Legislative Pressure on Agriculture

Legislative Pressure Builds for Agriculture

By Jessica Theisman, Associate Editor

Dennis Albiani is a lobbyist with California Advocates based in Sacramento. California Ag Today met with him at the recent Almond Alliance meeting in Santa Barbara, where he discussed the legislative pressure on agriculture. California’s agricultural interests have had a challenging past couple of years on the subjects of overtime, minimum wage and some of the regulatory compliance areas.

“As we work with legislators, legislative process and the administration, we need to definitely find opportunities to advance the arguments on how the regulations are impacting agriculture,” Albiani said.

What also needs to be realized is that there might be some opportunities. We may be able to benefit from in the climate contained, constrained economy. We also must keep in mind the possible challenges.

Albiani looked at the almond industry as an example. “We have three crops per the drop for nuts. You have the nut, the bio-massed product, and the tree is a carbon sink,” he said. All of those are options that need to be further explored and also continue to pushed back on the regulatory constraints that they are inflicting.