CRC Drinking Water Well Monitoring Program with Craig Riddle

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This episode of the Thoughts on Rice podcast features Craig Riddle, the Industry Affairs Manager for the California Rice Commission, discussing the history and requirements of the Drinking Water well survey program. Under this program, growers must conduct annual nitrate monitoring for drinking water wells located on parcels where rice is grown, though compliance frequencies can be reduced based on low nitrate results. Craig also highlights a commission assessment showing that rice practices have a de minimis impact on nitrate contributions to groundwater, allowing rice growers to operate under a commodity-specific compliance pathway. 

Resources

Drinking Water Well Resources

Upcoming Events

Rice Quality Workshop

• July 30, 2026 from 8:30 am – 12:30 pm
• An in-depth workshop covering the factors affecting rice quality. Registration required.
• Hillcrest Catering, 210 Julie Dr, Yuba City, CA

Emerging Pests Workshop

• August 5, 2026 from 9:00 am – 11:00 pm
• CIP Conference Room, 100 Sunrise Blvd, Colusa, CA

Rice Winter Grower Meetings

• Woodland: February 16, 2027
• Richvale & Willows: February 17, 2027
• Colusa & Yuba City: February 18, 2027

Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker: Hello and welcome to Thoughts on Rice, a podcast hosted by the University of California Cooperative Extension Rice Advisors. I'm one of your hosts, Sarah Marsh Janish, and I'm a Rice farm advisor for Colusa and Yolo Counties. I'm Whitney Broome DeForest. I'm the cooperative Extension rice advisor for Sutter, Yuba, Placer and Sacramento counties. My name is Luis Espino. I'm the rice farming systems advisor for Butte and Glenn counties. I'm Michelle Leinfelder Miles. I'm a farm advisor in the Delta region, and the counties that I cover are San Joaquin, Sacramento, YOLO, Solano and Contra Costa counties. Together, the UC see Rice Farm Advisors seek to provide relevant topical research backed information relating to California rice production. On this episode, we're lucky to have Craig Riddle, the industry affairs manager for the California Rice Commission. Craig has been with the CRC for almost three years now. Is that right, Craig? Yeah, a little over three years, a little over three years. Okay. And he's taken an active role in several programs, including the Drinking Water well survey program, which is what we're going to talk about today. So Craig, thank you so much for being here. Yeah, of course, Sarah, thanks for having me on. Well, first off, let's, let's kind of jump into this. Can you explain a bit about the history of the Drinking Water well survey program and how it relates to the California Rice Commission? Yeah. So I think to go back up a little bit, you got to understand the context. I think it was, uh, two thousand twelve ish. The California passed the Human Right to water, uh, legislation that basically said that, you know, all Californians, uh, need to have access to to clean drinking water requirement for. That came from. For the agricultural industry, the requirement came through the State Water Resources Control Board through the waste discharge orders, right, which is the Irrigated Lands Regulatory program. So the, uh, the regional board, our regional board in the Central Valley region nine, the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board, um, put into all of the irrigated lands regulatory program. Uh, discharge orders, this requirement to monitor drinking water wells for nitrate. There are other constituents of concern, of course, in drinking water. But nitrate is a can be a direct result of agricultural practices. And so naturally made its way into the Irrigated lands regulatory program. Nitrate specifically. So the Current drinking water well monitoring program consists of monitoring drinking water wells that are used for cooking or consumption for nitrates, and they are only required for rice. And I believe this is true for all of agriculture, but for drinking water wells that are located on parcels where rice is grown right, or where another agricultural crop is grown. So if it's not on an agricultural crop parcel of land, it's not required to be tested in this particular program. But yeah, that's how, you know, the basic, you know, California framework for the human right to water and irrigated agriculture's, um, you know, role in helping identify, uh, which wells may have nitrate impacts specifically. I think it's interesting that the CRC takes such an active role in making sure that the growers are participating in the Drinking water well monitoring survey program. Um, can you explain a bit about why the CRC is so heavily involved in making sure that requirement is fulfilled? Yeah. So as the California Rice Commission, um, you know, we are the third party representation, right, for all of the rice growers in the Sacramento Valley. Uh, as they meet their obligations, um, for the waste discharge order through the Irrigated lands regulatory program. So, you know, there are some requirements that the CRC has to do, you know, like the monitoring and reporting, um, other things, you know, we have, uh, less of a role or a little bit different role. Um, the order actually, you know, requires growers to, or landowners to have a specific role in meeting the requirements of the waste discharge order as well. This is actually a case that the onus largely falls on the growers of the landowners to comply with this. Of course, this. The the CRC has no formal enforcement role, right. With the with the order. Um, however, you know, we have a great relationship with the industry where we feel like we can give them the information, we can encourage them to comply, um, and provide them with all the tools that they need to do this compliance. Um, but at the end of the day, we don't actually check for compliance. We don't send any reports to the water board about, you know, who has complied and who hasn't. Um, it's up to the water board actually has their own enforcement branch, right? That will do periodic checks, um, on this type of enforcement. So, um, our role for the CRC is a little specific in this way. Um, you know, all of other agriculture in the Sacramento Valley falls under a general order and ours is a commodity specific order just for rice. Um, and so our compliance with the Irrigated lands regulatory program looks, you know, different, um, depending on, you know, our requirement that's commodity specific and other, you know, crops that are grown in the Sacramento Valley. And so the drinking water well program is also a little bit unique. Uh, we have our, our own template for compliance, right? That we send to the water board. Um, and some of the information on that template is, is specific to the rice commission. And so we didn't want to confuse it with the, you know, general template that was available for, for all other agriculture in the Sacramento Valley. So, um, on our website at Cal rice news dot org, we've got all the compliance tools that our growers need to, to meet, meet compliance for this. And so, um, we've got the, the, the template for submission, you know, how to collect the sample or how to, you know, have a lab collect a sample for you. Uh, where to collect the sample, frequently asked questions, a notification template, um, you know, to users if it, if it meets or exceeds the maximum contaminant limit, the drinking water standard for nitrate. Um, so we put all these tools, um, up on our website that are available for growers to be able to comply. This is one where it's been great to go through those resources and just learn from the website. But so that's a bit about, I guess, just the basis of the program and how it got started. But do you can you explain a bit about what the responsibilities of the growers are themselves? And, uh, when we're talking about responsibilities, um, sampling timelines, how often they have to sample and what specific wells need to be sampled. Yeah. So let me start with the, uh, the easy one first. Um, again, this is only for drinking water wells on a parcel where rice is grown. Um, so if it meets those requirements, it is required to be sampled, You know, if you have just an irrigation. Well, that just, you know, uh, irrigates a field not required to be sampled. Um, if you do have a drinking water, well, um, on a rice parcel, but that, that well isn't used by anyone for consumption, then it doesn't need to be tested as well. If you have obviously a drinking water well on a parcel where rice isn't grown right, then you don't need to test that well either, right. At least not under our program, not under the LRP program. And so compliance for us in the LRP program started, um, in twenty twenty two. And the requirement for growers is annual monitoring of these wells. You know, we encourage, I encourage it to be, you know, around the same time of year when they're collecting their sample annually. Um, again, they can, uh, contract with a lab to collect a sample for them or they can, you know, collect the sample themselves and submit it to the lab. The results are not shared with the Rights Commission. The results are reported back to the user or the grower landowner who submits them and to the water board. That's why it's important that growers use the form that we provided the template when they submit that, so that the lab knows about the reporting requirements for that. So annual monitoring, uh, you know, if a grower has a field of the drinking water, well on it, they've got to do this annually. And then based on the results, the frequency of that can change a little bit. So, um, at the onset of the program, uh, monitoring was required annually for everybody. And if you monitored for up to three years in a row and your nitrate level is below, uh, eight milligrams per liter, then you can, um, reduce your monitoring frequency to once every five years. So again, if you, if you've monitored for the first three years of the program or three consecutive years, any three consecutive years, and all of your results are below eight point zero. You can monitor once every five years so you get a reduction in frequency sampling. Um, if your results are between eight and ten and ten again is the um regulatory limit the maximum contaminant limit for nitrate in drinking water wells in the state of California. Um if it's between eight and ten you have to continue your annual sampling. So it's kind of like a borderline result where it's not not exceeding the drinking water limit, but um, is high enough that the, the board wants you to continue your annual sampling. If in the rare case that it's above the drinking water sampling, uh, you are required to notify the user of, of that water and notify the regional water board, um, of the result. And actually at that point, you can stop sampling, uh, so you don't need to sample anymore. Once the regional board has become aware that the drinking water well has exceeded the drinking water standard. The requirement to continue annual sampling isn't in effect anymore. And they will, um, handle that from a, from a enforcement and, uh, clean water alternative. Um, standpoint at that point, it's not really a drinking water well monitoring program. Then it becomes something, something else entirely. Right? Yeah. And that's where, um, you know, this program is really designed by the water board to, um, be a data collection service essentially. Right. So we are collecting data by virtue of the order to say, hey, our growers have tested these wells on agricultural parcels and is there a problem or is there not a problem? Um, there's a, there's a different regulatory framework for, um, providing an alternative clean drinking water sources to growers. Um, and I'll give you a little bit of context on that because, um, you know, we are tangentially involved. Um, that has more to do with nitrate control program under CV salts, which is also a water board program. Um, looking at nitrates and salinity, uh, in, in groundwater and surface water throughout the Central Valley and in the nitrate control program. You know, they had these, uh, what they called priority zones, priority one and priority two areas throughout the Central Valley, uh, which had, which basically were known to have nitrate impacted groundwater at drinking water depths. And, um, the Sacramento Valley had no priority one zones. They had, uh, one priority two zone in, uh, a portion of Yolo County. And so, um, you know, compliance with this nitrate control program. There were basically two different ways that you could comply with the nitrate control program through the waste discharge orders. And one was a path A where basically individuals, um, you know, who were permitted, could do their own individual compliance pathway, or you could do a path B where you basically join a coalition of Dischargers, including non ag dischargers, um, to kind of collectively, um, address this clean water issue and mitigate nitrate impacts. Uh, the rice commission very proactively before compliance was even required. We started on this in twenty eighteen and got the approval a couple years after, uh, we did our own nitrate initial assessment for rice in the Sacramento Valley. And so what we did is we basically at a significant cost to our, our growers and our industry went and looked at nitrate contributions to two groundwater from rice agricultural practices. And the result of that report was that rice actually contributes very little nitrate to groundwater. Um, and, and, um, you know, because of the, the nature of the soils where rice is grown, right? The ponding nature, we don't actually contribute a lot of groundwater recharge. So not a lot of the water that is in a rice field actually makes its way in any significant quantity into groundwater. So we're actually not a great recharger of groundwater aquifers either. Um, I know that's been a popular topic in the state, you know, with the drought that we've had. And it's a very, very popular topic of using agricultural fields as recharge areas for groundwater during wet years. Right. But rice is actually poorly suited for that because we don't we don't transmit groundwater vertically very well. And so that helped us in our nitrate initial assessment. We basically said, hey, you know, yeah, we use fertilizers in our fields, but those largely stay within the root zone and don't percolate to shallow groundwater. And the conclusion from the regional board, their response to our report was they agreed with us and they gave us a what's called a de minimis nitrate contribution category, which basically means that we have a very minimal to zero impact contributing nitrates to groundwater. So, um, because of that, we, we did not need to join the broader coalition, the management zones that they're called, uh, they involve, um, everything from irrigated agriculture to dairy to pot, non fifteen Dischargers, uh, a broad, broad group of dischargers, um, that all have discharge permits from the water board, but they all collectively work together to provide replacement drinking water for a particular area or residents where the well may be impacted by nitrates. Uh, and so I know in the South Valley in, uh, near Fresno, um, uh, there's a lot of, uh, replacement water programs going on there. They've got clean drinking water stations where basically anybody can come and fill up a bottle or, you know, a five gallon jug of clean water. And, you know, Yolo County had a much less of an impact. They were, again, a secondary priority zone. And so they don't have as a as robust, I think, a replacement water program. But they are they are committed and have funding to do the same replacement water program. The Rice Commission doesn't participate in that. Um, now, uh, because of our path a right, our, our de minimis, uh, conclusion from the water board. Um, and the fact that, you know, the rest of the Sacramento Valley is all in a, um, prioritized, uh, zone for nitrates in groundwater, meaning that the regional board recognizes that in general, the Sacramento Valley has high quality groundwater and nitrates in drinking water is not a pervasive issue across the valley. Uh, with this one exception in Yolo County, um, having a few, a few hot spots. Um, so it's good news for us, right? It's good news for the rice commission, right? We, we, we did it. We did our homework. We, we, uh, you know, put a lot of money and time into developing the science and finding out, you know, our impact on nitrates and groundwater. And, and our own individual conclusion was that we don't really contribute. And, you know, the secondary good news is that in the Sacramento Valley, right, we generally have high quality groundwater anyway. So we are we kind of started from a position of strength, um, to begin with. Yeah, No, absolutely. I mean, it's a very proactive approach, I think, to see what's coming around the corner and create the research and do the studies that help establish the truth of the matter, and that rice is not really contributing to groundwater, groundwater degradation. And so, uh, yeah, I think is there a, I know on your website, there's a talk, there's a section about the CV salts program and then the water board nitrate control program success story is that can people go and read more about that on that Cal Rice dot org website? Uh, yeah. I don't know if we have a direct link to that. We used to, um, but it's still on the water board website. You can go to the water board's website and look at, um, the nitrate control program. And, you know, because of the way that we engage with the water board well before the, you know, requirement to comply, you know, they were very pleased with the engagement process. Right. And being willing to meet with them and ask questions and then be willing to fund, like you said, the science, right, to go find out the answer to this question. Right. Well ahead of the, you know, requirement. Um, you know, for, for all of agriculture to comply. And, uh, they were so pleased with that, that they wanted to highlight that as a success story, right? About how agriculture can work with regulation, right? Not in conflict, but in concert where we can, you know, work together on a solution. Um, instead of, you know, waiting till the last minute to comply or avoiding, you know, contributing, you know, fees or energy into the program. Yeah, you know, we, we've highlighted that in many of our, uh, conversations with industry, um, just about a good success story, you know, for, uh, the regulatory framework and, and from agriculture perspective to both, uh, come, come away with a win, right? They, they got a, uh, committed partner and we got a result that Let us be able to manage our own future. Right? And that's why we have our own commodity specific orders, because we are a little bit of a unique crop, right, in agriculture. And, and we, we don't always want to be thrown in the same basket with, you know, other row crops or tree crops. And in this case, you know, it was it was it was beneficial to us. And, you know, I should mention too, that even though we weren't required to join a management zone, we did put significant funding into the creation of the management zone in Yolo County. Right. So we didn't just wipe our hands and walk away. You know, we, we, we put up a significant amount of dollars to get this management zone up and going and get off the ground. Um, even though we weren't required to, uh, to comply. And even to this day, you know, the, the rice Commission is very proactive in, uh, providing, you know, uh, limited support funding for advocacy groups that are really fighting, you know, for clean water, access to all kinds of disadvantaged communities and minority groups. And the CRC does, you know, support them as well, obviously not required by regulation or anything, but we want to have good relationships with these people because they're our neighbors, they're our friends. They they are the, the people that we rely on for our industry as well. And so we want to be a good steward and a good partner in our communities. And, uh, be proactive in helping people meet their needs. And of course, drinking water is, is, is a basic need for everyone. Well said. And so I know that the CRC is not gathering the data that's being submitted. Uh, but do you have any information on just how this program has been going? I think you said it started in twenty two. So in that case, last year must have been the first year that growers could potentially begin sampling on a three year cycle. Is that accurate? Right. Correct. Yeah. So, um, yeah, if they sampled in twenty two, twenty three and twenty four actually. Right, then technically they don't need to sample, you know, twenty five through twenty nine. Uh, they only need to sample once. So, um, the, the regional water board, um, there's actually two websites you can go to, um, to look at the results. So I don't have any um, results that are, you know, CRC specific. Um, and in fact it's, we should point that out too, that, um, you know, there is no, um, personal identifying information when a grower or landowner submits this water quality sample to the lab and it gets reported to the water board, uh, what gets posted publicly, um, is just the, the general, uh, area where the well is located, but does not have any personal identifying information. Right. Doesn't have an address, doesn't have a phone number, doesn't have a name. First or last name, has none of that type of information on it, just has a general location and the amount of nitrate that was detected in the laboratory analysis. So there is some anonymity preserved right in having this information be public. But the information that is public is quite a bit and you can go on two websites. One is um the, uh, the gamma website, uh, which is the groundwater ambient monitoring assessment, I believe. Um, it's, um, it's, uh, provided by the state of California. It's got all kinds of, um, information, um, technical information. The gamma website is probably best suited for those who are a little bit more technical savvy. Uh, you can look at nitrates and you can select, you know, all the wells and you can go on and look at at which Wells. Uh, you know, I, I believe if they're green, they have like a zero or a non-detect status. If they're yellow, they are, you know, below the eight point zero milligrams per liter. If they're orange, I think they're the eight to ten range. And then if they're red, they're above the ten, uh, range. And so, um, it's not rice specific. This is everything, you know, that they have, uh, data for. You can look at municipal wells, you can look at domestic wells, you can look at monitoring wells. Uh, you can look at all kinds of different types of wells as well. Uh, you can look at it through various lenses of, um, of time periods. You can look at the last year or, you know, five years or all time. And again, it's not, it's not even agricultural specific, but this is, this is it'll show you all wells that have nitrate impacts, um, in addition to other constituents of concern. So if you want to look at something else that you think is a concern in your groundwater, You can also select for that. So again, that one's a little bit more designed, I think, for the more technical minded folks who, who maybe want to set some different filters or some different parameters as they, as they look for groundwater constituents. The other one is, it says, is my property near a nitrate impacted water? Well, yeah. And this one basically just says, is it a problem or is it not? And so it also is color coded. And if it has, I believe it's like a darker icon. It's a problem. And if it's a lighter gray icon, it's, it's basically below the, the drinking water limit. That one is much more very quick, very simple just for nitrates, right? You can actually type in an address on this one, you know, and your home, your business, your, your, your grandma's house, whatever, right? You can go in and type an address and look at, you know, what data that they have that may be nearby that you could really quickly and easily tell. Is nitrate a problem based on the data that's available in a particular area? Yeah. So those are the two sources that I go and look at. Um, you know, to look at, you know, what is available in rice field, you know, rice country, right? Obviously, um, you'll see more results in urban areas, right? In small towns, you will see some results in, you know, in some, some domestic wells, um, you know, that are, that are a bit more out in the country. But um, yeah, it's, it's a great resource for the, and again, it's public information, right? It's not, not, not, um, you know, done by the CRC. Um, but public, anybody can go and look at this information and, and see nitrate impacts in groundwater wells, something I think is really interesting about the, the second um, resource you noted that is my property near nitrate. Well, is that, like you said, it's really easy to just either input your address, or just scroll up and down the state map and just see, well, one, you can get your information really quickly, but it also just shows how much data collection has gone into this project. A lot of data, how much information is out there. It's really interesting to see. And I think they're all hosted on ArcGIS maps. So if you've got any kind of familiarity with that, it's um, something really, really useful, I think for people who are interested in looking at water monitoring and data in California. Yeah. And like I said, you know, um, you know, we're specifically talking about the nitrate, the nitrate, um, you know, drinking water well program, but the state has invested a lot of money into this resource to, to, to define, you know, groundwater quality. And, um, there's a lot of different parameters you can look at that's pretty interesting. And, and, um, very, very comprehensive. I would say as they try to build this data set and define, you know, groundwater quality. Craig, I think we've covered a lot about the, um, drinking water well monitoring program, but is there anything else you'd like to touch on? Yeah, I think just the one other thing that I would like to highlight is, um, you know, I mentioned the nitrate initial assessment that we did, you know, a number of years ago. And, um, we, you know, the, the United States Geological Survey, the USGS had a, a study in the mid nineties about shallow water quality beneath rice fields in the Sacramento Valley. And when the Irrigated Lands regulatory program came on, uh, we actually partnered with the USGS to use a lot of that data, including doing monitoring in those wells ourselves to continue to collect information about nitrates and other groundwater quality constituents in these, you know, shallow groundwater wells below rice fields. And, um, that information, you know, from the mid nineties, you know, has been monitored ever since and has been, you know, was a very key integral part of our data set collection, um, in doing our nitrate initial assessment and continues to this day. Right. So part of our, our order is to monitor groundwater. And so we continue to have a network of these, you know, small diameter wells that go to, you know, first encounter groundwater below rice fields that we, we monitor annually, right on behalf of the industry. And we collect them again for nitrates and, uh, and other groundwater constituents. Um, and, you know, the, the data that we have from those wells very much continues to support that. There is very low, low detections of nitrates in these, you know, first encounter groundwater below rice fields to this day. And we, um, I think, you know, the industry and California in general can, rest assured, right, that we we continue to monitor this, right. On an annual basis. Right. So it's not something that we've, you know, uh, wiped our hands with and walked away, you know, done the check mark. But, you know, we, we continue to, to monitor this and look at this because it is an important constituent. And, um, you know, our current data, you know, supports the decades of data that we've had, um, to support this argument that, you know, rice does actually contribute very little to no nitrates, uh, to groundwater. So, you know, it's not just something that we've done in the past. We continue to actively monitor this on behalf of the industry as well. Yeah, I think that's a great way of noting that it's not just a one and done kind of study. This is years of ongoing work, building on decades of foundational work and just making sure that there's good, accurate science, um, supporting the truth. So it's really great that you have, you all have taken this on and we've had great interaction with our regulatory partners, even on the groundwater monitoring network. You know, we we had, you know, over the course of time, you know, as we submitted reports and got data back and had conversations with our, our, our regulator friends, right? They would say, well, you know, there's, it looks like there's a data gap, you know, maybe there's a broad geographical area where we didn't really have some good groundwater data. Well, the rice commission went in and we installed at our own cost, you know, two shallow groundwater monitoring wells, right, to, to collect data in these, you know, geographical regions that didn't have good representative data. Uh, we partnered with other water agencies who had, you know, state grants to install wells where we said, hey, you know, we, we see that you're installing a well in this area. It's near rice fields. Can we, can we go monitor this well that you put in, you know, water agency and, and got agreements from them, right. For us to go monitor that well as well. And then we've had some wins as well where we had, you know, some redundant wells where we maybe had too many wells in a geographical area. And we we asked the water board, you know, can we sample one of these wells instead of three? And because they're all in close proximity. Right. And so the number of wells that we've monitored over time has changed. The location of wells that we've monitored over time has changed. Um, but we've, you know, had a good working relationship to make sure that we're covering the valley and continuing to collect the information that the regulators want to see to make sure that, you know, this information is up to date and is still true. Right. That if it was true ten years ago, twenty years ago, is it still true today? Right. And so we continue to to collect that information and in concert with our regulators in a way that that makes sense, right? Both for the industry and from a regulatory perspective. Craig, before we wrap up, are there any upcoming events you'd like to shout out? Uh, yeah, we've got the, uh, rice quality workshop that we have coming up. Uh, that'll be held on Thursday, July thirtieth at the Hillcrest Catering in Yuba City from nine to twelve thirty. This workshop is focused towards growers in the industry, right? How they can learn about, um, um, agronomic practices, uh, milling quality. Um, we've got speakers from across the industry from, uh, from USDA, from the California Crop Improvement Association, from, um, mills. Uh, we're going to have growers, we're going to have rice experiment station folks. Speaking of this, um, obviously, Sarah, some of your colleagues at the UC Cooperative Extension. So it'll be a great technical seminar. Half a day lunch is provided afterwards, by the way. So stay and eat lunch and socialize with us. But, uh, it'll be a great opportunity for industry to, uh, get together. Um, you know, as they, you know, have a mid-summer break and, and prepare for harvest. So yeah, come join us at the rice quality workshop on Thursday, July thirtieth. Great. We'll have that registration link in the show notes, and we're also promoting it on our newsletters. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to Craig or any of your race advisors. And with that, Craig, would you like to share any contact information if people have more questions for you? Yeah, please contact me. See riddle at kalaris dot org. So C as in cat R, I'd d l e at kalaris dot org. Um, you know, please let me know your thoughts or concerns or questions. Um, be happy to respond. Perfect. Well, with that, thank you so much, Craig. We'll let you get back to planning the rice quality workshop, but we'll see you around soon. And thanks again. Awesome. Thanks, Sarah. We've got quite a few upcoming events in this next season. The most recent upcoming event will be the Rice Quality Workshop, which will take place July thirtieth, twenty twenty six from eight thirty a m to twelve thirty p m. This event is hosted by the California Rice Commission, so it's a real treat that we had Craig on here today, and this will be an in depth workshop covering the factors affecting rice quality, with some featured guest speakers talking at this event. The event will take place at Hillcrest Catering at two ten Julie Drive in Yuba City, California, and there is a registration link for this meeting, which will be available in the show notes. We will be hosting the Emerging Pest Workshop meeting on August fifth, twenty twenty six from nine a m to eleven p m. This is a meeting talking about some of the emerging pests in the California rice industry, covering insects, invertebrates, vertebrates, and weeds. This will be at the Calusa Industrial Properties Conference room. We will have more information on this meeting available later on. The Rice Field day will take place on August twenty sixth, which is, as always, a Wednesday and all day event dedicated to rice research in California. At the Rice Experiment Station at nine fifty five Butte City Highway in Biggs, California. You've heard me talk about this event a lot. Um, a really great opportunity for anybody interested in any aspect of rice research in California. And of course, another big draw is the delicious lunch that they provide for us. Again, that's an all day event. There will be hours available. For more information, please feel free to reach out to any of your rice advisors or the staff at the Rice Experiment Station. We're also announcing the dates for the rice Winter grower meetings. The woodland meeting will be February sixteenth, twenty twenty seven. The Richvale and Glen meetings will be February seventeenth, twenty twenty seven, and the Calusa and UBA meeting will be Eighteenth twenty twenty seven. More information and the agendas for those will be available later on. We're just getting those dates out there so people can mark them down on their calendars. In terms of other resources you might want to take advantage of. You can also look at our newsletters, which include race briefs, which covers Colusa YOLO Race Notes, which covers Yuba, Sutter Rice Leaf, which covers Butte and Glenn, and Field Notes, which covers rice in the Delta region of California. Thanks for listening. Two thoughts on Rice University of California Cooperative Extension Podcast from the University of California Agricultural and Natural Resources. You can find out more about this podcast on our website. Thoughts on rice dot buzzsprout dot com. We'd love to hear from you, whether it's from using our text link in the show notes, a survey submission in our feedback form, also in the show notes, or in a comment or rating on your podcast streaming service of choice. You can email me with any comments, questions or concerns at smarsh at uconn dot edu. Another year has begun and it feels like planting is right around the corner. And remember, like the growers like to say, have a nice life. Mention of an agrochemical does not constitute a recommendation, merely the sharing of research findings. Always follow the label. The label is the law. Find out more at ipm dot uconn dot edu. The views, thoughts and opinions expressed are the author's own and do not represent the views, thoughts and opinions of the University of California. The material and information presented here is for general purposes only. 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