AB 1439 (Alejo, Salinas) was placed on the Assembly Appropriations suspense file earlier this month. The bill would annually index the minimum wage in California to the California Consumer Price Index. The Association has joined a host of other business and employer groups in opposing this legislation.

While some in the Republican Party - mainly at the presidential campaign level - are trying to moderate previously strident messages on immigration reform, others continue to beat the drum for a continued hard line on illegal immigrants in the U.S. as this week House members showed up at a talk radio host convention in Washington to warn their brethren about straying from the playbook. Meanwhile, farmers and ranchers laid out their frustrations with the seasonal worker H-2A program, saying the government is making it nearly impossible to follow the rules and employ workers legally. Recently six Senators wrote to the Department of Labor (DOL) voicing their concerns with the current system and how it's restraining food production in their states. The six Senators urged DOL, the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department to hold regional meetings with growers to find solutions to the challenges of the visa program.

The best places to work also often have the best employee productivity, customer retention, and financial performance.

Exceptional workplace. It sounds good, right? We all want to have one or work at one, but what is an exceptional workplace, and how do you build one?  One thing is for sure, you don't wake up one day and say, "I want my company to be an exceptional workplace" and bam, there it is.  Becoming exceptional takes time and thought.  It's not haphazard.

During my career, I have had the pleasure of working with a wide variety of senior managers, some from companies recognized as exceptional places to work and others that create great places to work without even knowing it. If no one has handed you an "Exceptional Workplace" award, but you are interested in building an organization that could easily win such an award, I'd like to find how you would answer these questions.

• Do you do anything unusual that sets your workplace apart?
• Would you like to better understand how being a great place to work can positively impact your business?
• Are you interested in what wisdom there is to learn from the best workplaces?

If you've answered 'yes' to any or all of these questions, you may be ready to embark on becoming an exceptional workplace. Through my years of working with such companies I have learned that these companies trump their competitors every time in terms of

• financial performance
• employee and customer retention
• talent attraction
• productivity
• communication
• morale

Becoming an exceptional workplace is deliberate. It takes thought. It takes work. And it takes time to change. But it's worth the effort.

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USDA this week announced it's launched a new "National Water Quality Initiative" aimed at improving "one to seven impaired waters in every U.S. state and territory." The program is the brainchild of the White House Rural Council. USDA has selected 157 watersheds where on-farm actions have the best chance of improving water quality, and this selection was based on cooperation with state agencies, key partners and USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). NRCS will make at least $33 million in farmer/rancher assistance available to implement conservation practices to help clean up water. The money will come from the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP). All eligible applications must be submitted by June 15. Go to www.usda.gov for details.

The U.S-Colombia Trade Promotion agreement goes into effect May 15 following the formal exchange of paperwork and the completion of legal requirements this week. When the agreement kicks in, there will be an immediate elimination of several U.S. ag export tariff rate quotas, particularly on poultry, but there will also be several extended phase-out periods for tariffs on other commodities.

Understand the unique brain and personality types of your employees to keep them invested in work. You'll see amazing results.

How do you keep employees inspired and productive?  It's an essential question since companies today must accomplish more, with fewer people. The most successful start-ups must be lean, nimble, and fierce.

In a nutshell, you should hire bright, energetic, innovative employees. Then offer them the right incentives--the ones that will impact their personal brain and personality types--to keep them mentally and emotionally invested in doing their best.

It's impossible to talk about motivation without mentioning Drive, a book by best-selling author Daniel Pink. (His TED lecture was turned into a fabulous video.) Pink notes that people perform best when they are given autonomy, opportunity for mastery, and the belief that their task is meaningful. He says money is not the best motivator, and that employees want to be "players, not pawns."

Pink believes Google's "20% time," in which employees may spend one day a week on whatever they want is a shining example of how allowing intrinsically-based motivations (a sense of accomplishment or purpose) can flourish. Personal endeavors from "20% time" resulted in Gmail, Google News, Orkut, and AdSense. Long before Google--back in 1948--3M instituted the "15% solution" or "dream time," which yielded both Scotch Tape and Post-It Notes.

There's no question that intrinsic motivation is essential. However, I do not agree with Pink that all extrinsic motivation (raises, bonuses, commissions, awards, titles, flex time, and other perks) is harmful. A skillful entrepreneur keeps employees motivated with a combination of both.

That said, there is no cookie-cutter approach to motivating your people. What inspires one person may leave the next cold. When you understand an employee's thinking and behavioral preferences, you'll be able to maximize his or her enthusiasm. This will help you get your workforce aligned and moving in the same direction, and you'll see incredible returns.

A measure that would address the fertilizer research program designed to mitigate fertilizer impacts and promote efficient use was heard in the Assembly Agriculture Committee this week on a vote of 7-0. AB 2174 (Alejo, Salinas) expands the eligible grant projects for a program run by the California Department of Food and Agriculture. The bill would include technical assistance in the priorities for funding as well as specific entities such as University of California Agriculture Extension programs. Programs would include those that advise farmers on measures to reduce fertilizer use, reduce the impact of fertilizer use on groundwater quality, and address drinking water contamination associated with fertilizer use. The association has been actively working with the author, our agricultural colleagues and the bill sponsors from the environmental justice community on clarifying amendments that would broaden language to focus on efficient and agronomically sound fertilizer use and to include others, beyond UCCE, which could be eligible for program development.

Senate Farm Bill on Floor after Memorial Day? House Panel Shoots for June Mark Up - Given the Farm Bill's chance of enactment this year is all about timing - it has to be ready for conference action by September at the latest - Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Debbie Stabenow (D, MI) is pushing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, NV) to make good on his pledge to get the bill to the floor. She is supported in this effort by a letter this week from more than 100 of the nation's major commodity groups who called for quick action on the bill. However, Stabenow and her panel's ranking member, Sen. Pat Roberts (R, KS), continue to try and placate southern Senators who continue to rail against the pro-Midwest/anti-South configuration of the panel's approved replacement of direct payments with a shallow loss Agricultural Risk Coverage (ARC) program.  

Reid, who's pledged to find floor time for the bill if Stabenow produced a product with bipartisan support, hasn't given the ag chair a date, but staff say it's likely not until after the Memorial Day recess at the earliest. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R, KY) says the bill will need at least a week to complete. Meanwhile, House Agriculture Committee Chair Frank Lucas (R, OK) says his committee will wrap up its Farm Bill hearings by the end of May and will be ready to dive into full committee markup by early to mid June. New hearings scheduled this week by the House ag panel include a May 16-17 hearing in the general farm commodities and risk management subcommittee on Farm Bill commodity programs and crop insurance, and a May 18 hearing in the conservation, energy and forestry subcommittee on energy and forestry programs in the Farm Bill.

Southerners Still Not Happy with Senate Farm Bill - Peanut and rice producers, with tacit support from their cotton and sugar brethren in the South, continue to tell Senate agriculture leadership they're not happy with the committee-approved package, meaning it's unlikely the bill will get floor time until they are. Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Debbie Stabenow (D, MI) told one publication this week, "They don't like change, but the change is coming...we spent hours and hours and hours and hours" talking about the bill, but no solutions have been reached, and she continues to urge southern crop producers to bring ideas to the table. She acknowledged the bill has provisions for peanuts and rice producers, but said right now, "the ball is in their court to help us" with ideas." She said the big hurdle is that rice producers particularly do not want to surrender their direct payments, but she said that's a non-starter in discussions. Southern rice producers say they want congress to set a "target" or reference price below which a payment would be forthcoming, but that's effectively maintaining the direct payment, she said. Stabenow allowed the House bill will likely have some form of target pricing, but not direct payments, saying the issue will have to be worked out in conference.

Anti-Spending Groups say House Farm Bill Must Cut Deeper - Tax reform, anti-government waste groups and other budget hawks called on the House this week to cut more deeply "Washington's outsized and outdated role in American agriculture." They called on the House to go farther than its Senate counterparts and view the $30 billion in cuts called for in the House-passed FY2013 budget resolution as the minimum that must be slashed from overall agriculture spending over the next 10 years, saying elimination of direct farm program payments "is long overdue." They also called for major reinvention and reform of the federally subsidized crop insurance program. They warned Congress not to create what they termed "new entitlement programs" for farmers, and cited the Senate Agriculture Committee's adoption of its shallow loss risk program as such a program. The coalition also said the Farm Bill should not undo "responsible cuts to biofuels programs" achieved last year, referring to the elimination of the blenders credit and tariff protections ended for corn-based ethanol. The groups said agriculture is one of the few sectors of the economy not feeling the effects of recession, citing record on-farm income and exports. The coalition said Congress must seize the opportunity to "reassess unnecessary and complicated federal policies that manipulate market decisions."

Lenders Say "No" to Conservation Compliance tie to Crop Insurance; Senate Looking at Crop Insurance "Reform" - Rural lenders this week told a House Agriculture Committee subcommittee hearing on the ag credit provisions of the 2012 Farm Bill that tieing crop insurance qualification to conservation compliance is the wrong way to go. Meanwhile, their Senate counterparts said it's time to further cut the federally subsidized crop insurance program which pays part of the producer premium while buying down the administrative cost of insurance carriers. The American Bankers Assn. (ABA), the Independent Bankers of America (IBA), the Farm Credit System (FCS) and the Community Bankers of America (CBA) told the House subcommittee crop insurance is a traditional backstop for their customers, and worried tieing conservation program compliance to crop insurance eligibility would hurt farmers' ability to get and keep insurance coverage.  

Independent witnesses warned the subcommittee that interest rates will increase, prices will eventually drop and that the current good times are simply the cycle traditional to agriculture. In the Senate, Sens. Richard Durbin (D, IL) and Tom Coburn (R, OK) sent a letter to the Senate Agriculture Committee calling for more cuts to the crop insurance programs based on high commodity prices and the "alarming pace" of crop insurance costs to USDA. The two Senators cite a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report that says imposing a $40,000 payment limit on premium subsidies would have saved the federal government $1 billion in 2011 alone. They also contended failure to set limits contributes to inflated land values that hurt small and beginning producers. Durbin and Coburn said their call for further cost cuts is not opposition to crop insurance - they called the program "critical" - but said it's important to seize the opportunity to improve the efficiency of the program.

On Wednesday, Governor Jerry Brown appointed two new members to the State Water Resources Control Board and affirmed that Charlie Hoppin would remain chair. To the "attorney" spot on the board the Governor appointed Felicia Marcus, 56, of Emeryville. Marcus has been western director at the Natural Resources Defense Council since 2008 and was executive vice president and chief operating officer at the Trust for Public Land from 2001 to 2008. She served as the administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 9 from 1993 to 2001. Marcus was a commissioner on the City of Los Angeles Board of Public Works from 1989 to 1993 and served as president of the Board from 1991 to 1993. She has been a member of the Delta Stewardship Council since 2010.

For the "professional engineer" spot, the Governor appointed Steven Moore, 45, of Sausalito. Moore has been a civil and sanitary engineer at Nute Engineering since 2006 and has been a member of the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board since 2008. He served in multiple positions at the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board from 1999 to 2006 and 1992 to 1996, including resources control engingeer. He was a senior engineer at Montgomery Watson Consulting Engineers from 1997 to 1998. Moore was an environmental analyst and biologist for Earth Metrics Inc. from 1989 to 1991.

Charles Hoppin, of Yuba City, will remain chair of the State Water Resources Control Board. Hoppin was appointed to the Board in 2006 and has served as chair since 2009. He is a partner in a family farm operation in Sutter and Yolo Counties.