Visalia, Calif., (June 23, 2017) – Tulare County Agricultural Commissioner released the current status today of Major crops in the most valued county in the California Ag portfolio. They report that Alfalfa fields are making excellent progress; and being irrigated, cut, and baled. Corn and sorghum for silage continues being planted, cultivated, and irrigated. The corn silage crop is in various stages, from newly planted to already producing tassels. Cotton continues to be irrigated, cultivated, and growing well.
Peaches, nectarines, apricots, and plums continue to be picked and shipped to domestic markets, with exports to Australia, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, and Taiwan. Demand for stone fruit remains strong in the domestic market. Last year’s almonds and pistachios are being exported to the European Union, Hong Kong, and India. Walnut, almond, and pistachio orchards continue being irrigated. Both mechanical and chemical weed control continues in orchards. Grapevines continue to have leaves removed to allow for improved air circulation and light around the developing bunches to improve color.
Late navel orange harvest has finished. Valencia orange harvest continues, with exports to China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Regreening is becoming more common due to the higher temperatures. Packers are color sorting to compensate. Ruby Red grapefruit are being harvested for the domestic market.
Certified producers are picking tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, and peppers for sale at the local Farmer’s Markets. Italian squash, eggplant, and cucumbers are being harvested. Blueberry harvest is slowing down in most parts of Tulare County. Blueberry and strawberry harvest should be coming to an end with this week’s hot weather. Sweet corn harvest is beginning with a few roadside stands opening and sales at the local Farmer’s Markets.
Low elevation rangeland continues to dry, and cattle are being moved to higher elevations. The higher elevations are providing more grass than previous years. Fed cattle prices dropped $5.00 to $132.00 per hundredweight.
Surface water is flowing in many of the irrigation canals as the hot weather accelerates the snow melt. Many farmers across Tulare County are able to use surface water to irrigate crops this year instead of relying solely on pumping ground water. Wholesale nursery shipments to Canada and domestic markets continue.
Irvine, Calif., (June 23, 2017) – For generations now, California farmers have fed America and the world. As a third-generation California farmer, my family is proud of the produce we have helped put on the table.
But that legacy of plenty could be in jeopardy for the next generation. A new UC Berkeley report commissioned by the Southern California Water Committee concludes that for decades, environmental regulations have been severely limiting the amount of water available for agriculture.
Overregulation is pushing us toward perhaps the greatest water loss ever in California – an average of 1.3 million acre-feet of water each year. That’s enough to irrigate 400,000 acres of farmland, or sustain more than 10 million Southern California residents for a year.
No matter the weather, the state’s current water system cannot capture and store enough water when it’s available – water that could be used to balance residential use, environmental practices and food production.
If this trend is allowed to continue, we will see a significant decrease in available farmland, an increase in food prices and an even tougher future for family farmers.
The report also confirms that California’s farmworkers are being marginalized in the state’s water debate. They have lost $900 million in wages since 2000 and could lose another $4 billion in wages over the next three decades.
While farmers and farmworkers are the first to feel the impact, others who rely on agriculture to make ends meet also will feel the pinch, including food processors, truck drivers and warehouse workers.
Consumers are likely to feel these policies, too, in their wallets as well as their stomachs. Our food supply will have to change because the water cuts predicted by the report could result in 195,000 acres of farmland fallowed each year for the next 30 years. The decrease in readily available food will force a choice between eating less of what we’re used to, or paying more. Poor families would no doubt be hardest hit, further limiting their access to fresh, wholesome and healthy foods.
As California’s prime farmland thirsts for water, now is the time to demand answers to the difficult questions. How will we keep affordable foods on the table? Will California be forced to import fruits and vegetables from other countries that do not follow our safety standards?
We need for a comprehensive solution to our water challenges. We cannot rely on conservation alone to ensure thriving farms and plentiful, healthy food. Instead, we need an expansive and balanced solution to ensure a clean and reliable water source for our farms – and for all Californians.
A.G. Kawamura served as California secretary of agriculture from 2003 to 2010. He can be contacted at ag.kawamura@ocproduce.com.
Plum harvest is underway in the Central Valley. Watch this brief video interview with diversified grower Jimmy Simonian as he provides an outlook on this year’s crop. Read more in California Fresh Fruit Magazine.
Featured in the June issue of California Dairy Magazine, check out the last dairyman in Exeter, Ed Brower as he shares his story in this brief video interview with California Ag Network and in California Dairy Magazine. Dairying runs deep in his family line all the way back to his ancestry in Holland.
The June issue of California Dairy Magazine is now available to read online! Read the latest California Dairy & Feed industry news and technology. Here’s a peek of what’s inside:
Improving Animal Health at Ed Brower Dairy Managing the Last Dairy in Exeter
Is Your Heat Abatement System Ready? Time to Battle the Heat and Protect Your Cows
June is Dairy Month Raise Your Glass to National Dairy Month
Udder Things California Dairy News Briefs
California Milk Prices Back On the Rise Industry Comes Closer to Solving Quota Concerns with New FMMO
Modesto, Calif., (June 22, 2017) – In order to maintain dairy farm inspection and sampling activities, the Department is increasing quarterly inspection fees for dairy farms in State Established Inspection Areas by $0.005 per hundredweight (cwt) according to the maximum volume and rate specified below.
Effective July 1, 2017, the inspection fee for both market milk and manufacturing milk dairy farms is:
Thirteen and one-half cents ($0.135) per hundredweight (cwt) of the first four hundred eighty two thousand (482,000) pounds (lbs) of milk produced during each quarter-year period (maximum $650.70 per quarter) or a minimum of $250 per quarter, whichever is greater.
The new rate amounts to a maximum increase of an additional $24.10 per quarter, or approximately $8.03 per month, for a dairy farm producing 482,000 lbs. or more of milk each quarter-year period.
Fees collected at the new rate during the quarter-year period of July 1 to September 30, 2017 will be due and payable October 1, 2017.
Questions regarding collection procedures may be directed to me at (916) 900-5008 or to our closest Regional Office at the numbers below:
Sacramento, Calif., (June 22, 2017) – Join Area IPM and Farm Advisors to discuss current pest management and production issues. We will largely forcus on orchard crops (but everything is on the table for discussion!). These meetings are open to all interested growers, consultants, PCSs, CCAs, and related industry.
Meetings will be held the second Tuesday of each month from February through November and will cover a wide range of timely pest and orchard management topics. Meeting locations will be rotated throughout the Sacramento Valley each month. Please contact Emily Symmes to request topics or bring you questions to the meeting!
Upcoming Meetings:
Colusa: July 11th ( location TBA)
Yuba-Sutter: August 8th (Perko Restauant)
Tehama: September 12th (Rockin R Restaurant)
Glenn: October 10th (Berry Patch Restaurant)
Butte: November 14th (Location TBA)
Additional information for each meeting will be available on the events page at sacvalleyorchards.com or by contacting UC IPM Advisor Emily Symmes at 530-538-7201 or ejsymmes@ucanr.edu.
Davis, Calif., (June 21, 2017) – Piglet #3 is not sure what to make of the empty kiddie pool where she finds herself standing at the UC Davis Swine Research and Teaching Facility. She grunts softly, sniffs at the ribbed-plastic floor, and glances at the humans watching her explore.
“See how she opens her mouth and sucks in air?” asks Professor Kristina Horback, an animal-cognition expert with the Department of Animal Science. “Pigs use their strong sense of smell to gather information.”
Animal science professor Kristina Horback (Gregory Urquiaga/UC Davis)
Horback is conducting personality tests with several 4-week-old female piglets, identifying aggressive and social behaviors, measuring response to human handling and approach, assessing willingness to explore an open field, and studying alarm response to a novel object. Horback has studied animal cognition in several mammal species, including elephants, chimps, prairie dogs, dolphins and whales. At UC Davis, she is building on her pioneering research examining the role personality plays in the welfare and sustainable production of farm animals, like cattle, sheep and swine.
Horback’s research is helping the nation’s pork industry adapt to new legislative and marketplace demands to raise pigs in group housing rather than in individual crates, which have been the norm for the last 40 years.
“Tina is laying the groundwork for answering a fundamental question in the pork industry: Do we have the right animal?” said Thomas Parsons, a veterinarian researcher at the University of Pennsylvania who works with pig farmers across the nation. “Is one pig better than another in a group setting? Or, is there an optimal combination of personalities?”
There are currently more questions than answers in the field of pig personality, but Horback knows one thing, for sure: A pig is not a pig is not a pig.
“Pigs have distinct personality traits that remain relatively stable throughout their lives,” Horback says. “They are not going to react to the same stimuli in the same way.”
Pigs are hierarchical, and battles for dominance can get bloody. Fifty years ago, pigs were housed in open barns and had to fight for the feed farmers tossed on their floor. Dominant pigs got more, timid pigs got less, and some pigs suffered miscarriages in the scramble. To protect pigs and their productivity, the industry switched to “gestation stalls,” which are 2-by-7-foot enclosures that let each sow eat in peace but do not provide enough room for them to turn around.
Prompted by complaints from animal-welfare groups, consumers, and 70 brand-name retailers like McDonald’s, the pork industry is now transitioning from crates to group pens. Gestation stalls have been banned in the European Union and in 10 U.S. states, including California. Working with Parsons and other colleagues, Horback is helping farmers and pigs adapt to housing that provides room to roam and protection from aggressive kin. Personality research can help.
“For 40 years, swine genetics has focused on production traits like weight gain, litter size and disease resistance,” Horback says. “Have we been inadvertently breeding for specific behavior and personality traits? Are some personality traits better than others, not just for the individual but for the group as a whole?”
Farmers prefer pigs that gain a lot of weight, and aggressive piglets often eat more. But if dominant pigs get fat at the expense of the others, that might not provide a net gain.
If you remove aggressive pigs from the group, will social and passive pigs grow bigger and be more content? Researchers also wonder whether bold pigs are better equipped to deal with another sow’s aggression, or if a few dominant personalities improve social order.
“Right now, we’re just identifying the differences,” Horback says. “We need to see a lot more numbers before we can confidently say what personality traits, or mixture of traits, work best in a group.”
To assess a person’s personality, psychologists rely on self-reporting surveys like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Since Horback cannot interview the pigs, she puts them in situations that “let them show their true colors.”
Spunky, aggressive piglets squeal (loudly!) when held firmly by humans for one minute. Passive pigs do not squeal as much when handled, perhaps out of resignation. Sociable sows are the first to sniff their fellow pen mates, and they interact more easily with humans — snuffling at their boots and such.
Fearful pigs often freeze when they are isolated in a strange environment, which takes us back to the empty kiddie pool where piglet #3 is standing at the UC Davis Swine Facility. Piglet #3 is not overly vigilant — not pacing or frozen in place. Horback is also assessing how pigs respond to a novel object — in this case the blue, vibrating Bumble Ball she places in piglet #3’s makeshift pen. The toy bounces in unpredictable patterns and can lurch forward without warning, simulating a predatory attack.
“I try to make the experiments as ecologically relevant as possible,” Horback says. “It’s not as convincing as casting a stuffed badger into a colony of prairie dogs [as Horback did several years ago while working with Professor John Hoogland from the University of Maryland]. But it seems to work.”
Piglet #3 keeps a close watch on the Bumble Ball before sniffing it and rooting at the floor.
“Pigs love to root,” Horback says. “That shows she’s letting her guard down and exploring the environment. She’s coping with the isolation and Bumble Ball quite well!”
In addition to measuring personality traits, Horback will soon start testing piglets for “cognitive bias,” or mood, to see if certain personality traits correlate with “positive affective states,” or optimism. In previous research, Horback has seen evidence of a link between aggressive personalities and a positive mood.
“Are mean pigs happier?” she asks. “We don’t know yet, but we’re keeping an open mind. And checking our primate bias at the door.”
Davis, Calif., (June 21, 2017) – The University of California, Davis, has purchased an anaerobic biodigester that has operated on campus since 2014 and plans to open an adjacent composting facility to create a more comprehensive waste-management strategy. The purchase will allow UC Davis to maintain an active research program on anaerobic digester technology and potentially expand research opportunities in compost application for healthy soils and carbon sequestration.
UC Davis ownership will also allow the campus to develop a comprehensive organic waste disposal program that meets the newest state requirements, reduces vehicle trips carrying waste to off-campus sites, and provides better control over current and future costs.
“The digester has helped demonstrate feasibility of the technology in a medium-sized plant, which was an important reason behind construction of the plant on the UC Davis campus,” said Camille Kirk, director of sustainability at UC Davis. “Looking forward, we’re combining leading-edge research with a comprehensive approach to managing organic waste on campus.”
Opened in April 2014, the campus biodigester was built, owned and operated by CleanWorld, with a ground lease from UC Davis. The commercial-scale biodigester is designed to generate electricity from methane gas formed from the digestion of organic wastes. It uses technology invented by Professor Ruihong Zhang at UC Davis and licensed to CleanWorld by UC Davis. The facility was launched with support of grants from the U.S. Department of Energy and the California Energy Commission.
The transfer of these assets to UC Davis fulfills CleanWorld’s mission to focus on technology rather than operating facilities, with the added benefit that UC Davis is a world-class institution dedicated to furthering research in the quest to find beneficial uses for organic waste.
As a renowned research institution and leader in environmental sustainability, UC Davis is interested in the research and operational opportunities offered by an on-campus biodigester and composting facility. UC Davis officials therefore decided to purchase and operate the biodigester. The cost of purchasing the equipment is estimated at $600,000 plus $450,000 for facility upgrades and permitting costs.
The university intends to construct a composting facility to manage effluent and waste products from the biodigester, as well as other organic wastes generated by the campus that cannot be fed to the biodigester and instead are currently hauled away. Costs of constructing the proposed composting facility are to be determined.
Sacramento, Calif., (June 21, 2017) – Tree fruit growers can receive premiums for delivering certain extra-early varieties of peaches, but peach farmers may net roughly $800 more per acre from late-harvest processing peaches than extra-early harvest varieties, according to new cost studies released by the UC ANR Agricultural Issues Center and UC Cooperative Extension.
To help farmers make decisions on which peach varieties to plant, UC researchers present sample costs to produce extra-early harvested cling and freestone peaches and late harvested cling and freestone peaches for processing in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valley in these studies.
Although processors pay more for extra-early harvested peach varieties than late-harvest peaches, the researchers found that yields are higher for late-harvest varieties while costs for hand thinning the fruit are lower.
“Peaches harvested early in the season have less time to grow compared to peaches that get to hang on the tree another month or more,” explained Roger Duncan, UC Cooperative Extension advisor in Stanislaus County, who coauthored the studies. “Therefore, more fruit has to be removed so the remaining fruit can size. That means it costs you more to produce less.”
The analyses are based upon hypothetical well-managed farming operations using practices common to the region. The costs, materials and practices shown in these studies will not apply to all farms. Growers, UC ANR Cooperative Extension farm advisors and other agricultural associates provided input and reviewed the methods and findings of the study.
Both studies assume a 100-acre farmer-owned operation with 40 acres of cling peaches. The remaining acreage for both hypothetical farms is planted in other mature tree crops. The estimated economic life of the extra-early harvested cling peach orchard and the late harvested cling peach orchard is 18 years.
Some of the major differences between the two studies are return price, yield and fruit thinning cost. The extra-early harvested varieties have a price of $545 per ton, a yield of 17 tons per acre, and a thinning cost of $1,445 per acre. The late harvested varieties have a price of $490 per ton, a yield of 20 tons per acre, and a thinning cost of $1,177 per acre.
Asked if a small farm could save on fruit thinning expenses by doing it themselves, Duncan replied, “I guess it would be possible for a small family operation to do the thinning themselves, but not likely. It can take 20 to 40 minutes to thin a single tree. If there are 151 trees per acre, you can see that it would take one skilled person over a week to thin one acre.”
The authors describe the assumptions used to identify current costs for production material inputs, cash and non-cash overhead. Ranging analysis tables show net profits over a range of prices and yields. Other tables show the monthly cash costs, the costs and returns per acre, hourly equipment costs, the whole farm annual equipment, investment and business overhead costs and the operations with equipment and materials.
Free copies of “Sample Costs to Produce Processing Peaches, Cling and Freestone Extra-early Harvested Varieties, in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valley – 2017” and “Sample Costs to Establish and Produce Processing Peaches, Cling and Freestone Late Harvested Varieties, in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valley – 2017” are available on the UC Davis Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics website at https://coststudies.ucdavis.edu. Sample cost-of-production studies for many other commodities are also available.
The cost study program is funded by the UC Agricultural Issues Center and UC Cooperative Extension, both part of the UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources, and the UC Davis Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics.
For additional information or an explanation of the calculations used in the studies, contact Jeremy Murdock at the Agricultural Issues Center, at (530) 752-4651, Janine Hasey, UC Cooperative Extension advisor for Sutter/Yuba counties, at (530) 822-7515, or Duncan at (209) 525-6800.
