California Department of Food and Agriculture

By Adele Peters

By Robert Rodriguez

Can Kern County, home of Buck Owens, oil wells and tumbleweeds, dethrone Tulare County as the No. 1 agriculture county in the state, and possibly the nation?

It could happen. And if it does, it will be a first for the south San Joaquin Valley county.

Who becomes the undisputed agriculture champion will be revealed on Tuesday. That’s the day Marilyn Kinoshita, Tulare County’s agricultural commissioner, delivers the 2016 crop report to her board of supervisors.

Tulare County will have to do better than Kern County’s $7.2 billion to keep its No. 1 ranking.

As the nation’s leading milk producer, Tulare County has led the state in overall crop values for the last several years, stripping that title from Fresno County, the one-time ag champ.

For years, the two counties shared a friendly rivalry over who would come out on top. But California’s four-year drought took a heavy toll on Fresno County as farmers fallowed thousands of acres or shifted production to counties with more reliable water supplies.

Last year Tulare was on top with a total value of $6.9 billion.

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A news conference to announce support for clean water legislation, SB 623. Photo by Ezra David Romero, Valley Public Radio.

By Ezra David Romero

California farmers and environmental justice leaders are joining forces to support a bill that would help fund a clean drinking water program.

The coalition, which includes the Community Water Center, is urging California Assembly leaders to bring  SB623, the Safe and Affordable Drinking Water Fund to a vote, instead of tabling it until the next legislative session. If passed, the law would fund long-term operations and maintenance of water systems for the 300 plus California communities dealing with water contamination.

Alyssa Houtby, with the trade association California Citrus Mutual, says the ag world realizes farming practices have tainted water supplies with contaminants like nitrates.

“Although the farming practices of today significantly reduce or eliminate the potential for nitrates to reach groundwater, the problem still exists and it must be addressed in an equitable and balanced manner,” Houtby says.

Capital for the fund would be collected by placing a fee on fertilizer, dairies and on monthly water bills. Chris Valadez, with the California Fresh Fruit Association, says the bill is important because it focuses on all Californians – including farmers – taking responsibility for drinking water issues in the state. “This overcomes long-running obstacles of what has been a limited focus onto small regions and maybe one industry,” says Valdez. “I think this bill does it . . . by expanding this to a statewide issue and a statewide generation of resources.”

Virginia Gurrola, former mayor of the City of Porterville, says she has a message for legislators deciding on whether to vote on the bill this legislative session. She says they need to think about the children that live in disadvantaged communities with contaminated water.

“These children deserve to go to their homes, to their schools, to their churches and turn on their water and have clean tap water,” says Gurola. “That’s what it’s about.”

The bill now sits in the Assembly and if it isn’t passed by Sept 15, it will have to sit idle until the legislature reconvenes in January.

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A Brussels sprouts harvest near Santa Maria. From the Santa Ynez Valley News

By Jennifer Best

(Excerpted)

Pesticides, herbicides, organics and technology are all hot topics in the agriculture community, but labor issues, particularly a lack of available workers, are the chief concerns this year for large-scale operations on the Central Coast.

“Labor is pretty much front and center right now. I was just talking to our general manager about H-2A workers we’re trying to bring in, but they’ve been delayed since May 1,” said Philip Adam, operations manager at Santa Maria-based Innovative Produce.

The H-2A Temporary Agricultural Workers Program grants temporary visas to non-citizen workers specifically employed in agriculture.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, 160,084 H-2A Temporary Agricultural Labor Visas have been certified nationwide. At 18,886, Georgia received the greatest percentage of those visas. California came in fifth at 12,292 behind North Carolina, Florida and Washington. Louisiana, Kentucky, Arizona, Michigan, and South Carolina rounded out the top 10.

The temporary work visas are granted when, among other things, employers can “demonstrate that there are not enough U.S. workers who are able, willing, qualified, and available to do the temporary work,” according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Workers granted the H-2A visa may remain in the United States for up to three years before they are required to return to their home country. They may bring their spouses and children, but spouse visas preclude them from working. H-2A visa holders must leave the U.S. after three years, but may reapply for temporary worker status again after three months away.

“H-2A workers are going to be the big solution for the foreseeable and near future. We’re trying to find ways to sustainably house, bring in, and train these workers to bring them into the community and add a lot to it,” Adam said.

The seventh-generation Santa Maria Valley farmer works with his father, Innovative Produce owner George Adam, other family members and a host of employees to cultivate 1,800 acres of conventionally and organically grown fruits and vegetables including lettuces, celery, broccoli, cauliflower, cilantro, Brussels sprouts, kale, strawberries, blackberries, peppers and squash.

“California agriculture is very different from agriculture in other parts of the country because our productivity rates, because our climate and soils are so much better than other places in the country. That security our climate gives us allows us to make big investments with some certainty,” Philip said.

Technology a possible solution

Investment in technology has further advanced California farmers, and may ultimately serve as a solution to the worker shortage.

“To ease the labor crunch, we’re doing everything we can to automate, from weeding to thinning. You’ll see limited thinning crews in the next five years. A lot of those jobs are going to be replaced by machine,” Philip said.

Meanwhile, Innovative Produce has leveraged its most experienced workers to turn out both higher production through the incentive of piece-work. The result has been greater production in spite of limited employees, and increased pay for the workers.

“Instead of paying by the hour, we pay by the carton. It’s worked out really well. It’s given a lot of people a chance to make a lot more money in a shorter amount of time. It’s allowed us to control costs,” Philip said.

Piece-work an incentive

Some of Innovative Produce’s better crews now paid by the carton can turn out 1.6 to 1.7 times the amount of product as they did when they worked for hourly pay. They are also earning more.

“It’s really just a marginal cost/benefit decision,” Philip explained.

He sees farmers making tough decisions about employment in the future as well.

“If minimum wage goes to $15 and 9-hour days, and we have to go to overtime to complete the work, that makes the machines more attractive. I don’t think it’s a bad thing. The tougher rules that are in place on California farmers have forced us to innovate a lot more than other places in the country,” he said.

Precision agriculture has become a keystone to successful operations.

“We’re getting everything dialed in with fertilizers and water application. Planting technology has gotten better. Technology really is driving progress in our industry now. Those that aren’t taking advantage of technology aren’t going to last. If you don’t have great production, don’t have great piecework setting all your ducks in a row from beginning to end, you’re not doing business in California agriculture in the future,” Adam said.

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By Anna Guth

The infection arrives with the rains, splashing down from a neighbor’s thick leaves. It takes hold one winter and persists silently for a year or two. Ambrosia beetles and bark beetles colonize the weakened tanoak, and the bark oozes and spots with dark-red liquid. Then, in a matter of weeks, the leaves brown and decay, and the tree dies.

Sudden oak death, a disease caused by the pathogen phyophthora ramorum, first appeared in an area near Mount Tamalpais in 1995. Though today it has devastated many parts of coastal California and Oregon, Marin County was one of the first places to receive attention from academic institutions studying the disease.

Since 2015, the University of California, Davis, the Marin Municipal Water District and the United States Forest Service have collaborated on a study of management strategies that contain the disease. The effort, called the Resilient Forests Project, has been focused on around 25 acres at three sites along the Bolinas Ridge, Laurel Dell and the San Geronimo Ridge.

This fall, the study will expand onto 10 to 30 new acres near the intersection of the Bolinas-Fairfax Road, Bolinas Ridge Road and Skyline Boulevard, with some new goals in mind.

“The severity of the disease is unfortunately exceptional on Bolinas Ridge, which has one of the highest mortality rates of tanoaks in the state,” Susan Frankel, a biologist from the forest service, said.

Richard Cobb, a researcher who began work on the project while at Davis and who now works at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, explained the process. “The disease causes the tanoaks to die above ground, but then they regrow from the roots, leaving behind smaller, infected trees that then also die. The resulting dense understory is a fire threat, and also depletes the soil-water reservoir,” he said.

Mr. Cobb said collaboration with local land managers to find a working solution is critical.

Marin Municipal is funding the water retention aspect of the study and supplying the crew for the vegetation work, which is primarily focused on clearing tanoaks with excavators and pulverizing them with chippers.

U.C. Davis researchers have received funding through the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection from a greenhouse gas reduction fund—which is generated by California’s cap and trade program—to focus on research related to the effect of carbon storage in the diseased forests. In preliminary findings, they’ve seen carbon storage levels diminish as the forest converts from older-growth, healthy trees to constantly dying, small undergrowth.

“Our hope is to identify techniques that are optimal in terms of suppressing the pathogen and also increasing carbon sequestration. We are still collecting data about the short-term trade-offs between, for example, reducing fuel levels and increasing the total amount of carbon stored,” Mr. Cobb said.

Before it was logged at the turn of the 20th century, the Bolinas Ridge consisted primarily of redwoods. Douglas firs, tanoaks and second-growth redwoods replaced the native habitat. But today, there are acre-wide gaps in the canopy, where hundreds of thousands of smaller tanoaks have sprung up.

Though the disease kills coast live oaks, California black oaks, Shreve’s oaks and canyon live oaks, among other tree species, tanoaks are especially susceptible. Sudden oak is known to spread through spores carried by air or water.

“It’s basically a brush field out there,” Janet Klein, Marin Municipal Water District’s natural resource program manager, said. An estimated 10,000 to 12,000 acres of the district’s total 22,000 acres are infected by the disease.

Ms. Klein said about 2,000 acres of the infected area are readily accessible. The district hopes to address about 100 acres per year, funding permitting. So far, the project has been expensive, with management costs at around $12,000 per acre. The next year is funded, Ms. Klein said, but she is still looking for support for two to three years out.

The team has some new goals for the Bolinas Ridge site, including testing the success of more efficient and cheaper methods. In the past, they “saw an increase in carbon sequestration and soil moisture, and also improved fire safety, but it was really expensive,” Ms. Klein said. “Our next attempt will focus on working faster and more cheaply. We are hoping, for instance, to not chip the wood so finely. We’re hoping we can still realize the same benefits but leave coarser material behind.”

New data also shows that native species such as redwoods were not regrowing in the areas cleared of tanoaks, as was hoped would happen. The next phase of the project will include both re-vegetation efforts and controlled burns.

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Gold Country Fair

9/7/2017 to 9/10/2017
Auburn, CA

Kern County Fair

9/20/2017 to 10/1/2017
Bakersfield, CA

Lodi Grape Festival

9/14/2017 to 9/17/2017
Lodi, CA

Los Angeles County Fair

9/1/2017 to 9/25/2017
Pomona, CA

Madera District Fair

9/7/2017 to 9/10/2017
Madera, CA

Mariposa County Fair & Homecoming

9/1/2017 to 9/4/2017
Mariposa, CA

Mendocino County Fair & Apple Show

9/15/2017 to 9/17/2017
Boonville, CA

San Benito County Fair

9/28/2017 to 10/1/2017
Tres Pinos, CA

Santa Cruz County Fair

9/13/2017 to 9/17/2017
Watsonville, CA

Tulare County Fair

9/13/2017 to 9/17/2017
Tulare, CA

Tulelake-Butte Valley Fair

9/7/2017 to 9/10/2017
Tulelake, CA