Jonas Jägermeyr, a climate change scientist and crop modeler who works for the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, calls the prolific food and farming issues facing the country and the world “the challenge of our generation.” He says that among several factors threatening to disrupt and in some cases completely stall food cycles, climate is “driving a fundamental change across most breadbaskets on the planet.” Creating sustainable food sources So what can be done? With its dominance in food production and shipping at hand, California is wasting no time addressing the increasing challenges to food sustainability and delivery. The state is a proven leader in the fight against food shortages and is waging a war against soil and climate change, and shortages on several fronts. Many of the agencies and organizations that operate throughout the state are grassroots efforts that, in sum, are helping California reach its ambitious farming and agriculture goals. Some of the most significant endeavors include:
and energy use, and other environmental impacts. Although the project has
recently been suspended, it operated for 30
years, garnering a long generation’s worth of research and data that are proving vital to the state’s overall farm management goals.
California Farm Bureau. The bureau and its 29,000 members—all of them active
farmers throughout the state—have allied themselves to become a major political force in support of a wide array of farming and food production issues. Their actions have produced significant results. Last year, Governor Gavin Newsom signed three Farm Bureau-sponsored bills that addressed a variety of farming-related issues, including: expanded insurance coverage for farmers and their property; legislation to allow drones to deliver farm crop-enhancing pesticides; and a bill to extend the sunset on accidental take provisions (when a protected species is unintentionally taken during the course of a lawful activity) of the California Endangered Species Act (without this extension, many agricultural operations would grind to a halt).
Century Experiment. Started in 1993, this initiative was created to study how farm
management practices impact the ecology of farms over the seasons, years and decades. The goal was to help agricultural scientists figure out how to make farming and food production more sustainable. For the experiment, 72 one-acre farm plots were arranged throughout the state with tight controls to measure key agricultural measures, including crop yield, soil quality and biodiversity, profitability, water
No state in the country has a more organic focus or crop output than California.
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IN YOUR CORNER ISSUE 18 | 2024
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