Kern County Ag Ranks Second in State, Fresno Drops to Third

Ruben J. Arroyo, Kern County Agricultural Commissioner reported the 2013 gross value of all agricultural commodities produced in the county was $6,769,855,590, according to the 2013 Kern County Agricultural Crop Report, representing an increase (6%) from the revised 2012 crop value ($6,352,061,100). Thus, Kern County ag ranks second in state, with Tulare ahead, and Fresno behind.

Kern County’s top five commodities for 2013 were Grapes, Almonds, Milk, Citrus and Cattle & Calves, which make up more than $4.6 Billion (68%) of the Total Value; with the top twenty commodities making up more than 94% of the Total Value. The 2013 Kern County Crop Report can be found on the Department of Agriculture and Measurement Standards website: www.kernag.com

Tulare County reported gross annual production in 2013 at $7.8 Billion, Fresno County, $6.4 Billion, and Monterey County, $4.38 Billion.

As predicted by many, including CaliforniaAgToday on July 15, 2014, Fresno County, long-time top ag county in the state—and in the nation—now ranks third in the state and has regressed in ag growth since 2011.

Les Wright, Fresno County Ag Commissioner, attributes much of the decrease to the water shortage, particularly exacerbated by a large part of the West Side being dependent on both state and federal surface water deliveries that have been curtailed by pumping restrictions due to the Endangered Species Act.

2016-05-31T19:33:30-07:00August 19th, 2014|

CaliforniaAgNews Streams 24/7, Globally

CaliforniaAgNews 24/7 Available on Any Platform

 

Clovis, Calif., August 14, 2014  Timely, relevant and important California agricultural radio news is now available for the first time ever –online, 24/7. Find it at www.CaliforniaAgNews.com.

Listen to the most comprehensive California agricultural news, updated continuously, on your smartphone, iPad, tablet, or any computer.

CaliforniaAgNews 24/7 includes the latest reports broadcasted on the CaliforniaAgToday Radio network, plus extensive in-depth interviews and reports, all presented to users in a state-of-the art, multi-platform format.

“CaliforniaAgNews 24/7 uniquely covers the state’s $45 billion dollar agricultural industry,” noted Ag News Director Patrick Cavanaugh, a thirty-year-veteran agricultural news reporter, often breaking stories.

“Our broadcast team is constantly in the field reporting news directly from farmers and other industry leaders throughout the state,” said Cavanaugh. “We also report relevant USDA news.”

“This new service will spread the word on what’s really happening in California agriculture during this severe drought crisis, worsened by federally-imposed environmental restrictions,” said Cavanaugh.

“In California, a major disconnect exists between the urban consumer and the farming community. CaliforniaAgNews 24/7 bridges the gap between the field and the fork; connecting the public to the land, resources, science & technology, politics and policies of California’s safe and local food, fiber, and fuel,” noted Cavanaugh.

“Hearing a farmers’ voice talking about how she or he provides a safe and nutritious crop will go a long way towards that city listener’s understanding of the farmer. On CaiforniaAgNews 24/7, listeners will hear, firsthand, about the concerns and challenges of farming in California – the leading and most diverse farming state in the nation,” said Cavanaugh.

2016-05-31T19:33:31-07:00August 14th, 2014|

Yolo Food Bank Receives Grant from National Dairy Council

Source: Woodland Daily Democrat

Yolo Food Bank announced that it has been awarded a $10,000 grant from the National Dairy Council to increase dairy capacity for the Food Bank’s partners.

This grant was awarded to 20 food banks, nationally, with Yolo being the only California food bank to receive it, according to the Yolo Food Bank.

The Food Bank plans to use these funds to purchase refrigerators for some of its partner agencies.

“We would like to thank both the National Dairy Council and the Dairy Council of California for this generous grant,” said Karen Strach, director of programs at Yolo Food Bank. “A number of our partners have limited or no access to refrigeration and therefore are unable to distribute dairy products to their clients. This grant will allow us to increase the number of food pantries that will be able to provide dairy products to local residents.”

Between May 2013 and April 2014, Yolo Food Bank distributed 117,000 pounds of dairy products. It is anticipated that this grant will increase the amount of dairy products that the partner agencies are able to distribute by approximately 5,800 pounds each year.

The mission of Yolo Food Bank is to alleviate hunger and malnutrition in Yolo County. Through its programs and partnerships with 60 nonprofit partner agencies, approximately 23,000 residents are served each month.

Established in 1915, NDC comprises a staff of registered dietitians and nutrition research and communications experts across the country. NDC has taken a leadership role in promoting child health and wellness through programs such as Fuel Up to Play 60.

Developed by NDC and the National Football League (NFL), Fuel Up to Play 60 encourages youth to consume nutrient-rich foods and achieve at least 60 minutes of physical activity every day. – See more at: http://www.nationaldairycouncil.org/AboutNDC/Pages/AboutNDCLanding.aspx#sthash.628ntxdh.dpuf

2016-05-31T19:34:18-07:00July 10th, 2014|

CDFA Official on Success and Future of California Dairy

Karen Ross, Secretary for the California Department of Food and Agriculture, talks about the role of California Dairy has on the current global market, and what the future hold for the industry.

“So we really have seen a couple things going on. One is this huge constant demand for California milk-based products. the export markets looking for powders, they can’t get enough powders, they have huge confidence in the food safety of our milk production here, we‘re strategically located,” said Ross. “So that demand has really drive up prices, but at the same time fortunately for us our friends in the Midwest had great corn and soybean harvest and so those grain prices had moderated so that farmers are finally to the point where their realizing some margins and they need to rebuild their equity,” she added.

Ross mentions that industry leaders are already looking towards the future.

“We also to the credit of the leaders and the producers and processor community, are still meeting as part of their California Dairy Futures Task Force, and we actually have a couple different proposals for some reform to of our pricing system going forward, that we are taking a deeper dive in. We have some economists that are doing some analytics on that and concurrently the cooperative continues to work on the petition and we will find out people are willing to consider seriously going into a federally milk marketing order. ” said Ross.

Ross explains some aspects of the dairy industry need to change.

“So I think its healthy for the industry now that we have some margins in the business and to really think about our future and this almost 60-year old pricing system, and what works, and we want to retain and where we need to create some flexibility so that we can be very competitive  and maximize our opportunities in the export market.” said Ross.

2016-05-31T19:34:20-07:00July 3rd, 2014|

Ranchers Concerned About Invasion of Medusahead Weed on Foothill Rangeland

Source: Jeannette E. Warnert

One of the worst rangeland weeds in the West is aptly named after a monster in Greek mythology that has writhing snakes instead of hair.

Medusahead, an unwelcome transplant from Europe, is anathema to the cattle living off rangeland grass. The weed’s three-inch-long bristles poke and sometimes injure the animals’ mouths and eyes.

The weed is also low-quality forage for livestock. When medusahead takes over rangeland, it reduces the forage value by 80 percent.

When Fadzayi Mashiri, UC Cooperative Extension advisor in Mariposa, Merced and Madera counties, was appointed in 2013, she became the first natural resources and rangeland expert to hold the position since the retirement of Wain Johnson more than a decade before.

She polled local ranchers to determine their most pressing problems. They said weed management, and in particular, medusahead.

Medusahead is relatively easy to identify on the range. It has distinctive stiff awns and a seed head that does not break apart as seeds mature. Patches of medusahead are obvious when spring turns into summer.

“Medusahead stays green after most of the annual grasses have dried off,” Mashiri said.

Medusahead has high silica content, making it unpalatable to cattle. The silica also protects the plant from decomposition, so a thick thatch builds up on the rangeland, suppressing more desirable species, but not the germination of the next year’s medusahead seedlings.

Over the years, UC scientists have discovered a number of medusahead control strategies:

  •  Corral cows on medusahead before the plant heads out or employ sheep to graze medusahead patches. It’s not sheep’s favorite forage either, but they will eat if left with no other option.
  • Prescribed burning in late spring or early summer. However, this strategy poses air quality and liability issues.
  • Apply nitrogen fertilizer to medusahead to improve palatability before it flowers, which is showing promise for controlling the weed and boosting the value of infested rangeland.
  • Chemical control.

In spring 2014, Mashiri conducted a demonstration field trial in Mariposa County of medusahead control with the herbicide Milestone, which was developed by Dow AgroSciences mainly to control broadleaf weeds like yellow starthistle.

The trial followed rangeland weed control research done by scientists including Joe DiTomaso, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Plant Sciences at UC Davis. DiTomaso found that the density of medusahead in treated areas declined and concluded that Milestone prevents medusahead seedlings from thriving.

Unfortunately, Milestone treatment of large rangeland areas is expensive.

“But if the value of forage declines, the productivity of livestock is compromised,” Mashiri said. “When you look at it that way, the chemical treatment might be useful.”

2016-05-31T19:35:27-07:00June 10th, 2014|

Crystal Creamery of Modesto Launches Campaign Against Theft of Milk Crates

Source: John Holland; Fresno Bee

A Modesto-based dairy company has had enough of milk crate theft, which costs the U.S. industry an estimated $80 million a year.

Crystal Creamery, formerly known as Foster Farms Dairy, is working with law enforcement, grocers and other partners to combat the problem.

They are focusing mainly on large-scale thieves who try to sell the ground-up plastic to recyclers, although it’s also illegal to take a single crate for use as a toolbox or storage container.

“Milk crates have always disappeared, but in the last two or three years, the rate of disappearance is greater,” said Elliot Begoun, vice president of sales and marketing at Crystal.

He said the thefts have increased with the rising value of scrap plastic, which is based in part on the price of the petroleum used to make virgin plastic.

Begoun talked about the problem during an interview Tuesday at the Kansas Avenue headquarters of the company, still owned by the Foster family, which also is in the poultry business.

On a typical day, Crystal trucks haul about 60,000 crates filled with milk, sour cream and cottage cheese to grocery stores and food service customers from Bakersfield to the Oregon border. The drivers are supposed to bring back crates from previous deliveries, but they can be stolen if not secured at the customers’ locations, Begoun said.

Each time that happens, Crystal loses about $4, which is hard to take in an industry with tight profit margins, he said. Nationwide each year about 20 million crates are stolen, according to the International Dairy Foods Association.

Crystal is working with grocers on improved security, as well as with food banks, which sometimes get donations of dairy products in the crates.

The company also approached Stanislaus County Sheriff Adam Christianson. He said Tuesday that the crime is driven mainly by addicts looking for recycling income they can spend on drugs, similar to metal theft.

Christianson said he was surprised that the scrap value of plastic has risen so much. He noted other such commodities that are being stolen, such as used grease from restaurants, which rendering companies buy.

“Milk crates are no different,” the sheriff said. “It’s a material that can be recycled.”

Christianson said he is asking detectives to look into where the stolen crates are being ground up and recycled. They’re molded to include a warning against unauthorized use, and their distinctive appearance makes it hard to sell them intact.

The Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries warns member companies against accepting materials “that are clearly marked as property belonging to an entity other than the seller, such as beer kegs, milk crates and other marked materials.”

Crystal also is asking the public to resist the temptation to take a small number of crates for personal use. Begoun and Larry Diggory, director of food operations at the plant, said they have seen them used in retail displays, on the back of motorcycles and on plumbers’ trucks.

“What we’re trying to do is to create an awareness with the public that it’s theft and it’s a cost of business,” Begoun said.

 

2016-05-31T19:35:27-07:00June 10th, 2014|

Governor Brown Issues Proclamation Declaring Real California Milk Month

Source: CDFA
Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. issued a proclamation declaring June 2014 as “Real California Milk Month” in the State of California.

 

The text of the proclamation is below:

PROCLAMATION


California prides itself on its vibrant agricultural sector, of which the dairy industry forms a key part. Our dairy farms contribute in innumerable ways to the state’s economic prosperity. 

California’s dairy farmers’ hard work has made them leaders in the field. Their leadership has resulted in the annual production of over 40 billion pounds of milk, accounting for about twenty-one percent of the nation’s entire supply.

The landscape, economy, health, and nutrition of California would not be the same without our dairy farms. I urge all Californians to take time to appreciate the privilege of living in one of the world’s great dairy-producing regions, and to support our industry by buying milk and other dairy products from our Golden State.

NOW THEREFORE I, EDMUND G. BROWN JR., Governor of the State of California, do hereby proclaim June 2014, as “Real California Milk Month.”

IN WITNESS WHEREOF I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Great Seal of the State of California to be affixed this 29th day of May 2014.

2016-05-31T19:35:29-07:00June 3rd, 2014|

Rescued Calf Gets New High-Tech Prosthetics

Hot and tired from a three-hour drive inside a trailer behind a pickup truck, the 600-pound English Charolais calf was content to lay on the grass behind a south Houston building while a team of technicians worked on its hind legs.

When the calf known as Hero heard its name called, the 15-month-old gingerly got up, unsteadily rocked a bit, then waddled away, tail wagging, eyes wide and tongue licking. It headed across a patch of concrete toward an appetizing snack of green shrubbery a few yards away.

Hero became what may be the nation’s only double-amputee calf with prosthetics on Wednesday when fitted for a new pair of high-tech devices attached to its back legs.

“I’m so proud,” Hero’s caretaker, Kitty Martin, exclaimed. “Look at you!”

It’s the latest step in a year-long effort that has taken Martin and the animal from Virginia, where she rescued it last year from an Augusta County farm where it succumbed to frostbite that claimed its hooves, to Texas.

Animal surgeons at Texas A&M University treated Hero for several months and affixed the initial prosthetics that the calf now had outgrown.

“This is our first cow,” Erin O’Brien, an orthotist and prosthetist for Hanger Inc., an Austin-based national firm that makes prosthetic limbs. She was among a team of about eight people working on the project for about two weeks.

“We did a lot of study of photos and video of cows just regular walking to see what it looks like and see if we can mimic that biomechanically,” O’Brien said. “It’s unusual, yes, but an opportunity.”

Surgeons at Texas A&M accepted Martin’s initial pleas for help, removing about two inches of bone to enable them to create a pad of tissue that would allow for prosthetics.

“Until I worked on him, I hadn’t ever done it before. And I’d not heard of (prosthetics) before in a bovine,” said Ashlee Watts, an equine orthopedic surgeon at the school.

Martin figures she has spent nearly $40,000 to save the calf.

“I don’t know how to explain it,” she said. “I’m an animal rescuer. And he had everything against him.”

Hero’s hooves are custom made of urethane and titanium, the connecting components are titanium and carbon fiber and the sockets that attach to his legs are carbon fiber and acrylic resin.

Martin and O’Brien declined to discuss the cost, but estimated that similar devices for humans go for between $4,000 and $8,000 apiece.

Hero’s sockets are painted with black and white cow spots. “Holstein legs,” O’Brien laughed.

“We like to customize legs to the person’s personality,” she said.

Martin, 53, a former veterinary technician and retired truck driver originally from Dalhart, in the Texas Panhandle, is moving with her husband from Greenville, Virginia, to Cameron in Central Texas.

She’s hoping Hero, who could grow to 1,500 pounds, can be a therapy animal for wounded veterans and special needs children.

“It makes my day,” Martin said. “He’s got a very bright future right now.”

 

2016-05-31T19:35:31-07:00May 22nd, 2014|

Secretary Ross Joins Elementary School Students to Experience Mobile Dairy Classroom

Source: Tammy Anderson-Wise, CEO Dairy Council of California

Earlier this month, CDFA Secretary Karen Ross joined students at Sacramento’s Pacific Elementary School for a visit from the Mobile Dairy Classroom, where an instructor shared fun facts like: cows have built-in fly swatters, and milk is warm when it comes out of the udder.

As the original farm to school program in California, Mobile Dairy Classroom has brought a bit of the dairy farm to schools across the state since the 1930s.

To help children better appreciate where their milk and milk products come from, the free assemblies provided by the Dairy Council of California teach children about agriculture and cows, healthy eating from all five food groups, and how to lead healthy, active lifestyles.

Mobile Dairy Classroom assemblies augment the Dairy Council of California’s classroom nutrition education lessons that are also free to schools as part of the dairy industry’s commitment to community health.

With six Mobile Dairy Classroom units across California, 400,000 students each year have the chance to make a personal connection with a cow and a calf, and better understand where their milk comes from.

Furthermore, the assemblies allow for a better appreciation for the role of the dairy farmer and milk processor in providing healthy food and why milk and milk products are an essential part of an overall balanced diet with foods from all five food groups.

2016-10-18T16:10:11-07:00May 20th, 2014|

Severe Drought Now Covers 100% of the State

Mark Svoboda, National Drought Mitigation Center, reports that all of California is now depicted as being in severe drought (D2) or worse this week, with the D3/D4 areas remaining unchanged. A heat wave is settling in that will only serve to exacerbate and accelerate drought impact concerns across the state. Increased water demand and risk of fire will ramp up as the heat does, and the state’s agricultural industry continues to suffer. The current drought map is included below.

A cursory review of drought impacts includes:

Groundwater: CDFA reports the state’s groundwater resources are at historically low levels. Fifty percent of the 5,400 wells assessed have dropped since 2008 to points lower than they in the previous century. San Joaquin Valley levels fell more than 100 feet below previous historic lows, while Sacramento Valley, Sonoma Valley and Los Angeles basin levels fell up to 50 feet. Note that the analysis was done in the spring when groundwater levels are usually at their highest.

Curtailments: CDFA reports curtailments in various watersheds, depending upon runoff conditions, water demand and the type of water rights. Water rights holders, including water agencies, farmers and other property owners, have been unable to receive their due water supplies. Junior water rights holders lose out first. Efforts are underway to save water for essential health and safety purposes, wildlife and habitat.

Food Assistance: The California Department of Social Services announced food assistance provisions to at least 24 counties with high unemployment rates and a high proportion of agricultural workers. Foodbanks struggle to supply provisions as the state grows less produce and sources provide lower produce donations.

Livestock Reductions: Many cattle and other livestock producers in California transported thousands of animals by truck to other states as they cannot wait out the stunted grass and depleted water sources. Reuters reported that up to 100,000 California cattle have left the state in just the past four months and producers are selling their cattle early.

Fruit and vegetable prices:  rose 2 and 3 percent in 2013, respectively, per USDA, as low water supplies affected production. A similar price increase in 2014 is likely as more than three million acres out of the nine million acres of irrigated land in California receive no surface water, aside from rain.

Reduced production:  USDA forecasts a 20 percent reduction in rice production and a 35 percent drop in cotton production in California this year as farmers leave fields fallow in response to very meager water allocations.

Photo credit: Robert Galbraith/ReutersUS Drought Monitor CA

 

Drought Monitor Key

2016-05-31T19:35:32-07:00May 17th, 2014|
Go to Top