Farmers have needed to pull their crops and are going through monetary hardship.
Sarb Johl reaches for an unripe peach at his orchard in Marysville, California, on June 12, 2026.
(Claudia Brancart/NSPR)
Listed below are the morning’s high tales on Tuesday, July 14, 2026
- Peach farmers within the Central Valley have needed to pull their crops and are going through monetary hardship. They’re hoping a brand new farm invoice will assist maintain them going.
- A invoice to chop crimson tape and make reasonably priced housing simpler and cheaper to construct simply turned legislation Monday. It focuses on a controversial mechanism.
It’s a sweltering morning in June off State Route 70 in Marysville as Sarb Johl watches considered one of his staff use an excavator to push useless peach bushes into ginormous, dry piles. “He’s choosing up the bushes which have already been pushed out of the bottom to allow them to be burned,” Johl mentioned.
Like a variety of farmers in Yuba and Sutter counties, Johl grows peaches — and never the sort that you just purchase recent on the retailer or farmers’ market. These peaches are grown particularly for canning. However Johl was compelled to tear out over half of his peach acres after one of many final canneries within the state, Del Monte Meals, filed for chapter after which closed earlier this yr. That left growers like Johl and not using a purchaser for his or her fruit — and going through a dire financial disaster.
“When the processor goes out, principally you bought no place to go,” Johl mentioned. In April, the USA Division of Agriculture threw farmers a lifeline by making a $9 million program to fund the removing of 1000’s of acres of bushes. Now, farmers like Johl must put money into rising one other crop, probably a sort of nut, and so they’re hoping the new farm invoice will present some assist to make the transition.
However it might not be that easy. “So traditionally, the farm invoice has type of ignored specialty crop growers,” mentioned James Sayre, an agricultural economist at UC Davis. Sayre mentioned that specialty crops — like some fruits, greens and nuts — have gotten the brief finish of the stick relating to the large piece of agriculture laws. He mentioned that’s partially as a result of a variety of the invoice is devoted to what are referred to as Title I crops — suppose huge commodities like corn, wheat and soybeans. Title I crops are federally backed with insurance coverage packages and direct funds to farmers when costs fall. These crops are grown throughout many Midwestern states, whereas specialty crops are concentrated in California. Sayre mentioned meaning lawmakers from huge commodity-growing areas have extra votes in Congress and subsequently extra political energy.
One silver lining is that California Sen. Adam Schiff has a seat on the Senate’s Agriculture, Diet and Forestry Committee. It’s the primary time in 30 years {that a} lawmaker from the Golden State is on the desk. Schiff mentioned considered one of his primary priorities is to get extra assets for specialty crop farmers. “There’s no motive to deal with these farmers otherwise than we deal with farmers in different elements of the nation that develop totally different crops,” Schiff mentioned. The senator mentioned that specialty crop farmers face the identical pure disasters and market pressures as commodity farmers.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a brand new housing affordability legislation on Monday, aiming to chop crimson tape and spur housing building.
At a press convention in Oakland’s Chinatown, the governor didn’t mince phrases when it got here to confronting the state’s cost-of-living disaster, which is high of thoughts for residents. “It’s Econ 101,” Newsom mentioned. “We have to construct extra rattling housing, and we have to decrease the price of building.”
The reforms signed into legislation are anticipated to scale back the per-unit price of reasonably priced housing by $60,000 to $70,000, the governor mentioned. One major change is slashing affect charges, which native governments add onto new housing developments to generate tax income. The one-time charges levied on builders are used to help municipal providers — together with colleges, public parks and sewage — for residents within the new reasonably priced housing models.
A report by the Terner Heart for Housing Innovation, a UC Berkeley suppose tank centered on housing challenges, not too long ago discovered that throughout the state, reasonably priced developments paid a median of roughly $300 million in affect charges yearly. In his announcement on Monday, the governor referred to as the charges “comical.” “They’re outrageous. It makes it fairly actually unimaginable to construct an reasonably priced unit,” Newsom mentioned.
