GIVE THIS SENATOR A CHANCE Dave Puglia, President and CEO
Seven months into a six-year term is not adequate to assign the new Senator a grade or make a definitive assessment of his commitment to our industry. But we do know that Schiff has been responsive. In May, the Trump Administration’s DOGE team cut USDA staff in several program areas, including the Farm Service Agency (FSA). The DOGE plan called for shuttering nine FSA field offices in California. Just days after the WG Board of Directors delegation met with him in Washington D.C., and elevated our serious concerns, Schiff and seven members of the House of Representatives wrote to USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins to protest. Two weeks later Rollins rescinded the move for all but one remote FSA office. Several of our members have hosted Senator Schiff for farm tours and policy discussions in recent months, as have our partners at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. By all accounts, these have been meaningful and serious encounters with Schiff seeking to both learn the nuances of our industry and develop policy solutions that help us remain viable. Schiff has suggested he would work in earnest with President Trump despite their strained history, especially on immigration reform, with Schiff even remarking that Trump could capture a “Nixon goes to China” moment in history by achieving what most Americans know is badly needed but that no president has been able to deliver since Ronald Reagan in 1986. If this is starting to sound like a re-election endorsement for Mr. Schiff, let me clarify: We are all entitled to our views—not just those confined to agriculture industry matters. We have good reason to judge our elected officials across a multitude of issues outside of the business of the agriculture industry. But for this association and its advocates, both on staff and in volunteer leadership positions, we are obliged to relate to our elected representatives through the lens of agriculture and the policy matters impacting the industry. We can and should open our gates to Adam Schiff and give him the benefit of the doubt on issues that matter to our industry. He will not do all we ask or hope for, but we must give him the opportunity, and the necessary persuasion, to do more than he may have bargained for when he decided to run for one of California’s two Senate seats. ••• Speaking of the U.S. Senate: Michael Bennet of Colorado will be leaving the “world’s greatest deliberative body” to run for Governor. Bennet has been a strong advocate for us, working across the aisle tirelessly on western water infrastructure and the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, among other matters. We will miss him in the Senate and wish him well on his campaign.
Weeks after the historic 2024 election, my daily news scan was halted in its tracks. On December 10, I noticed an Op-Ed in the Bakersfield Californian, written by Adam Schiff. The longtime U.S. Representative from Los Angeles was sworn into the Senate the day before, to fill the remaining fragment of the term of the late Dianne Feinstein, and would be sworn in again on Jan. 3, 2025, to begin the full six-year term to which he had just been elected. Why in the world would this very high-profile progressive L.A. Democrat place an opinion piece in a newspaper serving one of the agriculturally concentrated and conservative regions of the state? As I hit the hyperlink, I prepared for disappointment and possibly anger. I was pleasantly surprised. Adam Schiff—the embodiment of the Democrat Party’s antipathy toward President Donald Trump—was extending his hand and his service as a new U.S. Senator directly toward California’s agriculture industry. He wrote of traveling the state during his campaign and making a point to visit agricultural regions including the Central Valley, the Central Coast and the Imperial Valley, places he “was far less familiar with from my years representing Los Angeles or growing up in the Bay Area.” Several WG members did in fact host Schiff for tours of their farms during the campaign, likely enduring some barbs from neighbors and fellow farmers for their trouble. I applaud them. Schiff wrote of asking farmers: “If I’m lucky enough to get this job, what can I do to help?” Further on, he wrote of his nascent understanding of California’s farmers and his being “deeply impressed by the multigenerational nature of the enterprise for many farmers, the difficulty of competing with other states and countries with lower standards, and the growing scarcity of our state’s most precious resource, water.” Whatever one’s partisan leanings, when a legislator extends a hand in partnership to help our industry, we extend ours, knowing we cannot expect the moon but understanding that non-engagement gets us nowhere. This is especially true of U.S. Senators, who by virtue of the Senate’s powers, rules and structure, can influence legislation and public policy at a profound level. I sent Senator Schiff a response, offering myself and the Western Growers team as good-faith partners. His staff responded quickly, and we met for lunch in Burbank. By then, he had been selected to serve on the Senate Agriculture Committee, another surprise to me. Schiff explained it is shameful that the largest agriculture state in the nation has not had one of its two U.S. Senators on the Agriculture Committee for more than 30 years, so he asked to be appointed.
4 Western Grower & Shipper | www.wga.com July | August 2025
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