Current Campaigns

2026 Policy Campaigns: Progress and Next Steps

CalCAN worked to advance several major policy campaigns in 2026. The campaigns focused on securing long-term funding for climate smart agriculture, manure management, water quality and farmland protection. Two of our priority bills, AB 2184 and AB 2100, received bipartisan support but both ultimately died in the Assembly Appropriations Committee. Details on these campaigns and more information on their outcomes are in the sections below.

Several of our campaigns remain active outside of the legislature. CalCAN will continue working to protect funding for the Sustainable Agricultural Lands Conservation Program (SALC), push for reforms for the Irrigated Lands Regulatory Program (ILRP) and build support for non-digester, alternative manure management systems.

We are also preparing for administration changes as the next governor will take office against the background of significant national, global economic, and sociopolitical uncertainty as well as rapidly accelerating climate instability, making it a consequential transition. CalCAN is developing recommendations for the next Governor and their administration that will call for greater ambition and creativity that builds on a decade of progress. 

Assembly Bill 2184: Securing permanent, reliable funding for Climate Smart Agriculture

AB 2184, authored by Asm. Lori Wilson (D-11, Fairfax), would establish a continuous appropriation from the state’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund to support nature-based solutions and sustainable agriculture practices. This would provide reliable, ongoing and substantial funding for several climate smart agriculture programs that suffer from inconsistent and insufficient funding, including the Healthy Soils Program, Organic Transition Program, SWEEP, and Alternative Manure Management Program. CalCAN is co-sponsoring the bill with River Partners and The Climate Center. The full text of the bill can be found here.

Outcome: AB 2184 received bipartisan support in its first policy committee hearing in the Assembly Natural Resources Committee. Unfortunately, the bill died in the Assembly Appropriations Committee in May along with hundreds of other bills, likely due to uncertainty over the future of Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund revenues. 

Assembly Bill 2100: Encouraging the adoption of methane-reducing and manure composting practices on dairies

California’s Alternative Manure Management Program (AMMP), established in 2017 by a CalCAN-sponsored bill, provides support for dairies to upgrade to manure management systems that reduce methane emissions, improve water quality, and often produce compost. AMMP has played an important role in progress toward California’s 2030 methane reduction target. Assemblymember Damon Connolly (D-12, San Rafael) introduced AB 2100 which is intended to build greater support for and remove barriers to methane-reducing alternative manure management practices that dairies will need to adopt in order to comply with forthcoming water quality regulations and help achieve the state’s climate goals. 

AB 2100 would convene a task force to more robustly evaluate the role of alternative manure management in achieving California’s climate, water quality, healthy soils, and organic acreage goals and to recommend improvements to state plans and regulations. The bill would also lead to a more clear and efficient process for approving manure composting projects. It is supported by a coalition of dairy industry stakeholders and environmental organizations. The full text of the bill can be found here.

Outcome: AB 2100 received unanimous, bipartisan support in its first policy committee hearing in the Assembly Natural Resources Committee. Unfortunately, the bill died in the Assembly Appropriations Committee in May along with hundreds of other bills. In explaining the decision to cull those bills, the chair of the Appropriations Committee cited potential costs to the state that would worsen the state’s budget deficit. While we believe two of the state agencies responsible for implementing the bill significantly overestimated their potential costs, the state’s multi-year, structural budget deficit means the legislature is reluctant to approve any legislation this year that even marginally increases costs to state agencies.

Protecting Funding for Farmland Conservation 

We are leading a campaign to protect California’s primary source of funding for the Sustainable Agricultural Lands Conservation (SALC) Program. Established in 2015, the SALC program has invested approximately $613 million to permanently protect agricultural lands at risk of urban development. SALC has historically received 10% of Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities (AHSC) program funds to help meet the statutory goal of protecting agricultural lands in support of infill development. SALC is responsible for 20% of the GGRF’s total emission reductions despite historically receiving only 2% of its funding. 

However, the Governor’s proposed 2026-27 fiscal year budget restructures the AHSC program and is silent on the amount of funds dedicated to SALC. We are urging the legislature to maintain SALC’s continuous allocation from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.

To learn more, please contact Anna Larson, Associate Policy Director anna[at]calclimateag.org.

Outcome: TBD

Reforming the Irrigated Lands Regulatory Program (ILRP) to Reduce Nitrogen Pollution, Reduce Nitrous Oxide Emissions, and Encourage Healthy Soils Practices

The Irrigated Lands Regulatory Program (ILRP) was created over 25 years ago and is intended to prevent surface and groundwater pollution from irrigated agricultural lands in California. In response to years of litigation, the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) convened an expert advisory panel last year to publicly review the program and advise the board on a series of technical questions. The panel’s answers to these questions are expected to inform how the SWRCB updates the Irrigated Lands Regulatory Program, including potentially setting new statewide standards or precedents to increase the efficacy and rigor of the program. 

The expert panel process is an opportunity to advance reforms to ILRP to improve water quality, reduce potent nitrous oxide emissions from the overapplication of synthetic fertilizer, and catalyze adoption of healthy soils management practices, which have additional public health and climate resilience benefits. The process is also an opportunity to better tailor the program to diversified, small, and organic farms.

After interviewing farmers and experts in our network about potential ILRP changes last fall and winter, CalCAN communicated our recommendations to the panel through verbal comments at the expert advisory panel’s public meetings, in written comments, and one-on-one with expert advisory panel members.

Outcome: TBD

Building Support for Non-Digester, Alternative Manure Management Systems that Improve Water Quality, Reduce Methane and Nitrous Oxide Emissions, and Increase Compost Supply

California dairies produce tens of millions of tons of manure each year. This manure is responsible for one-third of all nitrogen applied in the San Joaquin Valley, and 94% of nitrate pollution from dairies comes from the overapplication of manure. At the same time, many farmers in California are highly dependent on volatile and increasingly expensive synthetic, fossil fuel based fertilizers to support crop production. 

CalCAN is working to solve all of these problems at once by enacting policies, regulations, and incentives that support dairies in voluntarily shifting to dry manure manure management systems and composting their manure in order to sell it to nearby farmers. The “alternative manure management practices” we advocate for simultaneously reduce overapplication of manure, reduce groundwater use, increase compost supply, help farmers reduce their use of fossil fuel-based fertilizers, reduce methane and nitrous oxides emissions (the largest sources of emissions in the agricultural sector), and reduce groundwater pollution on both dairies and farms.

In February this year, we published a report that reassessed the role that alternative manure management can play in achieving the state’s legislative methane, healthy soils, and organic transition goals, using the latest science and publicly available program data. In March, we presented on alternative manure management at a joint informational hearing of the Senate Environmental Quality and Agriculture committees. In May, we submitted a 16-page comment letter to the California Air Resources Board to respond to their solicitation for information on dairy methane solutions and science.

This spring, we learned that the California Department of Food and Agriculture and CalRecycle will soon be launching a process in the second half of 2026 to develop a Statewide Compost Strategy to increase the availability and affordability of high-quality compost in California, which will include dairy manure composting as part of its scope. We look forward to engaging with those agencies and our dairy producer partners to inform that forthcoming strategy. 

We are also continuing to coordinate with our partners about responding to a forthcoming update to the Dairy General Order, which will set important new standards and timelines for water quality regulatory compliance for dairies. This will be yet another critical opportunity for a state agency to intentionally support dairies in shifting to alternative manure management.

Outcomes: TBD in California (pending the outcome of the multiple regulatory and planning processes described above), but our work to advance alternative manure management has garnered attention beyond California’s borders. In June, we were invited to present our report to the New Mexico Departments of the Environment and Agriculture, which are considering developing their own version of an Alternative Manure Management Program. We were also recently invited by the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition to help them draft comments on updating the Natural Resource Conservation Service’s Conservation Practice Standards for Waste Separation and Compost Facilities, which have the potential to influence how those conservation practices are incentivized and implemented on dairies nationwide.