California Passes Bill to Help Prepare Farmers for Climate Change

Climate change’s immediate and long-term impacts have reached statewide concern for the agriculture industry as noted by the passage of AB 1071 by California’s Assembly. This agriculture resilience bill seeks to help farmers and ranchers be more prepared for climate change risks and production impacts. California Climate & Action Network posted about the bill’s passage on their website and stated the following primary goals:

1. Develop science-based, farm-level agricultural climate change adaptation planning tools for California farmers, similar to the AgroClimate Toolkit and Adaptation Workbook that have been developed for other regions in the US. Such decision-support tools are intended to incorporate the best available climate science into farm management planning to help inform farmer decision-making about a number of climate related issues affecting their operations, including crop/cultivar selection for a changing climate and how to improve resilience to more frequent and intense droughts, floods, and heat waves.

2. Pilot the decision-support tools in three agricultural regions of the state – the Central Valley, Central Coast, and Desert Region – with local farmers, ranchers, technical assistance providers, and agricultural organizations. This will further refine and ground-truth the tools.

3. Finalize the tools and facilitate trainings for technical assistance providers, like UC Extension and RCDs, and other agricultural organizations on how to use the adaptation tools with farmers as well as effectively communicate with producers about climate adaptation needs.