Agriculture: Cannella Environmental Farming Act of 1995: technical assistance grant program: groundwater conservation planning.

The Cannella Environmental Farming Act of 1995 requires the Department of Food and Agriculture, in consultation with the Scientific Advisory Panel on Environmental Farming, to establish and oversee a Healthy Soils Program to seek to optimize climate benefits while supporting the economic viability of California agriculture by providing incentives, including loans, grants, research, and technical assistance, and educational materials and outreach, to farmers whose management practices contribute to healthy soils and result in net long-term on-farm greenhouse gas benefits. In this connection, the department has also established the State Water Efficiency and Enhancement Program to provide financial assistance in the form of grants to implement irrigation systems that reduce greenhouse gases and save water on agricultural operations. The Sustainable Groundwater Management Act provides for the sustainable management of groundwater basins, including basins designated as high- or medium-priority basins by the Department of Water Resources, by requiring local government agencies to take specified actions to conserve and regulate the extraction of groundwater in those groundwater basins. This bill would require, upon an appropriation of funds, the Department of Food and Agriculture to establish and administer a 3-year grant program to fund technical assistance to support landowners located in a critically overdrafted basin, as defined, in reaching water use reduction goals established pursuant to the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. The bill would require the department, in its development of the grant program, to establish various criteria, guidelines, restrictions, processes, and requirements for the qualification and administration of grants to technical assistance providers, as specified. The bill would authorize the department to use specified guidelines to administer this program. The bill would require the grant program to fund one or more technical assistance providers in each critically overdrafted basin. The bill would require the department to ensure that at least 25% of the grant program funds are used to provide technical assistance to socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers, as defined. The bill would require that technical assistance from the grant program be provided directly to landowners in a critically overdrafted basin to design, develop, and implement on-farm conservation plans for agricultural lands that are at risk of fallowing due to water shortages.