The deadline for the governor to sign or veto bills delivered to him in the final days of the legislature was last Sunday September 30th. The Legislature sent the Governor a total of 1,152 bills this second year of the Legislative session. The Governor signed 1013 bills, vetoed 138 and 1 bill became law without his signature. Below is a summary of the priority bills acted upon in the final days of the Governor's bill signing session.

Heat Stress Bills Vetoed

Two bills that would have created joint liability for farmers, increased the death benefit outside workers compensation and increased penalties were vetoed by Governor Brown on the last day.  

AB 2346 - Heat Illness (Betsy Butler - D, Los Angeles) Would have increased farm employers' litigation exposure with "bounty-hunter" lawsuit provisions allowing workers to sue employers for violations of the Cal/OSHA Heat Illness Prevention Standard and would have made farmers and ranchers jointly liable for violations of their farm labor contractors.

AB 2676 - Heat Illness (Charles Calderon - D, Whittier) Would have imposed new requirements on farm employers and supervisors for providing shade and water to farm employees that are inconsistent with the existing Cal-OSHA heat illness standards. A violation of this law would have been a crime punishable by potential jail time and monetary fines.

Water Bills Signed

Three bills that the association had taken a position on were all signed by the Governor. The association opposed AB 685, but supported SB 965 and AB 2174.

AB 685 - Right to Clean Water (Mike Eng - D, Monterey Park) Establishes a state policy that every human being has the right to clean, affordable, and accessible water for human consumption, cooking, and sanitary purposes. AB 685 would require all relevant state agencies, including the Department of Water Resources, the State Water Resources Control Board, and the State Department of Public Health, to consider this state policy when revising, adopting, or establishing policies, regulations, and grant criteria.

SB 965 - Water Board Communications (Rod Wright - D, Los Angeles) Addresses ex parte communications with the State and regional water boards allowing the public more flexible communications with them on matters concerning waste discharge requirements, conditions of water quality certification or conditional waivers provided all parties are given at least three days notice and an opportunity to participate.

AB 2174 - Fertilizer Funds (Luis Alejo - D, Salinas) Directs fertilizer assessment funds to UC Ag Extension and other appropriate programs to advise farmers on methods to reduce the impacts of fertilizer use and adds clarifying language that broadens the focus of the CDFA Fertilizer Research and Education Program to include agronomically sound fertilizer use.

Two Other Water Bills Did Not Make it to the Governor

Two other measures that would have assisted rural economically disadvantaged communities with drinking water challenges from high nitrate levels did not make the midnight deadline. In June 2012, a stakeholder group consisting of agricultural representatives, environmental justice interests, drinking water providers, local government agencies and others, was convened by the Governor's Office to develop recommendations addressing the impacts of high nitrates in drinking water supplies for communities dependent on groundwater for their drinking water. The Governor's Drinking Water Stakeholder Group developed recommendations to assist these communities and identified two immediate needs that required legislative action. These actions were in AB 403 (Luis Alejo-D, Salinas) and AB 2238 (Henry Perea-D, Fresno). Both bills required a two-thirds majority vote and each contained urgency clauses, but they failed to move through both houses for floor votes before the Legislature shut down early Saturday morning.

General Ag Bills That Were Signed

AB 2111 - UTVs and Shade Trailers -( Campos - D, San Jose) Adds the Utility Terrain Vehicle (UTV) and shade trailers used exclusively in agricultural operations, as implements of husbandry to state law.

SB 594 - Net Energy Metering (Wolk - D, Davis) Allows Net Energy Metering customers with multiple electrical accounts to aggregate the electrical load of all meters located on the property where a renewable energy system is located or on contiguous property.

SB 1122 - Bioenergy Projects (Rubio - D, Bakersfield) Creates a program for the purchase of electricity generated from bioenergy by requiring the CPUC to direct the utilities to collectively procure at least 250 megawatts of electricity from developers of future bioenergy projects of a size no greater than three megawatts.

AB 907 - Food Processors/Payments (Ma - D, San Francisco) Strengthens California's processors law to ensure that farmers delivering products to California food processors and wineries are financially protected by allowing surety bonds or other guarantees to cover payments owed to farmers for products they have already delivered and processed.

AB 1966 - Minerals/Surface Owners (Ma- D, San Francisco) Requires mineral owners to provide surface owners of the overlying property with a 30-day notice prior to activity that would cause disturbance to the property and a 5-day notice for non-disturbing activity prior to entering a surface owner's property.

SB 592 Dairy Lien Modernization (Harman - Huntington Beach) This measure modernizes the dairy feed supply lien law to allow for a non judicial foreclosure process, extends the length of time covered by the feed lien law from 30 to 45 days and makes other technical changes to the law.

AB 1581 Floral Industry Geographic Misrepresentation (Weickowski - Fremont) This bill requires florists to include their address in advertisements if they use a local telephone number or local name.

AB 2378 Increased enforcement tools for kitchen grease theft (Huber - El Dorado Hills)  This measure will increase the penalties and provide CDFA civil penalty authority for kitchen grease theft.

September 30 marked the expiration of the 2008 Farm Bill, and on October 1 the political rhetoric ramped up, the failure of Congress to enact a new omnibus farm program package becoming a campaign issue for GOP congressional incumbents and challengers. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack issued a statement October 1, pointing out the "many programs and policies" at USDA that expired and/or lost funding, "impacting millions of Americans, including farm commodity and price supports, conservation, research, nutrition, food safety and agricultural trade." He said without action by the House on a multi-year Farm Bill, the "uncertainty and burden" on rural communities during tough times are multiplied.   

Several of the nation's largest general farm and crop producer groups issued a joint statement on Monday pointing out both House and Senate Agriculture Committees did their job in passing a new Farm Bill, the Senate approved its version, but the House has "bottled up" its committee's package. House Speaker John Boehner (R, OH), contending there weren't enough votes to pass the House ag committee's farm bill or an extension of current programs during the regular House session, has said the House will "deal with farm programs" in the post-election lame duck session in November. Particular focus of critics of congressional inaction, particularly by House members facing reelection throughout the Midwest, focused on dairy supports.  

The joint letter from producer groups points out the Milk Income Loss Contract (MILC) is one of the programs that expired last Sunday, and now dairy farmers are "left without adequate assistance." The National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF), in a separate statement, said it was confident had the House leadership brought the bill to the floor, its new Dairy Security Act would be in place, but now "we are in uncharted waters and one of our life rafts has disappeared." USDA explained because milk receives subsidies, the department cannot use emergency funding - as it has with the livestock industry - because those funds cannot be used on "supported commodities." The groups also decried the suspension of the Foreign Market Development (FMD) program, a cost-sharing export promotion partnership between industry and the federal government, and said USDA dollars to keep the program operational and pay personnel will run out at the end of this month.  

About 6.5 million acres come out of the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) is year, and without a new Farm Bill no new signups will be allowed for CRP or the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (CREP). Disaster assistance is now limited to lack of forage or if animals die, they said. The farm groups were also quick to point out that federal food stamps and other nutrition programs won't be affected by the lapse of the 2008 programs, nor will federal crop insurance programs expire, and most commodity-specific support programs will continue as they're pegged to the 2012 crop year. Democrats across the country took the opportunity to shoot at House GOP leadership for failure to pass a 2012 Farm Bill. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) issued a statement deploring the expiration of farm programs and expressing concern for farmers and ranchers who can't access disaster assistance, and Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D, MI), chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, demanded the House take up the bill "the first day of the November lame duck session." Sen. Mike Johanns (R, NE) told one reporter Pelosi and the Democrats are dodging any blame for failure to pass a House Farm Bill, allowing the GOP to take the heat as a reelection strategy. GOP candidates in key Senate races in Wisconsin, North Dakota, Montana, Nevada, Ohio and Missouri are seeing their races tighten, in part because of a lack of action on the Farm Bill, observers said.

Public comments on whether EPA should temporarily waive the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) on ethanol, a federal mandate on how much corn-based ethanol gasoline refiners must blend with their fuels, are due October 11, and groups favoring the waiver have pulled out all the stops to get as many comments on their side of the ledger as possible. While the EPA August 30 Federal Register call for public comments focuses on formal petitions filed by the governors of Arkansas and North Carolina, six other state executives - Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, Georgia, Texas and New Mexico - have asked for relief, and a petition under the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) was filed with EPA by 19 national livestock, poultry, feed and meat processing organizations in July.

In addition, several national consumer, environmental and hunger groups, have made public statements supporting the RFS waiver, and the head of the Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations has publicly stated the U.S. should waive the ethanol mandate based on the 2012 drought, depleted domestic stocks reducing export and food aid availability and skyrocketing corn prices - the same basic arguments made by industry - lest these conditions contribute to a global food crisis. Livestock and poultry producer groups are asking their individual member companies to file comments as well, and in the integrated industry, contract growers and their employees are also filing comments supporting the RFS waiver petition.

USDA announced it will open sign-up for its Supplemental Revenue Assistance Payments Program (SURE) for the 2011 crop year on October 22, as the worst drought in nearly 80 years continues to wrack the Midwest and farmers are concerned late-planted corn harvest may be threatened along with winter crops. SURE covers crop losses caused by natural disasters occurring through September 30, 2011. The Associated Press (AP) published a story this week, reporting the federal U.S. Drought Monitor showed drought conditions in the lower 48 states for the previous week showed 20% of the country continues to be in extreme or exceptional drought, AP reported. The wire service quoted sources saying conditions worsened in Kansas and Iowa, and almost all of Nebraska was considered to be in the two worst drought categories. Details on the SURE signup can be found at www.usda.gov/sure.

Challengers hoping to kill off a new Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) rule on position limits on derivatives related to 28 commodities - slated to go into effect in two weeks - won a partial victory late last week when a federal judge told the CFTC to rework the rule. The new rule, promulgated under the Dodd-Frank law on financial market reregulation, was challenged by the International Swaps & Derivatives Assn. (ISDA) and the Securities Industry & Financial Markets Assn. (SIFMA) who contends the commission misinterpreted the Dodd-Frank mandate and imposed the position limits without regard to whether they were "appropriate or necessary." The federal judge concurred, saying the new authority under Dodd-Frank was ambiguous and the CFTC did not recognize the ambiguity when publishing the new rule. He also said the commission failed to follow congressional instructions that the position limits rule be "necessary to diminish, eliminate or prevent" excessive speculation. The commission said the new rule "addresses Congress' concern that no single trader is permitted to obtain too large a share of the market, and that derivatives markets remain fair and competitive."

"Degraded performance and the consequences of gradual or sudden failure of infrastructure components" was the description and warning about U.S. waterways transportation in a report released this week by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in Washington, DC. The NAS report says the culprit is priorities - federal dollars spent in recent years have gone almost exclusively to new construction of locks and dams, with little attention paid to modernizing the existing infrastructure. "We now have a scenario where the water infrastructure is wearing out faster than it is being replaced or rehabilitated," said David Dzombak, chair of the NAS committee which wrote the report and chair of the Steinbrenner Institute for Environmental Education & Research at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Dzombak said some parts of the waterway system could be divested or decommissioned, but the Army Corps of Engineers lacks the authority to take those steps.

FARM MANAGER OPPORTUNITY: A VERY profitable and progressive farming operation is actively seeking an experienced Farm Manager to oversee 7+ employees. This person MUST have a stable and proven track record as a Farm Manager. This farming operation deals solely in crops and no livestock and currently farm about 12k-15k acres with realistic plans for major growth over the next few years (the specific farm that this person would manage is about 3000-acres of irrigated land). Irrigation experience is a must. The main crops that they grow are corn, cotton, wheat and milo and it is a 4-generation family-owned farm. I have been placing individuals in agriculture for many years, and I have not been aware of a Farm Manager opportunity as solid as this. This position will include a very competitive salary + guaranteed bonus, housing, vehicle, insurance, retirement, etc. -- plus anything else the person would need to get the job done. This position will not be on the market for long, so it will be important to apply ASAP.

Brady Lynch, Ag Division Manager

MRINetworkT

MANAGEMENT RECRUITERS

OF SIOUX FALLS, LLP

Direct line:  605-978-5418

 BCL@agoodjob.com 

 www.agoodjob.com 

USDA reported this week that farmer, rancher and fishery cooperatives posted record sales and income for 2011, with net income for all agricultural cooperatives at $5.4 billion, compared with the previous record of $4.9 billion set in 2008. Sales totaled $213 billion, topping the year before by more than $10 billion, USDA said. Patronage refunds fell by more than 11%, to $613 million, down from $674 million in 2010.   Employment remains strong at 184,000 full-time, part-time and seasonal employees, up slightly from 2010. The top three U.S. farmer-owned cooperatives based on revenues are CHS Inc., St. Paul, MN ($36.9 billion); Dairy Farmers of America, Kansas City, MO ($12.9 billion), and Land O'Lakes Inc., St. Paul, MN ($12.8 billion).

The Bureau of Reclamation's Central Valley Project began Water Year 2013 (Oct. 1, 2012 - Sept. 30, 2013) with approximately 6.9 million acre-feet of water (98 percent of the 15-year average on Oct. 1) in six key CVP reservoirs.

The total reservoir storage is the combined amount of water remaining at the end of WY 2012 in Shasta, Trinity, Folsom, New Melones and Millerton Reservoirs and the federal share of the joint federal/state San Luis Reservoir. The 15-year average carry-over for these reservoirs on Oct. 1 is 7.0 million acre-feet of storage. One acre-foot is the volume of water sufficient to cover an acre of land to a depth of 1 foot, enough water to sustain a typical California household of four for one year.

Two tables follow, one showing reservoir capacities and end-of-year storage comparisons for WY 2012 and 2011 for key CVP reservoirs and one comparing end-of-year storage for 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008 and 1977 (the driest year).

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Please join California Grain & Feed Association on Wednesday, October 24, 2012 at the  Diablo Grande Golf & Country Club in Diablo Grande, CA for the Northern/Southern San Joaquin Valley / Sacramento Valley/South Bay District Meeting and Golf Tournament.

 Click Here for Brochure  

The Federal Register displayed a notice of statutory exemptions from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration - the Federal agency responsible for large truck and bus safety - alerting the public of the Agency's actions to simplify regulations for farmers and their employees, as required by the new surface transportation reauthorization bill called MAP-21.  This action builds on our support for the Nation's farmers as they continue to face the effects of this year's drought. 

Section 32101 of MAP-21 provides a statutory exemption from the hours-of-service regulations for certain carriers transporting agricultural commodities and farm supplies and section 32934 provides a statutory exemption from most of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations for the operation of covered farm vehicles by farm and ranch operators, their employees, and certain other specified individuals under certain specific circumstances.  The statutory provisions are self-executing and take effect on October 1, 2012. 

This notice is intended to ensure that the public is aware of the statutory provisions.  The Agency will, at a later date, amend the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations to reflect the statutory language included in MAP-21.  This Notice should be on public display at the Office of the Federal Register Web site later today.  A copy of the notice and Frequently Asked Questions document is attached.

FRN - Map-21 Agricultural Exemptions.doc 

MAP-21 Agricultural Exemptions FAQs.doc 

Prior to 2012, the most adverse growing season weather conditions for U.S. corn and soybeans in recent history occurred in 1988. Now that the 2012 season is over, it is instructive to compare the two growing seasons and the impact on the U.S. average yields of the two crops. To simplify the comparison of growing season weather, we consider state wide monthly average precipitation and temperature from April through August in Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa. Average total precipitation for the five months in the three states was 1.2 to 2.0 inches below average and average temperatures were 1.6 to 3.3 degrees above average. However, the pattern of monthly weather was substantially different in the two years.

farmdocdaily   

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