Trends Archives - Page 27 of 31 - California Agriculture News Today

UC President Janet Napolitano Presents Food Initiative Plan to CDFA

University of California President Janet Napolitano today (July 1) presented the university’s plans for a comprehensive food initiative to the California State Board of Food and Agriculture.

The UC Global Food Initiative is intended to marshal the university’s resources — including curriculum and world-class research, student efforts and operational efforts in place across the university’s 10 campuses — to address global challenges related to food.

“This initiative grows out of a commitment made by all 10 UC campus chancellors and myself,” Napolitano said. “It is a commitment to work collectively to put a greater emphasis on what UC can do as a public research university, in one of the most robust agricultural regions in the world, to take on one of the world’s most pressing issues.”

The food initiative will build on UC’s tradition of innovative agricultural research to support farmers and ranchers. Future efforts will build on work already begun by UC’s 10 campuses and its Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources (ANR) to address internal and external issues with a variety of approaches.

UC research, for example, taught Californians how to remove salts from the alkali soils in the Central Valley, transforming that barren landscape into one of the world’s most productive farming regions, Napolitano noted in her presentation to the California State Board of Food and Agriculture.

Today, the World Food Center at UC Davis stands with 26 other centers dedicated to food and agriculture on that campus; students and faculty at UC Santa Cruz are transforming the field of agroecology; and the Berkeley Food Institute is studying the relationship between pest control, conservation and food safety on Central Coast farms. The cutting-edge Healthy Campus Initiative at UCLA taps all members of the campus community.

The initiative is not limited to seeking any single solution or set of solutions to the myriad food issues confronting the world, Napolitano said.

“The idea,” she said, “is to provide the intellectual and technical firepower, as well as the operational examples needed for communities in California and around the world to find pathways to a sustainable food future.”

In describing the building blocks for the initiative, Napolitano noted that the university’s agricultural outreach and public service programs — in every California county and more than 100 nations — bring UC resources to individuals and communities to help them access safe, affordable and nutritious food while sustaining scarce natural resources.

The university’s work also will help inform and drive policy discussions from the local to the international levels, and expand partnerships with government agencies such as the California Department of Food and Agriculture.

“This initiative shows great vision and leadership from President Napolitano and the University of California,” said CDFA Secretary Karen Ross, “Climate change and population growth will greatly strain our ability to provide healthy food to people here and around the world.

“President Napolitano’s proposal to leverage the strategic assets of the entire UC organization makes it a valuable partner in addressing the significant challenges and opportunities for our production agriculture and food system.”

Emphasizing that student engagement is key, Napolitano announced, as one of her first actions, the funding of three $2,500 President’s Global Food Initiative Student Fellowships to be awarded on each campus to undergraduate or graduate students. The fellowships will fund student research projects or internships.

Among other early efforts to be undertaken as part of the initiative are the following:

Internally, campuses will heighten their collective purchasing power and dining practices to encourage sustainable farming practices, and model healthy eating and zero food waste; food pantries and farmers markets that exist on some campuses will be spread to all 10. Partnerships with K-12 school districts to enhance leveraging procurement for these purposes also will be explored.
Food issues will be integrated into more undergraduate and graduate courses, catalogues of food-related courses will be developed, and demonstration gardens will be made available on each campus to increase opportunities for students to participate in experiential learning.
Data mining of existing information will be deployed to help develop insights and action plans for California agriculture and responses to climate change.

New policies will be enacted to allow small growers to serve as suppliers for UC campuses.

Patrick Cavanaugh2016-05-31T19:34:20-07:00July 1st, 2014|

Save Our Water Web Site Launches “Don’t Waste Summer” Campaign

As a drought-stricken California moves further into a hot summer, Save Our Water – a partnership between the Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA) and the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) – is launching Don’t Waste Summer, a campaign devoted to providing daily tips and news to help Californians find ways to conserve at home and at work every day.

Don’t Waste Summer kicks off this week with the official start of summer. Tips will range from simple ideas such as shutting water off as you brush your teeth, to checking for and fixing leaks, to helpful ways businesses big and small can do their part in saving water during the drought.

The campaign will also showcase the efforts of Save Our Water partners to conserve this summer.

The Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA) is the largest statewide coalition of public water agencies in the country. Its nearly 440 public agency members collectively are responsible for 90% of the water delivered to cities, farms and businesses in California.

The Department of Water Resources (DWR) is responsible for managing and protecting California’s water. DWR works with other agencies to benefit the state’s people, and to protect, restore and enhance the natural and human environments.

Patrick Cavanaugh2016-05-31T19:34:21-07:00June 30th, 2014|

TV Campaign for ‘Grapes from California’ Kicks Off on Food Network

A new television campaign for ‘Grapes from California’ launched in June on the Food Network.

“These commercials showcase the natural beauty, easy versatility and great taste of California grapes while communicating the value of sharing life’s special moments with family and friends, and the care that growers put into growing,” said Kathleen Nave, president of the California Table Grape Commission.

One of the two new commercials has a grower theme and the other has a dinner party theme. Watch them here: www.grapesfromcalifornia.com.

These 30-second commercials, the first two of a planned series of six, are seen during shows like, “Trisha Yearwood’s Southern Kitchen,” “Sandra’s Money Saving Meals,” “Home for Dinner with Jamie Deen,” and “Diners, Drive-ins & Dives.”

The Grapes from California commercials will run through December and and will be used in future seasons.

Patrick Cavanaugh2016-05-31T19:34:21-07:00June 26th, 2014|

Cottage Food Industry on Growth Trend in California

A little more than a year ago, a California law went into effect that gave small farmers and even home gardeners a new opportunity to sell value-added products.

Shermain Hardesty

The California Homemade Food Act permits individuals to produce certain types of cottage food in home kitchens to sell in limited quantities to the public.

That sounds simple, but like most laws, there are plenty of caveats. The legislation has stipulations about the types of foods allowable, registration, permits and labeling requirements.

UC Cooperative Extension has been helping farmers and home gardeners who produce fruits, vegetables, nuts, herbs, and honey take advantage of the new opportunity at workshops around the state, reported the Stockton Record.

Shermain Hardesty, UC Small Farm Program extension economist, is coordinating the project. Hardesty thinks that marketing may be the hardest part of creating a successful cottage food businesses for many farmers and other entrepreneurs.

At the workshops, Hardesty teaches the basic “Four P’s” of marketing: product, place, price and promotion.

Patrick Cavanaugh2016-05-31T19:34:22-07:00June 25th, 2014|

$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.

Patrick Cavanaugh2016-05-31T19:34:22-07:00June 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.”

Patrick Cavanaugh2016-05-31T19:34:22-07:00June 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.

Patrick Cavanaugh2016-05-31T19:35:22-07:00June 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.

Patrick Cavanaugh2016-05-31T19:35:22-07:00June 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.

Patrick Cavanaugh2016-05-31T19:35:23-07:00June 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.

Patrick Cavanaugh2016-05-31T19:35:23-07:00June 19th, 2014|

Sign Up For Our Newsletter!

California Ag News…
At Your Fingertips!

Sign Up For Our Newsletter!

California Ag News… At Your Fingertips!

California Ag News…
At Your Fingertips!