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10 CapitalPress.com Subscribe to our weekly California email newsletter at CapitalPress.com/newsletters January 20, 2017 California Brown’s budget includes boosts for CDFA, ag education By TIM HEARDEN Capital Press SACRAMENTO — Gov. Jerry Brown’s $122.5 billion initial state spending plan for 2017-18 calls for a slight boost for its main agriculture agen- cy to fund efforts to regulate marijuana, fight plant pests and manage antibiotics in live- stock. Brown would provide $284.4 million to the Califor- nia Department of Food and Agriculture, up from its $253.9 million in the current budget, and add nearly 300 new po- sitions for a total of 1,752.1 full-time-equivalent employ- ees, according to his Jan. 10 proposal. The CDFA’s overall budget would be $411.5 million, down slightly from the $414.5 million allocated to the agency in the 2016-17 budget. Federal funds and fee programs also contrib- ute to the CDFA’s finances. Tim Hearden/Capital Press From left, farm manager B.J. Macfarlane puts a castration band on a goat held by student Colton DeBerry as student Hunter Allen stands ready with an inoculation Jan. 9 at Shasta College in Red- ding, Calif. Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed budget includes a $23.6 million boost for community colleges statewide. The governor’s proposal would include nearly $22.4 million in new spending to regulate cannabis production, which voters legalized for non-medical uses in November, and about $2 million apiece to implement the Produce Safety Rule and new antibiotics con- trols. One key expenditure would be $4.4 million for a pest and disease prevention program, which would devote about 190 employees to such tasks as combating the spread of the Asian citrus psyllid and huan- glongbing, the deadly tree dis- ease it can carry. The budget devotes an ad- ditional $1.75 million and 20 positions to an emergency ex- otic pest response unit. Some currently seasonal employees would be switched to full-time to address the citrus issue, CDFA secretary Karen Ross said. “Not only have we seen the spread of the agent itself (the psyllid), but now we’re seeing the disease,” which has been found in 30 trees in Southern California, Ross told reporters in a conference call. “We need to continue the program to beef up our quarantine and work with the citrus industry. ... It’s more crucial now than ever.” The citrus industry has been trying for the past two years to get state money for the psyllid and HLB, for which the indus- try has allocated $15 million toward research and education and received $11 million from the federal government. California is strengthening its quarantine for the psyllid, which now covers roughly one- third of the state’s total land mass. The cannabis funding is part of $57.2 million shared by five agencies to license and regulate the drug, which would be funded by cultivation taxes and license fees. The CDFA’s role would include issuing the licenses and developing a pro- gram to track the movement of medical marijuana through the distribution chain, according to a budget summary. Among the other elements of Brown’s spending plan that could affect agriculture: • The governor proposes increases of $146.7 million for the University of California, $76.3 million for the Califor- nia State University and $23.6 million for community colleges statewide. Some of the UC’s new mon- ey would likely go to the Agri- culture and Natural Resources division, which runs Cooper- ative Extension. The division plans to add 26 positions to extension, which now has 173 advisers and 115 specialists, said Lucas Frerichs, UCANR’s government and community af- fairs manager. “This new ... release contin- ues our commitment for hiring to exceed projected turnover, thus achieving our goal of aca- demic growth,” Frerichs said in an email. • The budget includes anoth- er $178.7 million in one-time funding for drought response, including $91 million for en- hanced fire protection, $52.7 million for disaster assistance, $5.3 million for water rights management and $5 million for local assistance for small com- munities. Agencies tout progress on state’s Strawberry production stabilizes blueprint for water efficiency By TIM HEARDEN Capital Press By TIM HEARDEN Capital Press SACRAMENTO — Wa- ter recycling, farm irrigation efficiency projects and imple- menting the new groundwater regulations were among the state’s accomplishments under Gov. Jerry Brown’s Water Ac- tion Plan in 2016, officials said. Several California agen- cies are reporting they made “significant progress” in the past year toward achieving the goals set out in the five-year plan that Brown initiated in January 2014. The plan’s major goals in- clude making conservation “a way of life,” increasing region- al water self-reliance, prepar- ing for droughts and providing safe water for communities, according to a summary. It is also a blueprint for non-res- ervoir spending under Propo- sition 1, the $7.5 billion water bond approved by voters in 2014. “We will continue the ‘all of the John Laird above’ water supply strat- egy we have, which is embod- ied in the Water Action Plan,” Natural Resources Agency Secretary John Laird told re- porters in a conference call to discuss Brown’s proposed budget. “We’ve made major progress in the 10 major tenets that are there. “Given this budget, it con- templates making even more progress in the coming year,” Laird said. The governor on Jan. 10 proposed spending $248 mil- lion of Proposition 1 funding on local projects, an increase of $15 million to the Depart- ment of Water Resources to provide technical assistance and $2.3 million to the State Water Resources Control Board to enforce diversion re- cording requirements, he said. Water officials believe they have momentum going into 2017 based on their work of the past year, according to a sum- mary of accomplishments pre- pared by the Natural Resources Agency, the state Environmen- tal Protection Agency and the state Department of Food and Agriculture. “This plan is critically im- portant beyond the year-to-year fluctuations we experience in precipitation,” CDFA Secretary Karen Ross said in a statement. “Looking ahead, we know that we must work together to make every drop of water count for California.” WATSONVILLE, Calif. — After several years of modest declines in acreage and produc- tion, California’s strawberry in- dustry appears to be stabilizing, just as China opened its doors to the berries. Growers expect to plant 36,141 acres of strawberries this year 2017, up slightly from the 36,038 acres planted state- wide last year, according to a California Strawberry Com- mission survey. The survey comes as the state’s production returned to its record-setting ways in 2016, as growers filled more than 196.4 million flats, the com- mission reported. Production vaulted over the nearly 194.8 million flats produced in 2013, when growers enjoyed their seventh record-breaking season in the previous eight years. Industry representatives see the rebound as good news for growers, as global demand for strawberries is already increas- ing and new market access to China portends even more ex- ports, said Chris Christian, the strawberry commission’s se- nior vice president. “It’s kind of nice to see it leveling off after a couple of years of declining acreage,” Christian said. “The varieties we’re seeing now are much higher yielding, and everyone sees this as a good opportunity to take advantage of the good demand.” Per-person consumption of strawberries in the U.S. has been increasing over the last two decades, reaching a record at 7.9 pounds in 2013, accord- ing to the USDA-funded Ag- ricultural Marketing Resource Center. California’s exports have been decreasing with pro- duction, as shipments totaled 279.2 million pounds in 2015 compared to nearly 331 million pounds in 2013, according to the commission’s latest annual exports report. But exports could ramp up again with access to China, as that nation’s General Adminis- tration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine has set up a pest-detection protocol to begin accepting California berries after 11 years of nego- tiations with the USDA. “Only a couple of very small shipments have gone over so far, but we expect within a cou- ple of years the China market in the summer months to be a sig- nificant opportunity,” Christian said. “In China, there aren’t any domestically produced straw- berries in the summer months.” Strawberry acreage in Cali- fornia had been on a downward trend from 40,816 in 2013, and production suffered a couple of years of declines, to 192 mil- lion 8-pound flats in 2014 and 190 million in 2015, the com- mission reported. ROP-51-6-2/#13