As California endures its fourth straight year of severe drought, anxiety about our water supply intensifies. The members of the California Roundtable on Agriculture and the Environment (CRAE) – a forum for dialogue among agricultural, environmental, and governmental leaders—ask our fellow Californians to adopt a fresh perspective. Media coverage about the current California drought has been extensive. Unfortunately, […]
We are in an age of worthy challenges, interdependent and complex, that demand a new kind of leadership. Visionaries have realized that the only way they can really make effective change on these important issues is that they must collaborate. And these days, the human race needs us to be effective. Desperately. In 2010, I began to […]
In this 3-part series, Ag Innovations is examining food hub feasibility in a non-traditional way. This series weaves together insights from a growing body of food systems research and experience in food hub development. In our first post Efficacy of Food Hubs, we shared the USDA’s current definition of a food hub, and then we called for […]
The Sierra Nevada region of California is famed for its extraordinary natural features, but less so for its central role in the state’s water system. The area includes the tallest peak in the contiguous U.S. states (Mount Whitney), the first territory ever set aside by Congress for public use and preservation (Yosemite Valley and the […]
Evidence shows food hubs can play a role in solving complex problems in our food system. Food hubs are relatively new on the scene – we’ve only been studying, experimenting, and talking about them for less than a decade – which means they present a lot of opportunity for creating resilient regional food systems. Building […]
We are elated to announce the addition of three highly respected leaders in the field of natural resource management to the Ag Innovations Board of Directors. Joining the Board are climate scientist Juliet Christian-Smith, PhD from the Union of Concerned Scientists, retired USEPA water expert Jovita Pajarillo, and natural resources management consultant Mark Rentz. Juliet Christian-Smith, PhD […]
In the year and half since Ag Innovations’ last word on the topic of regulations, progress has been made toward the recommendations advanced in our two reports on the subject: Permitting Restoration (2010) and Regulating for Agricultural and Public Outcomes (2014). Last September, the Habitat Restoration and Enhancement Act was passed, simplifying the permitting process for small-scale, voluntary habitat […]
I recently had the pleasure of facilitating one of my favorite kinds of meetings – a kick-off for a new collective action project. The topic was habitat conservation for monarch butterflies and pollinators in the state of Missouri and the mission was to bring key players together to co-create a first-ever collaborative statewide conservation strategy. These […]
The historic Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) was signed into law in the fall 2014, providing the first comprehensive framework for regulating groundwater in California. SGMA requires local agencies that lay atop the state’s at-risk groundwater basins to form Groundwater Sustainability Agencies (GSAs) and to adopt Groundwater Sustainability Plans (GSP) tailored to their region’s priorities and […]
In California’s multiple responses to the drought, there is one key initiative that remains relatively unknown: the California Water Action Plan (Plan).1,2 The Plan calls for coordinated action to address the dynamic and interconnected challenges faced by the state’s water system. Thus far, our ability to resolve these challenges has not kept pace with the increase […]
