California produces more food than any other state in the nation. Over one-third of U.S. vegetables and two-thirds of U.S. fruits and nuts are grown in California. But drought, wildfire, and the impacts of climate change are increasing across the state. How are the farmers doing? And how are the young farmers doing? Lindsey talks with Mai Nguyen, Young Farmers’ California Organizer, based in San Diego, who is also a heritage grain farmer, activist, and former climate researcher. Mai authored the 2019 California Young Farmers Report for the National Young Farmers Coalition which drops later this week.

Episode Transcript

Lindsey: Can you please introduce yourself?

Mai: Yeah. Hi, I’m Mai Nguyen, I’m the California organizer with the National Young Farmers Coalition.

Lindsey: Great. And Mai, the California report – what was your goal in writing this? What were you trying to find out?

Mai: I just want people to understand the lived experiences of farmers. You know, we have census data and then we have these snippets in newspapers, journal articles, but it’s very rare that we hear the whole story of what it’s like to be a farmer in California and particularly for young farmers, for farmers of color. So I wanted to be able to capture these experiences so that we have a fuller understanding of what’s happening, who’s feeding us, and also, you know, what’s at stake as we’re finding a declining population of young farmers.

Lindsey: Yeah. I mean this is a California report, but this is also a national report. It has national consequences. More than a third of the country’s vegetables and two thirds of our fruits and nuts are grown in California. Did you feel like you were making that case in this report? That this is not about just what’s happening with our state, but this is really about the future of the nation.

Mai: I hope that anybody who goes to their grocery store and looks at any of the produce, that they’ll recognize a lot of it comes from California. We have our, our name on all of this food. And so when someone picks up this California report that it’s like picking up that piece of fruit. We are a major producer, but we’re a year round producer of so much of our country’s food. So what happens to us has major effects for everybody else.

Lindsey: One of the things that struck me about this report, you really made an effort to go to areas of California that in fact are the most productive areas of California when it comes to agriculture, but seem to be the least represented. Why is there this disconnect between the most productive parts of California when it comes to agriculture and technical services and support?

Mai: So I went to the Central Valley and southern California because those are areas where we don’t often hear from farmers. We don’t see a lot of technical support services. And I would hazard the guess that in the valley and in southern California, because we have a lot of agribusiness and in southern California we have the predominance of a few crops, so citrus and avocado. Because of that kind of scale, the people haven’t really sought out technical services, or if they have they’re kind of through larger entities, known entities, the resource conservation districts, associations such as the farm bureau, or crop associations, especially in the case of southern California with the citrus and avocado growers. But so, for smaller scale farmers, there hasn’t been as much of the development of technical services for them as much as there has been up north or on the central coast where, I think also parcel size has to do with it and, and just a history of the movements for small scale farmers who wanted to grow organic and kind of alternative practices, that kind of led them to create a service providing organizations that aligned with their particular values and practices. But over time, you know, so that was maybe a 40 years ago, that those groups have started, over time you still see the perpetuation of that gap. And with lower resource farmers being in the central valley in particular, there, there is less of that development of the technical services. And in terms of going to those areas and who I was talking to, I think it’s really key for us to hear from farmers in the valley and especially small scale and mid size farmers because it’s the area in California that is the most agriculturally productive and has the highest grossing sort of products. And yet those counties are also ranked the highest in rates of poverty and chronic diseases, environmentally induced diseases, and illness. So to really understand those conditions – Why is there such a large gap between what is being produced and who actually is benefiting or profiting from what is being produced? I think it’s really important to talk with people about what’s happening on the ground.

Lindsey: And does this, some of the geographic distribution of technical assistance, does this play into one of your findings around the racial distribution of assistance? Whereas, you know, individuals who identified as white reported no gaps in resources, whereas American Indian respondents received none of the listed resources, which included help with soil management, business planning, crop planning, pest management, et cetera, irrigation, water management, financial management, long list of sort of basic areas of support for farmers. And then non white respondents, they received assistance in some areas more than others. So I’m wondering, how does that actual geographic distribution play out in terms of technical assistance or is there a relationship between this racial distribution and geographic distribution?

Mai: I think that there is a correlation in terms of racial distribution and geographic distribution because of areas that people initially settled into, because of segregation, zoning, really also intentional sort of red lining, as well as for more recent refugees and immigrants kind of resettlement centers and opportunities for where, you know, farm land was cheaper yet still fecund. So you have this greater concentration of this racial ethnic diversity in the valley in particular. And then that relates back to technical assistance in terms of that lineage I spoke of with like who was developing it, who has the power to convene or the sense of safety to convene in order to organize for, you know, either peer to peer assistance or to advocate for resources for external assistance or just supporting one’s work in a nonprofit. So there’s a correlation there again, in terms of technical assistance, geography and, race. I think the other part, it’s trickier because it depends on which group you’re referring to, but, you know, people have their different experiences of your relationships with technical assistance providers, right? So some groups might have faced historical discrimination, some groups, there might’ve simply been an initial language barrier, but at the same time, these institutions that provide technical assistance weren’t reaching out to these farmers either, and making the effort to kind of bridge linguistic or cultural gaps. There’s also farmers who were using their traditional practices if they maybe were new Americans, and that those practices didn’t necessarily align with what technical service providers were advocating for. And over time now we’ve just seen that there are even fewer technical service providers. We only have four small farm advisors for the whole state. So they’re very stretched,

Lindsey: Through cooperative extension?

Mai: Yeah. Through cooperative extension. And so through our sort of formal government system, there are very few providers. And then that’s where, at least in other areas, such as northern California and the central coast, nonprofits have filled in, but in the valley, we haven’t seen that to the credit of the Fresno based cooperative extension office. Their extension agents have really focused on trying to assist southeast Asian farmers, particularly the Hmong American farmers. So they’ve really stood out as strong advocates for creating technical assistance that’s culturally relevant and also in a language that’s accessible for farmers.

Lindsey: So tell me about the young farmers that were part of this study. Who are they and what did they grow?

Mai: Whew, we had many respondents. We had farmers, ranchers, beekeepers, and in terms of the farmers, they were often vegetable farmers, many of whom also had diversified operations, so had some livestock or also cut flowers to have an additional income. And in terms of acreage, you know, it ranged from like a half an acre to 3,000. So we really saw a wide range of crop type, land scales, also in terms of gender, race, and geography. So I’m excited that the report has this large span. And going back to your earlier question about kind of sort of capture a lot of the California experience and I certainly don’t claim that it does, but I think it’s scratches the surface for us to ask more questions and have more conversation.

Lindsey: Yeah. One to did you say a quarter acre to 3,500 acres? I mean it’s, did you find there are common threads in shared experiences between such a range of farmers and ranchers?

Mai: Yeah, I think the salient threads are people, everybody’s facing climate change, they’re all facing drought. And also being able to make new, you know, make a living at farming. The price of food hasn’t really gone up while the costs of all the inputs certainly have, you know, land and labor. For those who are trying to hire employees on their farm, they’re finding that there are fewer and fewer people with experience farming and who can remain reliable and that, you know, relates back to the cost of goods, right? If you can’t pay people enough because you’re not making enough from your products, you know, it’s, it’s a cycle where you’re not really going to bring in a lot more farmers to support your own farm. A lot of other salient threads, common threads across all of those different sizes and types of production are highlighted in the report. So I do hope that people delve into each topic to get sort of the rich stories that farmers have shared about, you know, why all these various topics are challenges and how they’re related to each other.

Lindsey: Yeah, I really appreciate throughout the report, the quotes that you incorporate. Some of them are so moving and just clearly speak to the experience and really give the reader a sense of, of what farmers are facing in California. And some of the quotes that I pulled out, that I sort of couldn’t get out of my head after reading the report, were around climate change. Of course, something that all California growers are contending with and, you know, all California residents period, but particularly impacting so many farmers. One of those quotes was, growers said that “the smoke from fires darken the skies. When my starts, we’re in a photo sensitive period, many yellowed and withered. You can’t unblock the sun”. That was a vegetable farmer. And another one is saying “it’s painful to harvest, my eyes sting and I can hardly breathe, but I have to harvest to make a living”. What did farmers say about the impacts of climate change in this report? How do they relate climate change to some of the severe weather, the fires and drought that they are facing?

Mai: Yeah. So, you know, a lot of the young farmers that I’ve met and talked to, they don’t live in a bubble. They’ve talked to their neighbors, elders, mentors, people who’ve been around, and so even if a young farmer might have, you know, just three years, five years of experience in one place, you know, they’ve learned from others that, you know, what they’re experiencing now was not the norm before. And then, you know, there are certainly multigenerational farmers who can, who can also speak to, you know, the stories that they’ve heard of and the lessons that they learned of how to farm, you know, when to plant and harvest according to their regional patterns. You know, California has a lot of different microclimates, but within those microclimates there has been some consistency in previous years, previous generations that are now, you know, it’s not just about the timing and when things are happening, it’s about the extreme, kind of intensity of these different cycles of heat and rain. So they, they are seeing, you know, the, the flooding that’s happening with rains that follow fires and, you know, with the fires that have destroyed not just farms and homes, but also conservation areas, zones where, you know, the plant life would have helped with storing water. With those areas being bare, you know, it’s harder to do so and have that important groundwater recharge as well as ensuring that the water doesn’t just run off to flood the rest of the farm lands. So yeah, people are experiencing that, and just going to the quotes that you just read, there’s, you know, people are, are also talking about how such as in one quote where they’re talking about trying to harvest, there’s the acute effects. When they’re trying to harvest and they have something in the ground that needs to be plucked. And then there are also those issues of the longterm impacts that I think the rest of the society doesn’t really see, right? Which is if a plant didn’t grow during its photosensitive period, then that farmer can’t put that plant in the ground, right? It’s, it’s food that’s just not even being produced at all. And that’s a loss the farmer that the rest of society may not see, right? But, but the farmer has to take that hit and in that way, you know, I see that across the board, farmers are really experiencing climate change on behalf of society first. They’re taking the economic and emotional hits before everybody else.

Lindsey: That’s so true. That’s so true. And yeah, there’s, there’s so many impacts that go unrealized that, you know, remain right? There’s the immediate acute situation, but then I just wonder long term what, like how is this impacting the farmer community having lost, I mean, you yourself lost land to fire. How do you feel like that, that sense of loss, that sense of panic and just trauma, How do you, did you get a sense of that in your conversations with farmers, do they feel like they are able to build resilience or is this just so far out of their control that it’s, they’re just – I’m just wondering like how do you get up and start, you know, start the next season? Of course California grows year round, so I’m more the east coast question perhaps, but even just how do you just start again when there are such risks at play right now and farmers are experienced such devastating loss?

Mai: Yeah, I wish I had the chance to go deeper into those conversations with farmers for the report, but just within my own, you know, farming networks and community, there’s certainly a sense of looming, persistent anxiety. And I think it really out, especially in the winter when, you know, you’re not in the, the daily hustle of trying to repair your irrigation system and harvesting and just, you know, being awake from sunrise to sundown. And with our long days and, and warm days for much of the year, we’re very productive. And so you can kind of set aside those thoughts to just keep going. But I find usually, or these days when fire season hits, the exhaustion really kicks up, right? Cause at that point you’ve been working since February till like September straight, and then you’re finding that it’s just everything just got harder because of the smoke and the heat. And then there’s this kind of like burnout in November, December. And it’s during those times where I really hear from farmers, those reflections of, you know, it’s like you’re doing your books and, and just everything has set in your body from the whole year. And it can, it can be very disheartening, but at the same time, I mean, all the farmers I talk to are incredibly resilient. I mean, they went into farming knowing that it’s challenging, even without climate change, right? Like there are all these other variables, right? Pests –

Lindsey: It wasn’t easy to begin with, that’s for sure.

Mai: Right. And now the stakes are higher when you’re putting things in the ground and there’s a greater sense of uncertainty. But also I think that uncertainty has, in the conversations I’ve had with people, has really fed into a greater sense of conviction. That this is very important, that farming is critical in this time of climate change. Because, you know, we know from all these studies, from the IPCC reports, UN reports, that the number one impact of climate change is food insecurity. And so we need people to continue to produce food, to know how to adapt to these changing conditions, to build the ecological and emotional resilience to do that. And you know, all these farmers have expressed that they are up for that task because you know, without their work, then we will be in a much more dire situation.

Lindsey: Another issue, Mai, that came up as one of the top needs of farmers in California was access to land. What is happening with land access in California? What are the challenges that farmers are experiencing?

Mai: So, if people are familiar with our national, the National Young Farmers Coalition National Report, there’ll be some familiar themes. I think it’s no surprise on this one right? No surprises. Yeah. We already sent out the spoilers, but I think that in California, just some areas play a larger role, right? So the same themes, but just some areas are exacerbated. So in terms of the cost of land for us, the state is in high demand for a real estate, for other kinds of production and manufacturing industries, especially the technological ones. So we’re, our land is in high demand and farming is not as lucrative as the other industries in which it’s competing for land use.

Lindsey: Like silicone valley, small farmer versus Google, right?

Mai: Yeah. And, and then also the people who are coming to work for those industries, right. So we do need to house them, but we also are a very wealthy state, so you also have people who are buying second homes here on farmland. One of the quotes in the report is comes from a farmer who talks about their being outbid by people from New York or Maryland or other states. And then also, but we have people who are being displaced from San Francisco because the, I believe last year or two years ago, they announced that the median and middle class income is $1 million. So if you’re not making a million dollars you’re moving, you know, an hour north to where there are a lot of farms, then it’s going to be cheaper. But $1 million is a lot of money compared to what a farmer is making. So there’s, there’s that piece. We also have a whole farm distribution system that geared towards export, and we have these key nodes in certain areas we have our ports and railway lines. And so for food to go to those areas, historically, it just means that the infrastructure is set up for food to go in particular directions such that if your farm is not along the lines of that infrastructure, then it’s very difficult to sell your goods, right? And to get your products to market. And for small farmers, but I guess I should say for young farmers, beginning farmers, they tend to be smaller and so they might not be able to produce the volumes that are necessary for them to tap into that existing infrastructure anyhow. So they need to be closer to population centers where they could possibly sell direct to market. And that’s becoming challenging, again, related to housing demands and cost of living, just even for people trying to live in those cities, let alone the farmland surrounding those areas.

Lindsey: Did you kind of sense of the breakdown in terms of the farmers looking to sell into a national wholesale market versus those who are looking to sell directly to consumers in an urban center, at a farmer’s market or via CSA or restaurants or the like?

Mai: In the survey we had a few questions about where people sold their products and within the listening sessions, that was certainly something that came up. I would say that the survey information, we could’ve spent more attention on that and I would do that in a future survey. With listening sessions, most of the people tried to diversify their sales avenues. So some of them, or many of them were doing both wholesale and direct market and direct to market through the form of farmer’s markets. Not very many farm stands, a few CSAs, but people were really just trying to hedge their odds. And I wouldn’t, I don’t, in the listening sessions, I didn’t talk to anyone who’s selling to national markets but they also weren’t necessarily clear as to where their products were going.

Lindsey: So they were so into like a distributor, perhaps?

Mai: Yeah. Most people, if they’re doing wholesale, were selling to a distributor. Some were selling to local food hubs and so they did know who their customers were. But the farmers who were like in the central valley or San Diego, southern California, they were selling to distributors. And there’s another part of the report that talks about the shift in who the distributors are, as regulations are ramping up and there’s increased consolidation of distributors and the effects of that kind of consolidation on farmers.

Lindsey: Interesting. So you mentioned infrastructure – what, so when you’re talking about infrastructure, what do you actually mean?

Mai: Yeah. For infrastructure, I mean both the transportation channels. Just good roads from rural areas. And having farmed up in Mendocino county, there’s just, you know, some key roads, highways that are in poor conditions

Lindsey: Which is, which is terrible on a farm truck. I mean, speaking from our experience on our farm, I mean it’s anyways, it’s like, it, it, all it matters for many reasons is in terms of timing and all such as repairs and all the rest.

Mai: Right. Yeah. So there’s that and then, cold storage if you’re going to try to get your products, your wholesale products to a cold storage node, or deliver it elsewhere, that’s also a very costly farm expense for an individual. And then trying to tap into existing systems. You know, a lot of them are geared towards larger scale production. So if you only have two cases and someone else has a whole, you know, semi load, your product can easily get lost or there’s also the cost of it, and you’re kind of seen as a nuisance. So there’s the cold storage infrastructure and then it comes down to, I think even the scales of production that young farmers are at right there facing high costs of land. So they’re getting smaller parcels to start with, and when you’re small, that means, you know, the equipment that you’re using is going to be smaller. And you know, can they find scale appropriate equipment for processing potatoes, carrots, you know, cleaning roots efficiently or, you know, for myself as a grain farmer, finding a combine that works for 40 acres as opposed to the typical ones that are being manufactured for the Midwest, where it’s meant to cover, you know, thousands of acres. So there’s, yeah, all scales of infrastructure from the kind of larger shared networks for distribution to even on farm infrastructure.

Lindsey: So you say in the report for farmers who are further from their markets there needs to be reliable and affordable storage and distribution infrastructure. And you know, I know with your grain operation on your farm, you had a huge loss this season. Do you think that is sort of in part, the result of this lack of appropriate infrastructure?

Mai: Certainly, yeah. And for it to be accessible for myself, you know, I need to clean grain and for those who are not grain farmers, once you harvest grain, say wheat, in an organic system there’ll be weeds. And so that’s green matter that needs to be separated out from the wheat. If it sits together in the summertime, the California summer where it gets to be 110 degrees, you know, that’s, that’s just a simple equation for mold and contamination. If I had a cleaner on-site then I could do that separation right away and you know, put the grain in storage. But the nearest cleaner that would take my size, so off of 40 acres, the nearest cleaner is four hours away and they usually take, you know, semi truck loads. And I had maybe, I had 20,000 pounds total. And that’s, it’s not even, it’s just a drop in the bucket. So my account is less valuable because I’m not going to pay, or like my fee to the cleaning service, it’s going to be less than someone doing a semi truck load. And so I become deprioritized and as a result with my grain sitting there, then that whole lot rotted.

Lindsey: So they were, they were waiting – your storage, your crop was waiting to be cleaned?

Mai: Correct. Yeah.

Lindsey: So it was at the facility. It was there.

Mai: It was there. Right. And for grain farming, right, it’s nine months that you’re waiting for a single crop and losing the entire thing means you’re losing your whole year’s worth of work and your whole farm income. So that’s just an example of a kind of key piece of infrastructure. There aren’t a lot of small skill grain farmers and I understand the reasons why. I’s just, I mean, I grow very different types of grains and that’s a whole ‘nother podcast. And relating it to other farmers say, you know, like vegetable growers who are also trying to diversify what they’re growing for environmental or market reasons, you’re trying to have different crops so that they can stand out. You know, it’s important to have seed cleaners and be able to save your seat stock. And again, relating back to climate change, you know, being able to select the seeds for plants that you found to be resilient in these changing times, the plants are adapting to your specific site, so being able to save your seed is really key to ensuring your success, your longterm success in that particular place. So that’s, you know, those are just some of the kinds of equipment infrastructure that I think needs to be addressed alongside the means of getting it out to markets without spoilage.

Lindsey: I mean it gets in the way of this, you know, idea of resilience and adaptation, right? To change if you know, it’s so difficult to experiment, right, and even grow at a smaller scale to see what might work best. That is so frustrating, Mai, and I am terribly sorry to hear about your loss from last season.But you’re actually expanding your operation this year. You are, you’re farming and in 2019?

Mai: I am farming in 2019

Lindsey: And also making a human.

Mai: Yeah, so there’s a lot going on, but you know, I think there’s, one in terms of addressing infrastructure, there’s room for collaboration by creating farmer cooperatives where farmers are owning infrastructure together and sharing the costs of owning that equipment. And then also, I guess I am going big. Maybe still not as big as, you know, the other folks who were taking their goods to the silos. But I’m seeing if that at least will, if that can at least enabled me to have a greater stock to split it up, and send to different places for cleaning or just have a greater volume to get in.

Lindsey: So Mai, what are you hoping as an outcome of this report? We have now, Young Farmers Coalition, has two members of the team in California. Ernesto is in Sacramento doing some policy work this session. Do you think there’s opportunities to solve some of those challenges that were identified by farmers?

Mai: Yeah, I think what’s exciting about California is that we have a very food literate state. People who are very enthusiastic about knowing about food. Cooking and getting to experience the diversity of crops that we can grow. And I hope that this report is a way for those food enthusiasts to understand, to really understand where their food is coming from. It’s a statement that’s been made over and over again. And I think this is an opportunity for people to have a deeper understanding as well as to take action. So that’s the first part of why I’m really excited for this report to come out. It’s slated to come out right around the time that my baby is due, so it’s kind of like a double birth, highly anticipated for me. Yeah. The youngest farmer. So I think there’s, there’s that piece, right? There’s a lot of, you know, food advocacy organizations, people who want to address food justice. And at the core, you know, if we’re going to talk about food, we really need to talk about farmers. And so I do hope that for all the people who are really deep in food advocacy as well, so organizations, philanthropists, people who are very active in that realm, that this is a way to help them understand, food from the producer side when so much of our information I think is, is really informed from the consumer side. And then lastly, the other piece about our California work, so Ernesto as our policy associate. And in our connection, our organizational connection with the California Farmer Justice Collaborative, you know, we’re working to sponsor two bills this year in California. One is a land access bill. It’s A-B 9 86 and that one would create a program to help finance farmland for farmers of color, socially disadvantaged farmers. And I think that’s really key for land access, right, and affordability. The other bill is A B, 8 38, and that one addresses technical assistance. So I’m glad you asked those questions earlier, which is, you know, technical assistance is limited. So this bill would expand the number of small farm advisors in California as well as put a director sort of, above all of them because currently there’s, there isn’t a lot of cohesion. I think the small farm advisors, they do meet up and they do, you know, collaborate, but there isn’t kind of an umbrella that kind of maintains that kind of cohesion. Additionally, we are really lacking in pathways to becoming a farmer through formal education. So this technical assistance bill would fund nonprofit agricultural training programs as well as mentorship programs with on-farm apprentices, really mimicking echoing the Colorado Workforce Bill that the National Young Farmers Coalition membership pushed for. So I’m excited that those two bills are happening in that we’re supporting them, they’re very much aligned with the key needs expressed by farmers and summarized in the report. And so if the report can help sort of inform the need for those bills and enhance, you know, the rationale for building a constituency around these bills and support for them, then, you know, making those wins so soon after the report release would be incredibly exciting.

Lindsey: That’s great. And we will be sure to link to both of those bills and opportunities to take action in the show notes for today’s show. And I guess I have one last question for you, Mai. There are clearly many very significant obstacles for new young beginning farmers in California, but I’m wondering, you’re still doing it, right? What is the reason to farm in California as a young person? Maybe who doesn’t even come from an agricultural background? What are some words of encouragement or signs of hope that you might have uncovered through this process that you would want to share with a young person considering starting a farm or working on a farm?

Mai: Oh, whenever I’m asked by young farmer if they should do it and I’m like, I don’t know. So that’s not very encouraging, but, I mean every farmer I’ve spoken to has their convictions and sense of values that keep them going despite all the challenges. and I really enjoy hearing all of them and I hope that, you know, through this podcast, through other forms of media or just getting out there that people will seek out those stories, because each individual one is very powerful on its own. But I, so I will just speak to my own story, which is that I find that with the food that we eat, it’s so integral to our health and that the relationship between the kinds of food we eat and our, what our bodies have acclimated to, I don’t know. Sorry, let me hold back. I guess it’s just – Yeah, I guess so my own personal reasons for this is that I understand how important, culturally relevant food is to each person, right? It’s the food that nourished, you know, oneself. And for me it’s Vietnamese food, Vietnamese crops that nourished, you know, me growing up, while I was still in the womb, it’s what my mom ate. It’s what my grandmother ate. It’s what my ancestors ate. And it’s the food that, you know, we had really adapted to in terms of our environment. And, it’s what my body craves and enjoys, and it’s also related to ecological diversity. You know, crops that can be grown in different situations. And I think that as we experience climate change, it’s critical that we have that kind of seed and crop diversity. So it’s both for sort of these personal and cultural reasons as well as ecological reasons that I find it important to farm and to grow these particular crops and having come from a climate science background, really value having a diverse ecosystem that reflects the diversity of our diets. And so in growing wheat and barley, particularly ones that are drought tolerant, that are meant to be eaten as whole grains so that we get the full nutritive value of that plant, to have this storage crop that other than this year for me, can be kept year around. These are key parts of just staying alive and having seeds that are still in the commons and food that can be for community. That’s really why I keep farming.

Lindsey: Mai, thank you so much for sharing your story. Thank you so much this incredible telling and report and description of what is going on with so many California farmers that, I agree, is often overlooked in California and beyond, some really important findings here and I’m excited to see what happens in California with these two pieces of legislation this year. And I’m sure what will be an important campaign going forward. So thank you for, for being on the show today. Thanks for this report. And we’ll talk soon, I’m sure.

Mai: Yeah. Well, and thanks for bringing this organization to California, for expanding its work to include our state and supporting the work of the report and making time today to highlight some of its key components. So I look forward to what’s next.