California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) Secretary A.G. Kawamura has appointed Nick Hill as chairman, Craig Armstrong as vice chairman, and Richard Bennett as secretary/treasurer of the newly formed California Citrus Pest and
Disease Prevention Committee.

Hill is a diversified citrus grower with lemons, oranges and mandarins, and markets fruit through a variety of entities; he is a former chair of Citrus Mutual.  Armstrong is a diversified citrus producer growing mainly lemons and some tangerines, grapefruit and mandarins; he is a member of the Sunkist Board of Directors. Bennett is primarily a mandarin producer and also grows oranges in Tulare County; he is a
former Tulare County Farm Bureau director.

These appointments confirm the nominations made by the committee at their inaugural meeting on January 20.  The new officers will lead the upcoming committee meeting on March 3 in Bakersfield.

The committee was authorized through AB 281, which was signed into law on October 9, 2009. The bill also authorizes the collection of a grower-paid assessment to help fund citrus pest and disease management programs.

The committee was created to advise Secretary Kawamura and the agricultural industry about efforts to combat serious pests and diseases that threaten the state's citrus crop.  Most recently, for example, California's citrus growers are confronting the arrival of the Asian citrus psyllid, a tiny pest that can spread the fatal citrus disease huanglongbing.  Multiple detections of the pest have been confirmed in Southern California, although the disease has yet to be detected in the
state.

Publication date: 2/24/2010

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Kawamura needs to resign NOW.

From hearing Kawamura speak, he has no analytic or logic skills that are necessary for this position as Secretary of the California Department of Food And Agriculture (CDFA). He can hardly get his words out on TV interviews and he has repeatedly embarrassed the CDFA organization with his bungling of information and delivery.

Recently he told CBS TV news that the tenured senior entomologist at UC Davis was not an entomologist. It even embarrassed the reporter, so she gave him another chance to correct himself, but Kawamura bungled again and assured her the professor was not an entomologist.

The professor is known worldwide and has been an entomologist for about 40 years and Kawamura is coming across on TV like a person who has been living out in the cold for too long and whose mind got stuck on one incorrect thing and they can't change it and they keep preaching it on the corner where they stand.

This is not like the Philadelphia 76'ers who should let Alan Iverson finish the season on their basketball team because of his history and then let him retire at the end of the season. Kawamura is in a position to do even more damage in this final year. He needs to resign or be fired NOW.

Kawamura has already had children directly sprayed with a toxic pesticide that he said to their parents was "Non-toxic."

This guy needs to be fired or resign now. Lives are at stake and a little bit of embarrassment is less damaging than potential lives that Kawamura can affect in his current position.

This isn't basketball. It’s the lives of children and the welfare of our state.

RobertW, Aptos, USA - 2/24/2010 8:41:12 PM

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