Volume 3 . Issue 17                    September 14, 2019

Another Hit on Farmers and Consumers

This week the California Farm Bureau sent out a press release opposing restrictive product packaging in bills by Senator Ben Allen, (D), Los Angeles South Bay Counties and Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D), San Diego. According to the Farm Bureau, Senate Bill 54 and Assembly Bill 1080 “are the most significant attempts to regulate packaging ever in California, and would impact the ability of California farmers to ensure food product safety and quality of our produce.”

It is felt that if these bills are approved by the legislature and signed into law by Governor Newsom, it will substantially increase the cost to manufacture and ship consumer products and produce within the state.

The Farm Bureau claims that both SB 54 and AB 1080 contain unrealistic time lines and heavy-handed regulations and penalties that will negatively impact food safety and quality, increasing food waste and potentially increasing overall food packaging.

Some items in the bills include:

1. Extend the scope of the bill to apply single use packaging provisions to all single use packaging materials to include glass, paper, plastic and metals.

2. Requires most farmers to register with CalRecycle and pay fees for normal practices such as bailing twine, wrapping cotton bales, farm stand sales – even if the material farmers are using is made of recycled content.

3. Creates barriers to innovative packaging for freshness and food safety, likely resulting in more food spoilage and shorter shelf life for our healthy fruits, vegetables and nuts.

4. Impacts commodities already heavily regulated such as wine and food processing. The bill mandates source reduction and will impact packaging such as wine bottles, individual packs for school lunches and single serve dairy case items.

5. Extreme penalties of "'condition for sale" and $50,000 a day penalty.

6. No small farm exemption.

Water Wars – Vote Expected on SB 1

The vote on the controversial Senate Bill 1 was expected on Friday, and even though the winter of 2019 brought 200 percent of average rains and snow pack, the state is still holding back on water to farmers and residents will be rationed within the next couple of years.

Senate Bill 1, the California Environmental Public Health and Workers Defense Act of 2019, establishes specified minimum federal environmental, public health, and labor standards, and prevents the California standards from falling below those baselines. In the event that new federal standards fall below the baseline, this bill allows private citizens to enforce state standards.

The bottom line: What the bill would really do is send billions of gallons of water out to the Pacific Ocean ostensibly to save more fish.

Over 30 state water purveyors, along with Mountain Counties Water Resources Association, Western Growers Association and Almond Alliance of California sent a letter to Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez conveying their opposition to Senate Bill 1 unless it was amended. Some had also sent a letter in May to Senator Adkins to express concern about the Endangered Species Act provisions of SB 1.

In the letter they stated that there is a likelihood for statewide disruptive impacts to the state's water systems should this measure be enacted in its current form. They added until those concerns are addressed, we vigorously oppose it. SB 1 threatens water supply reliability for millions of Californians and jeopardizes efforts to improve the environmental health of the Sacramento and San Joaquin River watersheds.

This week California Water For Food and People, a private group, reached out asking people to call their legislators. They claim that 8.741 trillion gallons of freshwater has gone to the ocean this water year alone which equals a year's

supply of water for 268,827,100 (268.8 million) people and adding that 500,000 acres of the most productive and fertile farmland will be taken out of production.

As we went to press with the Messenger, the vote on Senate Bill 1 had not yet been taken and was not expected until late Friday night, the last day of this year's session.

Rest assured, water wars will continue. Those in power in California and environmentalists have a history of opposing the construction of building any new water storage facilities and soon California families will be required to ration water usage in their homes.

In October of 2018, President Trump signed a memorandum on “Promoting the Reliable Supply and Delivery of Water in the West” which included guidance and direction on the process. In the President's memorandum he says, “Decades of uncoordinated, piecemeal regulatory actions have diminished the ability of our Federal Infrastructure, however, to deliver water and power in an efficient, cost-effective way”. Also warning that unless addressed right now, “fragmented policies and fragmented regulation of water infrastructure will continue to produce inefficiencies, unnecessary burdens, and conflict among the Federal Government, States, Tribes, and local public agencies that deliver water to their citizenry.”

It is no secret that California's government is also at war with the President. It should also be noted that in the letter from Water Purveyors and growers, they said, “'while we understand the state's desire to serve as a strong voice against Presidential policies on many fronts – including environmental policies – in its current form SB 1 would be counterproductive to the best environmental outcomes with respect to water operations and could severely disrupt the delivery of water throughout most of the state."