Dairy Cares notched a win in the climate fight Tuesday by announcing the industry will achieve an annual reduction of 5 million metric tons of methane this year. It puts the state more than two-thirds of the way toward reaching its goal of slashing methane emissions 40% by 2030.
The sustainability group attributes the success to on-farm manure management projects, gains in production efficiency and the state’s shrinking herd size. California has 168 dairy digesters operating, with about 75 more in development, while farms have implemented more than 128 alternative manure management projects, with another 65 lined up.
Dairy farmer Chuck Ahlem, who chairs the group, also praised a “tremendous partnership with the state,” with $365 million in incentive grants over the past decade.
Read about the future of those incentives under a cap-and-trade extension in the Agri-Pulse West Newsletter hitting inboxes later this morning.
Congress to undo California waivers
Under Republican rule, Congress is gearing up to block California’s sales ban on gas cars. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., on Tuesday pledged to break precedent by overruling the Senate parliamentarian and using the Congressional Review Act to revoke the EPA clean air waiver.
The news led to a cascade of Democratic responses. California Sen. Alex Padilla placed a hold on President Donald Trump’s EPA nominees until Republicans “stop their reckless attempts” to ignore the parliamentarian, who has ruled the act does not apply to waivers.
Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon warned that invoking “the nuclear option” would propel a future Democratic administration to “revisit decades-worth of paltry corporate settlements, deferred prosecution agreements and tax rulings that were overly favorable to multinationals and ultra-wealthy individuals.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom said the move would “cede American car-industry dominance to China and clog the lungs of our children.” He once again noted that then-Gov. Ronald Reagan established the Air Resources Board and the Nixon administration issued California its first Clean Air Act waivers.
Delta Dems blast ag for tunnel project
Karla Nemeth, who directs the Department of Water Resources and serves as the governor’s water advisor, was in the Legislature’s hot seat Tuesday defending a proposal to fast-track the Delta tunnel project.
She testified at a budget subcommittee hearing soon after the Delta Caucus railed against the project for nearly an hour at a press conference. Nemeth corrected many of the assertions, starting with Sen. Jerry McNerney of Pleasanton repeatedly referring to it as multiple tunnels — six years after Newsom downgraded the project to one.
Nemeth also shot down claims the project would balloon past its $20 billion price tag. The caucus attempted to label the proposal as a handout to big ag interests at the expense of taxpayers. But Nemeth pointed out that Los Angeles’ major water provider would finance most of the project.
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Yet lawmakers are heeding the advice of the Legislative Analyst’s Office and plan to delay a decision on the trailer bill until later this summer to spend more time debating it.
Keep in mind: Lawmakers mulled the same proposal at length just two years ago and ultimately struck the tunnel project from the streamlining package. While much of the attention had focused on the tunnel, the package quietly benefitted the Sites Reservoir Project, another infrastructure proposal in the crosshairs of environmental groups.
Similarly, the hearing Tuesday only briefly touched on a separate proposal that could expedite a Bay-Delta Plan incorporating farmer-backed voluntary agreements.
CA beekeepers call for expanded pollinator habitats
On World Bee Day the California State Beekeepers Association is asking for political and public support for access to large-scale pollinator habitats. The association believes last year’s bee die-off could be offset by allowing commercial bees to forage on public lands.
Commercial beekeepers are now facing high input costs –– such as purchasing sugar and other feed additives –– to keep their colonies going. The state brings in nearly two million additional beehives each year to support the Central Valley almond bloom in lieu of California bees.
Beekeeper Trevor Tauzer said that efforts to reduce competition between commercial and native honeybees has led to some forage spaces being restricted. The association maintains that managed and wild pollinators can co-exist in harmony.
CSBA says the public can help by consuming U.S.-made honey and offering private land to commercial beekeepers.
NOAA update shows record-breaking Western snowmelt
A Tuesday update from the National Integrated Drought Information System found that above-normal temperatures and below-normal precipitation are forcing a rapid snowmelt across the western U.S.
Almost all basins across the West are exhibiting “late season snow drought” despite many above-average peak snowpack. Current dry conditions may also lead to an earlier fire season.
NIDIS also found that below-average April rainfall has decreased water supply expectations for the Colorado River Basin.
Western ag groups signal support for removing ESA ‘harm’ definition
Leaders of 41 western ag groups want the Trump administration to remove regulations defining “harm” under the Endangered Species Act. They say the definition is “overbroad.”
Rescinding the definition of “harm” would reduce costs, prevent delays and create more certainty for landowners, says a letter from leaders of groups like the National Water Resources Association, California Farm Bureau, Family Farm Alliance, Western Growers Association and the Public Lands Council. But it could also limit enforcement actions affecting certain species’ environments.
The group’s leaders say landowners seeking ESA take permits have been forced "to pay thousands of dollars and wait months or years” to receive them. Those that don’t receive such permits must pay for mitigation activities mandated by the federal government.
"Instead of imposing costly and sometimes burdensome regulatory mandates, the services should be focusing taxpayers’ dollars on actions proven to actually protect and restore species — and which follow the law,” the letter says.
US ag bracing for MAHA report
Farm groups are preparing for the worst in a report due this week from the Make America Healthy Again Commission. A source familiar with the report tells Agri-Pulse’s Rebekah Alvey that it touches on pesticide usage, although the final language is subject to change.
The Department of Health and Human Services has taken the lead on the report and has declined meetings with stakeholders. Calley Means, a leader of the MAHA movement and brother of surgeon general nominee Casey Means, is believed to be closely involved in the report’s development.
Read our full report at Agri-Pulse.com.
First nutritional SNAP waiver gets mixed reviews in Congress
House Agriculture Committee Chair Glenn Thompson, R-Pa., says USDA’s recent approval of a SNAP waiver allowing Nebraska to restrict purchases of soda and energy drinks demonstrates the need for a state cost-share.
Nebraska was the first state to receive USDA approval for such a waiver, but other states like Texas, Arkansas, Indiana and Iowa have submitted similar requests to USDA. Supporters of the waivers, including Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., argue they will improve public health.
Thompson generally takes issue with the SNAP restrictions on certain foods but says the waiver shows states need to have a bigger financial stake in the program.
“I don't think they ought to be meddling with any benefits that they don't contribute payments for. Where do they get the right to do that?” Thompson said. “I think it'll be challenged by someone, because what czar do we have [that] determines what's nutritional, or what's healthy?”
Keep in mind: The House Agriculture Committee’s piece of the Republican reconciliation bill proposes shifting between 5% to 25% of SNAP costs to the states. The plan has received backlash from anti-hunger groups, Democrats and some Senate Republicans.
GOP moderates: ‘Do not believe the CBO’
House Republican lawmakers are pushing back against criticism that their “big, beautiful” reconciliation bill will dent the U.S. economy by spurring the national debt and widening the deficit.
At a press conference on Tuesday, the Main Street Caucus, a group of self-proclaimed “pragmatic conservatives,” argued revenue forecasts of legislation have often been off.
“Do not believe the CBO,” Rep. Andy Barr, R-Ky., told reporters, referring to the Congressional Budget Office. Barr charged that the CBO has “been wrong over and over again.”
The reconciliation bill, he argued, will be “jet fuel for the American economy.”
His comments are in line with those from Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith, R-Mo. Smith told the Economic Club of Washington, D.C., last week that the CBO underestimated revenues from Trump’s first-term tax cuts and the costs of President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.
Take note: CBO has not scored the full reconciliation bill yet but has put out estimates for parts of the bill. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a non-partisan Washington-based think tank, says the bill in its current form would increase the debt by $3.3 trillion by 2034.
CBPP decries proposed cuts to SNAP, Medicaid
Cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program being considered in the House will hurt people with low and moderate incomes, says the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal research and advocacy group.
CBPP President Sharon Parrott told reporters these are “the very people the president and many other Republicans promised during the campaign to serve and protect.”
Criticizing the proposed reductions in food and health assistance, Parrott said the cost savings are “about equal” to the planned tax cuts to households with earnings over $500,000 a year.
Parrott said the impacts will be felt most acutely by households with the lowest earnings, including “truck drivers, cashiers, food service workers, home health aides, people who work and care for our kids in childcare centers.”
Court of International Trade to hear arguments in second tariff case
The Court of International Trade in New York will hear legal arguments today in a hearing for a case challenging the economic emergency used to impose new tariffs. Twelve states are suing the Trump administration over its tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, as well as sweeping reciprocal tariffs, and are asking for an injunction while the case is pending.
It is the second such case to have a hearing before the CIT in as many weeks. Expect lawyers to make arguments similar to those made by a group of small businesses that appeared before the court last Wednesday.
The judges, who are the same as those in that case, could wait and rule on both cases together, a lawyer involved in last week’s case said.
Final word
“Any chink in this inspectorate team, any lapse, could lead to a foodborne outbreak that would be a matter of great public concern. The bottom line is that the firings that left the FDA with not enough people to do the work.” — Former FDA Commissioner Robert Califf, speaking Tuesday at a Senate Democrat forum on Health and Human Services staffing cuts.
