Farmers and ranchers can deal with the markets and they can deal with weather, but it is the regulatory challenges they constantly face that can have lasting effects on their farms and ranches. That observation was made by California Farm Bureau Federation President Paul Wenger during his opening remarks at the annual CFBF Leadership Conference in Sacramento last week.
"The one thing that we can really impact is trying to change the regulatory issues that are before us. We have to be engaged in order to do that, and that is why you are here today," Wenger told the assembled audience of agricultural leaders from throughout the state.
"We find ourselves at a very interesting time. People can really get discouraged at the amount of regulation that is coming down. It seems like a lot of our regulatory agencies have completely lost any kind of focus on what the impacts are of what they are doing," he said.
Wenger was setting the stage for the group's visits with elected representatives and regulatory officials at the state Capitol (see story).
"At the end of the day, whether they are Democrat or Republican, whether they are in the Assembly or the Senate, these are the people who need to hear our message," he said, adding that California farmers and ranchers can make a strong case for the quality and efficiency with which they grow food and fiber that the world needs.
"So when you want to talk about carbon footprint, when you want to talk about squeezing the most crop per drop, when you want to talk about efficiency of production, we in California take a back seat to no one. Whether it is conventional production, organic production, you name it, we can do it better than anyone in the world," Wenger said.
He acknowledged that during the past decades, farmers and ranchers shared in the responsibility for some of the environmental concerns being addressed presently in California.
"Nobody is saying that we haven't contributed to some of the problems, and we will solve those problems. But it took decades to realize the problems that we have and it will take decades to solve those problems," he said.
"Unfortunately, you will find out as you walk the halls of the state Capitol and talk to some of the people at the agencies, that they think as soon as they write the regulations or as soon as they pass the bill, that tomorrow they have affected change. When that change doesn't happen within the next year or two, then they think that obviously it wasn't restrictive enough," he said.
Wenger noted that farmers and ranchers don't have 8-to-5 jobs in an office, but people who do are the very ones who need to be educated about the concerns of agriculture, so that regulatory decisions can be made responsibly and not emotionally.
"The reason that we are still here in agriculture is that we have the stubbornness and resourcefulness to deal with these challenges and are able to survive," he said.
(Steve Adler is associate editor of Ag Alert. He may be contacted at sadler@cfbf.com.)