Sonoma County farms that currently qualify as CAFOs could modify their operations to no longer meet the def nition of a CAFO.” —Cassie King, Coalition to End Factory Farming. i
you have to go through tracking your inputs, the impacts they might have,” Roman-Alcalá says. Instead, such record-keeping should be required of all producers, he says. That would both absorb some of the cost and not put the onus on the government but something the industry itself pays for, he says. “If producers were forced to pay into an inspection fund, unless they were provably using ecological techniques— including organic—that inspection could offer clearer understanding of farm impacts, individually and collectively, while incentivizing farmers to improve their environmental impacts and methods,” Roman-Alcalá says .. g
for job assistance and retraining. While Roman-Alcalá continues to look askance at Measure J, he also continues to advocate for new ways to legislate “that don’t put the onus on the state or the people who are passionate about social justice,” he says. The industry itself should come up with the money for administering stricter regulation, he says. “When someone gets found out, they get a slap on the wrist, but it rarely amounts to a system that prevents this kind of harm from happening in the first place,” Roman-Alcalá says. Roman-Alcalá notes that organic producers have to go through reams of paperwork and record-keeping to be certified organic, while non-organic producers have less paperwork. It’s as though the good actors are being punished, the assistant professor says. “It’s this backward system where if you are doing well, Designing with Sonoma County- grown flowers first!
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26 NorthBaybiz
July 2024
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