[A new bill aims to help the state’s independent farmers by
first labeling who they are.]
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PORTSIDE CULTURE

CALIFORNIA’S ‘LOCAL FOOD PRODUCERS’ HOPE PROPOSED NEW LABEL
WILL BOOST SUPPORT  
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Naoki Nitta
May 19, 2023
Modern Farmer
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_ A new bill aims to help the state’s independent farmers by first
labeling who they are. _

The Sunday Marin Farmers Market is the third largest in California. ,
Naoki Nitta

 

Despite offices being closed, Sundays are the busiest day of the week
at the Marin County Civic Center. Located half an hour north of San
Francisco—and within a couple of hundred miles of California’s
many agricultural regions, including the Sacramento and San Joaquin
valleys and the North and Central coasts—the Sunday Marin Farmers
Market is the third largest among the state’s 655 open-air
greenmarkets.

On busy weekends, crowds of locavores routinely swell to 15,000.
“Customers come from all over,” says Gha Xiong, owner of Xiong
Farm. He’s one of nearly 150 regional farmers, ranchers and food
purveyors who set up Sunday shop in the sprawling parking lot, in
clear view of the Prairie-style dome and spire designed by Frank Lloyd
Wright.

For nearly two decades, Xiong and his wife, Kou Yang, have made the
weekly, three-hour trek from their family farm outside of Fresno,
where they grow a diverse range of Hmong and Asian produce such as
bitter melon, bok choy and daikon. While business is normally brisk,
an overly wet and drawn-out winter drowned their low-lying fields and
delayed spring planting by nearly six weeks. Consequently, recent
offerings have been slim. “People say, ‘You sold out so early
today.’ No, [it’s just that] we don’t have enough to fill our
tables,” he says, gesturing to the thinning pile of greens.

For California farmers, relentless precipitation and a late spring are
just the latest in a mounting list of challenges exacerbated by
extreme climate, spiraling costs and increased environmental
regulations. But the pressures exact a larger toll on independent
producers like Xiong, many of whom lack the resources of the
industrial giants that dominate the landscape. As a result, the state
loses an average of four small-scale farms every day.

The recently proposed California Local Food Producers Bill (AB 1197)
aims to stop the hemorrhaging by giving independently owned farms an
official state designation and better support those who grow food for
their communities. Although the bill isn’t directly tied to funding
or other assistance, proponents say the legal definition would help
target resources, state programs and future policies to help bolster
the local food economy.

Small-scale producers play a vital role in supplying not just farmers
markets but restaurants, community-supported agriculture (CSA)
programs and food hubs, says Jamie Fanous, policy director at
Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF), a California-based,
non-profit advocacy group and a major bill sponsor. “This is a path
to designate who they are, so we can figure out how to protect those
facing the highest pressures.”

A top-heavy landscape

The bill assigns values to “Local Food Producers,” defining them
as independently owned farms in California that operate on less than
500 acres and sell more than 75 percent of products to their local
community. (“Local,” however, remains a less-precise category,
extending to the whole state.) The California Cattlemen’s
Association, a non-profit trade group representing the state’s beef
and dairy interests, has opposed the acreage limit, citing greater
land needs for grazing cattle. In response, Assemblymember Gary Hart
(D), who introduced the bill, is working to create a separate
threshold to accommodate ranchers. “I am confident we will find the
common ground to earn [their] support,” he told Modern Farmer in an
email.

According to the 2017 Census of Agriculture, farms measuring less than
500 acres make up the backbone of U.S. agriculture, accounting for 85
percent of the overall landscape. Although that number inches up to 90
percent in California, two-thirds of its growers operate on less than
50 acres, helping to make the country’s biggest food producer also
its most diverse.

Yet the largest five percent of properties make up more than half of
the Golden State’s nearly 25 million acres of cropland, while 37
percent of fields and pastures are leased out by non-farmers. “So
there’s a pretty significant power imbalance, where the majority of
land is really owned by a few [parties],” says Fanous.

That shifts the foundations of California’s agricultural system away
from individual and family growers to large companies and absentee
landlords, many with weak ties to the local community. Often backed by
speculative investment and run by farm management companies, she adds
that these deep-pocketed operations are better equipped to weather the
challenges of farming.

California faces a particularly unique set of issues that heighten the
impacts. Like the rest of the nation, the state contends with extreme
weather and temperatures, pest infestations and decreased crop
resilience. “But our farmers are constantly dealing with the
whiplash of drought, wildfires and floods,” says Fanous. “It seems
like every two to three months, there’s something new.”

Additionally, development pressure gobbles up 50,000 acres of cropland
every year. And for independent growers, the majority of whom lease
their fields, skyrocketing land prices continue to take a larger bite
out of their profit margins; Xiong, the Fresno farmer, reports that
the rent on his five-acre farm has nearly tripled in the last decade.

“And we only anticipate things to get worse as a result of the
Sustainable Groundwater Management Act,” adds Fanous, referencing
California’s strict limits on pumping groundwater. Enacted to
replenish the state’s overtapped basins, research shows that the
regulations could end up fallowing as much as 900,000 acres of
farmland along the way.

Many small-scale growers—immigrants and historically
underrepresented groups in particular—lack robust safety nets, says
Fanous. Only eight percent of California farms receive public
subsidies, few carry crop insurance and government aid is often laden
with paperwork, bureaucracy and delayed payouts. That leaves them
highly vulnerable to consolidation, which, she notes, has ramped up in
recent years, further tipping the balance of power in favor of big
industry.

Labels matter

“It often feels like we go from one [crowdfunding] to another, just
so we can keep farmers in California,” says Andy Naja-Riese, chief
executive director of the Agricultural Institute of Marin (AIM). The
non-profit operates nine farmers markets throughout the San Francisco
Bay Area, including its flagship at the Marin County Civic Center,
drawing more than 350 farmers, food purveyors and artisans from 40
California counties. They also serve 47,000 shoppers who use
CalFresh—California’s version of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance
Program (SNAP)—annually.

A recent survey reveals that this past winter’s storms hit AIM
vendors hard: More than 75 percent missed market days, with a quarter
experiencing property damage and 40 percent losing inventory. “The
majority of producers rely on the markets and other local sales
outlets to make their living,” says Naja-Riese. With many operating
on razor-thin margins, “missed days and delayed sales have a huge
impact on their business.”

In the past decade, California has seen nearly a fifth of its farmers
markets and a third of its certified producers vanish. Giving local
producers a legal designation is a key step in reversing the trend,
says Fanous. “In order to protect a community, you need to first
define [them], then map them to know where they are.”

The Farmer Equity Act, for instance, set the foundation for promoting
equitable agricultural policies by identifying socially disadvantaged
groups. Similarly, a local food producer designation allows effective
inclusion or exclusion in measures such as water restrictions, grant
and relief programs and technical resources, adds Fanous. “We could
utilize this definition to exempt these producers from X, or
prioritize for Y when it comes to, say, water or land issues.”

The label is every bit as relevant to urban growers and their
communities, says Jamiah Hargins, executive director of Crop Swap LA,
another bill supporter. The South Los Angeles-based CSA operates three
micro farms located on slivers of residential yards. At just over one
acre, Crop Swap LA grows a range of produce such as leafy greens,
tomatoes and okra and distributes them weekly to 70 families within a
tight, one-mile radius. The hyper-local system, says Hargins, ensures
subscribers—many from underserved communities of color—with direct
and reliable access to fresh, affordable and sustainably grown food.

Urban farms are an important investment in not just food security but
community well-being and the local economy, says Hargins. “But in a
city like LA, [real estate] is a money game,” he says, of the
relentless threat that development poses to their existence. “So,
hopefully, the bill will create a solid structure that helps us hold
onto and guarantee our gains.”

While California grows most of the country’s produce, “the whole
food system is set up to support industrial agriculture,” adds
AIM’s Naja-Riese. “We can create better standards for what it
means to feed your local community and put some meaning behind
that.”

* local foods
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* Food Labeling
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* farming
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