The North American Meat Institute (Meat Institute) said that today’s U.S.-Japan deal to increase the beef safeguard trigger level under the U.S.-Japan Trade Agreement will increase the American beef industry’s ability to meet Japan’s growing demand for U.S. beef.
“The Meat Institute welcomes this agreement that will help the U.S. beef industry earn greater market access to Japan,” said Meat Institute President and CEO Julie Anna Potts. “The Meat Institute thanks the Biden Administration for their dedicated work securing this deal.”
In addition to increasing market growth for U.S. beef into Japan, the new three-trigger safeguard mechanism will decrease the likelihood that Japan will impose higher tariffs on U.S. beef.
In 2021, Japan was the United States’ largest beef volume market (320,738 metric tons) and second largest value destination (more than $2.3B).
The agreement’s three-trigger mechanism – whereby all three triggers must be hit for Japan to implement the safeguard and impose a higher tariff – are:
More details are available in the U.S. Trade Representative’s press release.
About the North American Meat Institute: The North American Meat Institute is a leading voice for the meat and poultry industry. The Meat Institute’s members process the vast majority of U.S. beef, pork, lamb, and poultry, as well as manufactures the equipment and ingredients needed to produce safe, high quality meat and poultry products.
The American Society for Enology and Viticulture (ASEV) has selected the 2022 Best Paper Award winners, who will present their papers during the 2022 ASEV National Conference in San Diego, June 20-22. Both papers are highlighted on asev.org and are available free of charge.
The 2022 Best Viticulture Paper is “Field Performance of Winegrape Rootstocks and Fumigation during Establishment of a Chardonnay Vineyard in Washington” by Katherine E. East* of USDA-ARS, Washington; Inga A. Zasada of USDA-ARS, Oregon; Julie Tarara of Ste. Michelle Wine Estates, Washington; and Michelle M. Moyer* of Washington State University, Prosser. The authors concluded that incorporating plant-parasitic nematode management as part of the process of vineyard replanting and fumigation is not an effective long-term strategy for suppressing Meloidogyne hapla.
For the 2022 Best Enology Paper, ASEV selected “Whole Cluster and Dried Stem Additions’ Effects on Chemical and Sensory Properties of Pinot noir Wines over Two Vintages,” by L. Federico Casassa*, Niclas P. Dermutz, Paul F.W. Mawdsley, Margaret Thompson, and Jean C. Dodson Peterson of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo; Aníbal A. Catania of Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA), Argentina; Thomas S. Collins and P. Layton Ashmore of Washington State University, Tri-Cities; Fintan du Fresne of Chamisal Vineyards and Winery in California; and Gregory Gasic, consultant from Oregon. The authors conducted this experiment at industrial scale to provide winemakers with a practical baseline for comparison when implementing whole cluster and stem additions to Pinot noir wines. The study took place during both relatively cool (2016) and warm (2017) growing seasons in California’s Central Coast, which allowed characterization of potential effects of vintage in the practice of whole cluster addition.
Each year, the ASEV Best Paper Awards Committee evaluates all manuscripts published in the American Journal of Enology and Viticulture (AJEV) during the previous year and selects one paper in viticulture and one in enology that reflect outstanding research and a substantial contribution to the field. Committee members are required to read and score each paper and the ASEV Board of Directors make the final decision. The 2022 Best Paper Award Committee includes Michelle Moyer (Chair) of Washington State University, Prosser; Torey Arvik (Co-Chair, Viticulture) of Sonomaceuticals/Whole Vine Products, California; Jeff Baccus of Joseph Phelps Vineyards, California; Mark Hoffmann of North Carolina State University, Raleigh; Molly Kelly of The Pennsylvania State University, University Park; Anji Perry of J. Lohr Vineyards & Wines, California; Joe Shirley of Trinchero Family Estates, California; Qun (Kristy) Sun of California State University, Fresno; Elizabeth Tomasino of Oregon State University, Corvallis; and Yun Zhang of Ste. Michelle Wine Estates, Washington.
*Corresponding Author
The election results for six Board seats, for the 2022 American Pistachio Growers (APG) Board of Directors, were recently announced during the Annual Membership Meeting. The newly elected board members are Adam Kusmak of Tularosa Pistachio Groves, New Mexico, and from California, William Bourdeau of Harris Farms, Paul Huckabay of Keenan Farming Company, Raj Kahlon of RHM Farms, Jim Zion of LJL Farming, and Ali Amin of Primex Farms, who has been re-elected to the board for a second term. Rudy Placencia of Touchstone Pistachio Company was appointed to the Board in November to fill a vacant seat.
The 2022 APG officers were also unanimously confirmed for the year: Dennis Woods, Chair; Vice Chair Justin Wylie; and Rich Kreps Secretary/Treasurer. As for the six who have completed their terms of service, APG offers their heartfelt gratitude to them. The invaluable leadership and the many hours of volunteering that Dominic Pitigliano, Gary Smith, Steve Moore, Steve Burcham, and Danielle Kusmak gave, on behalf of APG, is deeply appreciated.
American Pistachio Growers’ Board of Directors consists of 18-member growers who bring a diverse range of knowledge, perspective and experience to the association. Board members, elected by APG growers, serve a 3-year term, and may serve up to 2 consecutive terms.
The “Noon” Kiwanis Club of Tulare will present its 61st “Farmer of the Year” award to Ronnie and Tom Clark, pistachio farmers from Tulare. The luncheon will take place on March 30th at 12:00 pm in Tulare. Tickets are $35. Tickets may be purchased at Mechanics Bank, Farm Credit West, or Garton Tractor in Tulare. Or for sponsorships, call Celeste Moore, event chair at 559-280-1481.
Ronald (known as Ronnie) has lived in Tulare County his entire life, is married to Robyn with sons Christopher and Michael (deceased) and stepsons Derek & Brandon Walker. Brandon works with Ronnie in the family business. Ronnie graduated from Tulare Western High School in 1970, attended COS and Cal Poly, and started farming in 1975 north of Tulare growing cotton, wheat, and corn. A partnership with his father Bob, uncle Don, and cousin Tom known as Clarklind Farms was formed in 1983 and today farms pistachios and almonds. Clarklind Farms has also received numerous awards over the years for their high yields in grain corn Ronnie serves on a variety of boards including Kaweah Delta Water Conservation District board, Kaweah and St. Johns Rivers Association, Mid Valley Growers, Pistachio Growers, Inc., and the board of the International Agri Center. In the past he has also served on the San Joaquin Valley Cotton Board, California Pistachio Commission, Tulare High School Ag Advisory, and is a member of the Tulare Chamber of Commerce. Ronnie and Tom both support many local efforts for youth sports, youth 4-H and FFA, youth exhibitors at the fair, and so many more charities too many to mention.
Thomas (known as Tom) has been married to Denise for 42 years and has three grown children: Ami, Chad, and Drew and five grandchildren; Drew becoming the fourth generation farmer in the Clark family. Tom attended Tulare Western High and Fresno State University and played varsity golf all four years in high school. He is a partner in the Clarklind Farms operation with Ron which was formed in 1983. He began working at the age of 13, shoveling furrow ends during the summer and at age 16 was promoted to combine driver during his summers. He worked in laser scraping when he was 20 years old, in the early years of this emerging technology. He has been farming for 49 years in all and has served on the Tulare Irrigation District Board. He coached high school junior varsity golf for three years, and in his free time enjoys golfing, snow and water skiing and wake surfing.
This annual awards luncheon recognizes the lifetime achievements of outstanding agriculturalists in our community and provides an opportunity for the Tulare Kiwanis to highlight the value of agriculture in our region and recognize an outstanding person or family. In the past they have recognized fathers, sons, brothers, cousins, and many more.
The luncheon includes a video montage about the honorees and a look back at the past 60 years of honorees, it is an emotional and touching tribute to our farm community and the many wonderful farmers in our great community of Tulare. To buy tickets, request to make a presentation at the luncheon, or be a major sponsor please contact event chair, Celeste Moore at 559-280-1481.
On Tuesday, March 15, the Westlands Water District Board of Directors appointed Jeff Fortune to fill the vacancy created when Director Todd Neves resigned last month. Mr. Fortune will serve through December 2022, when he will stand for election to fill the remainder of Director Neves’ term.
“Jeff Fortune has farmed in Westlands for more than four decades. The Board will benefit from his experience and perspective as the District navigates unprecedented drought, implementation of the sustainable groundwater management act, and many other challenges in the months and years ahead,” said Westlands’ Board President Ryan Ferguson.
Mr. Fortune, a third generation California farmer and the second generation Westlands farmer, is a “boots on the ground” farmer. Since his graduation from the University of California at Davis, he has worked alongside his father, and more recently, his two brothers, at their family farm, Fortune Farming Company. Mr. Fortune currently grows tomatoes, almonds, and pistachios on his family farm.
“I’m grateful for this opportunity to serve,” Mr. Fortune said after being appointed, “Instead of sitting back and watching our farms, farmers, and communities struggle, I am taking this opportunity to offer my experience and ideas to help this District remain a place where family farms like mine can not only continue to operate, but can once again thrive.”
About Westlands Water District
Westlands Water District is recognized as a world leader in agricultural water conservation and has served the farmers and rural communities on the west side of Fresno and Kings counties for more than five decades. As stewards of one of California’s most precious natural resources, Westlands continually invests in conservation, and champions farmers deploying innovative irrigation methods based on the best available technology.
Today, the Bureau of Reclamation and California Department of Water Resources jointly filed a Temporary Urgency Change Petition with the State Water Resources Control Board to temporarily modify requirements in water right permits and licenses for the Central Valley Project and State Water Project between April 1 and June 30. These changes are in response to a historically dry January, February, and first half of March, which are typically our wettest months. Facing a third consecutive year of critically dry conditions, these changes are expected to conserve vital water supplies in upstream reservoirs for critical needs later in the year, including public health and safety, and environmental needs.
After a series of strong December storms, Reclamation and DWR had been hopeful that water from Folsom and Oroville reservoirs would provide for adequate water supply and environmental needs later in the year and a TUCP would not be necessary. However, following the historically dry January and February, Folsom and Oroville are seeing unprecedented declines in inflow forecast. With this decrease in expected inflow, these reservoirs cannot support Delta outflows as expected and there is inadequate storage in other CVP and SWP reservoirs to meet other critical water supply and environmental needs later in the year without a TUCP in place.
“Reclamation and DWR, along with the federal and state fish agencies, have been coordinating throughout the winter to address increasingly challenging hydrologic conditions for environmental flows and water supply,” said Reclamation Regional Director Ernest Conant. “We all recognize what a difficult year this is going to be for everyone. It’s definitely another roll-up-your-sleeves, all-hands-on-deck water year.”
“DWR has been planning for conditions to remain dry since the start of the water year on October 1. We are facing tough but important decisions about how to manage the system for a third year of drought,” said DWR Director Karla Nemeth. “We are taking critical steps like submitting the Temporary Urgency Change Petition in coordination with our federal and state partners, to balance the needs of endangered species, water supply conservation, and water deliveries to Californians.”
As part of the all-hands approach, DWR is also planning to refill the notch in the Emergency Drought Salinity Barrier in the Delta. Work will begin on April 1 to fill in the notch, with completion by April 15. The barrier reduces the amount of saltwater intrusion into the Delta, allowing for reduced flows from upstream reservoirs to conserve water supply. Additionally, based on a recognition by Reclamation and DWR as to the importance of better understanding the source of harmful algal blooms and their impact upon the Delta region, the two are committed to fully participating in multi-agency efforts to address this issue, such as that recognized by the Water Board in response to comments received on the 2021 drought actions.
Additional operational flexibility of the Projects is needed to support priorities, including: providing for minimum health and safety water supplies; preserving upstream storage for release later in the summer to control saltwater intrusion into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta; preserving cold water in Shasta Lake and other reservoirs to maintain cool river temperatures for Chinook salmon and steelhead; maintaining protections for state and federally endangered and threatened species; and meeting critical water supply needs.
View the TUCP. Visit the California drought page for drought resource information.
Pre-Season ground prep work was completed in late-2021, first-turn plantings have been well under way since November, and harvesting of early Cole crops have begun in earnest.
For Tri-County vegetable growers their cycle of implementing their standard cultural practices for the 2022 growing season has been under way since late-2021. The standard fundamentals of “blocking and tackling” to successful growing will evolve seasonally, ranging from pest management practices and field labor time management to updated food safety requirements, to highlight a few.
For the upcoming 2022 growing season, however, costing standards will be taking a dramatic upturn. Unlike prior pre-pandemic seasons, the 2022 season backdrop is a continued convergence of worsening supply chain hurdles and inflationary input cost increases.
Unlike this time last season, the uncertainty of whether the cost increases would be transitory or persist and continue to increase is now self-evident. As reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics, the benchmark for measuring national cost increases, the CPI-U, has increased to 7.9 percent over the prior 12 months.
The current events unfolding in Ukraine only exacerbate the already-challenging supply-chain situation. For growers, predicting what some of their direct input growing costs, such as seasonal fertilizer requirements or any petroleum-based by-products, is proving to be “best-guess work,” even for as short a period as three to four months in advance.
The old local adage of “What’s good for the shipper is good for the grower” is generally still true. Because the grower-shipper interests are intertwined, namely partnering to supplying the highest quality, healthiest and safest vegetables at a competitive value proposition.
Many of the aforementioned grower-shipper relationships are deep-rooted and have covered the course of generations in some instances. The foundations of these relationships have been based on trust, mutual respect, and business execution in good years, in which both realize profitability in order sustain their respective operations. To this end, with the intent to ensure growers’ direct inflationary growing costs as well as packing and manufacturing shipper and processing costs are “passed through” to the buying community via finished fair price increases.
The growing community applauds the unusual yet vital measure the shipper and processing community has taken with this action. The grower community could no longer absorb the steep inflationary cost increases on top of the annual margin compression driven by input costs outpacing general contract price increases of the past decade. These actions will make the old adage shift to “What’s good for the grower is good for the shipper AND processor.”
Washington State University researchers have developed a way to assess soil health by measuring the electric current produced by its tiniest microbes.
The team used a probe originally developed to measure the electrochemical signal of microbes in aquatic environments and tested it on healthy and unhealthy soil samples to measure microbial metabolism and other indicators of soil health. This proof-of-concept research, published in Journal of Electrochemical Society, could someday lead to a simple, real-time test for farmers to determine whether soil is productive.
“Soil underpins all the food we eat, and most of it is degraded worldwide,” said Maren Friesen, an associate professor in the Departments of Plant Pathology and Crop and Soil Sciences and a co-author on the study. “One of the biggest barriers to improving soils is not being able to have rapid, real-time measurement to develop appropriate management strategies for them. This sensor has the potential to be able to do real-time measurements not just of the structure of the soil, but how it’s actually functioning. It would be a huge advance in the field.”
“I believe this is one of our most significant works and will have a high impact on soil health determination,” said Haluk Beyenal, professor in the Gene and Linda Voiland School of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering and corresponding author on the paper.
Other co-authors on the study include postdoctoral research fellow, Abdelrhman Mohamed, and graduate students Eduardo Sanchez and Natalie Sanchez.
Soil health is critically important to agriculture and crop success worldwide, but measuring it is not straightforward. Farmers and researchers use soil chemistry, nutrient analysis, texture and pH measurements to gain understanding of soil’s physical and chemical properties. While that information can be valuable, it doesn’t always reflect how productive the soil actually is.
That’s because a key to soil productivity is how microbes function, said Friesen. Billions of bacteria, fungi and other organisms play critical roles in nutrient mobilization and provisioning, defense against pathogens and plant growth. But, until now, there has been no simple, real-time way to measure the microbial activity.
“What makes a soil beneficial for a plant is that it is alive and contains all these bacteria and fungi,” she said.
In the new paper, the WSU research team was able to measure current through the soil to determine microbial activity and distinguish healthy and unhealthy soils.
The researchers used a probe that they developed a few years ago to measure the electrochemical signal of microbes in aquatic environments. Similar to how humans eat and breathe, microorganisms take in food and then use electrons liberated during metabolism for their energy. Finally, microbes give these electrons to an acceptor molecule such as oxygen. The probe the team developed replaces these acceptor molecules with an electrode. Using this electrode, they can then measure the electric current and get an idea of the magnitude of microbial activity.
“We are able to measure metabolic rate of the microbes by capturing electrons that are released as a part of metabolism,” said Mohamed, a postdoctoral researcher in the Voiland School. “We’re watching the microbes breathe in the soil.”
The two soil samples the researchers used were collected from the R.J. Cook Agronomy Farm and looked nearly identical to each other in terms of their soil composition. They were both collected from plots that had not been tilled, were relatively high in organic matter, and had the same pH and soil type. But, the researchers had data showing that one of the soils had been significantly more productive in its wheat yield than the other.
The researchers found that the more productive soil produced an electric current while the less productive soil produced almost no current – about 1% of the more productive soil.
“There was a really dramatic difference in the amount of current generated,” said Friesen.
They also found another difference between the two soils in the open circuit potential measured in the soil. When they added sugar to stimulate metabolic activity, the researchers also observed the electrochemical signals change in the healthy and unhealthy soil samples converging, which suggests that the sugar addition stimulated the microbial activity in both soil types.
“We could see that in a couple of days, the microbes in the soil started to respire,” Mohamed said.
With just the two soil samples compared initially, the researchers say their idea is still just a proof of concept. They have many additional questions, such as what the creatures are doing to generate current and what specific microorganisms might be in the samples to create productive soil.
“We have two different signals, but what do they really tell in terms of the fundamental parameters of the soil?” said Mohamed. “Both parameters tell slightly different things, and we need to work on their interpretation.”
They also want to test a lot more soils, including in actual farm fields rather than in the controlled setting of a laboratory. They hope to eventually develop a portable probe that could be inserted directly into the soil to provide real-time information.
“In terms of working towards a just society with sustainable global food production, I feel this has the potential to be a game-changing technology,” Friesen said. — By Tina Hilding, Voiland College of Engineering & Architecture, Washington State University