Farm burning takes center stage in Sacramento

The debate over the burning of agricultural waste is heating up once again.
During an informational hearing Wednesday in Sacramento, Sen. Dean Florez (D-Shafter) called into question how some farmers have been able to continue to set ablaze uprooted trees and clippings.

Florez wrote a law in 2003 to phase out farm burning for good. The three-phase legislation, which took effect in 2005, eliminated some burning the year it was put into practice, more in 2007 and was scheduled to ban all burning this year.

San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District officials, however, delayed the third and final phase, saying burning is an economically viable way to dispose of agricultural waste. Other methods, such as using a chipper on dead trees, are too costly, they say.

Currently, some almond prunings and uprooted citrus trees and vineyards are exempt from the burn ban. Citrus tree and vineyard clippings cannot be burned, but uprooted trees and plants can be burned.

The California Air Resources Board in May extended the exemption until June 1, 2012.
Farm burning in the San Joaquin Valley has decreased in recent years by 80 percent and will soon be at 90 percent, California Citrus Mutual Director of Governmental Affairs Shirley Batchman said Friday.

Farm burning accounts for just 25 percent of the burning in the Valley, Batchman said. Prescribed burning in the forest is responsible for 75 percent.

Also, Batchman said, the air district has a smoke-management plan whereby farmers can only burn on days when human-health risks will not be created.

“You can’t just burn at your will,” she said.

Still Florez is not satisfied.

Bob Alvarez, Florez’s chief of staff, said the senator is unhappy with the “blanket exemption.”
Instead of being automatically exempt, Florez said farmers should have to go before the air district and ask for an exemption.

“There’s some contention over the economic model used to decide what’s affordable and not affordable,” Alvarez said.

Florez offered to give $10 million to biomass facilities to encourage farmers to participate in chipping programs and to send the products to such facilities.

Batchman, however, said Florez’s offer is unwise. She said the money should be spent on replacing old diesel trucks, which she said emit more pollution than farm burning.

“If [Florez] were to secure some money,” she said, “then let’s put it where we’re going too get the biggest bang for our buck.”

Tulare County Agricultural Commissioner Marilyn Kinoshita said some agricultural waste should not be used as compost because of certain diseases and viruses.

“Certain pests and diseases can only be controlled by burning,” she said.

Doug Peltzer, owner of Peltzer Farm Management, farms 1,000 acres of citrus from Lindsay south to northern Kern County.

He said he recently pushed out two 20-acre blocks of oranges — one in Terra Bella and the other in Lindsay — and had the trees chipped. The chipping operation charged Peltzer $500 just to move in its equipment to each site, he said.

Peltzer said Florez’s law hurts the small farmer because no chipping business is going to want to move in its equipment for, say, two or three acres.

“If there are no chips,” he said, “there’s no money to be made.”

Peltzer said the senator’s law is a “one-solution-fits-all” piece of legislation and cannot work.
“[Florez] has a goal in mind, regardless of the practicality,” he said. “He didn’t get his way, so he’s coming back to force his will on everybody else.”

Contact Alex K.W. Schultz at 784-5000, Ext. 1049 or aschultz@portervillerecorder.com.