Renata Brillinger | California Climate & Agriculture Network

Rangeland Conservation Group Impresses with Leadership & Vision

January 26, 2012 by Renata Brillinger Leave a Comment

After attending the annual summit of the California Rangeland Conservation Coalition (CRCC) in Davis last week, I’m more impressed than ever with the group and their efforts. The long-term viability of California’s grazing lands — under siege in many ways — depends on the leadership, partnership and vision of the stakeholders in this coalition.

CRCC is a coalition of ranchers, environmentalists, land trusts, public agencies and researchers working together to preserve and enhance the ecosystems services of California’s rangeland while supporting the long-term viability of the ranching industry. The focus of the summit was on managing rangelands for multiple ecosystems services and highlighting the many public benefits rangelands provide — food provision, wildlife habitat, open space, limiting urban sprawl, watershed protection, recreation, and not least of all, carbon sequestration.

The summit also highlighted the threats to these working lands. For example, many speakers mentioned the negative impact of the defunding of the Williamson Act (a program that has provided tax incentives for farmland protection for decades) that is no longer effective in providing counter-pressure against development. A research team from UC Davis reported on rancher survey findings indicating that 42 percent of ranchers would sell some or all of their land without financial support from the Williamson Act, and 56 percent of those predicted the land would be developed for non-agricultural purposes. Jaymee Marty from The Nature Conservancy stated that their research shows the biggest threat to rangeland conversion is from intensive agriculture such as vineyards, orchards and irrigated pasture — a threat that the Williamson Act does not mitigate. This gap points to a need for better programs to protect rangeland.

This is a group not afraid to talk about climate change, both in terms of the impacts it will have and the climate benefits offered by rangelands. Many rancher members are carefully watching the carbon market in hopes that it will provide new financial incentives to keep them in business. The many scientific and political barriers to fulfilling these hopes have yet to be overcome.

To put a point on the impacts of climate change discussed at the summit, just a couple of days later a report was released called “The Impact of Climate Change on California’s Ecosystem Services.” Predictions under two climate models are both bad for ranching — warmer, drier conditions will desiccate grasslands while warmer, wetter conditions will cause intrusion of less digestible brush. Summarizing the findings for rangelands, lead author Rebecca Shaw said, “A less stable climate will reduce the ability of natural landscapes to support cattle grazing, so ranchers may have to grow or buy extra hay instead of getting it for free from nature, as they do now.”

Some of the most exciting research work in this field is coming out of the California Rangeland Watershed Laboratory at UC Davis at the Graduate Group in Ecology, both headed by Ken Tate. Several members made presentations at the summit and are closely involved with CRCC. They have a strong interest in improving their participatory research efforts by working more closely with ranchers to correlate research findings with on-the-ground experience.

One of the most interesting presentations was made by Valerie Eviner (a CalCAN science advisor) who described how difficult it is to translate scientific findings and models to real ranch conditions, and how challenging it can be for ranchers to balance competing ecosystems management and economic priorities. She acknowledged that scientists still are not able to give prescriptions to ranchers since there is so much variability in rangeland systems. She described an ambitious project they are undertaking to collect vast amounts of information and observations from ranchers in an attempt to draw connections between management strategies, geographic and climatic conditions and the resulting impacts on ecosystems indicators. CalCAN will play a supporting role in this research as it moves forward.

Keep an eye on this coalition. There is a lot to learn from their whole systems approach and collaborative multi-stakeholder structure.

Filed Under: Climate & Ag Research, Farmer Resources, Impacts of Climate Change Tagged With: conservation, ecosystems services, ranching, rangeland

Crop Insurance Reform Must Reflect Climate Realities

December 19, 2011 by Renata Brillinger 1 Comment

There are some good reasons suggesting that we need to reevaluate federal crop insurance policies.

First, the effects of climate change are already being felt by farmers across the country. The extreme weather events of 2011 throughout the United States — including severe floods and drought, and the related economic losses into the billions of dollars — have raised awareness about the vulnerability of agriculture to more extreme and unpredictable weather patterns. Farmers, government agencies and policymakers are now considering how to be better prepared for weather extremes, including reforming how we insure farms against catastrophic losses.

Second, in the recent flurry of farm bill activity sparked by the (now failed) “super committee” process, robust debates began on how to spend public money on supporting the country’s food and farming system. There is every indication that powerful agribusiness interests will agree to reduce, or in some cases eliminate, commodity payments that for decades have guaranteed billions of dollars in revenue for producers of the major commodities (e.g., corn, soy, wheat, rice, cotton, etc.). However, this historic concession will come with a significant tradeoff — namely, the expansion of federal crop insurance payments, essentially continuing the practice of minimizing economic risk for producers of these crops. Farmers need good crop insurance. The question is how crop insurance is structured, which will impact not only what is grown and how, but whether or not taxpayers are on the hook for what could be expensive and risky policies.

Lastly, all of these debates come at time when federal policy decisions continue to be examined through the lens of budgetary austerity, and farm bill programs are no exception. In the case of crop insurance, which must be considered in light of climate change, the challenge will be to sort out what risk management programs and policies are truly the most economical and sustainable over the long term.

A new briefing, A Risky Proposition: Crop Insurance in the Face of Climate Change by the Institute for Agriculture & Trade Policy (IATP) makes the case that farmers need adequate insurance, particularly in view of increased challenges caused by climate change. But the authors also argue that the support should be coupled with measures that mitigate climate change risk for agriculture and increase on-farm resilience. To do otherwise, they say, is “like offering a home owner a fire insurance policy, but not even requiring the most basic preventative measures, such as smoke alarms or fire extinguishers.”

As the authors note the current system of taxpayer-backed farm insurance isn’t working as well as it needs to. Some highlights:

Organic operations — arguably among the most resilient farming systems — pay a five percent surcharge on their insurance policies, and any losses they incur are reimbursed at conventional crop prices without consideration of the higher market value of organic products. This disadvantage should be corrected in the next farm bill.
Of particular relevance to California is the fact that fruit and vegetable producers have fewer options under the federal insurance program.
Most crop insurance policies favor less diverse operations by making it difficult to insure integrated, multi-crop, mixed crop/livestock systems. Yet one of the most important tools for resilience to climate change and other unpredictable events is to diversify. This practice must be re-examined and revised to encourage and reward diversification.

One potential solution is whole-farm revenue insurance. Our colleagues at the National Center for Appropriate Technology, in a report funded by the USDA Risk Management Agency (available by emailing Jeffs@ncat.org), make the following case:

Whole-farm revenue insurance is not currently the major way many farmers insure their production in the United States. Seventy-six percent of the total liability covered by federally subsidized crop insurance in 2010 was attributed to four crops: corn, soybeans, wheat and cotton. However, whole-farm revenue insurance could provide a more effective way to insure not only specialty crops, but all crop and livestock production in the United States. Rather than the continued proliferation of single-crop based insurance products, whole-farm revenue insurance would likely be a less costly way to provide publically subsidized insurance for farmers. We understand that one key to sustainability in agriculture is expanding crop and livestock diversity.

We believe that critical analyses and innovative proposals such as these by IATP and NCAT should underlie decisions in the next and future farm bills. Solving multiple complex problems such as agricultural risk management, climate change preparedness and economic frugality demands it.

Filed Under: Federal Policy, Impacts of Climate Change

Organic Can Feed the World

December 9, 2011 by Renata Brillinger 3 Comments

This short blog entitled “Organic Can Feed the World” in The Atlantic by Barry Estabrook is a must read. Refreshingly, he puts the responsibility on conventional agriculture to prove how it can feed the world’s population:

Given that the current food production system, which is really a 75-year-old experiment, leaves nearly one billion of the world’s seven billion humans seriously undernourished today, the onus should be on the advocates of agribusiness to prove their model can feed a future population of nine billion — not the other way around.

Estabrock cites (with links) several conclusive studies that make the case for not only the feasibility but the necessity for a global shift to organic, agroecological, and other sustainable farming systems to maintain and increase yields and increase food nutrient density. He states that a literature review by the British Soil Association found that all 98 of the papers reviewed concluded that organic agriculture does in fact have the capability to feed the world.

Importantly for both the long-term health of the planet and the economic security of farmers, organic systems are also proven to improve soil fertility, cut costs on chemical inputs, and save energy. Finally, research is increasingly demonstrating that organic methods sequester more carbon than conventional systems, can buffer against climate change impacts, and can help farmers be more resilient in the face of intensifying climate challenges.

Organic agriculture has for decades been the underdog not because the science can’t support it but because there are powerful interests protecting the failing industrial agriculture experiment. Changing policies, financial incentives, and the subsidies that prop up unsustainable practices is part of the solution to ensuring a sustainable food future.

Filed Under: General Information

Is Global Warming Linked to Severe Weather?

October 15, 2011 by Renata Brillinger Leave a Comment

Reposted from permission from the Union of Concerned Scientists

As Earth warms, powerful storms are becoming the new normal. Overhead, tall, dense clouds are poised to burst, their presence a sign of an imminent deluge.

These cumulonimbus masses are a reminder of the destructive floods that are occurring around the globe, which, taken together, are potent signals of one of the greatest environmental challenges of our time: global warming.

Powerful rain and snow storms—and, ironically, intense drought periods—are a well-known consequence of a warmer planet.

1. What is the relationship between global warming, climate, and weather?

Weather is what’s happening outside the door right now; today a thunderstorm is approaching. Climate, on the other hand, is the pattern of weather measured over a number of decades.

Over the past 30 years there has been a pattern of increasingly higher average temperatures for the whole world. In fact, the first decade of this century (2001–2010) was the hottest decade recorded since reliable records began in the late 1800s.

These rising temperatures—caused primarily by an increase of heat-trapping emissions in the atmosphere created when we burn coal, oil, and gas to generate electricity, drive our cars, and fuel our businesses—are what we refer to as global warming.

One consequence of global warming is an increase in both ocean evaporation into the atmosphere, and the amount of water vapor the atmosphere can hold. High levels of water vapor in the atmosphere in turn create conditions more favorable for heavier precipitation in the form of intense rain and snow storms.

2. The United States is already experiencing more intense rain and snow storms.

As the Earth warms, the amount of rain or snow falling in the heaviest one percent of storms has risen nearly 20 percent on average in the United States—almost three times the rate of increase in total precipitation between 1958 and 2007.

In other words, the heaviest storms have very recently become even heavier.

The Northeast has seen a 67 percent increase in the amount of rain or snow falling in the heaviest storms.

3. As storms increase in intensity, flooding becomes a larger concern.

Flash floods, which pose the most immediate risks for people, bridges and roads, and buildings on floodplains, result in part from this shift toward more extreme precipitation in a warming world.

Regions previously thought to be safe from floods are increasingly threatened by them; agencies such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the US Geological Survey (USGS), among others, are working to gather information that can be used to redraw flood maps to help anticipate vulnerable areas.

In 2008 two scientists, Sharon Ashley and Walker Ashley, of Northern Illinois University, analyzed flood fatalities between 1959 and 2005 in the mainland United States, excluding those from Hurricane Katrina.

Their research found that Texas had the largest number of fatalities from flash floods and river floods over the study period. When standardized for population, South Dakota, Mississippi, West Virginia, and Montana had the highest numbers of fatalities from flooding per 100,000 people. Those between the ages of 10 and 29 and those over 60 years old were disproportionately at risk.

4. Does global warming create more frequent and more intense tornadoes?

Tornadoes are relatively small, short-lived phenomena and scientists don’t have robust enough data to determine whether and how climate change may be affecting tornado frequency, intensity, or the geographic range where tornadoes are most likely to form.

Tornadoes often form when warm, moist air near the Earth’s surface rises and interacts with cooler and drier air higher in the atmosphere. This creates unstable conditions that are favorable for thunderstorms and sometimes tornadoes.

Unlike thunderstorms, tornadoes need a rotational source such as when warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico wafts over the southeast and strong Jetstream air aloft arrives from a westerly direction, as during the tragic string of tornadoes in April 2011.

While one study found that the number of tornadoes reported in the United States has increased by around 14 per year over the past 50 years, the trend may have more to do with how tornadoes are tracked and reported rather than how many are actually forming.

Similarly, the study found that severity ratings for tornadoes are usually based on the damage they cause to structures and may not have been consistently applied over the past fifty years.

5. What can be done to deal with severe weather?

This pattern of intense rain and snow storms and periods of drought is becoming the new normal in our everyday weather as levels of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere continue to rise.

If the emissions that cause global warming continue unabated, scientists expect the amount of rainfall during the heaviest precipitation events across country to increase more than 40 percent by the end of the century. Even if we dramatically curbed emissions, these downpours are still likely to increase, but by only a little more than 20 percent.

Regardless of what actions we take to cut emissions, we must adapt to the likelihood that severe storms are becoming ever more commonplace.

Efforts such as modifying local infrastructure to withstand floods, adjusting agricultural patterns to account for droughts, as well as establishing emergency planning in our homes, would be far less costly to implement when compared to the costs of responding to washed out bridges, deluged homes, or loss of life.

Clearly, the time has come to develop smart planning and engineering solutions to cope with storms of the future.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Victory!

October 9, 2011 by Renata Brillinger 1 Comment

Governor Brown signed SB 489, the Renewable Energy Equity Act!

On October 8, SB 489 became law in California. This CalCAN-sponsored bill will make it easier for farmers and ranchers to develop innovation renewable energy projects by allowing them to easily and effectively get those projects connect to the grid. The Renewable Energy Equity Act will help California produce homegrown clean, renewable energy and reduce our state’s greenhouse gas emissions.

We are deeply grateful for the leadership of the author, Senator Lois Wolk, and her very capable staff for understanding the importance of this bill for California farmers and for the state’s renewable energy goals. Two other leaders on the issue are Russ Lester and Jenny Lester-Moffitt at Dixon Ridge Farms who have led the field with innovations in producing heat and electricity by gasifying walnut shells. Justin Malan (Ecoconsult) and Karen Mills (California Farm Bureau) also made this victory possible.

Two examples of the type of agriculture renewable energy projects that will benefit from the Renewable Energy Equity Act:

1. Russ Lester at Dixon Ridge Farms, producer and processor of organic walnuts near Winters, uses walnut shells as the feedstock to produce electricity to power his freezers (used to keep the walnuts fresh and kill insect pests) and heat from the gasification process to dry the walnuts. Dixon Ridge has not been able to get their small-scale bioenergy project connected to the grid and credited for the energy they produce. Under SB 489, Dixon Ridge Farms will be credited on the farm’s utility bill for the renewable energy produced. See: http://www.californiareport.org/archive/R201108250850/a

2. Straus Family Dairy in Marin County installed a methane biodigester that produces electricity to power the dairy operation and their electric vehicles. SB 489 would enable these kinds of small-scale biogas projects to tie into the grid. Here is a short video about Straus Dairy’s renewable energy project: http://vimeo.com/15641142

Filed Under: California Policy

Wise land use decisions needed

September 13, 2011 by Renata Brillinger Leave a Comment

A false choice between food and renewable energy is playing out in our Central Valley. Fresno County Supervisors made a significant decision last week in approving a large solar project sited on prime farmland near Interstate 5. The project will generate 18 megawatts of solar power and cover 90 acres of high-value agricultural land – ending its use for food production.

The Fresno county’s planners and agriculture advisory committee argued that such large projects should be placed on less arable land. The Fresno County Farm Bureau also opposed the plan. But after considerable industry pressure, the Board disagreed and the project was approved.

California should aggressively move ahead with reaching its renewable energy targets. After all, California agriculture has a lot to lose if the worst impacts of climate change are not averted. But it shouldn’t come at the cost of sacrificing land that is needed for food production for generations to come.

There is no question that there is a role for farmlands in producing clean energy, and California farmers lead the way among their peers nationwide.

The USDA’s On-Farm Renewable Energy Production Survey reported that California farms produce 25 percent of the country’s on-farm renewable power generation, with almost 2,000 farm-based generators using mainly solar photovoltaics, thermal solar and wind. A CalCAN-sponsored bill (SB 489), which is now before the Governor for his signature, will remove some barriers to using agricultural by-products, like nut shells and orchard and vineyard prunings, to generate renewable energy. On-farm renewable energy projects integrated into farming operations — such as rooftop solar mounted on farm buildings and wind turbines combined with cattle ranching — augment farming operations and help farmers cut costs so they can stay in business. This is in sharp contrast to mega-projects like the one approved in Fresno that displace farmland and farmers.

There is no shortage of urban and rural rooftop space that can be deployed for solar power generation in a decentralized but coordinated fashion, a much preferable alternative to land grabs by solar power companies and utilities that disregard the impacts on agriculture and what that means for all of us as food consumers.

Filed Under: California Policy, Renewable Energy Tagged With: land use, renewable energy, solar

Urge Governor Brown to Support On-Farm Renewable Energy!

August 31, 2011 by Renata Brillinger Leave a Comment

Walnut shells to be turned into clean energy

Please call Governor Brown before Oct 9, 2011 to ask him to sign the Renewable Energy Equity Act, SB 489.

SB 489 passed out of the California Senate and Assembly with bipartisan support. Now it’s up to Governor Brown to make it law. This is a critical moment to keep this important bill moving towards passage and help farmers be part of California’s clean energy future.

SB 489 would make it easier for farmers and ranchers to develop innovation renewable energy projects by allowing them to easily and effectively get those projects connect to the grid. The Renewable Energy Equity Act will help California produce homegrown clean, renewable energy and reduce our state’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Make your voice heard and support sustainable agricultural solutions to climate change. Please call Governor Brown today. He could make his decision at any time.

Here are two ways to take action:

1. The most effective thing you can do is fax or mail a letter. If you can represent an organization or business, here is a sample letter. If you are an individual, please use this version. Please personalize them if possible.

Fax: (916) 558-3177
Address: Governor Jerry Brown
c/o State Capitol, Suite 1173
Sacramento, CA 95814

2. You can also call Governor Brown’s office at (916) 445-2841. Ask to speak to the staff person who handles agriculture issues. The message is simple:

“I am calling to ask Governor Brown to sign SB 489, the Renewable Energy Equity Act. SB 489 will help California reach its renewable energy goals, help the state’s agricultural producers develop renewable energy, and be a driver in the clean energy economy.”

Please let us know you took action. Drop us an email at info@calclimateag.org.

Filed Under: California Policy Tagged With: biomass, Governor Brown, net metering, on-farm renewable energy, Renewable Energy Equity Act, SB 489, waste into energy

Down on the Farm: Nuts to Renewable Energy

August 25, 2011 by Renata Brillinger Leave a Comment

Reposted from KQED Climate Watch

http://blogs.kqed.org/climatewatch/2011/08/24/another-renewable-energy-frontier-farm-biomass/

By Katrina Schwartz

California is just a few votes away from changing the rules to allow farmers to connect machines that create bioenergy to the electrical grid, a privilege that has thus far been reserved for farm-generated wind and solar energy.

Passage of the bill — SB 489 — would mean they could use the byproduct of their crops as fuel to create electricity.

Russ Lester, the owner of Dixon Ridge Farms, has been leading the charge to get the rules changed. He has gone to extraordinary lengths to shrink the carbon footprint of his organic walnut farm and processing plant in Yolo County. Brian Jenkins of the California Biomass Collaborative at UC Davis calls Lester the “guinea pig” of bioenergy.

Lester has installed a 50-kilowatt biogasifier that burns walnut shells at high temperatures to create fuel to run his generator, and heat to dry his walnuts. Lester has demonstrated his contraption to many people, including legislators, members of the California Air Resources Board and countless interested farmers. He’s been making the case for SB 489 as the only way to make this type of environmental commitment pay off for farmers. He predicts that many farmers will follow suit if state policy and regulations support farmers to use alternative energy in their businesses.

Beyond creating heat and power to become sustainable, Lester also mixes the char ash leftover from burning walnut shells into the soil where it sequesters stable forms of carbon for hundreds of years and fertilizes his walnut trees. He’s even looking into using walnut oil—another byproduct of processing—as a fuel to replace diesel to run his machinery. Lester says he’s on pace to meet his goal of being energy-neutral by 2012.

“We’re still not 100 percent,” he told me on a recent visit to the farm. “We’re probably at about 45% reduction in our energy usage, but it’s a substantial improvement. So the naysayers who say you can’t do that are really not correct.”

One of the biggest challenges Lester has faced is air quality regulation. It seems that every air quality district in California has different restrictions based on the particular challenges in that neck of the woods. So, the regulations that Lester must meet in the Yolo-Solano Air Quality District are quite different from those a farmer would face in the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District. That can pose a problem for farmers operating in districts with chronically bad air quality as any emissions they create will be closely watched.

Kevin Hall, a co-founder of the Central Valley Air Quality Coalition, says he supports efforts by farmers to produce renewable energy, but he’s wary of the potential effect on air quality. As long as producers like Lester keep their systems under the one-megawatt limit set out in SB 489, says Hall, it shouldn’t be a problem. It’s conceivable that many small growers could produce the same amount of pollution as a large power plant if they aren’t regulated. Very few California farmers have a biogasifier like Lester’s, so Hall isn’t too concerned just yet.

The biggest opposition to SB 489 comes from utilities. In its opposition letter, PG&E claimed that net-metering (allowing sale-back to the grid) of all renewables would cost the average ratepayer more. The California Public Utilities Commission found the opposite in its analysis [PDF]; that SB 489 would likely reduce the cost to the average consumer. That’s because farmers and commercial consumers of electricity already pay some costs that residential consumers don’t, like the cost to distribute and transmit the power. Those embedded fees make net metering for bioenergy less expensive than net metering for residential solar. PG&E’s numbers are based on the performance of solar net metering.

The other problem utilities point to is the net-metering cap. Right now, utilities buy no more than five percent of their peak energy load through the net-metering program. If more types of technology are eligible for the program, that could mean reaching the cap more quickly. If that happens, legislators might be tempted to raise the cap. For utilities, that would mean managing lots of small producers instead of a few big ones. Nor does the energy produced through net metering count towards the utilities’ state-mandated renewable energy targets. Right now, no utility is close to reaching the cap. Most are still buying less than two percent of their power from net metering.

Supporters of SB 489 are close to reaching their goal. The bill has a broad range of environmental and agricultural supporters, including the California Climate and Agriculture Network (CalCAN) and the California Farm Bureau Federation. It won significant bipartisan support as it moved through various committees in both the Senate and the Assembly. The next hurdle will be a full Assembly vote and another full Senate vote to reconcile some small changes. Senate sponsor Lois Wolk (D-Stockton) says Governor Jerry Brown has been supportive of the bill and that if it gets to his desk before the end of the legislative year on September 9th, he’s likely to sign it.

The Biomax 50 produces heat and power for Russ Lester’s organic walnut farm. Lester hopes that SB 489 will allow him to hook the biogasifier to the electrical grid soon.

Filed Under: California Policy

New CDFA Environmental Panel

August 19, 2011 by Renata Brillinger Leave a Comment

CDFA Secretary Karen Ross recently announced new appointments to a CDFA advisory group, the Cannella Environmental Farming Act Science Panel. The panel is charged with reviewing agriculture’s impacts on the environment and creating a voluntary environmental farming program to provide incentives to farmers and ranchers whose conservation practices provide environmental benefits, including improved air and water quality and enhanced wildlife habitat.

At CalCAN, we are pleased not only that Secretary Ross has made it a priority to breathe life into the panel, which was established in law in the mid-1990s, but that she populated it with several knowledgeable and experienced members.

Three of the panel members have served in various advisory capacities with CalCAN: Ann Thrupp, PhD, is the Manager of Sustainability and Organic Development at Fetzer & Bonterra Vineyards; Brian Leahy from the Resources Agency, Department of Conservation; Louise Jackson, PhD, University of California Cooperative Extension (ex officio member). We look forward to supporting these and the other committee members in their efforts, and we commend Secretary Ross for devoting resources to the panel and its important work.

Filed Under: California Policy

More Conservation Funds Available to California Farmers

August 4, 2011 by Renata Brillinger Leave a Comment

Rep. Dennis Cardoza (CA-18) and Rep. Jim Costa (CA-20) recently announced the availability of an additional $9.5 million in funding through the 2008 Farm Bill’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP). The funds go to California farmers seeking to make on farm improvements that will help air quality, water quality or conserve water.

The recent federal arguments over the debt ceiling and budget cuts have failed to distinguish between good spending and bad spending. At CalCAN, we are pleased to see these funds released in part because they are examples of wise public investments. Dollars spent on farm conservation programs have multiple benefits-protecting ecosystems services, increasing on-farm biodiversity and resilience to climate change, in some cases enhancing carbon sequestration, supporting innovative farmers doing environmental stewardship, and supporting rural economies.

Filed Under: Farmer Resources Tagged With: Cardoza, conservation funds, Costa, farm bill

Rangeland Conservation Group Impresses with Leadership & Vision

Crop Insurance Reform Must Reflect Climate Realities

Organic Can Feed the World

Is Global Warming Linked to Severe Weather?

1. What is the relationship between global warming, climate, and weather?

2. The United States is already experiencing more intense rain and snow storms.

3. As storms increase in intensity, flooding becomes a larger concern.

4. Does global warming create more frequent and more intense tornadoes?

5. What can be done to deal with severe weather?

Victory!

Governor Brown signed SB 489, the Renewable Energy Equity Act!

Wise land use decisions needed

Urge Governor Brown to Support On-Farm Renewable Energy!

Down on the Farm: Nuts to Renewable Energy

New CDFA Environmental Panel

More Conservation Funds Available to California Farmers

Farm Bill 2012 Hearings Open As Next Year’s Budget Plans Emerge

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