Agricultural commissions and reports.

Guided by the Committee on Agriculture, the proposal threads governance reform across major crop commissions with new funding and reporting requirements, centering on the avocado ecosystem while extending tighter data obligations to grape reporting and clarifying olive oil governance. At its core, it reconfigures the California Avocado Commission’s structure by adding alternate producer and alternate public members, clarifying eligibility and conflict-of-interest rules, and authorizing the commission to appoint officers and manage internal leadership, all while codifying protections for state and individual participants and establishing wind‑down provisions if the chapter is suspended.

The measure tightens data collection and fiscal accountability through a comprehensive set of changes. Grape crush reporting would shift to a January 31 deadline for processors, with the secretary publishing a preliminary summary by March 15 and a final summary by April 30, and it expands the details required in annual disclosures, including variety-level tonnage, pricing, sugar content, and concentrate estimates. It also creates a dedicated funding stream to cover reporting and enforcement costs—up to ten cents per ton for affected grape and avocado activities, with a specified split between processors and producers, remittance timelines aligned to the marketing year, and caps on administrative expenditures. In parallel, the avocado program introduces a fixed-cap or value-based assessment framework, with total assessments capped at six and a half percent of gross avocado sales and administrative costs limited to two and a half percent, collected through producers or handlers and held in trust until remitted to the commission.

The bill further expands sector-specific authorities and definitions. It authorizes the avocado and apple commissions to propose maturation, quality, and labeling standards under the California Marketing Act, subject to the Act’s adoption and implementation rules, and requires standards adopted with secretary approval to be operative at the start of the next marketing year. For olives, the definitions broaden to include toll processing, toll processors, and expanded roles for handlers and producers, creating alignment with the olive oil regulatory framework. Additional governance adjustments for the avocado commission include a new ex officio nonvoting membership category, clarified nomination and election procedures, and provisions ensuring secretary attendance at meetings and oversight of proceedings, all complemented by liability protections and explicit wind-down mechanics for the commission’s assets and obligations.

Taken together, the bill structures greater transparency and regulatory oversight across key commissions, expands representation and safeguards for participants, and introduces dedicated funding for data collection and enforcement while linking standards development to established marketing-act processes. It also foregrounds stakeholder governance—grower and handler representation, plus nonvoting ex officio roles—within a framework that preserves state supervision and explicit liability allocations, with implementation timelines tied to standard marketing-year cycles and Secretary-approved standards.