California Ag Network

Tag: United States Department of Agriculture

  • USDA Secretary Rollins Works to Make America Healthy Again

    In the first 100 days of the Trump Administration, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins has taken bold action to support the leadership of President Donald J. Trump and work to Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

    “President Trump has made fixing our chronic health problems a main priority. Our farmers and ranchers produce the safest, most abundant food supply in the world, and we are working every day to ensure our kids and families are eating the healthiest foods. We have made great strides in the last 100 days to Make America Healthy Again,” said Secretary Rollins.

    On her first full day in office, Secretary Rollins sent a letter to the nation’s governors (PDF, 88.8 KB), outlining her vision for the Department and inviting them to participate in a new “laboratories for innovation” initiative to create bold solutions to long-ignored challenges. She has supported the leadership of states who are submitting waivers to Make America Healthy Again. The MAHA movement at USDA has also supported major voluntary changes to make food healthier, including applauding the dairy industry for voluntarily removing artificial colors from the National School Lunch Program.

    At the direction of President Trump, USDA and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) are ensuring programs work harder to encourage healthy eating and lifestyle habits. As part of the MAHA Commission led by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., this work will not only research and report the many reasons children face unbelievable rates of diet-related disease like obesity and diabetes but also how government can implement change through things like revised dietary policy, state innovation, and less regulation. Secretary Kennedy and Secretary Rollins collaborated on their first MAHA event during a visit to Ferdinand T. Day Elementary School in Alexandria, VA where they participated in a healthy snack time with students and met facility staff. The event was an opportunity to learn more about the impact that federally funded nutrition programs have on children and signaled their strong partnership to work together to effectuate their vision for a healthier America. The Secretaries also wrote an opinion piece in USA Today outlining their plan to MAHA.

    The Secretaries most recently visited Texas to discuss food security and learn how America’s farmers are working to Make America Healthy Again by visiting cutting-edge laboratories at the Texas A&M Norman E. Borlaug Building and receiving a briefing on the Grand Nutrition Challenge at the Institute for Advancing Health Through Agriculture (IHA). The Secretaries then toured the Automated Precision Phenotyping Greenhouse in addition to touring the fourth-generation Sawyer Farms who are utilizing stewardship practices to ensure healthy production of a robust barley, rye, corn, and wheat crop. The visit to Texas A&M IHA included amplifying the HHS and USDA commitment to a timely and consumer-facing update to Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA). On March 11, 2025, after the inaugural meeting of the Make America Healthy Again Commission, Secretary Rollins and Secretary Kennedy announced a commitment to a final DGA no later than Dec. 31, 2025.

  • When Life Gives you Sour Lemons, Use Genetics to Find Out Why

    A team of researchers, including two from the University of California, Riverside, has identified the genes responsible for the hallmark sour taste of many citrus fruits. Published Tuesday, Feb. 25 in Nature Communications, the research could help plant breeders develop new, sweeter varieties.

    Modern citrus varieties have been bred over thousands of years to generate a broad palette of sour and sweet-tasting fruits. Analyses of their pulp reveals that a single chemical element—hydrogen—is largely responsible for the difference between sour and sweet-tasting varieties, which usually have similar sugar content. The pulp from sour fruits contains more hydrogen ions, giving it a lower pH and a tangy taste that is recognized by acid-sensitive cells in our taste buds. Conversely, pulp from sweeter varieties contains fewer hydrogen ions and tastes less acidic.

    Ronald Koes and colleagues at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands set out to untangle how some citrus varieties wind up with more acidic juice than others, a process that until now has remained a mystery. Their interest stemmed from a previous study showing that higher acidity in purple petunia flowers resulted in more petal pigmentation.

    Intrigued by the Faris variety of lemon tree, which produces branches bearing both sweet and sour fruits, and white and purple-tinged flowers, Koes’ team turned to UCR plant scientists Mikeal Roose and Claire Federici. Using the university’s vast Citrus Variety Collection, which preserves over 1,000 living citrus and related fruit varieties, Roose and Federici selected the Faris lemon and 20 other citrus fruits ranging from wincingly sour to sugary sweet for Koes’ team to analyze.

    By studying the expression of genes related to those controlling acidity in petunias, Koes’ team identified two citrus genes, CitPH1 and CitPH5, that are highly expressed in sour varieties and weakly expressed in sweet-tasting varieties. The CitPH1 and CitPH5 genes encode transporter proteins that pump hydrogen ions into the vacuole, a large storage compartment inside juice cells, thus increasing their overall acidity.

    Next, the team turned its attention to genes that control the levels of CitPH1 and CitPH5 in juice cells. While down-regulation of CitPH1 and CitPH5 in sweeter tasting varieties arose multiple times independently in different varieties, the researchers found that mutations in genes for a handful of transcription factors (proteins that help turn specific genes on and off) were responsible for reduced expression of CitPH1 and CitPH5, and therefore a sweeter taste.

    Roose, a professor of genetics in UCR’s College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences, said the findings could help breeders develop better-tasting citrus fruits. However, he said breeding varieties with severe mutations in the transcription factors such as those studied in the “acidless” citrus would be “overkill,” producing sugary citrus fruits with none of their popular acidic kick. Instead, plant scientists should look to target mutations that have a less dramatic effect on the production and activity of transporter proteins.

    “By understanding the mechanism acidification of fruit cells, we can now look for related genes that might reduce the expression of CitPH1 and CitPH5 just enough to engineer or select for new, sweeter varieties,” Roose said.

    The title of the paper is “Hyperacidification of Citrus fruits by a vacuolar proton-pumping P-ATPase complex.” In addition to Koes, authors at the University of Amsterdam are Pamela Strazzer, Cornelis Spelt, Shuangjiang Li, Mattijs Bliek, and Francesca Quattrocchio. Roose and Federici’s work was supported by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

    About UC Riverside: The University of California, Riverside (www.ucr.edu) is a doctoral research university, a living laboratory for groundbreaking exploration of issues critical to Inland Southern California, the state and communities around the world. Reflecting California’s diverse culture, UCR’s enrollment is now nearly 23,000 students. The campus opened a medical school in 2013 and has reached the heart of the Coachella Valley by way of the UCR Palm Desert Center. The campus has an annual statewide economic impact of more than $1 billion. To learn more, call (951) UCR-NEWS.

  • Pistachio Bushy Top Approved for USDA TAP Program

    Pistachio Bushy Top Syndrome, New Mexico State University

    On May 31, the United States Department of Agriculture, Farm Service Agency (USDA-FSA) State Committee approved pistachio Bushy Top Syndrome as a natural disaster, thereby allowing pistachios to be included in USDA’s Tree Assistance Program (TAP).

    This means that eligible growers affected by the Bushy Top Syndrome could receive government assistance for the replacement of their affected trees. The program will be implemented in Fall of 2018 and will be retroactive to 2012.

    Growers from all states affected by Bushy Top Syndrome will be allowed to participate. Like a number of other Federal programs, TAP participation has a number of restrictions, including participation limited to entities with adjusted gross income below the federal cap of $900,000; and cost reimbursement only for the removal and replanting costs of the affected trees, not for the trees themselves.

    American Pistachio Growers (APG) has been diligently working on this issue for over a year attempting to qualify pistachios for this Federal program. We will keep you updated as more details are released.  This is a significant victory for our industry and it was accomplished through the perseverance of APG and our ongoing federal lobbying effort.

  • USDA, Dairy Industry In Partnership to Promote and Enhance Environmental Sustainability

    Hanford, Calif., (February 21, 2018) – U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy to jointly promote and enhance environmental sustainability in the dairy industry. The pact extends and builds upon a MOU originally signed in 2009.

    USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue (r) shakes hands with dairy farmer Paul Rovey after signing a Memorandum of Understanding between the United States Department of Agriculture and the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy.

    Secretary Perdue signed the MOU yesterday with Arizona dairy farmer Paul Rovey, chairman of Dairy Management Inc. and an Innovation Center board member, at DeGroot Dairies in Hanford, CA.

    “USDA and the Innovation Center will continue to work together to accelerate the adoption of innovative technologies and increase energy efficiency improvements on U.S. dairy farms,” Secretary Perdue said. “These improvements will help producers diversify revenues and reduce utility expenses, while they strive to support their families and local communities by operating economically, environmentally sustainable dairy farms.”

    “USDA has resources that can help the dairy industry be successful but in many cases they are difficult to find because they are spread out through various agencies,” Secretary Perdue continued. “This MOU hopefully will be a potential navigator to the Innovation Center and give a ‘green light’ to interact with our agencies and centralize our various research and voluntary conservation efforts to reach their goals.”

    USDA’s support for agricultural and waste-to-energy research has played a key role in the agreement’s success to date. USDA will continue to work on enhancing the application and approval process for Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) programs, to make the process more efficient and tailored for producer convenience. USDA will also continue to examine ways to expand the award of conservation grants for sustainability initiatives by producers, cooperatives, non-governmental organizations and state and local governments.

    The Innovation Center agrees to work with its member companies to partner with USDA in communicating and educating producers on the value of sustainable practices while encouraging them to take advantage of conservation program opportunities.

    “Over the years, we have pursued creative and common-sense ways to work together that have allowed us to develop research, technologies, and on-the-ground practices that move us closer to our collective goals,” said Barb O’Brien, president of the Innovation Center. “The Innovation Center is proud of the synergy that has resulted from our collaboration with USDA, and we have no question that this public/private partnership works in the best interest of farmers, our dairy community and, most importantly, consumers of dairy who trust us to produce nutritious products they can feel good about feeding to their families.”

    USDA’s national and locally-based teams of subject matter experts and portfolio of programs help improve the economic stability of rural communities, businesses, residents, farmers and ranchers, and the quality of life in rural America.

    “This MOU allows the dairy industry to continue to build on all of the good work we have done for years with USDA,” Rovey said. “It allows our industry to have a voice and work within a structure where we can continue making progress toward our shared goals and priorities. We are thankful to have USDA at the table with us.”

    Previous and current collaborations have resulted in research, resources and a variety of programs that have advanced sustainability within the dairy community, including anaerobic digesters on farms, food waste reduction and the development of nutrient recovery technologies through NRCS and dairy’s Newtrient company.  Additionally, the Farm Smart Project led to the Farmers Assuring Responsible Management (FARM) Environmental Stewardship module. This voluntary tool empowers farmers to identify opportunities for sustainability improvements on their farm as detailed within the FARM program. Ninety-eight percent of the U.S. milk supply participates in FARM.

    Note – CDFA’s Dairy Digester Research and Development Program is also working for enhanced environmental sustainability on dairies.