Lookin' good
While some California farmers wonder if they can make it through next week several agricultural professionals are envisioning farming in the state in 2030.
The group called the Ag Vision Task Force includes hired managers of most of the state’s major agricultural associations and commodity groups. Its task grows out of the State Board of Food and Agriculture and is closely monitored and aided by the California Department of Food and Agriculture.
In case you’re confused about current assignments, the State Board of Food & Agriculture is an advisory group, a kind of sounding board that has offered advice and other inputs to CDFA at monthly meetings for years. Its members, appointed by CDFA,
include spokesmen from banking, education, the environment, chemicals and pesticides, transportation, public health, government and other specialties as well as agriculture itself.
More than a year ago the group conducted a series of listening sessions in several locations to hear what an even broader slice of the public expected of agriculture 20 years down the road. Distillation of that information has given the task force a foundation for looking ahead.
Meeting the group’s goal of developing a living document to guide the realization of public policy and industry practice in 2030 has not been an easy task. But coordinators believe the process has entered the home stretch. Management of the process has been assigned to American Farmland Trust, an association that concerns itself with current and future agricultural conditions, especially land use.
The assignment has been complicated by the inclusion of some representatives of interest groups that traditionally have been at the opposite end of the political and philosophical spectrum from most farmers. Gaining their inputs has been deemed of value even though those are sometimes hard to swallow.
Coverage of the process by California’s agricultural publications has been scant, probably because it has so far been tedious tabulation and organization of thoughts and comments from agriculture’s broad spectrum, some of them irrelevant. From the outside the process has been about as exciting as attending recess at a think tank. The press was not invited to the most recent meeting of the task force in August.
However, the group indicates it will produce a final draft of its recommendations and observations by next March, pegging its release to Ag Day, a national observance. Whether its suggestions find their way into current policy will largely be decided by the Director of the Department of Food and Agriculture A. G. Kawamura.
Current updates on the process can probably be obtained by contacting Ralph Grossi, senior advisor with American Farmland Trust. Also out front in the project has been Karen Ross, manager of the California Association of Wine Growers and a member of the State Board of Food and Agriculture.
Several positive outcomes are possible from all of the head scratching and possibility thinking involved. It might provide a guide for the industry’s next two decades. A road map is always a big help, especially if you know where you want to go. We can hope that none of the hangers on and fringe players in this enterprise will prevail with any bum steers.
Early on the group’s goal was stated to be an advisory document to guide development of public policy and industry practice with an eye to environmental sustainability and public health. However, suspicion of anything built on the shifting sands of sustainability is justifiable.
Meanwhile farmers trying to stretch their economic sustainability past next week will be awaiting the outcome with bated breath, assuming that bated breath is not suddenly determined to be an atmosphere pollutant.
