Remarks of Michael R. Dimock, Executive Director, Roots of Change, Before the California State Board of Food and Agriculture

Remarks of Michael R. Dimock, Executive Director, Roots of Change, Before the California State Board of Food and Agriculture

August 4, 2026

Good afternoon. Thank you for requesting that Roots of Change share its perspectives on the next round of Specialty Crop Block Grant Program funding that will be administered by CDFA.

First a bit of context: Roots of Change seeks a resilient, healthy and equitable agriculture and food system, and shares with CDFA a large array of its Ag Vision goals. We actually utilized Specialty Crop Block Grant funds to create the Market Match program over a three-year period (2010-2013). That success led Roots of Change to propose and advocate for CDFA’s California Nutrition Incentive Program. Both these programs have been enormously successful in creating a new approach to increasing sales of specialty crops to low-income families, benefitting the farmers selling directly through farmers markets, CSAs and farm stands.

The Specialty Crop Block Grant program is a powerful tool for driving innovation. And innovation is needed more than ever. We are living through a time of incredible disruption and chaos for agricultural producers. The fraught international and domestic politics and resulting economic challenges and uncertainties combined with extreme weather are driving many farmers out of business.

I will add that our work for CDFA and USDA on how to support further development of resilient food system infrastructure has been instructive.  That work over the last two years has allowed us to examine over 350 data points and to engage hundreds of farmers and representatives of agriculture and food organizations, to determine what is still needed to increase access to middle-of-the-supply-chain infrastructure for small and mid-scale producers.  All of this experience informs the following six recommendations.

1) Research proposals that support adaptation to increasing temperatures and decreasing supplies of irrigation water must be a high priority. The most dramatic impacts of the changing climate are only beginning. As you know, California is on the front line. We must continue to show the way to adaptation.

2) Specialty crops remain the most dependent on hand harvesting, harvest crews and an immigrant-based labor force. Even with increasing technologies, dependence on human hands is unlikely to change for the foreseeable future. Consequently, we need more research and pilot programs that help labor contractors and farm operators to devise best management practices to protect workers from heat stress and illness and wildfire smoke impacts. Roots of Change and Tracking California (our program partner at PHI) are currently working with UC ANR, Central California Environmental Justice Network, and a farm labor contractor in the San Joaquin Valley to do this type of work. We are already aware that much more innovation is needed. As the world heats and megafires continue, better protecting workers will be essential to maintaining a healthy workforce.

3) Research proposals that aid farmers to increase soil health practices that lead to more carbon capture, to help mitigate climate change, are essential. Given the high degree of cultivation required for typical vegetable crop systems, this is a challenge. But there are innovators out there creating low-till, no-till, and other systems that decrease soil disturbance. They must be scaled up to increase their contribution to carbon capture. Orchards and vineyards can certainly increase the use of cover crops, and it is important we expand their utilization in the years ahead.

4) Research related to food safety, which I know my fellow speakers have covered well, is critical. We believe there is a sweet spot to be found between the need to ensure safe produce and the need to protect and enhance species diversity. Agriculture and wild nature cannot be completely separated. They impinge upon one another. There are innovations to be found that will aid us in efforts to meet both our state’s environmental quality and food safety goals. This is a critical topic requiring deep and sustained research.

5) The expanding markets for school food and food is medicine programs in which sales are focused on small and mid-scale producers are critical to maintaining resilience in our food supply chains and improving the health of Californians, particularly children. Thus, grant proposals that aid farmers to access processing infrastructure that prepare harvested specialty crops for use by school systems and healthcare commissaries will bring more economic stability to the farmers and should be encouraged. Relevant infrastructure includes cold storage, cut and wash, flash freezing, and portion packaging systems.

6) We also have reconfirmed in our Resilient Food Systems Infrastructure (RFSI) Program study that farmers markets remain the primary point of sales for small-scale specialty crop farmers and therefore promotion of those markets to encourage more Californians to frequent them is extremely helpful. These farmers put the warmest, most human face on California agriculture and help to highlight the interdependence of our urban and rural inhabitants. The farmers in these markets remind us of the need for respectful reciprocity between cities and agrarian, working lands. These small farmers are our most effective diplomats and we need to maintain their place in California’s great agricultural community.

Thank you.

For more information, please feel free to contact us at [email protected].