Eric Jones Releases Comprehensive Agriculture and Water Platform Ahead of Farm Bureau Forum
Press Release
Plan covers water security, flood protection, farm workforce, wine and specialty crop policy, and trade
NAPA, CA — Today Eric Jones, Democratic candidate for California's 4th Congressional District, released a comprehensive agriculture and water platform. The platform covers six distinct policy areas that are central to the lives of farmers, growers, and rural communities in the nine-county district.
The platform’s release coincides with the Yuba-Sutter Farm Bureau forum, where Jones and Congressman Mike Thompson will appear today.
“I grew up in a rural town. I know what it means for the survival of an entire town, farm, or family to be tied to water access. It decides whether your kids can build a life on the same land you did. The people in this district, in these counties, know what they need. They’ve engineered the fixes. They’re just waiting on Washington to fund them,” Jones said.
The platform covers six areas:
Secure Our Water addresses the water projects the district has been waiting on, including Sites Reservoir in Colusa County. Jones called out the State Water Resources Control Board's proposed permit condition that would tie Sites' diversion to Delta outflow levels, a condition water managers say would undermine the reservoir's financial viability. Jones pledged to fight the condition and push for full federal funding for the project. The platform also covers the ARC Spillway at New Bullards Bar, Sutter Bypass levees, and Lake Berryessa and Clear Lake infrastructure.
Protect Our Land and Family Farms takes on the corporate consolidation, foreign land purchases, and rigged regulations squeezing family operations out of their land. Jones calls for real antitrust enforcement in agriculture, limits on corporate and foreign farmland purchases, fairer subsidies for small and mid-sized farms, estate tax relief, and incentives for regenerative farming.
Protect Us From the Next Flood lays out a plan to fund the ARC Spillway at New Bullards Bar, bring 70 miles of levee in the Yuba-Sutter area up to current federal standards, and shift federal flood spending from disaster recovery to capital investment. The spillway design is complete and the environmental permit came through in June. What remains is construction funding of $210 to $290 million.
Fight for Our Growers and Winemakers calls for specialty crop parity in the federal farm bill, including a direct response to the Del Monte cannery closure that left roughly 50,000 tons of cling peaches with no buyer and canceled more than $550 million in grower contracts. The platform also takes on consolidated wine distribution, calling for antitrust enforcement, franchise law reform so producers can leave underperforming distributors, and a national standard for direct-to-consumer wine shipping.
Get Our Growers the Workforce They Need proposes reforming the H-2A guest worker program with a single filing portal, hard government response deadlines, predictable wage formulas, and a year-round track for dairies, packing houses, and nurseries currently locked out of the system.
Open the Markets Our Crops Depend On addresses trade policy: mandatory agricultural impact assessments before broad trade actions, aid designed for perennial crops rather than annual ones, expanded export promotion for specialty crops, and enforcement of existing trade agreements.
“The people who put the actual food on America's plate are an afterthought to the people writing the checks. Specialty crops are 30 to 40 percent of the total value of American agriculture and get less than half a percent of the farm bill’s funding through the title that supports them. That's what happens when a region has nobody in the room. These are our neighbors. This is what we make. It's long past time our representative in Washington fought for it,” Jones said.
The full platform is available at https://www.ericjones.us/priorities.
Jones takes no corporate PAC, special interest, or foreign money. He is running against 14-term incumbent Congressman Mike Thompson in California's newly redrawn 4th Congressional District, which spans nine counties from Sonoma and Napa in the west to Sutter, Yuba, and Colusa in the Sacramento Valley.
Contact:press@ericjones.us, (650) 245-2114
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