelve bills that pose significant costs to implement or could be unpopular with voters.
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