Town Hall events bring together members across the supply chain, state officials and allied industry professionals to learn more about and provide a forum to discuss key issues including legislative, food safety, regulatory, traceability, nutrition, new market development, along with regional and commodity-specific issues that impact the produce industry.

United Fresh staff returns from these Regional Town Hall Meetings with great insight on the challenges faced by member operations and how United Fresh can best serve the needs of our membership.

Town Hall events are complimentary for both members and non-members, and lunch is provided.

For more information on Town Hall events, or to offer to host a Town Hall in your area, please contact Jeff Oberman, vice president of membership and trade relations, at 831-600-8922 or joberman@unitedfresh.org, or Miriam 
Wolk, Vice President of Membership & Marketing, at 202-303-3410 or mwolk@unitedfresh.org.

The schedule: 

 Aug. 8, Visalia, Calif.; hosted by California Grape & Tree Fruit League and California Citrus Mutual.

Aug. 9, Salinas, Calif.; hosted by Grower-Shipper Association of Central California.

More information on Fresh Impact Tour locations, as well as town hall registration options, is on the United Fresh website.

The Delta Water Summit will be held on August 3, 2013 from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at Fresno State’s Satellite Student Union. The Summit is intended for farmers and the community as a whole to hear what’s going on from key legislators, administration (state and federal) and water agencies.

“What’s going on?” asks Mario Santoyo, Organizer of the Summit and Director of The California Latino Water Coalition, an organization dedicated expressly to helping constructively craft solutions to California’s water crisis and ensure that our state’s vital water supply needs are met now and in the future. Although formed as a voice for Latinos, the Coalition is a positive force benefitting all Californians.

“If I am a farmer, and I am having difficulty getting my water for farming, I would want to know—what people are doing?” said Santoyo. “This is an opportunity to bring all the key players to Fresno and give the community a chance to ask these types of questions.”

“There is no question this is an emergency situation now,” Santoyo clarified. “We constantly hear about the long-term solutions including the twin tunnels, but they won’t be built for ten years.”

“If I am a farmer today, struggling, and I hear that next year we’ll may have zero water allocation, or even ten or twenty percent, coupled with the current bad year, I am probably looking at going out of business,” warned Santoyo.

“I want to know what are our legislators are doing to help us find a solution for tomorrow,” Santoyo commented. “Our legislators can get focused, work in a bipartisan way and encourage their other colleagues to get involved. The key thought here is that they have to find a way to work together. I think our Valley legislators, for the most part, have been successful in that regard, but we have to be more successful.”

“I think it is important for all of us, in general, to get to a point to where we all know what we need to do, agree on how we are going to do it, and then work together to try to make it happen,” noted  Santoyo.

“If we don’t reach a temporary, interim solution within the next two to three months, we are guaranteed to have a crisis next year,” warned Santoyo. “So, we need to be doing something, and it needs to be now.”

Today Gavin Iacono, Deputy Commissioner/Sealer, Standards & Quarantine, Tulare County Agricultural Commissioner/Sealer Office, commented on the invasive find on Citrus Psyllid in Porterville and the possibility of a quarantine.

Iacono said that the State and USDA were still waiting to determine if they have met the criteria to decide if there is an infestation.

Adult Asian Citrus Psyllid Feeds on Citrus, with immature nymphs nearby.

“These government agencies are not currently requesting growers to spray; they are not requiring growers to do anything.”

Yet, growers are concerned this can be a newly established population.

“The State and USDA are doing limitations around these refined sites,” explained Iacono. “In other words, there are 100 traps per square mile in the delineated section—one mile around each find site. In this core area, they check traps daily.”

“Outside that,” Iacono continued, “in the surrounding eight-square-mile-area, they set up 50 traps per square mile and check them every other day.”

Iacono remarked, “They’ve actually been checking these on yellow sticky traps, or blunder traps, for the last four or five days, through the weekend, and so far they’ve found nothing.”

“This is good news,” said Iacono.

The problem used to be in the foothills, but now marijuana growers are sourcing out areas on the Valley floor to plant the illegal crop for very high profits.

Manuel Cunha, President of Nisei Farmers League, Fresno.

Recently, marijuana has been found on rangelands on the West Side. Furthermore, a high profile bust happened in southeast Fresno where the crop was planted among two acres in a carved-out area of a cornfield. During the raid by the Fresno County Sheriff Department, a suspect, a reputed gang member, was found with a gunshot wound, after an exchange of gunfire from a vehicle that had apparently just sped by the scene.

These fields are linked to medical marijuana cards and fields under cultivation, but the Sheriff Department notes that there is far more marijuana being produced than the approved permits.

“Farmers are at risk with the marijuana growers on their land,” said Manuel Cunha, president of the Nisei Farmers League in Fresno.  “Farmers could be considered suspects for a short time until more evidence is gathered, and at the same time, they could be in danger if they were to wander up on the field. The Feds can take the land away from the owner if they feel that the owner is involved,” Cunha said. “The Feds will sell the land and then put the money into the DEA program.”

Cunha said another major problem is human trafficking. “Many farmworkers must be let go from farms due to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) audits. The farmworkers who have lost their jobs hear that people are looking for workers, but there is no mention of marijuana. Instead, marijuana growers tell the workers they are being hired for maintaining irrigation and a drip system,” noted Cunha.  “Low and behold, workers find out they are dealing with marijuana growers; and the growers threaten to harm both the workers and their families if they do not stay on the farm and work.”

Again, the pot growers will eventually move back up into the hills as authorities keep busting them up on the valley floor. “Then the hills become dangerous to cattle grazers and backpackers in the area,” Cunha said.

New Disease on Almonds
Bacterial Spot Found in the San Joaquin Valley

By Brent Holtz, David Doll, Roger Duncan, John Edstrom, 
Themis Michailides, and Jim Adaskaveg

Bacterial Spot Causes Lesion on hulls.

Over the past few years, we have observed these symptoms at about the same time in mid-April to early May.  The damage looked similar to leaffooted bug (LFB-Leptoglossus clypealis) or anthracnose symptoms. Concern was raised when ‘Fritz’ containing orchards sprayed proactively three times for LFB or anthracnose again experienced the same symptoms. 

Xanthomonas arboricola pv. pruni is a plant pathogenic bacterium capable of causing the disease ‘bacterial spot’ of Prunus species, such as almond and stone fruit. We will have to verify that this pathogen is in fact causing these symptoms using procedures known as Koch’s postulates, which involves re-inoculating symptomless plants and reproducing symptoms and re-isolating the pathogen, but the evidence looks pretty convincing. 

Amber gum flows from the hull spots.

Symptoms of infected nuts include the production of amber colored gum from spots on the hull (Figure 1). Cutting into the hull, there is no presence of LFB feeding, but there is a lesion about the size of a pencil eraser (Figure 2).  Lesions may enlarge, become sunken and orange in color, or exude an orange slime similar to anthracnose symptoms. Leaves may show spots (Figure 3), turn yellow, and drop prematurely.  Twigs may show visible lesions or cankers (Figure 4), which may be a source of overwintering inoculum.  Infected nuts may stick on spurs and be found in close proximity to mummy nuts from the previous year, still showing dried up lesions (Figure 5). 

Management for bacterial spot will be much different than controlling LFB or anthracnose.  It may involve trying to reduce inoculum levels by defoliating leaves with zinc sulfate in the fall, destroying mummies, and spraying fall, dormant, delayed dormant, and in season copper treatments to reduce overwintering inoculum.  

Intensive spray programs with copper and mancozeb have not controlled Bacterial Spot “down under” while in the South Eastern United States, peach growers have applied copper plus the antibiotic oxytetracycline as preventative fall sprays with some success.  Unfortunately, bacterial diseases are very difficult to control. 

The Tulare County Agricultural Commissioner’s office is announcing that six additional Asian citrus psyllids (ACP) have been detected on three traps south of the city of Porterville. The latest interceptions were confirmed by the California Department of Agriculture (CDFA), bringing the number of psyllids found in our county to nine. Maps and current information are available on the Agricultural Commissioner’s website by visiting: http://agcomm.co.tulare.ca.us/default/.

CDFA has already begun to saturate the affected area with detection traps in order to determine the extent of any infestation. The United States Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (USDA-APHIS) and CDFA will work collaboratively to determine what steps are taken next.

“Thanks to the responsiveness and cooperation of our farmers and their neighbors, we were able to do away with ACP restrictions in mid-June, so it is very disappointing to have new detections pop up so quickly,” said Tulare County Agricultural Commissioner Marilyn Kinoshita.

The Asian citrus psyllid is an invasive species of grave concern because it can carry the disease huanglongbing (HLB), also known as citrus greening. All citrus and closely related species are susceptible hosts for both the insect and the disease. There is no cure once a tree becomes infected. The diseased tree will decline in health, producing bitter, misshaped fruit until it dies. To date, HLB has been detected on just one residential property in the Hacienda Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Kinoshita points out that her staff will support the efforts of our $750 million citrus industry, as well as our residential citrus owners. “I want to emphasize that citrus fruit is safe to eat and the disease is not harmful to human health. The Asian citrus psyllid is another example of the many invasive species that enter our state every year”.

Andrew Vargas and his father Arnaldo may have to quit farming if there a zero allocation of water next season.

Marty Acquistapace is worried about the damage the well water with high salts and boron is causing to his trees.

Marty Acquistapace has been farming 2,200 acres of almonds for Blackburn Farming Co., and its almond processor, Silver Creek Almond Co., all west of Mendota. Acquistapace joined the company eight years ago, when water was more plentiful. Due to  the 2009 first biological opinion in 2009, water allocations started at an unprecedented zero, but following the historic water march it was raised to 10 percent in Westlands Water District. Then came 2010, 2011, and 2012 all at 40 percent allocations.

High salt and boron levels burn the leaves of almond trees. It takes up to three years for recovery