Governor Signs Bill to Help Farmers Adapt to Climate Change

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Published on: September 15, 2016

State Sen. Lois Wolk, D-Solano, chair of the Senate Budget Subcommittee on Resources, Environmental Protection, Energy and Transportation, applauded Gov. Jerry Brown’s approval this week of numerous budget measures on resources, including a number of bills to help the state reach its climate change goals.

The governor signed legislation Wednesday establishing a $7.5 million Healthy Soils Program to support agricultural practices that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and store carbon in soil, trees and plants. The bill, which funds the state’s cap-and-trade program, includes the language of Wolk’s Senate Bill 1350 to establish and fund the Healthy Soils Program.

“By providing farmers and ranchers with greater access to programs and other resources, the state will not only help agriculture adapt to climate change but will also help this sector play an important role in addressing climate change by reducing their greenhouse gas emissions and storing, or sequestering, carbon in the soil,” Wolk said in a press release. “I applaud the governor’s decision to establish and fund the Healthy Soils program, as well as other important programs such as those to provide clean drinking water to disadvantaged communities and protect our state’s natural resources.”

Senate Bill 859 will establish a Healthy Soils Program to support projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural operations and increase carbon sequestration, or storage, in agricultural soil. Benefits to increased health of agricultural soils include the ability to store more carbon and other greenhouse gases through sequestration, provide more nutrients for plants, retain more water, and reduce erosion — resulting in improved air and water quality, water conservation, enhanced wildlife habitat and healthy rural communities.

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Resistance Is Fertile: It’s Time to Prioritize Agroecology

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Author: Colin Todhunter | Published on: August 29, 2016

Food is becoming unhealthy and poisoned with chemicals, while diets are becoming less diverse. There is a loss of plant and insect diversity, which threatens food security, soils are being degraded, water tables polluted and depleted and smallholder farmers, so vital to global food production, are being squeezed off their land and out of farming.

Over the last 60 years or so, Washington’s plan has been to restructure indigenous agriculture across the world. And this plan has involved subjugating nations by getting them to rely more on U.S. imports and grow less of their own food. Agriculture and food production and distribution have become globalized and tied to an international system of trade based on export-oriented mono-cropping, commodity production for the international market, indebtedness to international financial institutions (IMF/World Bank) and the need for nations to boost foreign exchange (U.S. dollar) reserves to repay debt.

This has resulted in food surplus and food deficit areas, of which the latter have become dependent on agricultural imports and strings-attached aid. Food deficits in the global South mirror food surpluses in the West.

Whether through IMF-World Bank structural adjustment programs, as occurred in Africa, trade agreements like NAFTA and its impact on Mexico or, more generally, deregulated global trade rules, the outcome has been similar: the devastation of traditional, indigenous agriculture.

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