Senate Standing Committee on Agriculture

Good morning, everyone. Thank you, Chair and Members of the Committee, SB 1419, which I'm presenting here today, will establish the Food Desert Elimination Act of 2024 to help address food insecurity and poverty issues for our most vulnerable or at-risk communities across our state. This Bill will aim to ensure all Californians have access to healthy, fresh food options.

I want to point out to the Committee and Madam Chair that I will be taking the suggested amendments on page five of the analysis in regards to removing the deadline for the Department to promulgate regulations and provide language to allow CDFA some flexibility on approving smaller scaled grocery stores. And that would be in the next Policy Committee. Again, Members, compared to the rest of the nation, California has the largest number of supplemental nutrition assistant program SNAP recipients, with the pandemic increasing those numbers recently.

In April of 2023, following up rescinding of the supplemental SNAP allotment, food insecurity surged. And by October 2023, more than one in five families became food insecure. While food insecurity is the inability to afford nutritionally adequate and safe food, it is includes limited. I'm sorry, it's uncertain how they're gonna get their food. Families are gonna get their food. And according to 2022 USDA data, 10.5% of California households, 4.1 million households, or 11.8 million residents, are in a food desert.

So this Bill aims to ensure that we provide that food to those that need it the most. Today, with me is my witness to testify. Leticia Garcia, with the California Grocers Association. Thank you.

Thank you, Chair and Members. Good morning. Leticia with the California Grocers Association here as a proud sponsor of SB 1419. SB 1419 creates the Food Desert Elimination Act, and it helps to address food insecurity by creating a grant program that will establish grocery stores in food deserts. California grocers represent large, regional, small, and independent and independent grocers all throughout California.

And our members take pride in feeding the community they serve, not only through the sale of groceries, but also through philanthropic efforts like food drives, educational scholarships for their employees and dependents, and partnering with local schools and nonprofits. At CGA, we're constantly being asked by local and state representatives, how do I get a grocery store in my district? Well, the answer to that is not as simple as one may think. Grocery store operators make a very, very large investment into opening a new grocery store, and they need to make sure that investment will thrive.

Depending on the location setup, costs for grocery stores range from seven to $50 million per store, and that is excluding labor costs. SB 1419 will make a modest investment to bring a long-term grocery store to communities that are in need. There are successful models that demonstrate how investments into grocery stores have brought fresh food options to neighborhoods that once were lacking. Pennsylvania has a fresh food financing initiative that has provided grants and loans to bring grocery retailers to food deserts.

Just last year, Illinois passed the Illinois Grocery initiative, which will help place grocery stores and food deserts through grants. And a successful model in California is one with the California endowment through Freshworks and one of our Hispanic grocer members, Northgate Markets. Actually, they benefited from that. Northgate partnered with Cal Endowment to establish three stores, one in San Diego, one in Inglewood, and one in South LA. All three stores are still operating and providing the option of fresh foods to the community.

The endowment later released a report where they found many shoppers reported that their respective Northgate Market is more accessible and grants them greater access to fresh produce and culturally relevant food compared to other stores. It has been proven that investments to place grocery stores and food deserts are successful. California has yet to make these investments, and I think this is the time.

Addressing food access in food deserts is a complex issue, and one important piece of that puzzle is establishing a full-service grocery store that can bring variety of fresh foods and produce to a community. For these reasons, we are proud sponsors of SB 1419.

Thank you. Having heard from the lead testimony, will we have any others in Room 112 here to state their support for this Bill? Please come on up. State your name and organization. Okay. Seeing none. Do we have anyone in opposition? Okay. Okay, we'll bring it back to Committee. Do we have any questions from Committee Members? All right, would you like to close?

Yes. Thank you, Madam Chair and Members of the Committee, I just want to point out, which is a heartbreaking story that I just heard this week, actually, with some of the 99 cent stores closing, family was distressed because they're not going to be able to get their canned foods, which is sad. And the reason I point that out, because this really focuses on bringing access to healthy, fresh food options, and that's why this Bill is so important. And with that, I ask for your aye vote. Thank you.

Thank you, Senator Rubio. At this moment, we'll go ahead and place the Bill on call until we have a quorum established and we'll go ahead and take a vote then. Thank you. Okay. At this moment, I will go ahead and present my Bill, so I'm going to give the gavel over. You can sit wherever you need to, wherever you like. If you want to.

All right, final item number three is SB 1448 by the Chair, Senator Hurtado, who will present. Musical chairs, no pun intended. That's right.

Good morning and thank you. Please bear a bit with me. I think I'm coming down here with a little bit of something. I don't think it's contagious, so don't worry. And if it is, I apologize. But anyways, I am here to present SB 1448, a Bill that will increase access to land and markets for small and underserved farmers. Access to land is a significant hurdle for small, underserved and limited resources. Land access is multifaceted and complex, with a combination of historical discrimination and theft payment.

Paired with today's increasing pressure of hedge funds and private investment companies rapidly purchasing agricultural land across California, local and regional food supply chains have been drastically underfunded and under resourced, leaving small family farmers to develop new supply chains with little to no financial support to invest in the infrastructure necessary for sustainable transformation. The COVID-19 pandemic revealed shortcomings in the US food system, revealing a system ill equipped to handle disruption to the complex network of supply and demand. Pardon me.

In the past several years, to address these significant challenges, two programs have been created, the Farm to Community Food Hubs program at the California Department of Food and Ag. This program was aimed to support small and underserved farmers with the infrastructural investments needed to form new aggregation centers or food hubs to sell to institutional markets an investment no other current CDFA program performs. In 2022, the Agricultural Land Equity Task Force, facilitated by the Strategic Growth Council, was established through SB 179.

The task force is mandated to develop a full report of recommendations at the end of three years with a set of policy recommendations to the Governor and the Legislature on solutions to address the land equity crisis. However, there are several administrative challenges for both programs. While charged with addressing land equity issues, the task force has equity issues of its own.

The Strategic Growth Council believes it is not authorized to compensate Members of the task force for the time on the Committee, including the historical or historically underserved farmers of color. And two, the task force also does not have any transparency requirements. This Bill would ensure the set of recommendations at the end of the three years are posted on the SGC website. So the solution here, SB 1448 addresses essential equity issues for two important existing programs and would implement the following reforms.

Clafiried task force Members may receive a reasonable per diem using existing or private funds similar to other task force and committees use.

It will ensure the agricultural Land Equity Task Forces report is made public and it streamlines the Farm to Community Food hub program Advisory Committee by reducing the number of Committee Members being less prescriptive and allowing for Members of existing CDFA committees to serve and extend the sunset for the farm to Committee Food Hub program to ensure it has sufficient time to comply with reporting requirements. And here to testify in support, I have Jamie, and I always mispronounce your last name.

Fanous with the Committee Alliance with Family Farmers. And so here she is.

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, Jamie Fanous. I also have brought along a farmer with me today who I'll let him introduce himself and then I will get into my testimony.

Hi, my name is Nathaniel Gonzalez Siemens. We have a farm just outside of Bakersfield. We farmed some almonds there and we're transitioning that old almond farm into a diverse of fruits and vegetables, primarily as a u-pick to feed our community. There's nothing like that within 50 miles and we don't own that land. We're hoping to buy it someday. We've lived there for my entire life and the land prices have gone up and the land access has gone down.

So when Melissa came out a few months ago, it was really heartening to see that we had support. I mean, we're going to do this one way or the other, but it would be really great to have help and have an institution behind us and behind our friends who are in a similar situation.

Thanks. So, yeah. Good morning. My name is Jamie Finouse. I'm the Policy Director at CAFF, the Community Alliance with Family Farmers. CAFF represents around 8,000 small and mid sized farms across the State of California and has worked for about 46 years to preserve family scale agriculture and promote environmental sustainability. The Senator has covered all of the core details of this program on this Bill and the corrections that are needed. But I'll just name a few important statistics as to why this is really important.

We are losing 1,500 small scale farms a year in the State of California. The challenges facing small scale farmers are simply too overwhelming to bear. From climate change to supply chain infrastructure issues, it's really an impossible task to be a local food producer today. Ultimately, these two programs are ways in which we want to invest in the supply chain for small scale farmers and actually come up with meaningful solutions to address the land access issue for small scale farmers.

Unless you are a millionaire or a fourth generation farmer, getting access to land is just not possible. If you're a beginning farmer, if you're a farmer of color, you need an endowment to keep you going and that is just not going to stand anymore unless we want to keep losing farmers in the state. This Bill is really clear.

It is just addressing some essential administrative corrections to both the Land Equity Task Force to make sure that our underserved farmers are being compensated for helping to create policy solutions. And this is something that exists in other task forces. So this correction is not new, as well as create some of those administrative changes to make sure that that food hubs program was actually created. So thank you so much and hope for your support.

Thank you very much. Are there additional witnesses who would like to register support for the Bill in the hearing room? If so, please come forward. State your name and organization for the record and indicate your support.

Hi, good morning. My name is Jered Lawson. I'm with Pie Ranch in San Mateo County, and we have established a community food hub that grew out of the pandemic and also for about five years have launched an incubator program to help next generation farmers, and particularly women and BIPOC farmers have access to land. And it's temporary.

They have, it's a five year program and addressing some of the issues, administrative issues in 1448 is critical for this task force to really do the job of the policy solutions that will help our participants in this program get to the next level on there.

This is an opportunity for folks to just simply state your name and organization and indicate that you support the Bill.

Great. We support the Bill.

Thank you very much and appreciate your patience. Hi, welcome.

Hi, my name is Maceo Hart-Kapic. I'm the owner and operator of H&K Family Farms here in Sacramento county, and I support this Bill. It's essential. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Will Holloway. I'm an owner operator of Longer Table Farm in Sonoma County and board chair of Feed Cooperatives and I'm in support of 1448.

Good morning. I'm Alexis Koefoed and I'm the owner and farmer of Soul Food Farm in Vacaville. And I support this Bill. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Reyna Yagi. I am owner and operator of Yagi Sisters Farm in Sonoma county and I support this Bill.

Hi, I'm Emily Schwing. I'm with Veggielution in East San Jose and Santa Clara County, and I support this Bill.

Hi, I'm Marie Millares, and I'm from Veggielution in Santa Clara County, Eastside, San Jose, and I also support this Bill.

Thank you. Are there any lead witnesses in opposition to the Bill or other witnesses in opposition of the Bill? Seeing none. Thank you for your testimony, Senator. Thank you. That will be put on call until we have a quorum. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

All right, in the interim, the Committee on AG will stand in recess until we establish a quorum.

The Senate Committee on Agriculture is back from recess, and we will go ahead and establish quorum. Secretary, please.

[Roll Call]

Okay, quorum has been established, and with that, we will go ahead and call vote for the bills that we have. We need a motion. Do we have a motion on SB 1419 by Senator Rubio? Thank you. We have a motion. And secretary, please, call the roll on that.

[Roll Call]

And we'll go ahead and take up the consent calendar as well. Sorry, I'm still a little sick. I apologize. The vote was. The vote is 30 and the Bill is out. And up next, we'll do the consent calendar. Do we have a motion? Thank you. Secretary, please call the roll on the consent calendar.

[Roll Call]

Okay, the votes 3-0 and the consent calendar items are all out. And up next, we have last, if we have Senate Bill 1448 and do we have a motion on that Bill? Thank you. And, secretary, please call the roll.

[Roll Call]

Okay, and the vote is 3-0, and that Bill is out, and I believe that is it for today. Thank you all for joining us, and thank you to all those that came up and provided a testimony at today's hearing, and we appreciate you all, and thank you so much with that. The Senate Committee on agriculture is now over it.