Agriculture/Food System – Enviro Updates

The new rules behind Sonoma County’s home kitchen food surge

January 11, 2026

Roger Coryell, SONOMA COUNTY GAZETTE

Sonoma County has always had a quiet side hustle economy. You just didn’t used to be able to taste it.

A jar of jam passed across a fence. A dozen eggs left in a cooler with a coffee can for cash. A neighbor who “just happens to bake” dropping off a loaf that makes you wonder why you ever bought bread in a store.

Lately, though, it feels like something has shifted. All of a sudden there are pop-up bread stands, home bakers taking preorders, “pickup Saturday” tamales, herbal tea blends, granola, cookies, even full meals coming out of home kitchens. Instagram is full of it. River Road has it. West County has it. Cloverdale has it. You can’t drive five miles without seeing a hand-lettered sign, a little table under an oak tree, or a “DM to reserve” post.

It’s not your imagination. Some of this is cultural, some is economic — and a big piece of it is legal.

Agriculture/Food Systemlocal food

Sonoma County BOS passes new cannabis business regulations

December 9, 2025

Emma Murphy, PRESS DEMOCRAT

In the brisk early hours Tuesday morning, Scott Orr, Sonoma County’s planning and permitting director, posted outside the main administrative building yellow and orange signs showing the distance of proposed setback requirements for commercial cannabis farms.

Land-use policy discussions don’t often include such displays, but the signs were another signal of the sharp debate that was expected to prevail Tuesday as the Board of Supervisors was set to adopt revised and controversial regulations governing the commercial cannabis industry outside city limits.

The ordinance overhaul marks the first significant change to the county’s regulations of commercial cannabis cultivation, sales and distribution since 2018.

The board voted 4 to 1 to adopt the new rules, which will take effect July 1.

The vote capped a fractious and labored process launched by the county in 2021 to amend its rules governing commercial cannabis and settle years of criticism from the local legal industry seeking relief from what they called a burdensome permitting process. Residents, as well, have been outspoken, seeking stronger safeguards against noise, odor and strain on limited water supplies.

Agriculture/Food System, Land Usecannabis, cannabis industry, cannabis regulations, events, Farm Bureau, neighborhoods

Vine removals to continue as wine industry sees ‘structural change’

December 4, 2025

Jeff Quackenbush, NORTH BAY BUSINESS JOURNAL

More significant removals are expected in 2026–2027 as growers confront years of oversupply, falling demand and bulk-wine inventories that remain stubbornly elevated.

The long-awaited wine industry rebound may be in sight in the next two years, but not before a dramatic supply contraction, including significant vineyard removals across California and even in the North Coast, according to experts at a major trade show in Santa Rosa on Thursday.

Analysts, lenders, accountants and marketers at the 13th WIN Expo Trade Show and Conference said the California wine business is undergoing a structural retrenching, not a cyclical dip, and a turnaround depends on eliminating excess inventory, reducing grape output and rebuilding how consumers are engaged.

Agriculture/Food System, Land Usevine removal, vineyards, wine industry

Sonoma County farmers confront new avian flu wave

November 12, 2025

Phil Barber, PRESS DEMOCRAT

The first tastes of wintry weather have brought an ominous feeling back to Sonoma County’s poultry producers. At least three farms have tested positive for Highly Pathogenic Avian Flu, or HPAI, in the past three weeks — early echoes of the 2023-24 winter outbreak that devastated the local industry.

“If the wind changes, as it did a couple days ago, we’re nervous,” said Mike Weber, who co-owns egg-laying operations Sunrise Farms and Weber Family Farms in Petaluma. “We’re on pins and needles until February. It’s simply scary as hell. We don’t get much sleep at night.”

Weber’s farms had been spared the contagion as of Friday — unlike two years ago, when the business lost 550,000 chickens and 3.2 million eggs at two sites.

The three recent Sonoma County cases are the first recorded among California’s commercial producers this winter.

Like human flu, avian influenza consistently spikes in colder months. HPAI spreads along the continent’s migratory flyways, including the Pacific Flyway that blankets the North Bay.

Agriculture/Food Systemavian flu, chickens, eggs, poultry

Close to Home: Supervisors double down on ‘inebriation tourism’

November 2, 2025

Judith Olney, PRESS DEMOCRAT

Once again, the Board of Supervisors is ready to throw Sonoma County taxpayers under the proverbial bus — and then back over us.

On Oct. 28, the board will discuss a cannabis ordinance that would reduce permit fees for cannabis cultivation on properties of 10 acres or more with agricultural or rural resource zoning, with operations only 100 feet from neighboring residences. In addition, the ordinance would allow events with cannabis consumption and sales.

After lowering fees for cannabis growers, the county still must pay for infrastructure and other public services, which means increasing the burden on other taxpayers.

It was bad enough when the supervisors granted the cannabis industry significant tax breaks, leaving residential taxpayers and businesses to cover the shortfall in revenue. Now, contrary to state regulations, the proposed ordinance includes unmitigated rights to host cannabis events, even on parcels that don’t have permits for cannabis cultivation, which require safety measures and qualified on-site security personnel.

With up to 104 event days per venue, plus large-scale cannabis events under zoning permits, the cannabis industry is securing more rights than the wine industry.

Agriculture/Food System, Land Usecannabis, cannabis regulations, events, tourism impacts, traffic, Williamson Act

Sonoma County Supes endorse new cannabis industry regulations

October 29, 2025

Emma Murphy, PRESS DEMOCRAT

Sonoma County’s highly anticipated overhaul of its ordinance regulating the cannabis industry arrived this week before the Board of Supervisors, where debate raised and settled for now a thorny question — whether commercial cannabis farming should be governed as agriculture.

On Tuesday, a board majority endorsed that regulatory set up, over opposition from the region’s largest ag trade group, while also deciding on other rules governing commercial cannabis cultivation, sales and distribution outside city limits.

The changes advanced by the board include defining cannabis as a form of controlled agriculture and classifying it as a prime crop making farmers eligible for tax breaks on their enrolled cropland. Going forward, the rules also would include cannabis in the county’s Right to Farm Ordinance, which is intended to protect and promote agriculture by prioritizing it on agriculture-zoned land.

Tuesday’s discussion marked the culmination of the county’s multi-year effort to conduct an environmental review of its embattled cannabis regulations and subsequently revise rules after years of piecemeal tweaks failed to resolve a stalemate between the local industry and residents.

Agriculture/Food Systemcannabis industry, cannabis regulations, controlled agriculture, noise, odor, traffic

UC Berkeley researchers find 75% of surveyed field workers labored during Sonoma County wildfires since 2017

October 24, 2025

Phil Barber, PRESS DEMOCRAT

Study adds to criticisms of county’s Ag Pass program as authors, trade group spar over interpretation

A newly published UC Berkeley study takes a highly critical view of Sonoma County’s Ag Pass program, adding to previous analyses that suggest the system, which allows agricultural workers into disaster evacuation zones when approved by the Sheriff’s Office, keeps local industry humming at the expense of worker health and safety.

Among the findings of a survey of more than 1,000 Sonoma County farmworkers presented in the article published Oct. 20 in the Journal of Agromedicine:

• 75% of respondents said they had done agricultural work during an active wildfire, or in the presence of wildfire smoke.

• 37% said their employers had not provided them with any personal protective equipment while they were working during fires.

• 66% said their health was affected by working during wildfires, with 83% of those citing eye irritation, 75% reporting headaches and 45% shortness of breath.

• 57% said they felt sick but continued to work because they couldn’t afford the lost income, and 51% said they did so because they were afraid of losing their jobs.

• Only 25% said they would feel safe gathering more information and signing up for the program through the Sheriff’s Office.

“Our research … identifies how the county developed a program that expanded access to agricultural workers but in practice primarily meets the needs of owners/operators,” wrote the study’s primary authors, Linda T. Gordon of the Berkeley Human Rights Center and Carly Hyland in the School of Public Health, in an accompanying white paper.

Agriculture/Food System, AirAg Pass, air quality, farm workers, health & safety, particulates, wildfire smoke