$9 Per Hour Minimum Wage Starts Next Week

By Christine Souza; Ag Alert

Starting July 1, the California state minimum wage increases to $9 per hour, a hike that growers say will result in more challenges on the farm and higher costs overall.

Monterey County strawberry grower Ed Ortega said, “In agriculture, nobody can pay just minimum wage.

“People will find a job doing something else that is much easier work than working in agriculture for minimum wage. They’d rather go and flip burgers for nine bucks,” Ortega said. “Our work demands more than a minimum wage employee, so every time the minimum wage goes up, the whole ladder in our entire pay structure goes up. There’s no such thing as paying the bottom guy more and not the top guy. The whole ladder rises.”

California’s minimum wage increase to $9 per hour is a result of the passage of Assembly Bill 10 by Assemblyman Luis Alejo, D-Salinas, in 2013. AB 10 also provided for a second hike in the California minimum wage to $10 per hour on Jan. 1, 2016.

Bryan Little, California Farm Bureau Federation director of labor affairs and chief operating officer of the Farm Employers Labor Service, said raising California’s minimum wage might have happened through a ballot initiative had AB 10 not become law last year.

Proponents of increasing the minimum wage argue it is needed to reduce poverty, while business groups and those opposed believe raising the hourly minimum wage would increase business costs and jeopardize California’s economic recovery.

“The majority of farmers already pay their employees much higher than minimum wage, so when these changes occur, employees making more than minimum wage expect to stay that much ahead of the increased rate,” Little said. “In the short term, it will increase costs to employers, but the labor supply is tight right now, so workers are already able to demand fairly high wages, but the increase still impacts operating costs and business profitability.”

Phil Martin, professor of Agriculture Economics at the University of California, Davis, confirmed that higher minimum wages affect some employers and workers more than others.

“Most farm employers have a wage structure, with some employees earning the minimum wage and others more. If the minimum wage rises by $1 an hour, workers earning more than the minimum wage normally expect a similar increase in order to keep their status in the wage hierarchy,” Martin said. “Employers often respond to higher wages with productivity increasing steps, from providing tools that enable workers to work faster to harvesting fields and orchards less often.”

Martin added that fewer new immigrants have already put upward pressure on farm wages and encouraged more use of labor-saving and productivity-increasing machines.

The new minimum wage has triggered other wage concerns for agriculture employers, Little said.

“A number of other costs associated with employing people are tied to employee earnings, like Workers’ Compensation and Unemployment Insurance; the increase in the minimum wage will directly and immediately impact employers’ costs for that. Also, if farm employers augment their workforces by bringing in farm labor contractors, the farm labor contractor is likely to increase the price of the workers they provide to cover that minimum wage increase and related costs.”

Farm labor contractors can be more efficient, and employ people year-round and spread their employment costs across more jobs than a farmer who employs a small number of people can, Little added.

“Farmers face several challenges in 2014, including implementing the Affordable Care Act and dealing with the effects of the drought,” Martin said.

This season, when it comes to the availability of employees, Ortega said, he is again experiencing a shortage of workers.

“We are experiencing the normal shortage that we experienced last year, which is a pretty extreme shortage of labor. Those who have less of a crop to harvest have a more severe labor shortage than those who have a crop to harvest,” Ortega said.

Whether a farm will attract the workers that are needed, Ortega said, depends on the size of the ranch and whether there is enough work to keep employees working. Smaller farms will have more limited opportunities.

“Any farmer who is experiencing a decrease in the water supply will also be experiencing extreme pest pressures, and if you have increased pest pressure, it means higher cost to the farmer,” Ortega said. “It’s an exponential factor. It’s not just raise the minimum wage a dollar; the associated costs go a lot higher than that.”

California is one of 18 states and the District of Columbia that have minimum wages above the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour and California’s $10 minimum is likely to be among the highest in the nation in 2016. Washington currently has the nation’s highest state minimum wage at $9.19 an hour.

2016-05-31T19:34:22-07:00June 25th, 2014|

UC Gets FAA Clearance to Research Drone Use in Ag

A UC laboratory at the former Castle Air Force Base in Atwater received clearance from the Federal Aviation Administration to fly dones at the Merced County Radio Control Club’s field, reported Thaddeus Miller in the Merced Sun-Star.

The unmanned aircraft are part of a project funded by the UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources that aims to study the possible use remote controlled aerial imaging to provide real-time information to farmers about water use and crop health.

The project leader, David Doll, UC Cooperative Extension advisor in Merced County, has put together a project team that includes UC Merced professors and graduate students, and UCCE advisors and staff.

Drones are also known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Doll believes small, basic UAVs can provide a platform for imaging hardware that can vastly improve crop surveillance to enhance water usage and pest control.

Doll’s project will test the potential of UAVs for water management and pest monitoring. He also plans to write a curriculum to extend information to farmers and demonstrate the use of small, remote controlled aerial vehicles as imaging platforms.

UC Merced also has other plans for using drone technology in research. They are seeking FAA approval to fly the aircraft over the university’s protected land, which includes 6,500 acres of grassland and vernal pools.

Dan Hirleman, dean of UC Merced’s School of Engineering, said the university’s use of drones and development of new technology could set it apart from other schools.

“We’re kind of at the ground zero for a lot of what’s going on in those areas,” he said. “It’s just a perfect fit with our sustainability theme and the application area.”

2016-05-31T19:34:22-07:00June 25th, 2014|

Could more dryland farming be in California’s future?

By Todd Fitchette; Farm Press Blog 

Slate.com’s “Thirsty West: The No-Water Way” is the latest in a string of popular press articles to suggest that California might be better off relying less on irrigated agriculture and more on dryland farming.

Generations ago, California settlers and residents established a system of water conveyance that allowed great cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco to be built and agriculture to flourish.

Modern irrigation paved the way for greater crop yields and the ability to feed a growing society that left the farm starting with the industrial revolution.

What would an article in the popular press be without a few gross misstatements, such as the oft-repeated meme that California agriculture uses 80 percent of the state’s water supply in an average year?

This is far from an average year. Still, agriculture typically uses about 43 percent of the water allotted while 46 percent is consumed by the environment. For California, that means much of that 46 percent is allowed to flow unimpeded to the Pacific Ocean.

Urban users consume the remaining 11 percent, according to the State of California.

With no surface water allotted to much of California agriculture this year, and the ever-shrinking ground water supplies, California agriculture will have a fraction of its typical annual supply of irrigation water for the few crops farmers can maintain.

We really do not know how much remains in underground aquifers, though it’s a safe bet to suggest “not enough.”

The premise behind dryland farming comes at a time when drought awareness has increased, though not entirely in practice as California lawns remain watered and cars are washed in driveways.

While dryland farming has its challenges, maybe it’s time for modern agriculture to consider the benefits of the water-thrifty practice and tackle the challenges with all the fervor of a sergeant told by his lieutenant “that can’t be done!”

While dryland farming is utilized to a small extent in California, its close cousin could be the no-till practices recommended by researchers Jeff Mitchell of the University of California.

Mitchell continually promotes the benefits of no-till and strip-till conservation practices that help hold in soil moisture and provide a host of other benefits to growers. He’ll readily admit there are challenges under California’s current farming systems.

While farmers elsewhere in the U.S. successfully employ the practice, California farmers seem reluctant to do the same.

Still, Mitchell works with California growers to employ conservation tillage practices that work and to transform machinery used in standard farming practices to achieve results.

Since Mitchell works with UC Cooperative Extension, his efforts move beyond the purely academic to the practical.

As California agriculture continues to seek ways to be as water thrifty as possible, and new technologies are developed to meet those ends, we need not be so quick to say “that won’t work” and instead embrace ideas that right now might only be a “what-if” conversation between a third-year undergrad and her college Ag professor.

2016-05-31T19:35:22-07:00June 24th, 2014|

Organic Versus Conventional Divide Not Helping Agriculture

By Todd Fitchette; Farm Press Blog

I’m sure there’s much more to this than meets the eye – there always is. To the not-so-casual observer, the recent petition by 20 organic farm and consumer groups related to the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) seems a bit hypocritical.

PR Newswire is reporting that 20 groups petitioned USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack “to protect the authority and permanence of the NOSB,” whatever that means.

Folks are apparently upset that the NOSB, created by Congress in the 1990 farm bill, does not have dictatorial control over organic policy and federal law. Instead, its stated purpose is to advise the USDA. Good enough.

Apparently it’s not.

Organic proponents apparently want their own control of all things organic, absent the kind of oversight conventional farming has.

Two of the petitioners include the Center for Food Safety and “Beyond Pesticides.” While the center’s name sounds sublime enough, the other group’s politics are front and center in the title.

It would seem that this petition is less about an egregious act committed by the USDA and more about fear mongering.

Can’t we all just grow up and have an adult conversation about food policy in America without the fifth-grade accusations?

Maybe America’s agricultural self-sufficiency breeds these kinds of ad hominem attacks that paint conventional farmers as evil and organic farmers as lazy. Isn’t there room at the dinner table for everyone, regardless of their chosen diet and the amount of money they choose to pay for produce?

The organic food industry certainly has a place in America’s free market. If people value what organic growers produce, they’ll buy it, plain and simple.

If folks choose to buy produce and meat produced conventionally, after it has been subjected to government oversight and inspection, then maybe I’m not going to worry so much about the chemicals used to kill pests in the California-grown tomatoes that become my bottle of catsup.

What does it matter if my Iowa-grown corn has a Bt gene in it that helps resist pests? Does it taste good and can I get it for a reasonable price?

American agriculture has too few people involved in it anymore for groups to balkanize each other and argue over issues that are inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.

Right now, nearly a million acres of farmland in California is fallow since the water which could have been used to irrigate a portion of that land was allowed unobstructed access to the Pacific Ocean during a severe drought. This happened since agriculture is not as politically effective as its antagonists. It’s really that simple.

Maybe it’s time for a little national pride in the fact we can produce 100 percent of our food needs in this country since we are blessed with the soil and climate and the technology to achieve it.

It sure beats the alternative of having to import much of our food supply because we can’t grow it ourselves.

2016-05-31T19:35:22-07:00June 24th, 2014|

Commentary: Cutting Regulations Would Stimulate the U.S. Economy

OpEd by Stewart Truelsen; Ag Alert 

Billionaires don’t always say the smartest things, but one of them has a smart idea. At the Forbes Reinventing America Summit, billionaire real estate developer Sam Zell said, “If you want to see the economy go wild, just cut all the regulations in half.”

Zell is known for his contrarian views and more often than not has been a successful investor. Cutting regulations is certainly contrary to what generally takes place in Washington. Regulations, especially environmental regulations, just keep piling up and up.

“We’re in a society where we think all risk can be regulated out,” Zell said. “There are just unending interpretations, revisions, legal fees to the sky—when you’re focused on that, you’re not focused on growing and getting new customers.”

Farmers know that feeling all too well. When they should be focused on growing this season’s crops and tending livestock, their attention is diverted by the Environmental Protection Agency “waters of the U.S.” proposed rule.

The rule broadens federal jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act and could extend permit requirements to ditches, small ponds and even depressions in fields that are only wet during a heavy rain. Farms, ranches, businesses and new construction could be affected.

EPA claims the proposed rule is a clarification of which waters fall under its jurisdiction. But in tracing the history of major regulatory acts like the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act, the words that stand out on the EPA’s own timeline are “expanded,” “increased,” “authorized” and “established.”

The Office of Management and Budget reviews pending federal regulations, and it comes as no surprise that EPA has the most regulatory activities under review at the present time.

It is only a natural tendency for federal regulatory agencies to extend their reach by adding more and more regulations to the laws that Congress writes. The last president who really tried to stop them and tackle regulatory overkill was Ronald Reagan.

A reduction in regulations was one of the major policy objectives of his 1981 economic recovery program. Deregulation was applied primarily to regulations that restricted economic activity, like price controls on oil and natural gas.

Every administration since Reagan’s, including the Obama administration, has expressed a desire for regulatory reform, but the results have been slow to materialize. Cost-benefit analysis is done on only a fraction of new regulations.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute estimates the annual cost of regulations to be about $1.8 trillion.

On a household basis, regulations cost more than every budget item except housing; that’s more than health care, food, transportation, etc. Cutting regulations in half, as Zell suggests, would indeed cause the economy to go wild.

There are alternatives to regulations that can get the same or better results. The American Farm Bureau Federation advocates market-based solutions and incentives as preferable to government mandates. Incentives have proved successful with conservation efforts. Regulation can also be accomplished without the government through competition, reputation, contracts, insurance and other means.

Sam Zell probably won’t get his wish, but he is correct about the need to throttle back government regulations. They are stifling innovation and economic growth.

2016-05-31T19:35:23-07:00June 23rd, 2014|

Breeding Crops for Drought Tolerance Tricky

By Ching Lee; Ag Alert

With water becoming ever-more precious, farmers are increasingly looking to innovations to help their crops be more resilient in the face of drought.

One focus has been on breeding and engineering new crop varieties that can withstand longer periods of water deprivation. While much progress has been made in this area, researchers say increasing drought tolerance in crops has never been clear cut, and prospects for getting those traits into specialty crops are uncertain.

In recent years, three major seed companies have introduced corn varieties that specifically target water-limiting conditions. Hybrids from DuPont Pioneer and Syngenta became commercially available on a limited basis in 2011, while Monsanto rolled out its first transgenic drought-tolerant corn in several Western Corn Belt states last year.

Kent Bradford, professor of plant science and director of the Seed Biotechnology Center at the University of California, Davis, said there has been a lot of interest in developing drought-tolerant varieties of field crops such as corn, wheat and alfalfa, but breeding drought tolerance into higher-value crops such as vegetables, fruits and nuts may be a longer-term goal.

One issue with developing crops that can withstand extreme weather conditions is that the process is not so straightforward and can involve a number of different genes and approaches.

“Drought tolerance is not an easy trait,” Bradford said. “It’s not like disease resistance where you have a disease, you have the resistance and you’re good.”

Daniel Gallie, a biochemist at UC Riverside, whose team did some of the initial work on DuPont Pioneer’s drought-tolerant corn hybrids, said one way to increase drought tolerance in plants is to grow bigger roots that can reach deeper into the soil to get water.

The method UC researchers used in developing DuPont Pioneer’s corn involved reducing the plant’s production of ethylene, which is triggered by drought stress.

Scientists have also looked at ways to help plants retain more water, such as by closing the stomata, or pores, earlier, so that there’s less transpiration. UC researchers found that by reducing a plant’s vitamin C, which controls the opening and closing of pores in the leaves, they can help plants better conserve water.

Since all plants have pores, Gallie noted, this approach could be applied to any crop species and has been particularly important to crops grown in California, where farmers rely largely on irrigation, he added.

But whether this and other techniques will find their way into commercial crop varieties depends on whether they get picked up by the various seed companies, he said. Because academic researchers typically are not in the business of commercializing their developments, they look to industry partners with the funding and infrastructure to introduce, test and market new crop varieties, Gallie added.

With a crop like almonds, for example, because the life cycle of the tree is so long, research would be much slower than what can be done with an annual crop. Also, specialty crops, while important to California, are not considered major crops with as much devoted acreage as key commodity crops.

“It’s the size of the market,” said Doug Parker, director of the California Institute for Water Resources at the University of California. “Companies are looking at: Am I going to be able to produce enough of this to make money. And it’s not just what’s being grown in other states that they’re looking at; it’s worldwide.”

For crops that are grown in California, the focus has been less on drought tolerance and more on water use efficiency, as growers are trying to get the most yield from what limited water they have, he said.

Farmers seldom plant specialty crops without some irrigation, Bradford said, whereas the major field crops—particularly those farmed in the Midwest—are often dependent on rainfall, so being drought tolerant is more critical.

Bradford cautioned that while researchers are making headway, they still face hurdles trying to create drought-tolerant crops that would work well under different weather scenarios and field conditions.

Soils can vary in one field, he noted, so the stress may not be uniform. And not all droughts occur the same way. Some are characterized by lack of precipitation, others extreme heat or both. These events may also happen during different periods of a growing season.

Since crop development is a long-term strategy to help farmers deal with drought, Parker said short-term strategies for how they manage water in their cropping systems may prove more important than drought-tolerant crops.

But ultimately, a mix of both is needed, he said.

2016-05-31T19:35:23-07:00June 19th, 2014|

Dry Farming in California

By Eric Holthaus; Slate.com

In a year with (practically) no water, here’s something that was inevitable: farming without any water at all.

Small farms around the Bay Area are reviving an ancient technique that is just what it sounds like. Add “dry farming” to the list of ideas that could get this dry state through the worst dry spell in half a millennium.

The Hoover Dam’s Lake Mead, the primary water supply for Las Vegas, has never had this little water to start June. Earlier this week, Fresno hit 110 degrees—the second-earliest achievement of that lofty mark in the 127 years that weather records have been kept there.

New data on Thursday showed California has now gone five consecutive weeks with fully 100 percent of the state rated at “severe,” “extreme,” or “exceptional” drought. The state is getting by on meager reserves amid a multiyear shortage, and there won’t be any more significant rain until the fall: The annual dry season has begun.

The last measurable rain in San Francisco was April 25, which is about a month earlier than normal. The coast gets most of its drinking water piped in from the Sierras anyway, so a dearth of local rainfall hasn’t done much except make cars and sidewalks extra dusty.

According to a San Francisco Chronicle analysis, the region is falling short of meeting conservation targets via voluntary water cutbacks. The Bay Area’s per capita water usage is already among the lowest in the state, so there’s not as much to cut as compared with other more water-hungry places.

In San Jose, water use is actually up slightly compared with the past three years’ average. If usage isn’t curtailed soon, San Francisco is considering mandatory water rationing for the first time in more than 20 years.

One theory on the lackluster response is that the state’s crisis isn’t as immediately visible to city dwellers as it is to farmers, who use 80 percent of the state’s water. Higher prices for food will be felt only gradually, even though they could linger for years. As an example, consumers are still feeling the pinch from higher meat prices linked to a 2012 drought in Texas that forced ranchers to cut back on herds.

There, I found one possible answer that’s catching on: get rid of water entirely.

Dry farming, a longtime niche of California’s massive agriculture industry, is gathering conversation within farmers market circles around the Bay Area. Here’s how it works, according to Fast Company:

By tapping the moisture stored in soil to grow crops, rather than using irrigation or rainfall during the wet season, dry-land farming was a staple of agriculture for millennia in places like the Mediterranean, and much of the American West, before the rise of dams and aquifer pumping.

During the rainy season, farmers break up soil then saturated with water. Using a roller, the first few inches of the soil are compacted and later form a dry crust, or dust mulch, that seals in the moisture against evaporation.

Dry farming isn’t as simple as just farming without rain. During a drought, it’s even more challenging.

“We’re concerned about keeping these trees alive. We try to create a barrier to keep the moisture,” said Stan Devoto, a dry farmer based in Sonoma County who raises apples, wine grapes, and cut flowers for Bay Area farmers markets. “On the east side of your grapevine, where the sun rises, you strip all the leaves. That allows for better airflow. On the west side, where the sun sets, you keep a good canopy of leaves to protect the drought. We do it by hand.”

The dry-farming method has long been practiced successfully in Mediterranean climates with a long dry season like California’s—basically, dry farmers forgo the extra fertilizer, water, and other inputs that maximize yields. Advocates say its water starvation diet produces sweeter and more flavorful tomatoes, apples, and other fruit. Some of the best wines ever produced in Napa Valley were dry farmed.

But there’s a significant downside. Though his heirloom apples make a cider that “brings to mind Lambic beer,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle, Devoto says “people have to be willing to pay a little bit more for them.” Dry farmers like Devoto are trading quantity for quality.

Devoto concedes that’s one of many reasons dry farming won’t have the potential to overthrow conventional agriculture. The lower water usage means there’s a significant yield tradeoff: His dry-farmed apples average 12 to 14 tons per acre, less than half the 20 to 40 tons per acre irrigated apple crops typically get. The wells on his property simply don’t produce enough water to irrigate.

That’s made his decision pretty easy.

2016-05-31T19:35:24-07:00June 19th, 2014|

Views on Food: Outsmarting the Drought

By Elaine Corn; The Sacramento Bee

Shahar Caspi tends acres of gardens, fruit trees and a commercial vineyard in the hamlet of Oregon House in the foothills between Marysville and Grass Valley. His job since 2012 has been raising food year round for his community and bringing perfect wine grapes to harvest – all without tilling, and with little to zero added water.

We drove between two fields, one side brown, ragged and parched, the other a Caspi no-water showcase – grape vines in bud break, the ground beneath them rich, a natural ground cover green as jade.

“Mulch with shredded roots,” he says exuberantly, eyes off the road. “Very simple!”

At a sunny glade, another concept preps cherry trees. He walks us past huge square holes he flushed with water and allowed to drain. The holes were filled with Caspi’s mulch, manure and compost, then a tree. “They won’t need water for many, many months.”

Back in the greenhouse next to his mountaintop home, Caspi laid manure on the rock-hard dirt floor, and on purpose didn’t till the soil underneath. He stuck chard seedlings directly into the manure. “They flourished immediately,” Caspi says. “The roots went sideways into a huge mass of roots. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

And despite no rainfall the first four months of his second season of raising food for his neighbors, water usage dropped 30 percent and yields increased.

How does he do it?

The same way a dietitian would bulk up a wasting patient with lots of calories and nutrients. Except Caspi is like a soil chef, mixing fermented manure and compost in varying proportions “to re-establish a whole layer of soil that holds water” like a subterranean sponge.

The technique is reminiscent of Rudolf Steiner’s bio-dynamics, which treats the farm as a holistic entity. But considering Caspi’s past and combining it with an uncertain future of water in California, a goal of using zero water to grow food is understandable.

Caspi grew up inculcated with respect for water. In Israel, kids get “Don’t Waste A Drop” stickers in school that go on the family fridge. “It’s so much in our blood to save water,” he says. “We had a cartoon that showed the whole family showering together under a few drops of water.”

Modern drip irrigation with emitters was an idea out of Israel. So is placing black plastic sheeting over soil to contain moisture. Israel leads the world in recycling 80 percent of its water. Its latest technology collects dew.

In California, some growers are on top of the drought. A report from the California Farm Water Coalition says that in the San Joaquin Valley $2.2 billion was invested in drip irrigation on 1.8 million acres. But for every conserver using soil probes, infrared photography and improved weather forecasting, we have devourers of resources.

“Here you flood fields,” Caspi says. “An Israeli would say, ‘Are you kidding?’ It’s the mentality of abundance, that it’s going to last forever.”

In 2008, winemaker Gideon Beinstock hired Caspi to be vineyard manager at Renaissance Vineyard and Winery in Oregon House. With Caspi’s degree in plant sciences from The Hebrew University and years of experience in water strategy in Israel, his mission was to convert 45 acres of conventionally cultivated vineyard to fully bio-dynamic viticulture.

Production costs went down by 12 percent. Yields increased between 3 percent and 7 percent.

Beyond his work at the vineyard, Caspi tends the gardens of about 50 “member” neighbors in and around Oregon House. Because this is a rural community, Caspi can put a sign on the road saying “manure needed,” and loads are brought to him for fermenting.

The finished manure plus organic matter from garden waste, wood ash and olive paste all come from within a 10-mile radius. It returns to the members in the form of Caspi’s magical soil smoothie that retains water and nourishes roots.

In the garden, take a load off and don’t till. Then follow Caspi’s instructions.

Find a source of manure and compost. Lay a thick layer, up to 4 inches, on the ground and plant right into it. Apply plant by plant rather than over the entire garden. For tomatoes, dig a deep hole, water the hole until the water drains, fill the hole with a mix of chicken manure and compost, then a tomato seedling. Add a bit more nitrogen in the form of half a teaspoon of chicken manure when you dig the hole. Water once more.

How long can you go without added water? A week? A month? Water only if lack of moisture is detected by sticking a finger into the ground. “The first year is hardest,” Caspi says. “Don’t give up. If you fail, you try again.”

As to your own sense of food security, you can have a community-supported agriculture system on your street. “One person grows the potatoes, someone else grows the beans, and another person grows herbs,” Caspi explains. Everyone adds to the pile tended by the neighborhood compost geek. In a few years, the soil will be so absorptive it will gulp winter rainwater and retain it through summer.

Without access to the livestock that live near Caspi, there might be a cost for store-bought manure, unless you have a friend with a horse, a cow or chickens. When a crop is ready, deliveries begin in staggered availability.

With wells already stressed in the Sierra foothills, Caspi remains an Israeli at heart, tinkering for extra droplets of water in what he presumes is a terminal drought.

“The plant takes only what it needs,” Caspi says. “This is how it works in nature. If you don’t need it, why do you want to take it?”

To protect ourselves from food shortages and to buffer California’s agricultural economy, we all should regard any adjustments that allow us to grow food with less water as permanent.

 

2016-05-31T19:35:24-07:00June 17th, 2014|

From Service to Harvest – Military Veteran Deploys Aquaponics on the Farm

By: Blair Anthony Robertson; Sacramento Bee

Farming wasn’t Vonita Murray’s first choice, but after making a drastic career change, the 38-year-old Navy Veteran, former office manager and longtime fitness enthusiastic now believes digging in the dirt, growing food and being her own boss may be the dream job she has always wanted.

The transition to farming for Murray, 38, happened gradually over the past several years. She eventually took stock of her life, sized up her talents, sharpened the focus on her dreams and decided she was no longer cut out for a desk job.

For several years, Murray had been an office manager and a CAD, or computer-assisted design, technician for an architecture firm. Much of her work focused on remodeling floor plans for a major fast food chain’s Northern California stores. But when the economic downturn hit the architecture and design industry, Murray got laid off. She saw it as a chance to make a change in her life.

“It was the best thing that ever happened to me,” she said.

Using a $5,000 grant she received from the Davis-based Farmer Veteran Coalition, Murray bought some basic farm equipment and managed to launch her new career. She also enrolled in the first class of the California Farm Academy, a six-month farming course run by the Center for Land-based Learning in Winters.

Murray knows it will take hard work and several years before she can make a comfortable living as a farmer. But she has a long-term plan and says farming – including many 12-hour days – is exactly the lifestyle she was seeking.

“I’ve never been so tired, so broke and so happy,” she said with a laugh. “For the first time in my life, I have worth and a purpose. What I do has value in people’s lives.”

More and more veterans are turning to farming to connect in a similar way. “We’re all a family and we all try to help each other succeed,” Murray said.

When Michael O’Gorman founded the Farmer Veteran Coalition in 2009, he searched throughout the U.S. and found just nine veterans interested in going into farming. By the end of that year, the number was up to 30. These days, O’Gorman and his group have helped 3,000 veterans transition into farming.

“What’s really attracting veterans to agriculture is it offers a sense of purpose and a sense of mission,” said O’Gorman, who has farmed for 40 years. “It’s about feeding their country, offering food security and a better diet.”

O’Gorman is seeing more women get into farming and says Murray is a great role model.

“Vonita is dynamic, creative, energetic and smart. Whatever she does, she will do it well and take it places,” he said. “She’s a growing phenomenon. About 15 percent of those who serve in the military are women and that’s about the same percentage we hear from.

More and more women are going into agriculture. The military and farming are both male-dominated. The women who have taken on both of them just seem like a really exceptional group.”

Those who encounter Murray are often impressed by her energy and her holistic, lead-by-example approach to farming. Not only does she want to grow good food, she sees the work she does as a way to help people be healthy.

Indeed, Murray’s physical presence says plenty. Though she no longer trains as a bodybuilder, she remains noticeably lean and muscular. Her workouts these days focus on functional training and she is a big advocate of Crossfit, which combines classic weightlifting with mobility exercises.

“I’m doing all this because I want to get people healthy,” said Murray, noting that she hopes to someday build an obstacle course on the property so people can use it to work out.

She also has a penchant for unorthodox and innovative approaches to growing food. Standing on a portion of the land she leases in rural Elverta next to the renowned Sterling Caviar facility, Murray watches water stream past. It’s runoff from the tanks where sturgeon are raised for their prized caviar. It’s also the key to what she will grow on her new “farm” site.

Murray essentially harnesses the water, 3 million gallons a day and loaded with nutrients, to create an innovative style of growing food called aquaponics, which combines modern hydroponics with forward-thinking environmental awareness.

The water goes through a settling pond to separate solids from liquids, travels through a moat and into small ponds where Murray is growing produce she sells to restaurants and to a growing number of customers at the Saturday farmers market in Oak Park.

The outgoing and optimistic Murray has put some of her energy into tapping resources that can help get her going in farming. She obtained a $35,000 low-interest loan from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Murray, whose produce operation is going to specialize in watercress, says she would have been at a loss as to how to proceed as a farmer without the education she got at the California Farm Academy. The program costs about $2,600 and various grants subsidize the tuition, according to Dawnie Andrak, director of development for the Center of Land-Based Learning.

Those who enroll run the gamut of age and work background. About 20 students graduate each year. To make it a real-world experience, they write a business plan and present it to a panel composed of people from the banking, business and farm community.

“There are more women like Vonita getting into farming,” Andrak said. “You will not find someone more dedicated and more clear about what it is she wants to do. She is certainly not one to give up.”

Jennifer Taylor, the director of the Farm Academy, is herself an example of a woman who made the career leap into farming. She was a research biologist who had no idea until well after college that a life in agriculture might appeal to her. She landed a four-month internship on a farm, was given four calves and eventually rented a barn and started dairy farming.

“If you have no connection to agriculture, it’s very difficult to imagine yourself doing it, Taylor said. “It’s a way many people want to live, an opportunity to be your own boss, work outside with your hands and be your own boss.”

But can you make a living?

“That depends,” said Taylor, noting that one young farmer from the program now sells to about 50 Bay Area restaurants and nets about $75,000 a year.

Back in Elverta, Murray is busy tending her crops and her chickens. She’s not making a profit yet, but she knows it takes time. More than anything, she loves the work, the lifestyle and the mission. She sometimes feels the stress of having debt and not knowing whether her crops will thrive.

But her farm is called Thrive Acres for a reason.

“You have to keep dreaming,” she said with a smile. “This is just the beginning.”

 

2016-05-31T19:35:25-07:00June 17th, 2014|

Poll Finds Little Support for Drought Spending Despite Broad Awareness

Source: Bettina Boxall; Los Angeles Times 

Most Californians surveyed say the statewide drought has had little or no impact on their daily lives, and a majority oppose the suspension of environmental protections or large-scale public spending to boost water supplies, a new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll has found.

Although 89% characterize the drought as a major problem or crisis, only 16% say it has personally affected them to a major degree.

Despite widespread news coverage of the drought — one of the worst in recent decades — the state’s major population centers have largely escaped severe mandatory rationing. Even agriculture, which as California’s thirstiest sector is inevitably hit the hardest by drought, has partially compensated for reduced water delivery by pumping more groundwater.

That has softened the drought’s effect on many, apparently blunting the desire for drastic remedies and big spending on water projects.

While Central Valley congressmen and some agribusiness interests have blamed environmental regulations for worsening the water shortages, those polled cited a much broader range of causes. Topping the list was a lack of rain and snow and people using too much water, followed by insufficient storage and climate change.

“They’re really blaming larger forces here,” said David Kanevsky of American Viewpoint, the Republican firm that conducted the opinion survey with Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, a Democratic firm. “What they don’t want to see is quick fixes at the expense of the environment.”

The survey showed strong support for water recycling, capturing storm water, increasing storage in underground aquifers, voluntary conservation and seawater desalination. A smaller percentage, though still a majority, favored building new dams and reservoirs.

But when it comes to paying for the projects, the numbers flipped. Only 36% want to improve storage and delivery systems by spending taxpayer dollars.

“As soon as you inject spending into it, support dries up,” said Drew Lieberman of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner.

Pollsters conducted the telephone survey of 1,511 registered California voters from May 21 to May 28 for the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and the Los Angeles Times. The margin of error is plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.

A large majority of those surveyed, 87%, said they were trying to save water by taking shorter showers, flushing toilets less frequently and making other changes in their domestic routines. Two-thirds say they are watering their lawns less, and roughly a quarter say they’ve ripped out lawns and replaced them with drought-tolerant plants.

Generally speaking, people in all parts of the state were taking steps to reduce domestic water use. But regional differences surfaced when people were queried about solutions.

Coastal areas favored mandatory 20% cuts in water use more than inland regions. In Southern California, 45% of those surveyed said water rates should be increased to promote conservation, compared with 56% in the Bay Area and slightly less than a third in the Central Valley.

A biology major with independent political leanings, Hart also opposed suspending environmental regulations. “I believe we should do more as a community to limit our water usage before we go and affect the wildlife around us,” she said.

The Bay Area had the smallest share of those saying the drought had a major impact — 11% — probably reflecting an urban landscape with some of the lowest per capita water use in the state. But 32% of those in the Central Valley, the state’s agricultural heart, said the drought had a major effect on their lives.

A sharp partisan divide surfaced over the role of climate change, with 78% of Democrats saying it was very or somewhat responsible for water supply problems, compared with 44% of Republicans.

Democrats and Republicans differed to a lesser extent on whether environmental protections for fish and wildlife should be suspended in response to water shortages. Overall, 55% of voters said no, as did 56% of Democrats, compared with 45% of Republicans and 64% of those who didn’t align with a party.

Those results suggest a bill passed by the GOP-controlled U.S. House and headed to a House-Senate conference committee is out of sync with a majority of the state’s voters. The legislation would roll back federal fish protections to increase delivery of water in California. But of 11 different water-supply solutions in the opinion survey, easing environmental regulations was the only one opposed by more than 50%.

Photos and newscasts about shrinking reservoirs and dusty cropland have also apparently failed to boost voter willingness to open the public wallet for water projects.

Reluctance to spend taxpayer dollars on water supply was found across the political spectrum. Whether Democratic, Republican or independent, fewer than 40% of those surveyed supported storage and delivery system improvements if they cost taxpayer money.

The numbers are largely unchanged from the results of a USC-Times poll conducted in September that gauged support for state borrowing to finance water-supply improvements. Legislators are now trying to hammer out a water bond to place on the November ballot.

“I think it’s trouble for passing a water bond,” Lieberman said, “if the ‘no’ side spends money” this fall.

2016-05-31T19:35:25-07:00June 17th, 2014|
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