The current minimum wage in California is $8.00 an hour. Federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. The bill would have raised minimum wage about 14 cents an hour starting in January.  

A coalition of ag and business groups actively opposed the legislation effectively communicating the costs to employers, negative impact on job creation and even the costs to the state. The California state government employs 91,272 minimum wage workers, according to the state Controller's Office. If passed, the bill would have cost the state nearly $800,000.

Senator Feinstein introduced S 3239 which is a companion bill to house H 3789, a bill developed from a landmark agreement between the Humane Society of the United States, the United Egg Producers and the Association of California Egg Farmers. The agreement between egg producers and animal protection and rights interests includes several provisions which are beneficial to consumers and will provide uniform animal care standards across all states. The bill would require enriched colony cages, which provide each hen with twice the space as well as enrichments that allow the hens to better express their natural behaviors.

Second, the bill includes a labeling provision on the front of the egg carton which will provide important information to consumers. It would require that egg cartons bear a label indicating whether the eggs were laid by hens in conventional battery cages, enriched colony cages, or cage-free or free-range environments. S. 3239 is supported by both animal protection activists and the egg industry itself, as well as by scientific groups such as the American Veterinary Medical Association.

Today is the last day for bills to pass out of the house of origin. A measure that will greatly expand the current requirements for farmers to provide shade and water and codify them in statute passed the assembly by a minimum 41 votes. A coalition of agriculture groups had been working against AB 2346 (Butler) for many weeks. After several attempts the bill failed passage requiring the speaker to individually call members on the floor pushing for their vote. The coalition was successful in communicating that agriculture has been working diligently with Cal OSHA in educating supervisors and employees of the need to watch out for signs of heat stress as well as complying with the various requirements of the heat stress regulations. The statistics show that heat stress incidents and deaths have greatly decreased since the current regulations were put in place. The bill now heads to the Senate.  

In comments to FDA on its pending guidance on records access for firms covered by the new Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), the National Grain & Feed Assn. (NGFA) said it wants the agency to change its public draft guidance document because "FSMA clearly does not provide FDA with unlimited records access authority." NGFA wants FDA to limit access to records unless inspectors have been authorized by an FDA official "with appropriate seniority and expertise;" FDA should have "valid evidence" that adulteration of a product has occurred and poses a risk as defined in FSMA before expanded records access is granted; the draft guidance needs to be changed to reflect that expanded access is limited to those records needed to "assist" the agency; FDA should maintain the confidentiality of protected commercial and trade-secret information as a result of its expanded access, and should develop strict procedures and redundant safeguards to comply with all legal obligations to prevent disclosure of company secrets, and the guidance document should be focused on inspectors.

A USDA advisory committee on biotechnology, charged with coming up with a system in which both biotech and non-biotech crop production can "coexist" has agreed that a USDA education initiative and "mitigation strategy" is necessary for farmers, but failed to find a consensus on any form of compensation plan to cover economic losses due to the unintended presence of genetic material in non-biotech crops. "The Advisory Committee on Biotechnology & 21st Century Agriculture," also known as AC21, is comprised of farmers, academics, biotech company representatives and consumer groups. The advisory panel has been charged with coming up with a so-called coexistence plan for biotech and nonbiotech crop production, and while the nonbiotech - mainly organic producers - want biotech companies to pay them if their crops are "contaminated" the most the AC21 group would say is that if some type of compensation program is developed, it should follow a federal crop insurance model. The group also agreed on the premise of "seed purity" and that farms using biotech seed need to reduce the drift of genetic material at the farm level. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack told AC21 this week he doesn't want excuses, he wants action on coexistence because "our regulatory system and our government are a step and a half behind and I'm asking you to get a step ahead" of the coexistence issue. AC21 is expecting to provide Vilsack a final set of recommendations by September 30.

In an "industry reminder" issued this week by FDA, the agency is prompting the animal feed industry to remember to label feeds which contain ethoxyquin, an approved food additive. If added to a feed product, the label must say one of the following: "Ethoxyquin, a preservative" or "Ethoxyquin added to retard the oxidative destruction of carotene, xanthophylls, and Vitamins A and E." The label declaration is necessary, FDA said, because there are established tolerances for the additive and a maximum use rate.

In the continuing saga over how to accommodate the impact of government-issued reports on the new 22-hour commodity market trading days, the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) said it's asked the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) for permission to open trading 10 minutes before USDA issues major commodity/supply-demand and other reports. At the same time, reports indicate USDA is considering shifting release times on major reports to accommodate the new market timeframes, and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack confirmed this week his department is looking at shifting report release times, but before any action is taken USDA will seek public comment. If the CFTC approves, CME, which owns CBOT, says it would open grain and oilseed futures and options markets at 7:20 a.m., central time, on days when USDA releases reports at 7:30 a.m. The early open would apply on the days USDA releases the World Agricultural Supply & Demand Estimates, Crop Production, Prospective Plantings and Acreage reports, and the early openings would apply to CBOT corn, soybeans, wheat, soybean meal, soybean oil, oats and rough rice futures and options.

Sen. James Inhofe (R, OK), ranking member of the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee, and Sen. Chris Coons (D, DE) will head a new Senate "study group" to examine issues surrounding the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), the increasingly controversial federal program which mandates how much and which alternative fuels must be blended with gasoline on an annual basis, a mandate critics say creates an artificial demand and pushes prices higher for food/feed commodities, but which supporters say is critical to building a U.S. alternative fuels industry. Issues to be examined by the study group include market effects and challenges, feedstocks, infrastructure and environmental impacts. A series of staff-led briefings will occur between June and September.

The Environmental Working Group (EWG), the group that collected, consolidated and put up a searchable Internet database on every individual receiving farm program payments, announced this week it will release an analysis of over a million USDA Risk Management Agency (FMA) records that show that in 2011 alone, more than 10,000 individual farms received federal crop insurance premium subsidies ranging from $100,000 to $1 million apiece. EWG said 26 farms received subsidies of $1 million or more last year. EWG is pushing Congress to at least cap the level of federal premium subsidies on a per-farmer basis at no more than $40,000 per year. EWG tracked subsidies across 686,273 insurance policies issued to 486,867 policyholders last year when total cost exceeded $11 billion for the premium subsidy program. The EWG, however, could not get the names of policyholders because the law protects them. EWG said the federal government picks up the cost of about 62% of crop insurance premiums, increasing from $1.5 billion in 2002 to $7.4 billion in 2011. "The subsidies go to large operators with conservation strings attached to protect water and soil and no payment limit on how much a farm business can collect," EWG said. Examples given by EWG include a tomato and pepper grower with operations in five Florida counties who receives $1.9 million in subsidies; a Minnesota farm insuring corn and soybeans in eight counties which received a $1.7-million subsidy, and in Texas 10% of the farms getting the most in insurance subsidies got 63% of all crop insurance subsidies paid to Texas operations.

Heritage Action and Club for Growth, two highly conservative national political organizations, said this week they'll "key vote" the Senate Farm Bill and urge Tea Party members of Congress to defeat it. "The fiscally conservative resistance will be high," said Club for Growth Vice President Andrew Roth in one newspaper interview. Heritage Action said it will target the Farm Bill because the new Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) program replacing direct payments costs too much, and the bill does not cut spending on food stamps enough. Michael Needham, head of Heritage Action, this week told The Hill, a newspaper covering Congress, that "conservatives should not be distracted by the end of direct payments in the Senate Farm Bill. Not only does the bill funnel millions to specialty crops while creating new and potentially costly subsidy in shallow loss insurance, it also fails to make necessary structural reforms to the SNAP (food stamps) program." Some speculate the two groups have more political clout in the House than in the Senate which could complicate getting a House Agriculture Committee bill to the floor.

Confirming the Senate Agriculture Committee's estimate, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) this week said the panel's approved Farm Bill, which could see floor action as early as next week, saves a net $23.6 billion over 10 years. The 10-year cost of the Senate package: $969 billion. The House Farm Bill, because that chamber approved a FY2012 budget resolution, is challenged with finding $32 billion in savings over the next 10 years.  

However, the way the Senate bill is constructed, any substantive change to the commodity title or any significant restoration of monies cut by the committee during markup leave Senate agriculture leadership little room for negotiation once the bill hits the floor. Both committee chair Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D, MI) and ranking member Sen. Pat Roberts (R, KS) pledged their bill would save at least the $23 billion in savings reached in last fall's debt reduction draft farm program rewrite.  

However, some economists continue to allege the bill really only saves about $17 billion over the next decade. CBO said cutting direct payments saves $44.6 billion; part of that savings goes to fund the Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) plan devised by the committee to cover 11-21% of a farmer's loss based on price and help span the gap between ARC and conventional crop insurance protection. ARC is expected to cost about $28.5 billion over 10 years.