Commentary
Prioritize California’s farmworkers and provide them COVID vaccines
As farmworkers prepare for their second pandemic-era harvest, it is time the state does everything it can to ensure their safety.
Agriculture
Environment
Up in smoke: Burns in San Joaquin Valley vineyards, orchards may finally end
California’s air board will vote this week on stopping burns that spew plumes of smoke that can trigger asthma attacks. The move is long in coming — it was supposed to end a decade ago under state law.
Climate Change
Farmers can help in battle against climate change
California farmers have an opportunity to turbo-charge the green revolution in rural America with crop-based biofuels.
California Divide
Farmworkers say employers, Cal/OSHA don’t enforce COVID-19 safety regulations
A new study shows farmworkers say they have been left unprotected from COVID-19 by the very employers and agencies who wrote emergency regulations intended to keep them safe.
Commentary
Californians deserve safe and breathable air
If we can rethink our habits of polluting the air that we breathe, we can improve our air quality in California and the Central Valley.
Commentary
California farmers looking for regulatory sanity
California employment law has become an electrified maze of regulations where walls shift without reason and once-safe paths are suddenly blocked.
California Divide
New bill pushes California to stock, distribute masks to farmworkers during wildfires
Lea este artículo en español. State Assemblymember Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) wants the state to acquire a stockpile of N-95 masks and set up a strike team to distribute them to farmworkers when they continue to work under dangerous conditions during wildfires in order to keep the country fed. Although Assembly Bill 73 has no funding attached, […]
Commentary
We can find common ground to solve challenging water issues
Looking forward, 2021 will be an important year for moving ahead on implementation of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act.
California Divide
Do California ag counties hold solutions to Monterey County farmworker housing crisis?
Lea este artículo en español. In 2019, Monterey County sold more than five billion dollars worth of agricultural products, from cannabis to strawberries to leaf lettuce. It is, by far, the largest industry in the county. However, that industry needs laborers on the ground. Tens of thousands of people plant, pick, and pack the produce that […]
California Divide
State mandates emergency workplace COVID-19 protections, less crowding for guest farmworkers
Backed by the state’s attorney general and welcomed by labor advocates as better late than never, California's new policy will start to hold businesses accountable for protecting their workers, mandate reporting outbreaks and decrease crowding in housing for vulnerable guest farmworkers spotlighted in a California Divide investigation.