Len Richardson

Researchers from the University of California, Davis, say the 2014 drought will cost the state $2.2 billion, with $1.5 billion in direct losses to agriculture and the loss of more than 17,000 full and part-time jobs, and result in the greatest depletion of w

University of California President Janet Napolitano is committing the 10 campuses in the UC system to a Global Food Initiative, a plan to leverage the state's role in agriculture and research to tackle the worldÐs most pressing food problems.

California Gov. Jerry Brown and the state legislature have agreed on how to divide up some $872 million in cap-and-trade auction proceeds as part of the Fiscal Year 2014-15 budget, according to the California Climate and Agriculture Network.

In recent years the California Farm Bureau Federation and the Western Growers Association, along with other farm groups and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have lobbied for policies that make it easier to hire foreign workers from Mexico and elsewhere.

A bill requiring labeling of packaged foods made with genetically modified crops is winding its way through the legislature in California, the biggest U.S. agricultural state, after a ballot measure on the issue, Proposition 37, was narrowly defeated by voters in 2012.

California Governor Jerry Brown is proposing major changes in the way the state regulates water from its underground reservoirs to preserve supplies as the most-productive agriculture state in the nation tries to cope with a historic drought.

Although recent storms may provide much needed relief for California farmers, the state’s water storage is drying up, researchers say. Using satellite data from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission, researchers found that as of November, total water storage in the state’s