Agriculture/Food System – Enviro Updates

Op-Ed: Big Pork’s sneak attack on small farmers

March 22, 2026

Anita Chabria, LOS ANGELES TIMES

At issue is the Save Our Bacon Act, a sneak attack backed by foreign corporations currently hidden deep inside the farm bill. It would severely curb the ability of states to enact limits on animal confinement and maybe accidentally open the door for ending all kinds of state-level food safety laws.

Spring has sprung on Leo Staples’ family farm in Oklahoma, and his Berkshire pigs couldn’t be happier about it.

Weighing in at about 550 pounds, Woody, his largest hog (named by a grandson after the “Toy Story” icon ), plays “like a puppy” in his free-range paddock, Staples told me, gobbling up the rye, clovers and winter peas that have grown knee-high under the Southern sun.

Swine life on Staples’ sustainable family farm is a jarring contrast to the existence of a pig on one of America’s “intensive” corporate-owned mega-farms, where some sows are confined to cages so small they literally can’t turn around or take more than a step or two in any direction.

“It’s not necessary and it hasn’t proven to be good science,” Staples, a self-described conservative Republican, said of Big Ag porcine lockups. “It’s also cruel.”

Agriculture/Food SystemFarm Bill 2026, humane animal treatment, pork

New backyard beekeeping regulations in Santa Rosa move forward

February 7, 2026

Paulina Pineda, PRESS DEMOCRAT

Draft regulations

Santa Rosa has released a draft set of rules that would legalize backyard beekeeping, a proposal spurred by a young boy and his family who helped champion residents’ rights to raise bees in the city.

The new regulations would set standards for colony limits, hive placement and maintenance as well as guidelines for small-scale honey sales.

The ordinance also would require beekeepers to display their name and telephone number at the property in case of any issues. It outlines enforcement provisions if beekeepers violate the code.

Community members for the better part of a year have urged the city to update its zoning code after then 9-year-old Nicholas Bard and his family were ordered to relocate their hive — a decision that has since been rescinded as staff worked on the new policies.

Agriculture/Food Systembees, honeybees, pollinators, regulations

Updated VESCO BMP Manual and Technical Report Guidelines

January 13, 2026

Department of Agriculture/Weights & Measures, PERMIT SONOMA

The Best Management Practices and Technical Report Guidelines document (BMP manual) for those undertaking vineyard or orchard development or replanting under the Sonoma County Vineyard and Orchard Site Development Ordinance (VESCO), has been updated. Standards and requirements have not changed, but the new manual includes some updated language and outlines the Low Impact Vineyard Replanting and Permit Extension application processes.

For the first time, the manual itself has been translated into Spanish. Both the English and Spanish versions of the updated BMP manual can be viewed or downloaded here: Vineyard and Orchard Grading and Drainage

Growers planting new vineyards or orchards, or replanting existing vineyards or orchards, are to use the BMP manual as a guide to achieve the standards required by the VESCO Ordinance in Chapter 36 of the Sonoma County Code.

Agriculture/Food Systemconversion to vineyard, erosion, tree removal, VESCO, vineyard regulations, vineyards

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