Rising farm exports to China lift agribusiness, farmers [Wall Street Journal]
Rising agricultural exports to China are helping revive the fortunes of some agribusiness companies and farmers, after the coronavirus pandemic upended the U.S. farm sector. China’s effort to boost pork production, and buy more U.S. grain and meat following this year’s U.S.-China trade agreement, are driving a surge of U.S. farm goods across the Pacific in recent months, according to government estimates. Growing demand around the world for food staples like vegetable oil and starch are keeping U.S. agriculture companies’ processing plants humming, industry executives said. “China has come roaring back from the pandemic,” said Juan Luciano, chief executive of Archer Daniels Midland Co. ADM 0.77% , on a conference call last week. “Their recovery has surprised everybody.” Grain giants ADM and Bunge Ltd. BG -1.36% both attributed rising profits during their most recent quarters in part to higher commodities exports.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/rising-farm-exports-to-china-lift-agribusiness-farmers-11604412000
Federal aid mostly goes to bigger farms [Wall Street Journal]
As federal aid to the U.S. Farm Belt surges, a fraction of farmers are reaping a big portion of the government largess. The Trump administration is expected to pay farmers more than $37 billion this year, a historic sum largely intended to help those hit by trade wars and the coronavirus pandemic. Of the first nearly $5 billion paid out under a pandemic-relief program, just over 1% of recipients received at least one-quarter of the funds, or $1.2 billion, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of federal data….Like many farm safety-net programs, recent aid payments have largely reflected farms’ production. Proponents say aid tied to a farm’s output is a logical way to support the sector. Large farms produce more, can suffer heavier losses and depend more on income from the farm, versus smaller farmers who often rely on off-farm jobs to help support their families, they say.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/federal-aid-mostly-goes-to-bigger-farms-11604341709
2020 declared the ‘third driest water year’ for Lake Mendocino [Ukiah Daily Journal]
n terms of rainfall, the year 2020 is officially the third driest year for Lake Mendocino, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers confirmed Friday. According to USACE staff, “Water Year 2020,” which includes precipitation from Oct. 1, 2019 to Sept. 3, 2020, is “the third driest year on record for the northern part of the watershed,” or Russian River Basin. By Sept. 3, the basin had received 37.46 inches of precipitation, or 48 percent of average. Such records for Lake Mendocino go back 127 years to 1894, staff said, and that Water Year 1977 was officially the driest, and Water Year 1924 the second driest. The rainfall numbers for those years were not provided.
The restaurant industry needs indigenous farm workers. Yet their fate hangs in the balance. [Bon Appétit]
Gray and white flakes of ash from the nearby Glass Fire flutter down as I speak with Gervacio Peña Lopez, the executive director of Movimento Cultural de la Unión Indígena and a Mixteco farm worker. We are wearing masks, sitting six feet across from each other outside the organization’s headquarters in Santa Rosa, CA. Lopez is bemoaning the compounding, paralyzing difficulties that Indigenous farm workers have had to deal with this year. First, the pandemic and the susceptibility to infection, with living and working in crowded spaces and without access to PPE. Second, a fire season that has become synonymous with the grape harvest season, filling the air with toxic ash and smoke. Third, the election. An overwhelming majority of farm workers cannot vote because they are undocumented—yet their wages and protections hang in the balance. “Our people take a lot of risks because they need to make money, but there’s more competition. People who lost jobs in other industries are coming to work here….The food supply chain begins with farm workers; the restaurant and hospitality industries depend on them as much as farm workers depend on these industries. But restaurant closures have meant that many crops have nowhere to be sold, causing a reduction in farm workers’ hours and therefore pay, with no assurance that the hours—or the restaurants—will ever return.
https://www.bonappetit.com/story/indigenous-farm-workers-2020-election
Commentary: Delta tunnel project would secure California’s water future [Redding Record Searchlight]
The Delta Conveyance Project is a necessary investment to secure California’s water future. Let’s face it, our climate is changing rapidly and becoming more unpredictable – wildfires are larger and more frequent, the seas are rising, droughts are lasting longer and storms are fiercer. The need for this project has never been clearer. Delta conveyance is the movement of water through the network of waterways in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the hub of the State Water Project – California’s most critical water delivery infrastructure. Two-thirds of California’s water begins its journey as snowmelt from high in the Sierra Nevada, eventually flowing into the Delta where the State Water Project infrastructure conveys the water to 27 million Californians and 750,000 acres of farmland from Silicon Valley down to San Diego. But the State Water Project’s 1960-era infrastructure is aging and needs to be upgraded to meet the challenges ahead. As we’ve seen in recent years, the state’s precipitation is increasingly coming in the form of big storms in-between extended dry periods. The State Water Project infrastructure must be improved to be more resilient to climate change and more flexible in its ability to take advantage of big storms by moving water when it’s wet for use when it’s not.
Opinion: What California can learn from Cape Town about water policy [San Francisco Chronicle]
Two years ago, Cape Town, South Africa, a city of 4 million people, informed its shocked citizens that the city was just a few months away from running out of water due to drought. It was a wake-up call for all of us to become much better stewards of our own water. Luckily, for Cape Towners, innovative water conservation and efficiency measures, smarter data use, expanded water storage, and help from Mother Nature all combined to help them avoid a major water shutoff. California of course continues to have its own foreboding water challenges. As Mark Twain allegedly said, in the West “whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting over.”…We need to consider: (1) Working collaboratively with agricultural users to determine new ways they can help their urban neighbors by even more effectively using and reusing ag waters.
Ag Today is distributed by the CFBF Marketing/Communications Division to county Farm Bureaus, CFBF directors and CFBF staff, for information purposes only; stories may not be republished without permission. Some story links may require site registration. Opinions expressed in stories, commentaries or editorials included in Ag Today do not necessarily represent the views of CFBF. To be removed from this mailing list, reply to this message and please provide your name and email address. For more information about Ag Today, contact 916-561-5550 or news@cfbf.com.
