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IN THIS ISSUE – “We Looked At That and Said, ‘How is That Bad Policy?’ ”
POLITICS
- CA Dem Party Factions Battle Over Endorsements; Progressives Rate Lawmakers
- Ballot Measure Requires Voter OK for Tax Hikes; Impacts Local Government
NATURAL RESOURCES
- Governor & Legislature Writing CEQA Carve-Out After ”Tragic” Court Ruling on UC Berkeley Expansion
- State Water Agencies Rush to Deploy Snowpack Measuring Tech
- Western States Expand Cloud-Seeding
- US & CA Lag in Storage Batteries for Renewables; “Long Way to Go”
HOMELESSNESS
ONLY IN CA…
Capital News & Notes (CN&N) harvests California policy, legislative and regulatory insights from dozens of media and official sources for the past week. Please feel free to forward this unique service.
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FOR THE WEEK ENDING MAR. 4, 2022
CA Dem Party Factions Battle Over Endorsements; Progressives Rate Lawmakers
CalMatters & Sacramento Bee
Get ready for a lot of (virtual) tension today as California Democratic Party delegates kick off their three-day annual party convention on Zoom. The convention, supposed to bring party members together, will likely showcase the splinters within their ranks as candidates seek endorsements for an unusually high number of open seats in the state Legislature.
Amar Shergill, the leader of the Democratic Party’s progressive caucus, is encouraging progressives to refrain from donating or volunteering for the party and instead focus their organizing energy on outside groups.
Meanwhile, party leaders — who plan to endorse nearly all state lawmakers running for reelection — have responded to the caucus with “iron-fisted” actions, including essentially blocking it from withholding support for lawmakers who opposed a failed single-payer health care billand watering down its proposal to stop accepting money from oil and gas companies and law enforcement groups.
Shergill: “The party uses every advantage it has under the bylaws to ensure there is no democracy in the Democratic Party.”
Tenoch Flores, a former communications director for the California Democratic Party: “One of the beliefs is that if you have impassioned speeches and you scream truth to power, you can have policy change overnight. They’re not able to make good on any of their threats.”
The divisions in the Democratic Party were also showcased in a Monday scorecard from Courage California, the state’s largest progressive organization. While some Democratic lawmakers were named “all-stars” for “never fail(ing) to put people first” despite “corporate pressure,” others were placed in the “Hall of Shame” for “aligning with corporations and lobbyists instead of everyday Californians.”
Progressive group Courage California unveiled its seventh annual California lawmakers’ score card, rating state lawmakers on how progressive they were in the previous year, including its “all-stars” and the “hall of shame.”
Among the list of “all-stars,” who earned a score of 100 out of 100, were Assembly members Marc Berman, Wendy Carrillo, Laura Friedman, Ash Kalra, Alex Lee, Kevin McCarty, Kevin Mullin, Luz Rivas, Phil Ting and Buffy Wicks, as well as Sens. Connie Leyva, Nancy Skinner and Scott Wiener.
As for the Courage California “hall of shame,” members of that group included Sen. Steve Glazer and Assemblymembers Jim Cooper, Tom Daly, Tim Grayson, Patrick O’Donnell, Freddie Rodriguez and Carlos Villapudua, who all earned a “F” from the group.
You can see the whole list for yourself by clicking here.
Ballot Measure Requires Voter OK for Tax Hikes; Impacts Local Government
LA Times California Politics Newsletter
The history of California politics is rich with battles over taxes — the sweeping cuts ushered in by Proposition 13, higher taxes on tobacco and the state’s wealthiest residents and efforts to earmark money for public schools.
Tax increase campaigns are usually a raucous mix of emotions and economics. And more often than not, the state’s voters will reject a tax increase unless they’re convinced it only affects someone else.
Several tax fights loom on the horizon in November, including proposals to impose new taxes on high-income earners that would fund pandemic response and climate change programs.
But the most consequential effort, should it qualify for the statewide ballot, isn’t about one tax but instead offers a sweeping revision to the California Constitution that would almost certainly make it harder to raise local and state taxes in the future.
In broad strokes, the proposal championed by well-funded business interests would leave the fate of a variety of tax increases up to voters. It would replace the current patchwork of rules governing how local and state taxes are increased.
It would also redefine some existing fees — often used to cover the costs of a particular service — as taxes and make it harder for government officials to increase those too.
“We’re at a critical point in California,” said Rob Lapsley, president of the California Business Roundtable, an organization that represents many of the state’s largest companies. “You have a growing frustration, and what we think could even be a revolt, of the average family in California of what they have to pay and their perception that they’re not getting a return on services.”
Lapsley credits former Gov. Jerry Brown for the idea. It was Brown, after all, who ran for a third term as governor in 2010 by promising that he would not raise taxes without going to voters. (It’s important to note Brown also prefaced that promise by noting that it was during a recession.)
“We looked at that and said, ‘How is that bad policy?’” said Lapsley.
On the state level, the plan would require a ballot measure to ratify any tax increase approved by the Legislature. In communities across the state where many tax increases already require voter approval, the proposal would raise the bar by stipulating those taxes must be approved by two-thirds of the voters casting ballots. (Statewide tax increases would require only a simple majority vote.)
Recent history shows how hard it is to get two-thirds of voters in a community to approve a new tax. An analysis by local government finance expert Michael Coleman shows that although 82% of simple majority tax proposals in California cities were approved by voters in November 2020, the success rate of those requiring a supermajority to pass was only 43%.
In reality, tax increases are rare at the state Capitol. But those that have happened — like the 2017 gas tax increase to fund transportation needs — would likely be rejected by voters. The business group’s ballot measure would also make a less obvious but important change: Voters would have to approve any legislative effort to cancel one of the scores of California’s permanent tax credits. That’s because rescinding a tax cut, under state law, is the same as imposing a tax increase on those who would have to pay more.
Labor and liberal activist groups have lined up to oppose the sweeping tax proposal, perhaps aided by the ballot measure’s title and summary issued by state Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta: “Limits Ability of Voters and State and Local Governments to Raise Revenues for Government Services.” On Tuesday, opponents said a majority of voters in their private poll rejected the ballot measure when reading the official description.
“Voters learned what they need to know from just the title and summary of this initiative,” said the group’s spokesman, Mike Roth, “that this measure undermines their rights to determine local priorities and raise money for vital services like public schools, fire and emergency response, public health, and services to support homeless residents.”
Governor & Legislature Writing CEQA Carve-Out After ”Tragic” Court Ruling on UC Berkeley Expansion
CalMatters
California, a state often described as a leader in climate policy, appears poised to carve out yet another exemption in its landmark environmental protection law.
That’s because the law — the California Environmental Quality Act, better known as CEQA — is getting in the way of another one of the state’s goals: Increasing the number of students — especially those from the Golden State — at its premier public university system, the University of California.
The issue came to a head Thursday, when the California Supreme Court in a 4-2 decision refused to strike down a lower court order directing UC Berkeley to slash its fall enrollment by as many as 3,050 students, CalMatters’ Mikhail Zinshteyn reports. The decision was a win for Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods, which said UC Berkeley violated CEQA by failing to build enough housing for its growing student population — straining city services and worsening homelessness, traffic and noise.
The legal battle, however, is far from over — and UC Berkeley said it plans to enroll many of those 3,050 students through a combination of online classes and deferred enrollment in the spring.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, who had personally urged the California Supreme Court to block UC Berkeley’s enrollment cap, slammed the decision on Twitter.
Newsom: “This is against everything we stand for — new pathways to success, attracting tomorrow’s leaders, making college more affordable. UC’s incoming freshman class is the most diverse ever but now thousands of dreams will be dashed to keep a failing status quo.”
State Sen. Scott Wiener, a San Francisco Democrat who recently introduced a bill to exempt certain campus housing projects from CEQA, had similarly choice words.
Wiener: “It’s tragic that California allows courts and environmental laws to determine how many students UC Berkeley and other public colleges can educate. This ruling directly harms thousands of young people and robs them of so many opportunities. We must never allow this to happen again. We must change the law. And we will.”
Other Democratic lawmakers showed similar signs of urgency: “We’re on the case and aware of the deadlines,” Assemblymember Kevin McCarty of Sacramento told Mikhail. Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon of Lakewood said he had conferred with UC President Michael Drake and “we will work together to help students.”
CEQA, however, has long been a bogeyman for Republicans, with GOP candidates in last year’s gubernatorial recall election blaming the environmental law for California’s housing crisis.
Indeed, on Monday, the conservative Pacific Research Institute published a report accusing CEQA of hindering housing, school, infrastructure and climate projects.
Chris Carr, head of Paul Hastings LLP’s Environment and Energy Practice Group and a report co-author: “As a Cal graduate, it is unconscionable that a law to protect California’s environment could deny thousands of students the opportunity for a UC education.”
State Water Agencies Rush to Deploy Snowpack Measuring Tech
Capitol Public Radio
As the planet warms, the spring snowpack is dwindling. The snow is creeping up mountainsides to higher elevations, melting earlier in the year and seeping into dry soils rather than washing into rivers and streams that feed reservoirs.
The risks are no longer futuristic or theoretical: The state’s projections for how much water to expect from the Sierra Nevada were so far from reality last spring that reforming the process has become increasingly urgent.
The calculation for the Sacramento River region was off by 68%, leaving the state’s reservoirs with far less water supply than expected.
“If you’ve changed the climate and then you try to use statistics — which relies on what happened in the past — to predict the future, you’re already running into an issue,” David Rizzardo, manager of the California Department of Water Resources’ hydrology section, told CalMatters.
State officials are altering their forecasts to take into account the myriad ways climate change is reshaping California, from warming temperatures to soil dryness. The stakes are huge: The Sierra Nevada snowpack provides about a third of California’s water supply.
Some California water watchers wonder: What’s taken so long?
The process is complex, requiring a massive expansion of data collection from the state’s snowpack and watersheds, and an overhaul to the forecast calculations.
“We’ve been forecasting since 1930. This is a complete overhaul,” said Sean de Guzman, manager of the state’s Department of Water Resources’ snow surveys and water supply forecasting section.
When the weather warms and the rain stops, melting snow courses into waterways, then into reservoirs, faucets and sprinklers — supplying California’s homes, farms and wildlife right when they need it most.
To keep close tabs on this precious resource, engineers like de Guzman plunge tubes into the snow to gauge its depth and water content, blanket remote mountains with sensors and weather stations and scan the snow cover from planes flying over watersheds.
De Guzman’s team plugs the snow measurements, along with information about rain and streamflow, into their calculations to forecast how much snow is expected to melt and run off into rivers and reservoirs. The federal California Nevada River Forecast Center calculates its own forecasts in parallel, he said.
The results are critical for managing California’s precarious water supply year-round.
Reservoir managers use them to determine when to hold on to water and when to let it flow.
Operators of state and federal water supplies rely on them to determine how much water to send to the cities, growers and water suppliers dependent on water pumped south through the Delta to hundreds of miles of canals, tunnels and pipelines.
Flood control, power generation and maintaining water quality for people, ecosystems and threatened and endangered species all rely on the runoff forecasts. Even outdoor enthusiasts benefit from the snowmelt predictions. “We get a lot of calls saying, ‘Hey, you guys must know when the waterfalls in Yosemite are going to be going,’” Rizzardo said.
The problem? The forecasts haven’t yet factored in how climate change has altered snowmelt.
“Climate change,” Rizzardo said, “has thrown a monkey wrench at all this.”
As climate change drives temperatures ever hotter, the snowpack is retreating up mountain sides to higher altitudes and melting earlier in the season. And the wet season is contracting into a shorter, sharper period of storms.
Though drought grips California once again, the snowpack wasn’t as scarce last year as it was in 2015. It was calculated at about 59% of normal in April 2021. But it took only one month for that snowpack to dwindle to 22% of normal in May. And, worse still, the rapidly melting snow didn’t refill rivers and reservoirs as expected.
Instead, it soaked into thirsty soils or disappeared into the air. By May, the runoff forecast for the Sacramento Valley had dropped by about 700,000 acre feet — enough water to supply 2.1 million Southern California households. All told, the forecasts overestimated runoff by 68% for the Sacramento River region and by 45% or more for major watersheds farther south, according to a state report.
“That was basically something we had never seen before. We have these various relationships that tell us if we have this much snow, you can expect this much water,” de Guzman said. “And that basically fell apart in 2021.”
Revamping runoff forecasts will require collecting better data about the dwindling snowpack and creating more comprehensive models that better capture the changing conditions.
“It’s an understandable concern, (but) it isn’t easy science,” Rizzardo said.
“What last year did was say, ‘Okay, we just need to kick all this into high gear, and figure out a way to get it done.’”
Better data is already in the works. Ten years ago, the Department of Water Resources teamed up with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to conduct detailed surveys of snow cover from airplanes equipped with a remote sensing device called lidar and other instruments.
So far, the surveys have been limited to five of the state’s watersheds. Though the partnership with NASA has ended, the list will almost double this year with the addition of the Feather, Yuba, Truckee and Carson rivers.
These measurements will be critical for feeding new, data-hungry models informed by climate factors and incorporating more information about the watersheds themselves, such as vegetation, temperature and soil moisture.
New technology, including sensors that quickly assess the snowpack’s temperature and how much water it contains, are now being test-driven by the University of California, Berkeley’s Central Sierra Snow Lab and state officials.
They already tried using machine-learning techniques to weigh factors like atmospheric dryness, soil moisture and temperature, but the multi-year effort yielded only slight improvements, de Guzman said.
This year, the team is working on what he calls a major tuneup, incorporating more recent rain, snow and runoff data that better captures the relationships under climate change.
Western States Expand Cloud-Seeding
Yale e-360
Desperate for water, several Western states have expanded decades-old programs to increase precipitation through cloud seeding, a method of weather modification that entails releasing silver iodide particles or other aerosols into clouds to spur rain or snowfall. Within the past two years, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, and California have expanded cloud seeding operations, with seeding a key plank in the Colorado River Basin Drought Contingency Plan.
Some of the renewed attention on cloud seeding is driven by fresh evidence that it actually works — at least when seeding for snow. In 2020, a group led by researchers at the University of Colorado and the National Center for Atmospheric Research reported the results of a study conducted at a cloud seeding operation in Idaho. Called SNOWIE, the study used sophisticated radar and meteorological methods to demonstrate unambiguously that cloud seeding can increase snowfall.
“Cloud seeding works,” says Katja Friedrich, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Colorado and lead author of the SNOWIE study. “We know that. We know that from experiments in the lab. We also have enough evidence that it works in nature. Really the question is: We still don’t have a very great understanding of how much water we can produce.”
Governments and users aren’t waiting for more certainty to pursue projects. In the U.S. West, the need for water is so acute and cloud seeding so cheap that even a very slight increase in precipitation is worth it, says Friedrich. “Cloud seeding is something people consider in areas where they’re desperate for water,” she says.
https://e360.yale.edu/features/can-cloud-seeding-help-quench-the-thirst-of-the-u.s.-west
US & CA Lag in Storage Batteries for Renewables; “Long Way to Go”
Wall Street Journal excerpt
BELTSVILLE, Md.— The U.S. is far behind its global rivals in the race for energy supremacy in a low-carbon world. To catch up, it is pinning its hopes on companies such as Ion Storage Systems, a next-generation battery company started in a University of Maryland chemistry lab with a $574,275 federal grant.
At a new factory outside of Washington, D.C., Ion Storage will be among the first companies in the U.S. to produce a new kind of faster-charging, longer-lasting battery. The company’s batteries also don’t catch fire; combustibility is a problem that has bedeviled the industry’s batteries for years.
The U.S. government and private investors have poured cash into battery startups hoping to catch up to the Chinese, Japanese and South Korean companies that dominate battery manufacturing. The goal is to leapfrog their rivals with better technology.
There is an urgency for U.S. battery makers to get products to market because big customers such as auto makers are lining up long-term suppliers. If there are no U.S. options, the buyers will go abroad. “This is our last chance to get it right” in the U.S., said Ricky Hanna, Ion Storage’s chief executive and the former executive director of battery operations at Apple Inc.
Ion Storage plans to begin producing batteries later this year. The company has a contract to develop batteries for the U.S. Army, and it is working on battery development with defense giant Lockheed Martin Corp. Company officials say they are in talks with five auto makers regarding batteries for electric vehicles.
The company is one of several startups focusing on solid-state lithium-ion batteries. These batteries differ from most lithium-ion batteries today because the electrolyte that conducts a charge between cathode and anode is solid, rather than a flammable liquid. That allows faster charging, less risk of fire and longer battery life. Ion Storage scientists demonstrate their batteries’ durability by cutting them open with scissors or putting them before an open flame.
Now the company is pondering an initial public offering of stock in the next year or so, said Mr. Hanna, who helped oversee production of the batteries that power iPhones, iPads and other devices while he was at Apple.
The technology behind Ion Storage is the brainchild of Eric Wachsman, director of the Maryland Energy Innovation Institute at the University of Maryland. Mr. Wachsman first became interested in alternative energy in the 1980s, when he worked on batteries and fuel cells at Stanford University.
Ion Storage faces stiff competition in the U.S. and abroad. Silicon Valley solid-state startup QuantumScape Corp. , which is backed by Volkswagen AG , went public in 2020 and briefly became more valuable than Ford Motor Co. Toyota Motor Corp. , the world’s largest car maker, says it is working on solid-state batteries.
Other competitors include Colorado’s Solid Power Inc., which has had backing from Ford, Hyundai Motor Co. and BMW AG . Factorial Energy, a solid-state company based in Woburn, Mass., last month said it had raised $200 million in a funding round led by Mercedes-Benz Group AG and Jeep maker Stellantis NV.
Some experts are skeptical that solid-state batteries will be able to compete with today’s standardized lithium-ion power packs soon. A vast supply chain and manufacturing industry has been created to build those batteries, helping drive down costs some 90% in the past decade. Much of the production lines for certain solid-state batteries will need to be built from scratch or borrow methods used in other industries.
“There’s still quite a long way toward commercializing any kind of solid-state technology, especially when it comes to electric vehicles,” said Andrew Miller, chief operating officer at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, which studies battery technologies and their supply chains. “These batteries haven’t been proven at scale.”
From Counting to Accounting, Homeless Problems Grow:
“The Governor, the Legislature, the Public Are Frustrated”
CalMatters
As she headed to her car after two hours of counting and surveying Sacramento’s homeless population, the state’s top housing official acknowledged there is a long road ahead.
“We’re building the system, building the capacity, building the data, and communities are rising to the occasion. I know people are really frustrated because they feel like they don’t see that change,” said Lourdes Castro Ramírez, secretary of the Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency. “But I don’t think you can see change that is going to be long-lasting overnight.”
As she spoke, just a few blocks away, a homeless encampment was going up in flames.
No one was injured, unlike a fire earlier the same day at a San Francisco encampment that killed a woman and that Gov. Gavin Newsom called “unconscionable.” But dozens of people — who had been camping beneath the on-ramp to Highway 50 on one of the coldest nights of the year — watched as firefighters sprayed hundreds of gallons of water at the inferno they had once called home.
California last tallied its homeless population in January 2020, and found at least 161,000 people without a roof over their heads on any given night, with the biggest concentration in Los Angeles. Most were single adults, about a third were chronically homeless and Black Californians were over-represented in the count nearly five-fold.
And if tracking data on how many people are homeless is difficult, tracking the payoff from billions of dollars the state is now spending to help them is even more challenging.
“I know (the governor) is frustrated, I know the Legislature is frustrated, the public is frustrated,” Assembly Budget Chairperson Phil Ting, a San Francisco Democrat, said during a recent hearing. “We have appropriated billions and billions of dollars to this issue. And it’s not clear where we’ve made progress.”
The world has changed a lot during the deadliest pandemic in a century.
The state poured billions of dollars into alleviating homelessness, creating thousands of new shelter beds and housing units. But the housing affordability crisis — to which most experts attribute homelessness — only worsened as millions lost their jobs and rents skyrocketed.
Shelters also reduced bed capacity and federal officials urged local law enforcement not to disband camps like the one in Sacramento to guard against the coronavirus, making tent cities more visible than ever.
That’s why most researchers aren’t wondering whether the new homeless numbers will show an increase. The only question is, by how much.
It also relies largely on volunteers to count what they think they see, and on local agencies to calculate the population of the areas they don’t cover, estimations later verified by HUD.
Cities with a dropoff in volunteers because of the ongoing pandemic may report a drop in the homeless population, even if it actually grew, said Chris Weare, a UC Berkeley lecturer who researches homelessness. Weare believes some jurisdictions keep their count artificially low for political optics, even though a city’s share of state and federal homeless dollars is based on these numbers.
Why isn’t the state’s generous spending more visible on the state’s streets?
Officials and advocates chalk it up to decades of disinvestment. In 2012, for example, the state began unwinding its redevelopment agencies, which were in charge of revitalizing “blighted” areas across the state.
With the end of redevelopment came the end of the single largest source of non-federal money for affordable housing in the state, and California lawmakers didn’t begin to plug that hole until around 2019.
“We’re trying to correct decades of disinvestment, lack of prioritization, gentrification gone wild…. We don’t fix a problem that’s been brewing since Vietnam and exacerbated over the last two decades by tech and other things in five years,” said Jennifer Loving, chief executive officer of Destination: Home, a homelessness nonprofit in San Jose.
For every two people who are housed in her community, another three become homeless.
The reason for the limited available data is, in part, because local entities serving people on the ground hadn’t always been required to report outcomes to the state, and no state body provided effective oversight of the myriad agencies that address homelessness, the State Auditor found. A slew of laws passed last year are supposed to change that.
This summer, using $5.6 million, the newly created Interagency Council on Homelessness is set to release a report detailing the outcomes of state spending between 2018 and 2021, to be followed by a final report in December. Newly appropriated dollars are tied to more stringent planning and reporting requirements: Cities and counties will set goals for the $2 billion they will receive over two years from the state to address homelessness, and about a fifth of that money will be set aside as bonus funds for those who meet their goals.
https://calmatters.org/housing/homeless/2022/03/california-homeless-count/
In California, A Booming Market for the Ultimate Wild Fig
Smithsonian Magazine
A booming market has specimen hunters tracking down rare new varieties of the ancient fruit in California.
David Burke grasps a rusty ladder fixed to the outside of an abandoned 60-foot concrete grain silo towering above a field in Tehama County, California. Using round holes in the concrete as footholds, he climbs ten or more feet, straight into a cluster of dense green foliage.
Leaves explode out of gaps in the wall and peek over the lidless roof, rustling in a breeze that threatens to blow Burke off the ladder. Peering into the silo, Burke notes that the trunk is only about six inches in diameter, but it’s one of the tallest fig trees he’s ever seen—and he has seen a lot of them.
“Figs are survivors,” Burke says. After plucking a small green fig and returning to earth, he slices it open with a pocketknife and admires the dark red flesh inside. It looks like a miniature watermelon.
He hands a piece to his wife, Priscilla, who is recording the discovery for their YouTube channel. The texture is pleasantly crunchy, and the flavor is tangy. “Tastes so good I’m gonna grow it,” Burke tells Priscilla.
The wild fig has seeded its own human ecosystem of hunters, collectors and connoisseurs, complete with fan conventions and online trading. This fig frenzy has pushed up prices for valuable new specimens. About five years ago, the fig hunter Doug Scofield discovered a green-skinned fig with raspberry-colored innards growing about an hour north of Sacramento. He named it Thermalito, after the town where he’d found it, and brought it to a fig convention in 2017, where it received rave reviews. “I felt like I was eating jelly out of a jar,” one taste tester enthused. More recently, a pair of Thermalito cuttings sold for $400 on the auction site FigBid.com. “I’m admittedly biased,” Scofield wrote, “but when you consider taste, productivity and resistance to splitting and souring, I think that it is one of the best overall figs out there for our growing conditions.”
Even as the sprawling commercial fig orchards of America’s past disappear, thousands of smaller nurseries and hobbyist farms have popped up, planting a great diversity of figs. This trend is fueled in part by the farm-to-table and eat-local and back-to-heirloom-variety food movements, to be sure, but there is no ignoring the importance of the fig tree’s unusual hardiness and versatility. An established fig tree can survive with minimal rain and no irrigation, and it’s the plant’s toughness that makes it so thrilling to hunt.
By the 1920s, California was producing nearly 60,000 tons of figs every year. The fruit (which is technically a bundle of hundreds of fleshy flowers turned inside out) was often consumed as a sweet dried snack wrapped in wax paper and packed in rectangular cartons; the fanciest varieties came in cardboard boxes stamped with gold seals that could just as easily have contained chocolate truffles. Distributors also sold figs preserved in cans—fig pudding joined ketchup and pickles as one of H.J. Heinz & Company’s “57 Varieties” of canned foods and condiments—and people also enjoyed figs in all manner of pastries.
But fig cultivation in California began a slow overall decline in the late 1930s. Compared with other fruits, some varieties of figs were labor-intensive to harvest and pack; pickers often had to use dust or salt water to scrub the plant’s rash-inducing milky sap off their skin.
By the 1990s and early 2000s, only a few American farmers were growing figs, virtually all of them in California. In recent decades, the closest most Americans came to a fig was likely in Fig Newtons‚ but even that stalwart cookie would feel the decline, with Nabisco creating raspberry, strawberry and other fruit flavors and shortening the name to just Newtons.
While commercial fig harvests were decreasing in California, though, birds, wild pigs and other animals kept spreading fig seeds. Like the tree sprouting from the center of that abandoned grain silo, these hardy plants have since rooted themselves in all kinds of bizarre spots: in drainage ditches, behind strip malls, on the edges of long-abandoned farms.
Established varieties of figs, such as Black Missions and White Adriatics, are propagated through cuttings: identical clones of one another that all look and taste exactly the same. But every fig grown from a seed is a combination of its parents and could constitute its own new variety, depending on how unusual it is. Such seed dispersal has created a genetic melting pot that could bring forth new varieties with unique flavors and traits.
Aficionados would love a breed with firmer skin that can withstand long-distance shipping, for instance. Historically, fig breeders at places such as the University of California at Riverside have carefully selected for such traits, in a process that requires years of exacting work.
Searching for beneficial mutations in the wild is more akin to playing the lottery—and hunters don’t need any scientific training to hit the jackpot. “The majority of [wild figs] are not worth my time,” says Eric Durtschi, a Santa Barbara fig hunter and hobbyist grower who has evaluated over 750 unique seedlings. “But I have found some that are just truly spectacular, that are as good, or better, than some of the very, very top figs that have been growing for hundreds and hundreds of years coming out of Europe.”
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