Patrick Cavanaugh, Author at California Agriculture News Today

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So far Patrick Cavanaugh has created 1490 blog entries.

Meat Consumption Expected to Rise

Lowell Catlett On Ag, Part Three

Meat Consumption Increases as Population Rises

By Jessica Theisman, Associate Editor

Lowell Catlett, who is a Regents Professor emeritus in Agricultural Economics and Agricultural Business and Extension Economics and was the Dean of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at New Mexico State University until he retired in 2015, told California Ag Today that increased income for the lower to middle classes is leading to an increase in meat consumption.

“As their incomes rise and they want to change their diets,” Catlett explained, “the first change they want to make is meat-based proteins. When we [isolate] just the income effect of the world getting more money, we must increase global meat output in the next 20 years by 50 percent. As of 2014, the average adult American consumed approximately 198 pounds of meat annually. By 2024, that number is expected to rise to 207.5 pounds.”

A surge in meat consumption requires increased grazing acreage for those production animals. “If the world grows to 9 billion people,” Catlett said, “we must double meat-based proteins — whatever they may be. I maintain most will come from intensive animal operations that are well-managed, more efficient, have a small impact on the environment, and cater to the overall physical health of the animal.”

“We’ll be doing most of that global meat supply in the United States because we have the infrastructure to provide those intensive animal operations,” Catlett said.

Patrick Cavanaugh2021-05-12T11:17:10-07:00March 28th, 2017|

Doug Mederos to be Named Tulare’s 57th Farmer of the Year

Doug Mederos to be Tulare’s Farmer of the Year

By Patrick Cavanaugh, Farm News Director

On March 29, the Kiwanis Club of Tulare County will recognize Doug Mederos as the 57th Farmer of the Year. Mederos – a diversified farmer and owner of Doug Les Farms in Tulare County – grows almonds, pistachios, cotton, silage corn and black-eyed peas. Mederos farms 600 acres and manages another 300 acres for his brother.

Mederos told California Ag Today the award caught him by surprise. “It is pretty humbling,” he said, “especially when you see the list of growers they picked [in prior years], and you always wonder, ‘Do I fit in this list or not?’”

Mederos’ family has been farming for several generations. “My grandfather came over in 1920 and started a dairy, P & M Farms, with his brother. When my father got out of the military, he joined the partnership with my grandfather and my uncle and my uncle’s son, Larry Pires.

“Along the way, my two brothers and my cousin’s sister, Loretta, all worked at the farm. My cousin Larry and I eventually became partners in the Pires and Mederos Dairy operation after we graduated from college.

The partners decided to move the dairy out of California and chose South Dakota. Mederos explained, “I stayed here farming in California, and I’ve been pretty fortunate over the years. We’ve had good years and bad years, but the majority of them have been good. Hopefully continuing on so that at some point I get to retire.”

Mederos’ children may continue their family’s legacy of farming in the Central Valley. “Probably my son or somebody will take over,” Mederos said. “He’s going to go off to Fresno State and to major in Ag business, so hopefully in a few years, he’ll be back here. Who knows, maybe it will be my daughter who comes around and ends up running the farm. You never know.”

Patrick Cavanaugh2017-04-20T13:11:02-07:00March 27th, 2017|

Dirty Dozen List has No Scientific Basis

Ag Industry Pushes Back on EWG Dirty Dozen List

By Patrick Cavanaugh, Farm News Director

The Environmental Working Group, headquartered in Washington D.C., with a local California office in San Francisco, has released its annual Dirty Dozen list. Topping the list again are strawberries, followed by spinach and many other fresh produce items.

The California agricultural industry is puzzled by the list because EWG provides no scientific evidence of residues on any of the itemized produce, according to Theresa Thorne, the newly named executive director of the Watsonville, California-based organization Alliance for Food and Farming.

The AFF exists to deliver credible information to consumers about the safety of fruits and vegetables, and to counteract misinformation like EWG’s Dirty Dozen list.

Thorne explained, “We really try and work to provide science-based information to consumers so that facts — not fears — can guide their shopping choices. You just can’t, year after year, continue to call safe and healthy fruits and vegetables ‘dirty.’ Nevertheless, EWG has been doing this since 1995. So every year, we work aggressively to put our information out there to counter the misinformation that EWG puts out, so people can make the right shopping choices for their families.”

According to Thorne, the EWG manipulates data issued by the well-known government-issued USDA Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) Pesticide Data Program implemented through cooperation with state agriculture departments and other federal agencies. According to the USDA AMS website, “The PDP data show, overall, that pesticide residues on foods tested are at levels below the tolerances established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and pose no safety concern.”

“But EWG goes through and manipulates that data,” Thorne said. “Even if there is some minute amount of residues detected, they are below safety threshold levels set by the EPA. According to a toxicologist from the Personal Chemical Exposure Program Department of Entomology at University of California, Riverside, you can eat an excessive amount of strawberries in a day, and still not have any health effects from residues. That’s how low residues are if they’re even present.”

Links:

Alliance for Food & Farming (AFF)

AFF Flyer

SafeFruitsandVeggies.com Pesticide Residue Calculator

Scientists and health experts overwhelmingly agree that the mere presence of pesticide residues on food does not mean they are harmful.
Use facts, not fear, to make healthy food choices
Health experts and scientists say produce, grown either conventionally or organically, is safe to eat for you and your children. Not only are conventionally and organically grown fruits and vegetables safe and nutritious, Americans should be consuming more of these, not less, if they hope to reduce their risk of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and obesity.

Pesticide Data Program (PDP)

Pesticide data Program (PDP) is a national pesticide residue-monitoring program and produces the most comprehensive pesticide residue database in the U.S.

Personal Chemical Exposure Program (PCEP) Department of Entomology, University of California, Riverside

Patrick Cavanaugh2021-05-12T11:05:17-07:00March 24th, 2017|

GMOs Are Part of Nature’s Technology

Lowell Catlett On Ag, Part Two

GMOs Are an Ancient Technology

By Jessica Theisman, Associate Editor

Lowell Catlett says GMOs have been around for thousands of years.

There is not a morsel of food that 7.2 billion people put it their mouth today that is not GMO. “That is called agriculture,” said Dr. Lowell Catlett, Ph.D. He is a futurist with a positive and upbeat predictions about agriculture.

Catlett gave California Ag Today the inside story on hybrids and GMOs. One question arose about whether hybrids are indeed considered genetically modified organisms. “Of course they are,” he said. “If you want to say it’s transngenetic, somebody moved a gene out of a fish into corn, that’s trans genetic. If you say GMO, that’s all of agriculture.”

What many people do not understand is that their non-GMO products, do come from GMO sources. “I get a kick out of people saying, ‘Well, this is non-GMO milk for ice cream.’ That Holstein has been genetically modified for 400 years. She is a genetically modified organism. There is no question about it,” Catlett said.

“We have the ability to move things around with genetics. The whole green revolution that gave people more food than at any time in history was all about accelerating genetically. Genetic modification in the old traditional ways is [what] we now call hybridization or crossing, ” Catlett said.

Corn is a GMO crop as well. “It was domesticated about 8,000 years ago by Neolithic women by crossing two grasses. Also, diabetic insulin is the result of GMO technology,” Catlett explained. “If you love yogurt, most yogurt in the United States is manufactured through a genetic modification called CRISPR, which is mother nature’s way of modifying genes.”

This process is caused by the bacteria in the yogurt. “It is the technology that bacteria use to protect themselves from invading other bacteria or pathogens. Right now, the 27 countries that are the EU, or soon to be the 26 EU countries that have banned GMOs, are now having to come back and say, ‘Wait a minute, CRISPR technology is Mother Nature’s technology.’ Mother Nature was a good genetic engineer long before we did it in laboratory” Catlett said.

“It is going to be an interesting time for GMOs in the next few years as the technologies merge to help us have better understandings and better control over things,” Catlett said.

Patrick Cavanaugh2021-05-12T11:17:10-07:00March 23rd, 2017|

Westland Initial Water Allocation 65 percent

Initial Water Allocation 65% for Westland Water District

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Patrick Cavanaugh2017-04-20T13:49:07-07:00March 22nd, 2017|

A Great Time to Be in Agriculture

Lowell Catlett On Ag, Part One

Agriculture Is Primed to Provide Different Food to Masses

By Jessica Theisman, Associate Editor

Lowell Catlett says California agriculture is in a good place.

Lowell Catlett, a former professor at New Mexico State University who continues to lecture with a style that keeps the audience engaged, shared with us what a great time it is to be in agriculture. “I think it is the best time because we have never had a period in history where we have had so many people, worldwide, rising out of abject poverty into middle class” he explained.

“They become consumers, and they want things, and they want a lot of things. They want the things that they see other people have. That means they want California pistachios, almonds and walnuts, and all the bounty that California produces, including its milk and eggs and cheeses, and everything else,” Catlett said.

“Once someone earns more money, one of the first things they change is their diets, and they like to get things that are unusual and unique. And California is the breadbasket of the world in terms of its ability to produce different things, and you’re seeing that translate into best time ever to be in agriculture,” he said.

Not only does current agriculture have the products, but there is plenty of money to buy those products. “There is so much money. The net worth of the United States right now over 123 million households is $94 trillion. The world’s output last year was $73 trillion, so we have $20 trillion more in household net worth than the whole world combined, The consumers want organic, or they want certified to the source. We have to certify those things to the source. They want all kinds of different food choices,” Catlett said.

“Before, people just wanted food, and they now want all these other foods. They may want gluten free, and they many not even have celiac disease. And it all helps the farmers to have markets we never had before, and that is fabulous,” Catlett said.

Patrick Cavanaugh2017-04-20T13:54:41-07:00March 22nd, 2017|

Saving Fish May Have Caused Oroville Disaster

Were Fish Cause of Oroville Dam Disaster?

By Jessica Theisman: Associate Editor

Reportedly, an effort to save millions of salmonoid fish below the Oroville dam may have caused a delay in releasing water from Oroville Dam on February 12. It set up the evacuation of at least 188,000 people in the area after authorities warned of an emergency spillway in the structure was in danger of failing and unleashing uncontrolled floods of water on towns below.

It was a near disaster and would have taken agricultural irrigation water with it, which has a lot of people asking questions. One person is Edward Needham. He provides agricultural services for growers throughout the state.

“I was trying to figure out what the missing piece was, why they could all of a sudden release 100,000 CFS and go from 65,000 to 100,000,” he said. Needham had spoken with a friend who worked at the refuge that day, who had told him he had been down at the fish hatchery, cleaning it out and saving all of the salmon.

“You’re telling me that they delayed the releases on the dam to save the four million salmon that were downstream?” Needham asked.

That may be correct! Many local news stations had reported that approximately 40 employees from the refuge were saving the salmon and loading them into trucks to be hauled away.

“That was two days before the dam nearly failed because of all the water it was holding back” Needham remarked.

Patrick Cavanaugh2017-04-21T15:00:38-07:00March 21st, 2017|

Caution Advised on USDA Proposal

California Dairies Cautious On USDA Proposal

By Jessica Theisman, Associate Editor

California Ag Today met recently with Kevin Abernathy, the general manager for Milk Producers Council. Milk Producer’s Council is an advocacy organization trying to make sure the dairies in California are being treated correctly. The MPC has been working for a long time to ensure that the California dairies are well taken care of. Especially when it comes to the USDA proposal to add the California dairy industry into the Federal Milk Marketing Order (FMMO).

Kevin Abernathy, Manager of Milk Producers Council

“MPC has been an advocacy group on behalf of California dairy families since 1949. This FMMO process is something we have been akin to since the start of it,” Abernathy said. “It was the early leadership of MPC that started the process of adding twenty-some odd years ago. Then the work evolved into work done by Sye Vanderdusson, Jeffery Vandenheuvel and Rob Vandenheuvel, with their growth management plans, which lead to the Holstein plan, which got evolved into the Foundation For The Future plan, which ultimately ended up where we’re at today.”

It is said that CDFA still has the upper hand in the situation concerning quotas and pay. The MPC is taking a look into these concerns.

“If this was something that was announced by CDFA because we have the experience in working in the California system, it is easy for us to calculate and the compute the outcomes. … So that is the process that we are going through right now and understanding how this thing works,” Abernathy said.

Patrick Cavanaugh2021-05-12T11:17:10-07:00March 20th, 2017|

AgJobs4U Connects Employees and Ag Businesses

AgJobs4U.com Helps Workers and Farmers

By Brian German, Associate Broadcaster

Two years ago, Josh Pitigliano encountered a problem when coming into harvest season. He didn’t have enough qualified labor for his almond orchard. Timing is critical during almond harvest, and Josh had sweepers and pickup machines parked because of a lack of labor. That was the motivator for establishing AgJobs4U.com, a website that connects motivated employees to successful agriculture businesses.

Josh offered some insight as to how the website works. “We are connecting farmers to employees and making that connection through a profile that the employee can create, that gives them access to a job board,” Josh said.

Last year at the World Ag Expo, Josh and his wife, Jennifer, officially launched AgJobs4U.com, and the website has been gaining momentum ever since. There are over 4,000 job seekers in the database this year.

Jennifer and Josh Pitigliano

Jennifer said, “We have a handful that are outside of California, but we’re focused really on California to make sure that we’re doing a good job and offering a good service here before we would potentially expand out.”

Josh said the website has an overall goal of going national sometime in the future.

The website boasts that it was “created by a farmer, for a farmer, to alleviate the stress of finding skilled agricultural workers.” They have a wide variety of positions listed on the website. “Anything from irrigator checker, milker, feeder, mechanic, harvester, driver, specialized jobs like a shaker driver, to a bookkeeper, front secretary, packing house personnel, even PCAs,” Josh said.

Employers can purchase a subscription that will give them unlimited access to the database of employees available for immediate hire. Employers can also post a job that is available in order to create a pool of candidates. “For an employer, it works two different ways,” Jennifer said. “They can either wait to see who contacts them, or who has a profile in the database. … It’s beneficial for an employer to post a job, in addition to extracting people out of the database.”

The website is designed to be easy to navigate and fill the needs of both employers as well as those looking for ag jobs. “When an employer puts a job on the job board, they have the choice, too, of whether it’s a part-time or full-time job,” Jennifer said. “That way, in case someone is looking for another job to supplement their current job, they have access to do that.”

AgJobs4U.com also helps to bridge the language barrier by offering a Spanish language option on the site. “Right at the top right of the website, with the click of a button, it will translate the whole website over to Spanish. … That way, me as someone who only speaks English, I can still find that person for that job by easing that translation barrier that’s between the two of us,” Jennifer said.

The company is 100% web-based. It is also very mobile sensitive, so employers and potential employees alike can use their smartphones to navigate the site. AgJobs4U.com is all about getting the right person for the right agricultural position. “It is the American way,” Jennifer said. “People are trying to improve themselves, and if we give them the ability to do that by connecting them to different farmers, then at the end of the day, it’s a good job.”

Patrick Cavanaugh2017-04-24T18:30:13-07:00March 16th, 2017|

Avian Flu Risk is High

Protect Poultry from Avian Flu

University of California poultry experts are urging poultry owners to examine biosecurity for their flocks after avian influenza was confirmed in commercial chickens in Tennessee by the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service on March 5. To protect the birds’ health, UC scientists recommend taking measures to prevent poultry from coming into contact with wild birds.

“Based on the initial sequence of the virus, the source of the virus is thought to be waterfowl,” said Maurice Pitesky, UC Cooperative Extension poultry specialist in the School of Veterinary Medicine at UC Davis. “This is consistent with the current understanding of how avian influenza spreads and evolves. Specifically, juveniles are infected at breeding locations and travel south in the fall carrying virus. As the waterfowl move southward, they are more likely to interact with other species, increasing the risk of interspecies transmission and formation of new varieties of avian influenza.”

The case in Lincoln County, Tenn., is the first report of highly pathogenic H7 avian influenza in commercial poultry in the United States this year. The flock of 73,500 affected chickens is located within the Mississippi Flyway, one of four North American flyways for migratory birds.

“Lincoln County is located in one of the medium-high risk areas that were identified by our risk map, said Beatriz Martínez López, director of the Center for Animal Disease Modeling and Surveillance in the School of Veterinary Medicine at UC Davis.

The UC Agriculture and Natural Resources researcher, who studies risk factors for the spread of avian influenza, noted that California is within atthe Pacific Flyway.

“We need to increase awareness of poultry producers to maximize the biosecurity implemented in their operations, particularly in those located in high-risk areas, mainly farms that are in close proximity to wetlands or other wild bird feeding and resting areas,” Martínez López said.

Poultry owners can identify biosecurity strengths and weaknesses for their own farm or backyard flock by filling out a free survey designed by Martínez López and other poultry experts. People who raise chickens, quail, ducks, turkeys, geese or other birds anywhere in the United States are invited to use the resource. At the end of the survey, participants receive specific research-based recommendations of biosecurity measures they can apply on their own types of farms. The poultry biosecurity survey is available in English http://bit.ly/2kkMycf and Spanish http://bit.ly/2mjO13G. The survey takes 15 to 20 minutes to complete and will be open until June 1.

If you would like UC Cooperative Extension to notify you if there is an avian influenza outbreak in your area, sign up on the California Poultry Census page: http://ucanr.edu/sites/poultry/California_Poultry_Census.

Owners of backyard chickens who observe illness or increased mortality among their birds should call their veterinarian or the California Department of Food Agriculture sick bird hotline at (866) 922-BIRD (2473).

For more information about raising poultry, visit http://ucanr.edu/sites/poultry.

Patrick Cavanaugh2021-05-12T11:17:10-07:00March 15th, 2017|

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