California Wheat Commission  

Home | Directories | Quality Info | Variety Survey | CAWG Update | News/Info. | Laboratory | Links

California Association of Wheat Growers (CAWG)

June 30, 2006

CALIFORNIA WHEAT COMMISSION WEEKLY UPDATE. The Commission published its last update for the year (for a total of twenty-four weeks) with a summary of harvest news statewide. The crop is varied this year, depending on region, with yields ranging from low to normal. The Commission is also in its second year of tracking the correlation between falling numbers and moisture levels. For more information, call or e-mail Sam Huang, Laboratory Director, CWC (530.661-1292, shuang@californiawheat.org).

STATE LEGISLATIVE UPDATE. (Courtesy of California Seed Association) The State Legislature complete work on the state budget this week and recessed for their annual summer break until August 7^th. Among the issues still pending are:

§         State preemption on agricultural biotechnology: The bill will prohibit any additional counties or cities in California from banning the production or use of genetically modified crops and from regulating them in any other way. This bill applies to both seed and nursery stock. Similar legislation has passed in fourteen other states thus far. 

As a reminder, Mendocino, Trinity, Marin and Santa Cruz counties have banned GMOs. Two of the actions were by initiative and two were by action of the county board of supervisors. The bill grandfathers in these counties so these GMO bans will remain in effect even if the bill passes. Ban initiatives in San Luis Obispo, Sonoma, Butte and Humboldt counties were defeated.

The bill, SB 1056 (Florez), will now go to the Assembly Floor where environmental and agriculture groups will square off against each other as California agriculture attempts to gain passage of the measure and send it back to the Senate for final approval.  

§         Minimum wage: Several bills were introduced this year regarding increasing the minimum wage.  Generally, Democrats want to increase minimum wages and then have an automatic annual escalator in the future.   The governor supports an increase in the minimum wage, but without indexing future increases to inflation. 

The main bills on minimum wage are AB 1835 (Lieber) and SB 1162 (Cedillo). Both will increase the minimum wage to $7.25 July 1, 2007 and to $7.75 per hour on July 1, 2008 and then index future increases automatically to the rate of inflation. The Lieber bill is under consideration on the Assembly Floor and will likely pass and the Cedillo bill is on the Senate Floor and will likely pass.  

As an alternate strategy the Governor recently petitioned the Industrial Welfare Commission (IWC) to increase the minimum wage by $1 an hour. The Governor's letter to the IWC explains that California's strong economic recovery allows for the first increase since 2001. The request would raise California's current minimum wage of $6.75 to $7.75, in two phases of 50 cent increases over the course of a nine-month period. The increase would represent a nearly 15 percent pay hike for California's lowest-wage workers and is estimated to provide workers throughout the state with more than $2 billion in increased income annually.

USDA AND DOE ANNOUNCE RENEWABLE ENERGY MEETING. USDA Secretary Mike Johanns and Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman announced last week that USDA and DoE will co-host a national renewable energy conference to help create partnerships and strategies necessary to accelerate commercialization of renewable energy and its distribution system.

The conference, titled “Advancing Renewable Energy: An American Rural Renaissance,” mirrors President Bush’s Advanced Energy Initiative (AEI) to decrease our dependence on foreign oil.  It is scheduled for Oct. 10-12 in St. Louis, Mo. Johanns also announced a loan guarantee and grant totaling $3.75 million for the construction of a new biodiesel facility in Iowa. This loan guarantee brings the total amount of renewable energy loans guaranteed to $13.35 million.

ETHANOL FROM WHEAT STRAW. In its annual activity report, NAWG provided the following update on efforts to commercialize cellulosic ethanol utilizing wheat straw:  In August 2005, President George W. Bush signed a major energy bill that included more than 1,700 pages worth of authorities to encourage domestic oil, natural gas, coal, hydro and nuclear energy production. The bill also contained authorities meant to encourage conservation and provide incentives for renewable energy production. It took relatively bold steps in the areas of renewable energy development, the most significant area of interest to agriculture. The legislation requires petroleum refineries to blend and market 7.5 billion gallons of renewable fuel - ethanol - annually by 2012, which should begin to diversify the agricultural feedstocks used in the refining of renewable fuels. NAWG has worked for several years to provide incentives encouraging the commercial refining of cellulosic agricultural residues such as wheat straw into renewable fuel and other value added byproducts.

These provisions, specifically loan guarantees, were included in the final package, though there have been no solicitations for applications for these guarantees because a program to facilitate this has yet to be set up. Cellulosic ethanol has a variety of financial benefits for those involved in agriculture. An April 2005 Department of Energy/USDA study projected 998 million tons of biomass would be available from agricultural sources each year, enough to sustain 1,000 plants, each producing 75 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol. Each plan is also projected to generate about $40 million in agriculture revenue, for a total of $40 billion potential additional farm income. In addition, an estimated 600,000 permanent, rural jobs would be created by the growth. As recent volatility, and thus increased prices, in the fuel market has shown, there is a place for both these quantities of cellulosic ethanol and more traditional corn-based ethanol in the fuels market.

In the biofuel fury that has followed President George W. Bush’s mention of our “addiction to oil” in the State of the Union, a variety of Members of Congress have proposed writing legislation to provide even more incentives for biofuel production. In June, Senators and Representatives held a press conference announcing the introduction of resolutions that would make the 25x25 coalition’s goal the sense of the Congress. This coalition, which NAWG has been a member of for some time, encourages the production of 25 percent of the nation’s energy from renewable sources like cellulosic ethanol and solar energy by the year 2025.

NAWG is continuing to work with IOGEN, a Canadian company that has developed technology to make cellulosic ethanol out of wheat straw, and to expand contacts in the biofuels industry. NAWG also continues to push for the loan guarantees allowed by law.

USDA TO OFFER EMERGENCY CONSERVATION FUNDS. USDA announced this week that it will begin to allocate $11.8 million for Emergency Conservation Program (ECP) funding in 18 states.

The fund, administered by the Farm Service Agency, would allow farmers to restore fences and provide water for livestock in drought situations. Some of the states where funds will be available include: California ($255,000); Colorado ($413,000); Oklahoma ($532,000); and South Dakota ($1,963,000).

Farmers should contact their local FSA offices for information regarding ECP sign-up periods. For more information on sign-ups and disaster assistance, please visit: http://disaster.fsa.usda.gov 

57 SENATORS ASK PRESIDENT FOR BALANCED DOHA AGREEMENT. More than half the Senate signed a letter sent to President George W. Bush last week expressing a “deep concern about the direction of the negotiations on agriculture” ongoing as part of the Doha Development Round of WTO negotiations.

Those signing the letter included the chairmen and ranking members of both the Finance and Agriculture Committees.