Open Ag Burning

For California AG Today, I'm Mike Stephens. New requirements have started to phase out open burning of agricultural materials. California Air Resources Board began the process a decade ago. Ryan Jacobson, CEO of the Fresno County Farm Bureau, explained how the process started.

Ultimately in control is the California Air Resources Board. They were given that authority by the SB 700 bills from the early 2000s. And so ultimately this decision went to the California Air Resources Board.

He explains further on chipping materials.

Well, yeah, and there's been a lot of progress made over time. I mean, that's that's one of the misnomers is that this recent announcement was that finally they were starting to in agricultural burning. That process started literally well over a decade ago. We've made tremendous strides. There's just been some difficulties with certain commodities, such as grapevines. And then secondarily, there's been difficulties in getting rid of our materials that ship material, because you when you take an orchard out, you have this cheap material. And it used to go because there was biomass facilities located throughout the San Joaquin Valley that we could dispose of that at. Those started shutting down significantly over the course of the last, you know, five to three years. So we were losing that ability to get rid of that. What was formerly a usable product was now a waste product that nobody wanted. So that's the issue to why there was a hurdle in trying to get get through some of this.