Farmers donate money to help dairy in fight with city [Fresno Business Journal]
Donations from Central Valley farm bureaus hope to aid a Tulare County dairy in a legal fight against the City of Corcoran. On Oct. 2, The Tulare County Farm Bureau presented a check for $65,000 to Ben Curti and Tessa Hall of Curtimade Dairy to assist in their legal fees as they defend against accusations of groundwater pollution from the Kings County city, said Tricia Stever Blattler, president of the farm bureau. Over the summer, the Kings County Farm Bureau donated $15,000 to Curtimade. Donations came from farm bureau members as well as the Madera County Farm Bureau, said Dusty Ference, executive director for the Kings County Farm Bureau.
https://thebusinessjournal.com/farmers-donate-money-to-help-dairy-in-fight-against-city/
Electrification programs offered for landscaping and agriculture [Santa Barbara Independent]
The leaf-blower wars of the late ’90s led to the exclusive use of electric-powered blowers in the City of Santa Barbara. It was a small but vehement battle over the irritants gas-powered blowers produced, both noise and smog related….The county is joined by a larger, regional effort to electrify farm equipment as well….In focusing one of its many grant programs on the agricultural sector, company spokesperson Shelly Whitworth said that electrifying not only tractors but irrigation pumps, cooling and heating systems, forklifts, and light and heavy vehicles has led to substantial savings for some operators. Agriculture also contributes about 8 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions in California, so the 3CE grant program pays off in more ways than one.
‘They think workers are like dogs.’ How pork plant execs sacrificed safety for profits. [USA Today]
Bernardo Serpa cut pork legs eight hours a day, six days a week. He made the same cut roughly 12,000 times per shift, wielding a sharp knife as a production line worker at the second-largest pork processing plant in the country. Then the coronavirus pandemic hit….The reporting found Triumph failed to respond with effective safeguards during a crucial period from mid-March to mid-April that could have contained the spread of COVID-19. And local health officials, who received complaints from employees and their family members, missed several opportunities to investigate….Weeks later, nearly 500 Triumph employees – roughly a fifth of its workforce – tested positive. Four workers, including Serpa, have since died.
Editorial: California had the chance to start fixing its broken tax system. It balked [Los Angeles Times]
Proposition 15, the “split roll” measure on the Nov. 3 ballot, was always going to be a tough sell….In the end, the campaign just couldn’t pull it off, and the measure was declared officially dead on Tuesday. Even so, the fact that it lost by a slim margin — 3.6% as of Wednesday afternoon, though ballot counting continues — rather than a landslide gives us hope that the third rail may be losing some of its charge and that the kind of tax reform the state needs might be achievable in the near term.
California’s gig worker initiative blew a giant hole in its landmark labor law. What’s left? [Sacramento Bee]
California’s landmark labor law, Assembly Bill 5, isn’t going away anytime soon. Despite the passage of Proposition 22, which exempts hundreds of thousands of gig drivers from the act that regulates who gets to be an independent contractor, supporters say they will protect what’s left….A year into its passage, AB 5 remains polarizing. Supporters of AB 5 say the bill addresses rampant misclassification that deprived thousands of California workers of basic employees’ rights such as minimum wage. Opponents say it has caused businesses to cut back on hiring, sapping a source of income from thousands….AB 5 still covers the majority of California’s independent contractors, from maids to truck drivers. To classify those jobs as independent contractors, companies still have to meet what is known as the ABC test, meaning they should not impose control over workers in areas such as their hours. Those workers should also perform duties outside the usual course of the companies’ business.
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article247105212.html
Protecting open land [Comstock’s Magazine]
Stan Van Vleck, owner of the 13,000-acre Van Vleck Ranch in Rancho Murieta, is incrementally placing 30 percent of his ranch under conservation easements, with nearly 1,800 acres conserved to date. “We’re going to be one of the largest private dedications of land in our region,” says Van Vleck, whose cattle ranch accounts for 5 percent of all agricultural land in Sacramento County. Positioned between Deer Creek Hills Preserve and Gill Ranch — both working ranches with land under conservation easements — Van Vleck’s conserved land creates a vast corridor of preserved habitat among the three properties.
https://www.comstocksmag.com/longreads/protecting-open-land
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