GOING BEYOND LOBBYING: PASSIONATE ADVOCACY By Matthew Allen, Vice President, State Government Affairs
blessed to work with them. We are also grateful to work alongside a group of lobbyists from other agricultural and business associations that have that same natural drive for your success. This was quite tangible at the end of the session, as hundreds of lobbyists were swarming the Capitol rotunda in Sacramento to grab the ear of legislators and their staff to answer questions about a bill or to negotiate final amendments to protect their stakeholders’ interests. There is a difference between a lobbyist who just “shows up” to work on an issue versus a passionate advocate. I stood at the rotunda railing between meetings, watching the frenzied activity of passionate advocates working to keep your business operations running as smoothly, effectively and efficiently as possible. It may often seem that Sacramento is a passionless place, devoid of common sense, deaf to the plight of agriculture. That is true in some corners but definitely not all. It remains our job and our calling to ensure that those who have gone deaf to agriculture’s concerns begin to truly listen again. We will not ever give up on protecting this industry that goes above and beyond every single day to feed our nation and the world. Please don’t ever believe that you are operating alone when it comes to handling legislative and regulatory issues. There is a small but mighty army of passionate advocates in Sacramento that considers themselves part of your company and your team.
I am writing this article in the middle of September. The California Legislature has concluded their session, and we are now awaiting the Gov. Gavin Newsom's final action on bills that made it to his desk. It has been a challenging year across the board on a range of topics, but we have had some great victories, including stopping a bill that would have further limited nitrogen applications and successfully stripping language from another bill that would have prohibited an entire class of pesticides in California. There are numerous other wins as well. Of course, many challenges are likely to be ongoing. Our team continues the work on single- use packaging, Proposition 65 regulations, numerous labor-related initiatives and a host of other regulatory proposals. A common denominator within all of this is the dedication that our entire team brings to work every day, to do everything that we can to ensure your continued success in agriculture. If we don’t end with a successful resolution, we conduct an after-action review to see what tactics and strategies worked and which didn’t. It’s not about meeting the bare minimum to say that we lobbied a specific piece of legislation or regulation; it’s about caring for each of your businesses as if we are one of the owners. That is not something that you can train for; that is someone who naturally brings forward the passion to work hard for your success. I am proud to say that Western Growers has those colleagues, and I am
10 Western Grower & Shipper | www.wga.com October – December 2026
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