Food And Farm News
November 10, 2026
Market, prices strengthen for sweet potato growers
After suffering from a post-COVID hangover, California's sweet potato industry appears to be recovering with stabilized acreage and improved prices during the past year. "Beginning last year, things finally started getting better, mostly because there were short crops in Mississippi and North Carolina because of weather," said Scott Stoddard, a farm adviser with the University of California Cooperative Extension. Jeremy Fookes, director of sales for Livingston-based A.V. Thomas Produce, a sweet potato grower, packer and shipper, agreed. "Compared to last season, this season definitely has some strength to it for growers, especially with the supply situation," he said. "It's one of those seasons where there's an opportunity to be a little bit firmer with pricing, but it needed to be so with not having a bumper crop and having higher input costs." Harvest of this year's crop started unusually early in late July and will taper off this month.
California FFA students win in Agricultural Proficiency
Six California high school students were named winners of Agricultural Proficiency Awards during the 99th National FFA Convention & Expo held in Indianapolis last month. The awards honor FFA members who, through supervised agricultural experiences, or SAEs, have developed specialized skills that they can apply toward their future careers. Students compete in areas ranging from agricultural communications to wildlife management. This year's winners are Saray Madriz Alcaraz of the Madera FFA Chapter for small animal production and care; Clarke Conrad of the Merced-El Capitan FFA for specialty animal production; Gauge Goehring of the Galt FFA for swine production; Jackson Alves of the Hamilton City-Hamilton FFA for diversified crop production; Elliott Kramer of the Galt FFA for environmental science and natural resources management; and Derek Rulon of the Cottonwood-West Valley FFA for wildlife production and management. Meanwhile, Hanford FFA was one of three chapters that won the #SpeakAg Showcase competition.
Commentary: Lessons learned from being a dot on bankruptcy map
The National Association of State Departments of Agriculture and the National Agricultural Law Center this year launched Data on Economic and Bankruptcy Trends in Agriculture, or DEBT, which maps agricultural bankruptcies with the aim of providing a picture of the number of farms facing financial distress. The map features 1,401 dots, each of which represents a farm bankruptcy filed since 2021. One of the dots represents the family farm of Jenny Lester Moffitt, vice president of farmland protection and strategic priorities for American Farmland Trust. "If we truly value what farms and farmers provide, we cannot wait until bankruptcy to decide they are worth saving," Lester Moffitt wrote in a recent Ag Alert® commentary. "We need strong markets, earlier financial and business support, conservation investments that strengthen economic resilience, better tools for managing debt and realistic pathways for the next generation to remain on the land."
In case you missed it:
California farmers explore seaweed crop
Seaweed farming in the United States remains in its infancy but has grown in recent years. In 2015, there were just a handful of kelp farms along the Atlantic and Pacific coastlines, according to a 2026 report by the aquaculture nonprofit GreenWave. There are now around 250 permitted seaweed farms across the U.S. and Canada, amounting to more than 6,000 acres. "Over the past decade, we've come a long way," said Kendall Barbery, GreenWave's director of partnerships and industry engagement. The company worked with Cal Poly, Humboldt, to open the state's first commercial, open-water seaweed farm in 2020. "We're at the point where we have achieved some serious scale and ability to produce and demonstrate viability as a new industry across the U.S.," Barbery said. However, she said the industry faces barriers in California due to the state's environmental regulations and an arduous permitting process.
For more information about any story in Food and Farm News, contact the California Farm Bureau Marketing/Communications Division at 916-561-5550 or email news@cfbf.com. Connect with us on Facebook, X, or Instagram: @CAFarmBureau.
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