California Ag Network

Tag: Specialty Crops

  • U.S. Truffle Growers to Gather in Sonoma County

    The North American Truffle Growers’ Association (NATGA) 2026 Congress will feature two full days of useful, relevant research and the latest information on truffle cultivation. You’ll be able to network with industry experts, successful truffle producers and leading truffle researchers. In addition to the scientific content, we are adding unique Sonoma County Events centered around truffles, such as wine and truffle bite pairing and a moderated panel discussion with well-known Michelin Star Chefs.

    For the first time ever, we are also offering three additional Bonus Truffle Experiences, with a variety of optional programs including: Cooking With Truffles, Truffle Dog Training and the Truffle Microscopy Workshop.

    These Bonus Truffle Experiences will take place before and/or after the Congress for an additional fee.

    Congress kicks off on Sunday evening at the Flamingo Resort, June 14 with our annual Welcome Reception where you can connect with old friends, meet new NATGA supporters and network with the experts. Day One will start at the Flamingo Resort and will feature presentations from our Keynote Speaker, Professor Alessandra Zambonelli, as well as additional industry professionals on topics related to truffle cultivation, production, and marketing of truffles. The afternoon will be spent touring a Sonoma County truffle orchard and vineyards, watching a truffle dog demonstration, and experiencing fabulous Sonoma County wines, paired with gourmet truffle bites prepared by Eric Anderson, a Michelin Star Chef.

    Day Two will include our annual NATGA members Business Meeting, an additional presentation by Prof Zambonelli as well as more truffle and Ag industry professionals in the morning. For the first time ever, the afternoon will also be available to the public via a Day Pass. The afternoon session, From Soil Prep to Harvest: Latest Research and Development for Truffle Cultivation will also be especially informative for those considering starting a truffle orchard. We’ll also feature a moderated Chef Panel Discussion with Michelin Star Chefs, a Truffle Marketplace, and Silent Auction. Congress concludes with our Closing Reception and Wine and Truffle Bite pairing.

    Agenda Highlights

    Keynote Speaker: Alessandra Zambonelli, PhD, Univ of Bologna, Italy

    • State of the Truffle Industry and Perspectives from Italy
    • Latest Developments and Techniques in Improving Soil Microbiomes

    Breeding and Training Exceptional Truffle-Hunting Dogs, Raúl Deoiz, Spain Founder and Manager of Trufdog.

    Truffle Species and Tree Species; New Combinations and Opportunities, Brian Upchurch, Carolina Truffiéres, NC

    Chef Panel Discussion with Michelin Star Chefs

    Optional Programs

    NATGA are preparing a series of extra curricular opportunities which may require additional fees

    Sunday 6/14.

    • Truffle Orchard Tours
    • Microscopy Course – Ann Scanlan
    • Cooking Class – Carey Angerer
    • Dog Training Class – Fran Angerer

    Wednesday 6/17

    • Truffle Orchard Tours
    • Microscopy Course
    • Cooking Class
    • Dog Training Class
    • Mushroom producer tour

    For more information, visit the NATGA website at https://trufflegrowers.com/event/natga-congress-spring-2026/. — North American Truffle Growers’ Association

  • At Farm Bureau Convention in California, Secretary Rollins Announces Dairy Margin Coverage Expansion and Section 32 Purchases of Specialty Crops

    This week at the 107th American Farm Bureau Federation Convention in Anaheim, CA, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins announced expanded enrollment for 2026 Dairy Margin Coverage (DMC) program and new Section 32 commodity purchases that will result in more healthy, U.S. grown food in the hands of Americans. Following the convention, Secretary Rollins also met with specialty crop producers at a local strawberry farm to discuss workforce needs and the Trump Administration’s recent wins related to significantly cutting the cost of H-2A labor for California farmers.

    Secretary Rollins and former California Ag Secretary A.G. Kawamura at his strawberry farm in Irving, California.

    “President Trump is making historic investments in the farm safety net and today’s announcement is one more action that supports our dairy producers by managing risk and strengthening markets so they can continue to provide wholesome nutrition for Americans,” said Secretary Brooke Rollins. “The Trump Administration will continue to stand with America’s farmers as the farm economy recovers from years of neglect under the last administration. Our mission to Make America Healthy Again continues after the recent release of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2025-2030 announcement, with the upcoming purchase of U.S. grown food that will reach those in need, all while benefitting American farmers facing unfair actions from foreign competitors.”

    OBBBA Improves DMC Coverage and Premium Fees

    Secretary Rollins announced the enrollment period for the Dairy Margin Coverage (DMC) program for the 2026 coverage year, an important safety net program that provides producers with price support to help offset milk and feed price differences. Starting January 12, 2026, dairy producers can enroll in DMC. The enrollment period ends February 26, 2026. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), signed by President Donald J. Trump on July 4, 2025, reauthorized DMC for calendar years 2026 through 2031 and provided substantial program improvements, including establishing new production history and increasing Tier 1 coverage.

    The OBBBA increased DMC’s Tier 1 coverage level increased from five million pounds to six million pounds. All dairy operations that elect to enroll in DMC for 2026 will establish a new production history. Existing dairy operations that started marketing milk on or before January 1, 2023, will use the higher of milk marketings for the years of 2021, 2022, or 2023. New dairy operations starting after January 1, 2023, will use their first year of monthly milk marketings, even for a partial year. Milk marketing statements or production evidence are required to establish a production history.

    Dairy operations also have the option to lock-in coverage levels for six years (2026-2031) with premium fees discounted by 25%.

    DMC offers different levels of coverage, including an option that is free to producers, minus a $100 administrative fee. To determine the appropriate level of DMC coverage for a specific dairy operation, producers can use the online dairy decision tool.

    For more information visit the DMC webpage or contact your local USDA Service Center.

    Agricultural Marketing Service Section 32 Purchases

    Secretary Rollins also announced USDA’s intent to purchase up to $80 million in specialty crops from American farmers and producers to distribute to food banks and nutrition assistance programs across the country. These purchases are being made through USDA’s authority under Section 32 of the Agriculture Act of 1935 and will assist producers and communities in need. With this action, the Trump Administration is bolstering American prosperity by supporting American agriculture, rural communities, and those in need of nutrition assistance.

    The Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) continuously purchases a variety of domestically produced and processed agricultural products. These “USDA Foods” are provided to USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) nutrition assistance programs, including food banks that operate The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP), and are a vital component of the nation’s food safety net.

    USDA AMS will purchase up to $80 million of the following commodities:

    •Almonds: $20M

    •Grape juice: $20M

    •Pistachios: $20M

    •Raisins: $20M

  • AI Tool to Help Farmers Measure Real-Time Crop Health from the Field

    Leaf Monitor, a new mobile tool backed by artificial intelligence and predictive modeling, could revolutionize how farmers monitor crops and make decisions by providing real-time nutrition and leaf trait information in the field.

    “Having this information is very valuable for the farmers,” said Alireza Pourreza, associate professor of Cooperative Extension and director of the Digital Agriculture Laboratory in the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering at the University of California, Davis. “In five seconds, they can have a sense of how much nutrition they have in a leaf.”

    Development of the AI model was funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture’s HiRes Vineyard Nutrition multistate project and its Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, as well as the California Table Grape Commission.

    Maha Afifi, director of viticulture research at the California Table Grape Commission, said the tool could be a game changer for the table grape industry if it leads to faster decision-making about fertilizer use. The right amount typically leads to healthier vines that produce more grapes with optimal size, weight and color.

    “The evaluation of vine nutrient status is one of our top priorities,” Afifi said. “At the same time, exploring new technology tools like this project is a high priority for us because they will be important to the future of the table grape industry.”

    Field testing

    The Leaf Monitor tool uses a handheld spectrometer to measure leaf reflectance beyond the range of light visible to the human eye.

    Once a leaf is scanned, its spectral data is uploaded to a cloud-based machine learning system designed to predict leaf traits and nutrient content. This algorithm was developed and trained by the Digital Agriculture Laboratory over five years using a dataset of thousands of leaf samples collected from California’s specialty crops, primarily grapevines and almonds. The samples were chemically analyzed to determine nutrient levels and structural leaf traits, providing the data needed to build an accurate prediction model.

    “Nutrient deficiencies in plants often go unnoticed until late in the season, by which point the damage is already irreversible,” said graduate student Parastoo Farajpoor, who is running the project. “This is why early detection is essential. Spectrometry provides a rapid and reliable way to identify these deficiencies before visible symptoms appear.”

    After a recent demonstration, Bulleseye Farms Irrigation Manager Geoff Klein said the tool could help save money and improve yields. Bullseye grows walnuts, pistachios, tomatoes, corn, wheat, rice and sunflowers in Yolo and Solano counties.

    Tailored crop management

    Currently, farmers typically take leaf samples, dry them, grind them up and send the samples off to a lab for testing, which can take up to two weeks to return results. Bullseye samples leaf tissues about three times a year.

    “Right now, it doesn’t really make sense to go out and take tissues in every single corner just because it’s expensive,” Klein said. “It’d be really cool if I could just walk out there and test a couple of different places.”

    The Leaf Monitor tool helps farmers tailor management decisions to specific areas rather than an entire field. Calibrating fertilizer use to real-time data can prevent overuse and nitrogen runoff, a financial and environmental challenge that many growers face.

    “I feel like there’s a lot of times we do need to put less [fertilizer] on, where we end up putting more, because that’s what the nitrogen removal formula says,” Klein said. “But with this app we can use less because we know the actual conditions at the time. I think it opens a lot of doors in terms of getting data back in real time and also utilizing the level of control we have with the data.”

    The app can also aggregate the scans and map out spatial patterns over a large area.

    “What we know is every field has variability that is not necessarily visible to the farmer’s eye,” Pourreza said.

    The prototype Leaf Monitor tool is free and included in a set of tools that can be downloaded on the Digital Agriculture Laboratory website. A web-based version of the tool will follow while the team continues to feed new data into the algorithm to refine the predictions. On average, it achieves about 65% accuracy across all traits, with predictions for certain nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorus, performing better than the overall average. Users will need to pair it with a spectrometer.

    “We need to produce more food while using less resources so we need to have some kind of monitoring system to give us precise and accurate feedback on our management practice,” Pourreza said. “This technology is growing very fast.” — By Emily Dooley, UC Davis

  • Innovative Ag Education Program Reaches Over 1 Million California Students

    Educating today’s students about the importance of California agriculture is critically important to protecting the future of farming and ranching in the Golden State. For nearly 40 years, the California Foundation for Agriculture in the Classroom has been a leader in that effort and is continuing to innovate to meet the needs of California classrooms.

    “We’ve been around since 1986, and our whole mission is to support teachers and students in incorporating agriculture into their classroom because agriculture affects our daily lives. It’s the food we eat; it’s the clothes we wear – it affects everything that we do,” said Amanda Fletcher, the Foundation’s executive director.

    During 2024, Fletcher said the Foundation’s programs reached over 1 million pre-K to high school students by engaging more than 34,000 teachers across California. Among the Foundation’s most-used resources was the 22ndannual issue of What’s Growin’ On, a 16-page interactive student newspaper funded in part by Farm Credit. More than 100,000 copies were distributed.

    Kevin Ralph, California President for AgWest Farm Credit, said California’s Farm Credit organizations have supported the Foundation’s work for many years.

    “Farm Credit has been proud to support What’s Growin’ On for more than 15 years – and in fact increased our support this year – because it’s proven to be an innovative and effective way of educating third through eighth graders about all the aspects of California agriculture,” Ralph said.

    Jacob DeBoer, Regional Marketing Manager with American AgCredit, agreed that the Foundation continues to do great work.

    “What makes the Foundation’s efforts so successful is that it comes up with ways to really reach students,” DeBoer said. “This year, the theme is ‘Imagine Your Future in Agriculture,’ which is especially important given the need to attract students to consider careers in ag-related fields. Besides information about farming, the newspaper and other programs discuss careers in fields including tech, marketing, soil science and ag mechanics. There’s nothing like drones to capture a young student’s imagination.”

    All seven Farm Credit organizations serving California – AgWest Farm Credit, American AgCredit, CoBank, Colusa-Glenn Farm Credit, Fresno Madera Farm Credit, Golden State Farm Credit and Yosemite Farm Credit – are financially supporting the Foundation’s work. They are all part of the nationwide Farm Credit System – the largest provider of credit to U.S. agriculture.

    Fletcher said the Foundation got its start in 1981 as a program launched by the California Farm Bureau Federation. It was spun off five years later as an affiliated 501c3 nonprofit. Today, seven – soon to be eight – employees develop age-appropriate curricula using a wide range of distribution methods.

    For example, a popular part of the program is the virtual California Farm Day. This year, 31,000 students watched one of two age-appropriate, hour-long programs including video and live Q&A sessions with ag experts. One segment showed a pest advisor walking through a broccoli field examining plants for insects. He explained that some insects were beneficial, and others weren’t and talked about the steps he took to become a pest advisor.

    “We had over 800 questions asked of the live hosts. A lot of the kids who were on that broadcast were from urban and more disadvantaged schools who don’t always have the ability to go on field trips, so this offered a little window into agriculture and how it affects their lives,” she said.

    “We probably work with 60% urban classes and 40% from the agricultural areas. Our target demographic is those urban and disadvantaged schools because we want to get into schools in L.A. and the Bay Area to make sure they’re getting the same education about agriculture that students in counties that have that rich agriculture history have access to.”

    This year, a grant from the California Department of Food and Agriculture allowed the Foundation to develop an interactive website called KnowinWhatsGrowin.com. Fletcher said it matches the state’s fourth-grade curriculum and focuses on specialty crops grown in different parts of the state.

    Santa Clara County students can learn about mushrooms, for example – how they’re grown and harvested, nutritional information, products that use mushrooms and even recipes.

    Because the Foundation strives “to keep growing, because if you stay stagnant that doesn’t work when the goal is to get the information out to the populace,” the staff is currently beginning a four-year project to develop a monthly curriculum for high school students that outlines ag-related careers. The lesson plans will tie into math, science and ag mechanics.

    “Then we are going to be working on developing an internship program that will go along with that. It’ll be exciting in the next couple of years once that gets off the ground,” she said.

    “We want to create materials that are easy and quick for teachers to implement so they have good programming for their students and to make sure that the next generation is informed about where their food and fiber comes from.”

    About Farm Credit:

    AgWest Farm Credit, American AgCredit, Colusa-Glenn Farm Credit, CoBank, Fresno Madera Farm Credit, Golden State Farm Credit and Yosemite Farm Credit are cooperatively owned lending institutions providing agriculture and rural communities with a dependable source of credit. For more than 100 years, the Farm Credit System has specialized in financing farmers, ranchers, farmer-owned cooperatives, rural utilities and agribusinesses. Farm Credit offers a broad range of loan products and financial services, including long-term real estate loans, operating lines of credit, equipment and facility loans, cash management and appraisal and leasing services…everything a “growing” business needs. For more information, visit www.farmcreditalliance.com

    About the California Foundation for Agriculture in the Classroom:

    California Foundation for Agriculture in the Classroom (AITC) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to increasing agricultural awareness and understanding among California’s educators and students. AITC develops accurate, teacher-tested educational materials, provides training and programs for educators, and collaborates with organizations to highlight the importance of agriculture in daily life. Through initiatives such as comprehensive lesson plans, the What’s Growin’ On? student newspaper, the Imagine this… writing contest, Virtual Farm Day, the annual teacher conference, and many more programs, AITC fosters agricultural literacy and supports the future of agriculture – impacting over 1 million students annually. For more information, visit www.learnaboutag.org.

  • Specialty Crops Industry Commends Senate for Passing Farm Bill

    WASHINGTON, D.C – The Specialty Crop Farm Bill Alliance (SCFBA), representing over 120 specialty crop organizations across the United States, has released the following statement after the passage of the farm bill in the U.S. Senate by a vote of 86 to 11:

    The Specialty Crop Farm Bill Alliance applauds the bipartisan efforts of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Agriculture Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, Ranking Member Debbie Stabenow, and members of the Senate in passing the Agriculture Improvement Act. The Alliance strongly supports the inclusion of a new research program for citrus producers, increased funds for nutrition programs and the extension of many of the specialty crop provisions that were included in the 2014 Farm Bill, such as:

    • Specialty Crop Block Grants ($85 million/year)
    • Specialty Crop Research Initiative ($80 million/year)
    • Trade Programs including Market Access Program ($200 million/year) and Technical Assistance for Specialty Crops ($9 million/year)
    • Pest and Disease Programs ($75 million/year) and National Clean Plant Network ($5 million/year)
    • Food Insecurity and Nutrition Incentive Program (Increased to $250 million over five years)
    • Emergency Citrus Disease Research and Development Trust Fund ($125 million over five years)

    “Chairman Roberts and Ranking Member Stabenow’s work over the past year produced a Farm Bill that is clearly committed to investing in specialty crop agriculture.  Our coalition appreciates the value of these programs in supporting our industry and delivering nutritious specialty crops to consumers. Looking forward, we encourage leadership in both chambers to convene a conference committee in an expeditious manner. For agriculture and the jobs it creates, it’s critical that Congress completes its work before the current farm bill expires on Sept. 30. Our industry stands ready to work with members of the conference committee to ensure a bill that will help specialty crop agriculture stay strong and competitive.”