Up in smoke: Burns in San Joaquin Valley vineyards, orchards may finally end [CalMatters]
… Throughout the San Joaquin Valley, growers burn thousands of tons of waste in vineyards and orchards a year, sending up plumes of particles and gases that are known to exacerbate asthma and cause other serious health problems. Now, the California Air Resources Board is poised this week to decide whether to stop the burning that stretches across eight counties, from Lodi to Lebec. Under the proposal, the board would direct its staff to work with the San Joaquin Valley’s air district to ban virtually all agricultural burning by the end of 2024.
https://calmatters.org/environment/2021/02/san-joaquin-valley-agriculture-burns/
Local farmworkers recount fear and exclusion during pandemic [Davis Enterprise]
… The workers are treated as “essential but disposable,” said Natalia Deeb-Sossa, a professor in the Chicana and Chicano Studies department at UC Davis who has researched local farmworker communities for years. Since the start of the pandemic, Deeb-Sossa and a group of her students have interviewed 80 essential workers, more than half of whom are farmworkers and most of whom work in Yolo County. The interviews paint a vivid picture of the challenges food and agriculture workers in Yolo County have encountered during the pandemic.
Opinion: KCFB: Patience needed for ag workers seeking vaccine [Hanford Sentinel]
… The Kings County Farm Bureau office receives several inquiries a week asking how and where the agriculture workforce can get their vaccines. … Kings County’s weekly allocation is small, and a number of residents are anxious to receive a vaccine. … KCFB continues to meet with members of the distribution stream. As we learn more about the availability of vaccines, we will update the industry. … In the meantime, if your agriculture operation needs N-95 masks, hand sanitizer or cloth masks, please contact our office.
Valley farmers keep close eye on Texas’ snow storm crop damage [KMPH TV, Fresno]
Valley farmers are keeping a close eye as farmers in Texas assess their crops following last week’s snow storm. Some could feel the impact, more than a thousand miles away. “There is the possibility that we may be shipping more there than typical just because there is going to be a need there,” says Fresno County Farm Bureau CEO Ryan Jacobsen. … He says Valley farmers are already seeing an impact on fuel prices. Texas produces more than 4.5 million barrels of oil a day, many shut down during the winter storm.
https://kmph.com/news/local/valley-farmers-keep-close-eye-on-texas-snow-storm-crop-damage
Tourists flock to almond bloom, sometimes over growers’ objections [Bakersfield Californian]
… The almond bloom has become one of the southern Central Valley’s favorite tourism attractions over the years, a somewhat unpredictable delight found almost nowhere else in the world. … But if local almond growers don’t promote the event as a tourist attraction, and they generally don’t, there’s a reason: Visitors and selfie photographers who often venture into local orchards can pose a liability to commercial agricultural operations. … Some who promote the bloom as a tourist destination understand that and make sure visitors do, too.
Opinion: Map out where solar installations will have least impact on farmland [San Francisco Chronicle]
… If unaddressed, the solar versus natural resources battle, which needlessly pits one set of important environmental goals against another, will mostly be fought at the local level, where land use regulations are enforced. … Fortunately, there is a basic solution to the problem: mapping out where large solar installations — which are fundamentally industrial land uses — will have the least impact on farmland, open space and species. Solar is an important tool for California to meet its clean energy goals, but it does not belong on land abundant in agricultural and other natural resources.
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