… A decade ago, California led the nation by creating a suite of state programs that help farmers transition to climate-friendly methods, many of which also improve farm resilience to extreme weather. These methods include strategies like planting perennials at the field edge or using cover crops in the off-season, both of which boost soil carbon and improve farmers’ ability to capture and store winter moisture for our increasingly long dry seasons. The problem, however, is that the California legislature hasn’t funded these programs adequately or consistently. In recent grant cycles, farmer demand for these incentives has outstripped available funding by two or three times.
–Written by Liz Carlisle, a public voices fellow of the OpEd Project and an associate professor of environmental studies at UC Santa Barbara.