by Katy Grimes, E&E Legal Senior Media Fellow and California Globe Editor
As Appearing in the California Globe
Are Democrat lawmakers willing to destroy food production in California over the imaginary air quality crisis?
A 2025 Cal Poly research paper revealed that California lettuce growers now spend 12.6% of their total production costs on regulatory compliance.
The Cal Poly study, which updated prior analyses in 2006 and 2017, titled “Two Decades of Change: Evolving Costs of Regulatory Compliance in the Produce Industry,” was authored by agribusiness professors Lynn Hamilton and Michael McCullough and commissioned by the Monterey County Farm Bureau. It examines a large-scale commercial lettuce operation (over 1,000 acres) in the Salinas Valley.
The study wasn’t just released, but it is quite relevant today, and demonstrative of how destructive California’s excessive regulatory environment is.
Cal Poly Professors Hamilton and McCullough address the ever-increasing costs of regulation and how they are a constant concern for California growers.
“An initial study of regulatory costs in California agriculture was conducted in 2006, as means to compare California’s regulatory environment to other competing states,” they report.
