Editor’s note: These comments were delivered to a State Senate Budget Subcommittee hearing on the Light Brown Apple Moth.
I am the California State Grange’s Legislative (outreach) Advocate for farmers and consumers. For those unfamiliar with the Grange, it is California’s oldest agricultural organization, priding itself in representing farmers and consumers alike.
The Grange is here today to ask for this committee to terminate the funding for the CDFA’s Light Brown Apple Moth eradication/control program. Four years ago, CDFA claimed that LBAM would devastate agriculture in California and yet virtually no damage has been observed.
State farmers/growers oppose this program. The program and its quarantines have hurt our farmers unnecessarily, while at the same time giving an unfair advantage to foreign growers bringing produce into California. That is perhaps why over 100 farmers, as well as small business owners, in support of our farmers, have signed a letter asking for an immediate halt to the LBAM eradication program. Three senior entomology faculty members at UC Davis, experts in eradication efforts, have continually questioned the LBAM program.
To our knowledge, there is not one group or organization who is clamoring to support the LBAM program, and that truly leaves the Pest Prevention Division of CDFA standing alone on its soap box in support of this program. Cutting this program would save the state an estimated two million dollars.
The Grange’s wish would be that the CDFA welcome its new Secretary of Agriculture, Karen Ross, without the leftovers of this embarrassing LBAM program.
As Jeff Rosendale, a plant nursery owner and grower located in Santa Cruz has said, LBAM is so easy to control in the fields that the quarantine and regulations cost 100 times more than controlling it without government regulation. LBAM is a poster-child for too much government. The LBAM threat is overblown, over-rated and over-regulated, pure and simple. After four years of dealing with it, the threat and impacts are by the men with regulatory positions, not the bug.
The Grange asks that this committee firmly support terminating the funding for the LBAM program and it’s “disinformation campaign.”
Yannick Phillips
Sonoma
Thanks to the grange representative, Yannick Phillips, for the previous comment.
It is a rare pleasure to see the truth so articulately written.
…and if the unnecessary and cumbersome LBAM program can finally be stopped, we will also be able to use the tens of millions of dollars we pay to federal taxes for legitimate issues in this difficult economic time.