Biden administration postpones lifting penalties for accidental killing of migratory birds [Wall Street Journal]
The Biden administration said Thursday it will postpone implementing a measure approved in the final days of the Trump administration that would have removed criminal penalties for killing migratory birds, calling the decision misguided. The measure lifting penalties was set to take effect this coming Monday. … In seeking to end the criminal penalties, the Trump administration was responding to business groups, farmers and others who said criminal penalties were too harsh for accidental deaths.
The impact of COVID-19 on Kern County agriculture [KGET TV, Bakersfield]
Studio 17’s Vanessa Dillon spoke to John Moore, President of the Kern County Farm Bureau, about how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected our local agriculture industry. [Video]
https://www.kget.com/studio17live/the-impact-of-covid-19-on-kern-county-agriculture/
PG&E addresses power shut-offs, wildfire prevention during virtual town hall [Chico Enterprise-Record]
After another year of disastrous wildfires across the state and numerous power shut-offs, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. held a virtual town hall meeting Wednesday for residents of Butte and Plumas counties to discuss the utility company’s role in wildfire prevention efforts. A number of topics were mentioned, but a majority of the conversation and subsequent questions from viewers centered around public safety power shut-offs — planned outages that the company announces ahead of forecasted adverse weather events, which typically includes high winds and low humidity combined with dry vegetation.
Why Gov. Newsom wants to invest nearly $90 million in Turlock livestock lab [Modesto Bee]
Gov. Gavin Newsom has asked for $88.6 million to build a livestock health lab in Turlock much better than the one already there. Backers say the project would help assure safe food for humans while containing diseases in poultry, cattle, swine, horses and other livestock. … “It’s great for all of our animal agriculture,” said Tom Orvis, governmental affairs director for the Stanislaus County Farm Bureau. … The new Turlock site would serve livestock within about a 90-minute drive, said a report accompanying the budget request.
https://www.modbee.com/article248989205.html
Moorpark City Council moves to permanently ban growing industrial hemp [Ventura County Star]
Growing industrial hemp in Moorpark looks to soon be permanently banned. The City Council Wednesday night unanimously introduced an ordinance to do so. … Cultivating industrial hemp in Moorpark is already prohibited under a temporary city moratorium that was enacted in December 2019, then later extended. It came in response to complaints from dozens of residents of the southern part of the city about strong odors coming from industrial hemp that at the time was being legally grown in the neighboring Tierra Rejada Valley in unincorporated Ventura County.
Opinion: The efficiency curse: We built a ‘better’ food system. The cost: It couldn’t handle a pandemic [Washington Post]
… In times of crisis, resilience counts for more than efficiency. … When the coronavirus came, we discovered that the system was fragile, rigid and therefore vulnerable. … A critical lesson for farmers from this crisis is to diversify to whatever extent they can, even if that costs some efficiency. … That sense of interconnectedness is, for me, one of the most powerful and hopeful lessons of the pandemic. People who had never given much thought to where their food comes from (not to mention their toilet paper) suddenly learned something about farms and farmers, concentration in the meat industry, and CSAs.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/02/05/pandemic-food-resilience/?arc404=true
Opinion: The environmental upside of modern farming [Wall Street Journal]
… Farm production in the U.S. has nearly tripled over the past 70 years, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and trying to pull that off using the low-tech methods of the past—which delivered lower yields per acre—would have meant that more forests would have been lost, more fragile lands plowed and more natural habitats destroyed. Modern farming is better because it uses low-impact, “precision” techniques that require less land, less energy and fewer chemicals for every bushel produced. … In agriculture as in so many realms, realism demands modernism.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-environmental-upside-of-modern-farming-11612534962?page=1
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