Senate Standing Committee on Agriculture

The Senate Committee on Agriculture will come to order. We are holding our committee hearings here in the O Street Building. Ask all Members of the committee to be present, room 1200, so we can establish quorum, which we have enough Members in this committee to establish. So at this moment, I'll go ahead and let our consultant do a roll call.

[Roll Call]

All right, quorum has been established. Thank you. Today, we had proposed four bills on today's agenda, and all were on the proposed consent. But I would like to, at this moment, pull one of the items, AB 454 and have the author come to the Committee room to present the Bill. And we will just wait for her to arrive, and we'll get started with that and we'll go ahead and vote on the remainder items. So that would include AB 404, AB 1583, and AB 1752. Do we have a motion so moved. Can we have a motion by Senator Padilla.

The motion is on the consent calendar. File items One, three and five, AB 404, AB 1583, and AB 1752. [Roll Call] Put it on call.

We will place the consent calendar on call to allow all Members to vote. We will take a quick break to allow the Member to get here to present AB four, Five four. The Senate Committee on Agriculture will recess until the Member arrives to present AB 454. Thank you. Would you like me to know oh, the Senate Committee on Agriculture is back from recess. Hi, and thank you. Assemblywoman Aguiar Curry, thank you for coming and for presenting on your Bill.

I know that it was proposed to be on consent. I had a couple of questions, and I was hoping that you could help me in terms of answering some of those questions. But I would love to give you an opportunity, of course, to present the Bill. So, please begin when you're ready.

Absolutely. It's my pleasure. Thank you very much, Madam Chair and Members. AB 454 makes an extremely important adjustment to our rice producers and handlers who have been hit hard by the catastrophic drought conditions which California has experienced year after year. Extreme drought and water shortages have severely constrained rice production in the Sacramento Valley, resulting in growers planting less than half of their typical acreage. Last year, over half of the state's typical 500,000 acres of rice were unplanted.

This massive drop in rice production means that many producers and handlers are no longer eligible to serve on the Rice Commission's Board. This is because to be eligible to serve on the Rice Commission, you must actively be producing or handling rice. AB 454 simply provides greater flexibility to the Rice Commission to maintain board representation of all rice farmers and handlers, including those impacted by the drought. With me to testify today in support, I have Taylor Roschen, and I don't know if Louis is going to speak to, but we have Taylor. Good afternoon. Thank you, Taylor.

Good afternoon, madam. Chair and Members Taylor Roschen on behalf of the California Rice Commission. I think Ms. Aguiar Curry did a great job describing what the Bill did. I think long term, when we had the drought impacts, we saw the entire west side of the Sacramento Valley fallowed, meaning that during those circumstances, and potentially because of the inability to participate on the board, the entire west side of the valley would not be represented on the Commission.

So AB 454 seeks to rectify this issue by after the Commission makes a drought declaration. And during that period, growers and Millers affected by drought are still eligible to serve on the Commission. That's after they've also been voted into their positions by their fellow Members in the rice industry. This Bill is supported by the California rice industry and is carefully crafted to provide this allowance under limited and timesensitive circumstances. 454 allows the rice industry to adapt to these unfortunate circumstances and modernizes California's Commission law to the impact of climate change. So for these reasons, we respectfully request an aye vote.

Thank you. Do you have an additional witness? No. Okay. We will go ahead and support for this Bill. Are there any Members in this committee looking to express their statement in support of this measure? Okay. Do we have any that are opposed in this room to AB 454? Seeing None. Okay. We'll go ahead and bring it back to committee and go ahead and allow colleagues to ask any questions if they have any. Okay. My apologies. Do we have any individuals wishing to provide their statement in opposition or in support of AB 454 on the telephone conference line?

Thank you. If you would like to show a support or opposition, you may press one and then zero. Again, that is one and zero for supporter, opposition. And Madam Chair, we have no one in queue at this time.

Okay. Seeing no additional in support or in opposition, again, we will bring it back to the committee colleagues. Do you have any questions or comments on the Bill? Okay, thank you. Well, I wanted to ask a couple of questions in regards to the Bill. I know that it includes expansion of eligibility to serve on the commission. Can you elaborate a little bit more on that?

Do you want to go ahead?

Yeah, absolutely. With the chair's permission. So under the way that the structure would proceed is the commission would have to make a declaration that there's a drought circumstance for that particular marketing year. Then under that provision, those that who would otherwise be ineligible, meaning they didn't handle or produce rice in the prior marketing year, would be eligible, as they would have been had they produced or managed rice in the prior year.

In order to participate, they had to have received funding, crop insurance, so to speak, through the Prevented Planting Program at USDA RMA. USDA RMA evaluates the water availability in order to determine what a payment rate would be for a grower. Millers are not eligible for those coverage options. They then if they chose there is a provision that's very specific that states that if you are selling water while you're receiving the Prevented Planting Program, you cannot sell water for greater than a year period.

And if you are selling that water, that water cannot be otherwise utilized to produce rice. So if you had the water to produce rice, you should have been producing rice. And the language makes it pretty clear it's actually important. That was a vote of the commission to make that decision, to say, we don't want people who aren't handling or producing rice representing us.

But we do understand that there are limited circumstances where drought afflicts those communities, and they still want to make sure that they're able to serve as representatives of their constituencies and of their communities in those time periods. They would only be allowed to serve on the Commission for that one year.

It would require, if they continued to exist, to serve on the Commission, the Commission would have to make another drought declaration, and they may not be able to serve in the secondary year had they not produced rice in the year prior, because they wouldn't be getting the crop insurance coverage. And then I just want to reiterate that under any of those circumstances, handlers and producers have to be voted into office.

So even if you meet all of the eligibility standards, you still have to be voted by your colleagues and Members of the Rice Commission to serve as a representative of that.

So can you please tell me a little bit more about the makeup of the Commission and how many Commissioners there are? I tried looking it up, and I couldn't find the information. And also the drought declaration something if you can elaborate a little bit more on how is it going to be determined whether it's a drought or non drought years? Are you taking what the state is kind of going with or if there's a declaration there in place?

Also, I know that the Commissioners also deal a lot with water quality standards and wanted to know a little bit more about some of the implications or just what type of concerns the Commissioners deal with in terms of water quality standards.

Sure, absolutely. Okay, thank you for the question. So the makeup of the Commission is based on the number of growers and handlers in each district. So you look to get a representative sample of how many acres of rice are produced and handled in each district. And so that changes over time depending upon where different areas of the state have greater production in that district versus in another, they don't. So that's the makeup of what the district is.

All of those district elections are overseen by the Department of Food and Agriculture and they're governed by that independent body to make sure that there's efficacy in the elections of the officials and that the Members continue to be eligible. Under those circumstances, the commission's meetings are publicly noticed at all times. So any Member of the public as a quasi governmental agency managed by CDFA can be part of the participatory process. And then I'm sorry, you had a second question, but I'll jump to water quality issues.

Certainly every commissioner is concerned about water quality and they take active action to remediate any water quality issues that they have. So they're looking at incorporating more salmoids and other species in their habitat in order to better manage water quality issues. They've reduced the amount of nitrogen fertilizer that they've been submitting onto their fields every year as a way to manage persistent water quality issues.

There certainly are still legacy water quality issues all over the state, but they actively manage their fields in a much more regenerative manner. There is a reason why rice is the environmental crop and that's because they look to see where there is a win win in all of those circumstances for managing water quality habitat and producing and handling rice. I'm sorry, I couldn't remember your second question.

I can't remember it either. Spoke so fast and I was trying to keep up with it all. But also you touched on legacy water issues. Can you speak to what you meant by that?

Sure. So I think under those circumstances, I'm speaking to the legacy nitrogen issues that are all around the state. Decades ago, UC, along with many other academic experts, provided input on what should be the application rates for nitrogen and other inputs on all crops across all of California that creates legacy issues in our groundwater. Agriculture has dramatically adapted and they actively play a role in funding water quality cleanup programs, in funding drinking water replacement programs. Certainly that's not something that's dramatically afflicted the rice industry in Sacramento Valley, but that's an issue that's existed agriculture wide.

So based on the way that this Bill is formatted here today, the membership could change from year to year or the total amount of Members per year.

I believe there is a set number, and I'm sorry I don't have the law in front of me, but I believe there is a set number of Members. The distribution of that membership is based on district, and those districts are based on the amount of rice handled in each of those districts. So I apologize, I don't have the actual number in front of me.

Okay, well, those are all the questions I can think of at the moment. Anybody else have any additional thank you.

Madam Chair, and again, I appreciate you coming down. The Bill was on consent and I know the chair had questions. I think the main concern I'm a little bit more direct than the chair but the main concern is that we want to make sure that this emergency drought declaration only addresses the Rice Commission board and membership and not any other aspect of state farming, water control or water resources or anything that would affect us in the Central Valley. So that's kind of, I think, where she's going.

You're absolutely to with everyone's permission, I do want to offer that that was debated as didn't the commission didn't want to wait until there was an emergency declaration made by the Governor made by any other state agency.

They wanted to be able to say within our circumstances for our particular industry in our region, the commission, as the embodiment of the entirety of the rice industry, gets to make a decision about whether or not the drought circumstances in the Sacramento Valley are afflicting rice in the acute sense that way. They weren't waiting until citrus came and said, we need a drought declaration, or there was other areas of the state or they were waiting for the state to make that decision for them.

I get that. I understand that. I think that all farmers, rice growers and all farmers understand that when they get their allocation, they can't plant or they can't do what they need to do, and people are like, oh, well, we'll give you water in August. It's like, well, we have to plant in June. Right. Or the previous months. And so you can't plan for that. So I get it, and I understand, and I thank you. And with that, I'll move the bell.

Right. Thank you very much.

Okay, we have a motion. I will respectfully abstain from this measure, but I will allow for committee Members to vote their conscience here today. I feel a little uncomfortable with voting for the Bill without really fully vetting it, and I don't feel that I am there yet, so I hope that I do get there. But with that with the motion, we'll go ahead and open up the roll.

File item two AB 454. The motion is do pass, but first we refer to the Committee on Appropriations. [Roll Call]

We will place that Bill on call.

For thank you very much.

Other Members to vote.

Thank you.

And we will go ahead and recess until we have all Members here to vote.

All right.

Okay.

The Senate Committee on Agriculture is back, and we're going to go ahead and move with opening the vote counts on the consent calendar first. So, Secretary, can you please read?

The motion is on the consent calendar file items one, three and four, ABS, 400 and 415, 83 and 1752, with the chair voting aye and the vice chair voting aye. [Roll Call]

Okay, we have four ayes, and the consent calendar items are out. Up next is AB 454.

Secretary, can you please read file item two? AB 454. The motion is due passed. But first we refer to the Committee on Appropriations. The chair is not voting with the vice chair voting aye. [Roll Call]

Okay.

[Roll Call]

I need to pause for this real quick.

[Roll Call] Okay, that measure has three votes and no votes, and that Bill is out.

And with that, the Senate committee on agriculture has ended. Thank you so much, all for being here, for your patience as we move through this wild agenda. So thank you so much. And we are officially over. I'm taking you with me to human services.