Farm groups are sponsoring a bill in the Legislature to help reduce employer costs for California’s contentious ag overtime law.
The California Association of Winegrape Growers and the California Farm Bureau have partnered with Republican Sen. Shannon Grove of Bakersfield on SB 628. The measure would provide a tax credit to cover overtime wages. New York and Oregon have approved similar tax credits as part of their ag overtime laws.
Grove reasons the credit would also make it easier for farmworkers to get more hours and more take-home pay. The continued push for a credit builds on a 2023 UC Berkeley study indicating farmworkers have earned less under the law.
With the smallest winegrape harvest in 20 years, growers are struggling to stay in business and provide their workers with income, according to CAWG President Natalie Collins. CAFB President Shannon Douglass added that ag overtime came at the expense of farmers and their families. She argued Grove’s bill would serve as an investment in the nation’s food security and in California’s rural communities.
Sound familiar? In 2020, just before his appointment to chair the Agriculture Committee and three years before assuming the speakership, Asm. Robert Rivas of Hollister unsuccessfully attempted the same legislation.
Then last year Assembly Minority Leader James Gallagher sought to slightly raise the hourly threshold that triggers overtime. But UC Merced labor researchers undercut his argument by issuing a white paper downplaying the peer-reviewed UC Berkeley study. A labor-friendly committee chair then shot down Gallagher’s bill.
Feds ‘release’ Sites Reservoir dollars
California is marking it as a win for the federal government to release money already obligated to the Sites Reservoir Project proposal and a San Luis Reservoir expansion project.
Gov. Gavin Newsom shared his gratitude for the Trump administration allowing the $315 million through its fiscal gauntlet. The Interior Department had allocated the money during the Biden administration.
Key ag Assembly district seats a businessman with ties to agriculture
Stan Ellis will take over Assembly District 32, winning nearly 64% of the special election vote as of Tuesday. Ellis, an engineer by trade whose business ventures have ranged from oil to quantum physics, has spent the last 50 years living and working in Kern County. He moved to the Central Valley from South Dakota, where he grew up on a hog farm and attended the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology.
His campaign platform hailed back to early farming and ranching endeavors in the valley, with Ellis stating that his entrepreneurial experience provided him insight into the state’s overregulation of small businesses and agriculture.
Ellis received across-the-board GOP endorsements, including Bakersfield Rep. David Valadao, Sen. Shannon Grove and former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. He joined many GOP legislators in criticizing spending on California’s High Speed Rail project as a “train to nowhere” and a waste of farmland.
He previously ran for now-Rep. Vince Fong’s congressional seat, but did not make it past the March 2024 primary. Fong won his reelection campaign for the state seat but gave it up to pursue lawmaking in D.C.
District 32 covers parts of Kern and Tulare counties, both regularly falling right behind Fresno in terms of top U.S. agricultural production and sales.
Conservationists criticize ag water users for decline in salmon returns
After the California Department of Fish and Wildlife announced that nearly 50,000 fewer fall-run Chinook salmon returned to the Sacramento River Basin than expected this year, salmon conservationists were quick to point fingers at ag diversions and policy priorities.
The Golden State Salmon Association called the tally “abysmal,” and blamed Gov. Gavin Newsom for abandoning the fishing industry “to cater to the state’s big agriculture water interests.”
But: A GSSA pilot project is showing some positive results: implementing a short-haul strategy, where salmon from the Coleman National Fish Hatchery in Shasta County are driven downstream and released in the Sacramento River, demonstrates a 15% increased survival rate.
Sen. Melissa Hurtado, D-Bakersfield, met with state FFA officers and Agri-Pulse founder Sara Wyant.
Thompson plans ag labor bill
With farmers across the country concerned about losing workers to mass deportations, there’re likely to be renewed calls for reforming the H-2A visa system. To that end, House Agriculture Committee Chair Glenn “GT” Thompson, R-Pa., tells Agri-Pulse he plans to introduce legislation that would put into law recommendations made by a committee task force in the last Congress.
Thompson’s big problem: Immigration and H-2A are under the purview of the Judiciary Committee, not Ag. Thompson says he will ask GOP leadership to move the bill to Ag but expects to be denied. He doesn’t have a timetable but says, “I see it as urgent, though, with what's going on right now.”
Industry groups welcome new USDA avian flu strategy
Industry groups are praising the strategy to combat the avian flu announced Wednesday by Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins. The plan comes with a $1 billion investment for on-farm biosecurity, increased indemnity rates and vaccines. The plan stops short of actually vaccinating birds.
International Dairy Foods Association welcomed the $100 million investment in vaccine research. The group also re-upped calls for the federal government to quickly develop and approve bovine vaccines.
The National Chicken Council, which has opposed rushing vaccine efforts due to trade concerns, praised the “measured and science-based approach” on vaccines.
Senate Agriculture Committee ranking member Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said the strategy was an “important step” in supporting farmers and consumers. However, she said the administration needs to also confirm it has rehired all employees fired in recent weeks who were responsible for combatting the avian flu.
Relying on imports: Supplementing the United States’ diminished egg supply with imports from other countries is a key part of the new strategy. Last year the U.S. imported about 70 million eggs from Turkey, according to a USDA official. This year the number will be about 420 million, which represents about 5% of the total domestic production for the month of January.
Poultry industry to senators: Don’t let vaccine ‘ruin trade’
Representatives from the poultry industry told lawmakers Wednesday that the U.S. should work with trade partners to ensure avian flu vaccinations do not disrupt exports.
Speaking at a Senate Agriculture Committee hearing, Tony Wesner, a board member at United Egg Producers, told lawmakers that “nobody wants to see trade stopped because we start using vaccine.” Many U.S. trading partners limit imports from countries vaccinating against avian flu over concerns it can conceal symptoms in birds harboring the virus.
Wesner pointed out that almost 40% of chicken exports went to countries that are vaccinating their own flocks.
“I can't understand why we can't get together with those countries and figure this out so we don't ruin trade,” Wesner said.
National Turkey Federation Chair John Zimmerman stressed that the U.S. needs to be strategic in its rollout of the vaccine. “We need to have a plan in place, because we know that our trading partners are going to request that plan,” he said.
Final word:
“It’s time to get smarter about how we build in the state.” — State Sen. Susan Rubio of Baldwin Park. Rubio has filed a measure on home hardening as part of a legislation package to help stabilize California’s insurance market.
