Farmers and ranchers have been on the front lines of wildfire impacts in terms of evacuations, smoke, and lost property, livestock, crops, income, and insurance. For example, one industry analyst estimated the 2020 wildfires alone cost the California winegrape industry $3.7 billion in lost property, inventory, grapes, and the wine those grapes would have produced.

Farmers and ranchers, who manage approximately 25 million acres of private land (one-quarter of the state’s land mass) and millions of acres of public lands through grazing leases are well-positioned to scale up many of the solutions now recognized as critically important, including prescribed fire and prescribed grazing. They are motivated, have intimate knowledge of the land, and in some cases already have the equipment needed to help the state scale up fuel treatments.