Researchers Work to Make Farming More Climate Resilient

Here are the morning’s top stories on Friday, December 27, 2024…

• Cal State Monterey Bay researchers and several partners are working to make Central Coast farming more climate resilient. The grant-funded project is focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions from specialty crops — think lettuce and strawberries – by using things like compost and cover crops.
• A new law in 2025 will scrub most medical debt from Californians’ credit reports.

Cal State Monterey Bay Researchers Expanding Climate-Smart Practices 

Tucked away amid 4,000 acres of land at Huntington Farms in Soledad, a 2.5-acre plot could hold important lessons for the future of agriculture in the Salinas Valley.

In late November, it doesn’t look like much is happening. Gazing across the field, one would be forgiven for noticing little more than dirt. But this expanse of soil contains 24 individual plots that, over the next four years, will reveal the potential of farming practices meant to make certain corners of the industry more resilient to climate change.

“We measure from each of those locations every day we come out, and we try to measure for multiple days in a row after any kind of major management activity that would influence emissions,” said Stefanie Kortman, a researcher in the Laboratory of Agricultural Biogeochemistry at CSUMB.

Kortman is overseeing greenhouse gas measurements at this monitoring site as part of a five-year, $5 million U.S. Department of Agriculture grant. A primary goal is to evaluate nitrous oxide emissions when specialty crops in the Salinas Valley — like lettuce, strawberries and cauliflower — are grown using climate-smart practices.

A New CA Law Will Scrub Most Medical Debt From Credit Reports

Californians’ credit reports will be safe from most medical debt in the coming year under a new law.

Medical debt can hurt people’s credit scores and harm their chances of negotiating a loan or mortgage on favorable terms. The law will not forgive someone’s debt, but by keeping it off credit reports, it might provide some reassurance that Californians won’t suffer more financial repercussions because of a medical balance.

The law has a loophole that lawmakers created late in the legislative session — it will not apply to debt charged to so-called medical credit cards. Bankers and lenders lobbied to exclude medical credit cards from this bill. They said medical credit cards can be used for non-urgent services, including gym memberships and cosmetic procedures. Instead the law will apply only to debt owed to a medical provider, such as a hospital or doctor’s office.