Trump makes water demand of farms priority for new office [Associated Press]
President Donald Trump on Tuesday created what he called a “subcabinet” for federal water issues, with a mandate that includes water-use changes sought by corporate farm interests and oil and gas. … Establishment of a water subcabinet “will streamline decision-making processes” across federal agencies, the EPA said in a statement. The first priority set out by the executive order is increasing dam storage and other water storage, long a demand of farmers and farm interests in the West in particular.
Latinos, farmworkers, 20-year-olds have most COVID-19 cases in Santa Barbara County [Santa Maria Times]
Latinos, agricultural workers, 20-year-olds and the elderly have been affected by COVID-19 at levels disproportionate to their percentage of Santa Barbara County’s population, according to a report on pandemic demographics delivered Tuesday to the Board of Supervisors. … Based on occupation, 1,180 of the county’s 8,199 cases were among agricultural workers, followed by 918 among retired and unemployed — likely due to outbreaks in skilled nursing and residential care facilities for the elderly — and 546 among laborers and unskilled workers.
Monterey Co. Agricultural Commissioner proposes fines for 2018 pesticide exposures [KION TV, Monterey/Salinas]
The Monterey County Agricultural Commissioner’s Office has announced fines and violations related to a 2018 pesticide exposure people that left several Salinas residents, including children, sick. On Oct. 22 of that year, a pest control company conducted soil fumigation to 16 acres of strawberry beds, and during the application, workers saw a large amount of flooding in furrows at lower field elevations. The Ag Commissioner’s Office said workers tried to cover the flooding with dirt.
This small lumber company beat back a blaze. Rebuilding is a bigger battle [Wall Street Journal]
… The family, whose logging operation, Big Creek Lumber, stretches across roughly 8,000 acres in the Santa Cruz Mountains, positioned its water trucks and hoses, doused piles of redwood logs, dug fire breaks and drove bulldozers toward the flames. … The McCrarys join timber companies across the state in the struggle to navigate the enormous financial burden of repairing the forests they rely on for logging. Wildfires, which have consumed a record 4.1 million acres in California this year, pose the greatest threat to the industry since the 2007-09 recession, which pushed lumber harvesting and sales to all-time lows, according to the California Forestry Association.
Nearly 1,000 nutria are trapped in two Valley counties this year [KMPH TV, Fresno]
The nutria is a destructive pest to Valley agriculture that resurfaced in the grasslands of Merced County three years ago. The latest progress report from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife on the battle to eliminate the rodent is encouraging. … State Fish and Wildlife has caught nearly 1,000 nutria along the San Joaquin River corridor and in the grasslands. … Gerstenberg has headed up the nutria project since 2017. He started with little staff but now has 19 people on the team. He credits that for the positive numbers.
https://kmph.com/news/local/nearly-1000-nutria-are-trapped-in-two-valley-counties-this-year
Pilgrim’s Pride reaches plea deal with Justice Department on chicken price-fixing allegations [Wall Street Journal]
Chicken processor Pilgrim’s Pride Corp. said it has agreed to a plea deal with the U.S. Justice Department to resolve price-fixing charges, and will pay a fine of $110.5 million. A guilty plea by Pilgrim’s, the second-largest U.S. chicken processor by sales, will make it the first company to admit in court to what prosecutors have alleged was a roughly seven-year effort across much of the U.S. chicken industry to inflate prices. That coordination pushed up poultry prices paid by fast-food chains and other chicken buyers, prosecutors alleged.
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