From the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service, California office:

The initial subjective forecast for the 2012 California almond production is 2.00 billion pounds. This is 1.5 percent below last year’s record production of 2.03 billion pounds. Yield, forecasted at 2,560 lbs/acre, is down 4 percent from 2011’s record of 2,670 lbs/acre. Forecasted bearing acreage for 2012 is 780 thousand. This forecast is based on a telephone survey conducted April 19 – May 1 from a sample of almond growers. Of the 458 growers sampled, 283 reported. Acreage from these reports accounted for 27 percent of the total bearing acreage.

The 2012 almond crop is shaping up nicely. February was warm and dry across the State, creating favorable bloom conditions for almond trees. While the bloom period was shorter than last year, the excellent weather made up for the shorter overlap and bloom load was high. Chilling hours were plentiful. An early March frost resulted in some spotty damage in southern San Joaquin Valley and an early April hailstorm affected orchards in Merced County. Weather in the Sacramento Valley has been near ideal. A heavier than normal drop was reported in the San Joaquin Valley. Low disease and insect pressure were reported.

PROCEDURES
Results of the subjective survey are based on opinions obtained from growers. The sample of growers changes from year to year and is grouped by size of operation, so all growers will be represented. Each selected grower is asked to indicate their almond yield per acre from last year and expected yield for the current year.

Come to the fair this summer!

The University of California Small Farm Program and the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) Division of Fairs and Expositions are teaming up to connect fruit, vegetable, nut, and flower farmers with county and regional fairs to celebrate California specialty crops. The two organizations are organizing workshops and tours for farmers and agricultural leaders at seven different fairs throughout the state, to be held during fair time in the 2012 fair season.

Each workshop will feature fair officials teaching farmers some of their methods for safely entertaining thousands of people, presentations by farmers currently involved with local fairs or local agritourism, interactive discussions on potential collaborations between specialty crop growers, agritourism operators and fairs, and guided tours of the fair facilities.

Farmers, agritourism operators and fair leaders from surrounding counties are welcome to participate in each fair workshop. Also especially welcome are county agricultural commissioners, Farm Bureau leaders, tourism professionals, farm advisors and educators, fair and festival vendors and entertainers.

Registration is open, but space is limited. Please register soon for a workshop near you.
Workshop registration fee $20.00 (includes lunch & tour)

Workshop Schedule (all events are 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.)
•Thursday, June 14 – Shasta District Fair
1890 Briggs Street, Anderson
register for the Shasta workshop
•Thursday, July 26 – Amador County Fair
18621 Sherwood, Plymouth
register for the Amador workshop
•Thursday, August 2 – Ventura County Fair
10 W. Harbor Blvd., Ventura
register for the Ventura workshop
•Thursday, August 9 – Napa Town & Country Fair
575 Third Street, Napa
register for the Napa workshop
•Thursday, August 16 – Yolo County Fair
1125 East Street, Woodland
register for the Yolo workshop
•Thursday, September 13 – Santa Cruz County Fair
2601 E. Lake Avenue, Watsonville
register for the Santa Cruz workshop
•Thursday, October 4 – Big Fresno Fair
1121 South chance Avenue, Fresno
register for the Fresno workshop

For more information, please contact Diana Paluszak, CDFA Division of Fairs & Expositons, (916) 263-2967 or Penny Leff, UC Small Farm Program, (530) 752-7779.

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/05/05/why-choose-to-eat-meat/#ixzz1uCFhAAUb

I am a fifth generation California cattleman, with my sons and daughter actively involved in the ranch. I guess some would classify me as an animal killer because we grow cattle to produce beef. And I know non-ranchers struggle to understand that I can do that and still like cattle, but I do.

As producers, we have a moral and ethical obligation to raise and treat animals humanely and with respect. And we try very hard to do so.

I am proud of that fact, and I am proud to be a cattlemen.

The great majority of the public eats meat and want to feel good about their choice, so it bothered me when The New York Times recently invited “carnivores” to submit essays on whether or not it is ethical to eat meat.

Judged by a panel of elitists who either espouse an animal rights agenda or consider our current methods of animal production wrong, I thought why bother?

We were being set up by those who don’t understand food production in general and animal agriculture in particular, and who have already decided they are right! What gave them the authority to morally decide right and wrong?

I talked to many cattle producers who raised the old arguments—we are doing a good thing by converting sunlight to protein, feeding a hungry world affordably, caring for the environment, providing jobs in rural America, and emphasizing the family nature of what we do.

Sure, all of these things are true—but it is the right answer to the wrong question. That is not what we were being asked.

When we think about the ethics of meat-eating, we could argue the fact that animals don’t have a conscience, or a soul and aren’t forward thinking. Famous philosophers like Kant, Descartes and Aquinas are credited with developing these arguments.

Kant argued morally permissible actions are those actions that could be willed by rational individuals. Animals and humans are compelled by desires, but only human beings have the will to choose a course, clearly demonstrating humans and animals are not morally equivalent.

Or, we could look at the opposing view that argues animals have moral equivalence to man.

My problem with all of these theories is that they appear to be based on yes or no, right or wrong. Since when is morality completely “yes or no”? Lying is morally wrong, most of us would agree, but what about a small white lie to protect your child or someone’s feelings?

There are shades of grey in everything we do.

In terms of scientific inquiry, I like to think of the decision to eat meat as a continuous distribution from carnivores to vegans. It is the classic normal curve, with the overwhelming majority of the population personally choosing to consume animal protein. That decision should never be framed as a yes/no, but rather as a series of personal choices that we should appreciate as individual decisions.

Vegetarians are a small minority of the American population and the percentage of those who don’t consume animal protein hovers around five percent (depending on who is counting). That number has been standard for decades.

Yet world demand for animal protein is expanding at an unprecedented rate. I have no desire to convert someone from being a vegetarian to becoming a meat eater. That is their personal choice and I respect that decision.

I guess it is too much to expect the same.

I wouldn’t spend my time arguing whether an animal has a soul or is morally equivalent to humans. Shrill vegans, animal rightists and extremists have little to offer to a meaningful dialogue. Most people already understand that a pig and a rat and a boy are not the same (like the founder of PETA once so infamously claimed).

We need to strike a middle ground with the consumer and emphasize respect for everyone’s individual decision—from vegan to carnivore.

My decision is simple. Like most consumers, my family and I choose to eat meat because we enjoy the taste, and it provides an exceptional source of high quality protein and other essential nutrients.

We eat the beef that we, and our fellow cattlemen raise, and have no moral dilemma with that choice.

We know the animals were raised with great care and harvested in the most humane way possible, by people who care about livestock and the environment. I want consumers to know we take our obligation to raise animals humanely and with respect very seriously and will continue to evolve and improve all practices.

Dave Daley is a California Cattleman and the Associate Dean of the College of Agriculture at California State University, Chico

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/05/05/why-choose-to-eat-meat/#ixzz1uD7EHLB2

CDFA is joining the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) in encouraging Californians to make the annual May 5 festivities a “Citrus de Mayo” affair by celebrating citrus’ role in the day’s food and culture—while also raising awareness of the serious threat that citrus diseases like huanglongbing pose to California’s residential and commercial citrus.

From the limes and oranges we use to marinate carne asada, to the limes we squeeze over our guacamole, tacos and ice-cold beverages, citrus is at the center of Cinco de Mayo activities.

Huanglongbing, also known as citrus greening, is one of the most serious citrus plant diseases in the world. Once a tree is infected, there is no known cure. Some citrus producing states like California, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas, have areas under quarantine for huanglongbing, which causes green, misshapen fruit and a bitter taste in fruit. Huanglongbing has now ruined millions of citrus plants in the southeastern United States. The first case of the disease in California was confirmed in Los Angeles County on March 30, 2012.

To learn more about the Save Our Citrus program or to report suspected citrus disease, visit http://www.saveourcitrus.org. Citizens can assist in Save Our Citrus efforts by observing quarantine restrictions and refraining from taking or sending citrus fruit, trees, leaves or any part of their trees away from where they are grown. A new detection tool, the Save Our Citrus free iPhone app, enables residents to identify and report citrus diseases to CDFA’s Pest Hotline, 1-800-491-1899.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-madcow-california-20120502,0,2552488.story

May 2, 2012

Mad cow disease has the power to terrify, but at this point, U.S. consumers have far more to fear from other sources of food poisoning. There have been no human deaths from eating mad-cow-tainted beef in this country. Meanwhile, other food-borne illnesses kill 3,000 Americans a year; close to 400 die from salmonella alone, according to a 2011 report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

That said, there’s still reason for concern about this country’s efforts to prevent mad cow — formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy — despite federal officials’ rosy statements after a California dairy cow was discovered to have the disease. The cow was among the 40,000 cattle randomly tested each year in this country for mad cow, and is only the fourth case to be detected. As spokesmen for the U.S. Department of Agriculture put it, the diseased cow had never entered the human food supply; it was found at a rendering plant, which processes animal remains for use in animal feed and some household products. And it had an atypical form of the illness, one that is more likely to have developed spontaneously rather than having been ingested through its feed, though the USDA is investigating the food records of the dairy involved.

This country’s primary defense against mad cow is a ban on feeding cattle parts to other cattle. That is supposed to prevent one animal from infecting another — both mad cow and the human variant of the disease are spread by consuming parts of infected cattle. But that goal is undermined by one industry practice that is still allowed: Those cattle parts can be turned into chicken feed. Chickens can’t contract the disease, but their uneaten feed and their droppings are then scooped up and processed into cattle feed. This procedure should be banned.

USDA officials touted the California case as proof that their random sampling works. But the agency tests only one in about 900 cattle. The chances are tiny that there was only one sickened animal among the 35 million cattle slaughtered each year in the United States, and that this level of testing just happened to catch it. The fact that testing found any cases is reason enough to increase testing.

There’s probably no cause for alarm, but that doesn’t mean that the federal government has taken all the reasonably appropriate steps to protect and reassure consumers. South Korea halted imports of U.S. beef for five years after a previous case was discovered in this country, and two retailers there stopped selling last week. Indonesia is also banning imports. The U.S. beef industry itself should be calling for extra measures to protect the reputation of its products.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/04/18/DD5N1N8AHQ.DTL

Laramie Treviño

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Say your grandmother in Florida wants to share her citrus harvest and mails you a box of juicy fruit in a package with no hint of its contents. Or relatives in San Antonio pack up holiday season pecans from their tree for overland delivery to the Golden State.

Good luck getting those backyard crops past the sniffing sentinels of the conveyor belt. With a dainty prod of a paw or a vigorous scratch punctuated with a growl and a pounce, these canine inspectors are no slouches on their beat. “They all have different styles,” says Tino Menchaca, handler for Hawkeye, Santa Clara County’s tan Labrador/hound mix who, like his six canine colleagues, makes the rounds of shipping-distribution centers in Northern California.

On the clock at United Parcel Service, Federal Express, OnTrac and San Jose’s main post office, seven Bay Area dog/handler teams of the California Department of Food and Agriculture enhance inspection and surveillance efforts involving packages containing fruit and plant materials that enter the state through parcel delivery sites. While agricultural products may look healthy, they could carry eggs, maggots, insects, diseases, invasive weeds, and other threats to state plants and wildlife. The CDFA estimates that each year insects and disease take a $3 billion bite out of the state’s $37.5 billion agriculture industry.

Unmarked boxes’ fate

The unmarked parcel is at very high risk of being intercepted to ensure harmful stowaways don’t go on to wreak agricultural havoc (see “Shipping tips”). Rejected packages are destroyed in many instances and can be returned at the shipper’s expense.

And if this season reflects last year’s activity, a peak period is upon us. California teams found the highest number of unmarked parcels containing agricultural products during March 2011, when statewide 300 were found.

Alameda, Marin, Sacramento, San Joaquin, Contra Costa and Santa Clara are the Northern California counties with canine/handler duos that along with six Southern California canine inspection teams, alerted on 51,000 parcels from July 1, 2010, to June 30, 2011, according to the program’s annual report.

“Citrus is very popular, especially this time of year, ” says Michelle Thom, deputy agricultural commissioner for Santa Clara County. However, soil, flowers, mushrooms, plant cuttings and insects are common finds. California’s parcel inspection teams are assisted by a biologist who follows up on packages tapped by dogs. The CDFA prefers no backyard-grown produce is sent. And when shipping commercially grown plant items, check California’s quarantines (see “Shipping tips”).

Started in 2006, the dog teams are a cooperative effort between the U.S. Department of Agriculture, CDFA and the County Agricultural Commissioners and Sealers Association. There is no breeding program for inspection dogs; most are rescues screened for high-food drive, intelligence, sociability, low-anxiety levels, physical agility, and other favorable traits. Dog/handler teams complete up to three months of training at the USDA National Detector Dog Training Center in Newnan, Ga. Dogs must be 1 to 3 years old when they start, retire at 9, and are often adopted by their handlers. Estimated value of a working dog is $60,000.

While dogs are trained to detect five specific odors – citrus, apple, mango, guava and stone fruit – they swiftly build their range to include cuttings, flowers, bulbs, seeds and bugs. “They learn rapidly that insects are worth a cookie (dog treat),” says Cecilie Siegel, who along with partner Bella, are among two Contra Costa County canine inspection teams.

Sniffing out bug

Last year, Bella nabbed an unmarked parcel containing unshelled pecans from Texas that came with a bonus: some suspicious larvae and saw-toothed grain beetles, a pest not believed to be established in California. Bart, Bella’s Contra Costa canine colleague and reformed chicken chaser, still carries buckshot in his hind end picked up in his youth. Dozer, a 3-year-old Labrador retriever mix, joined the California Agriculture Detector Dog Program in Sacramento earlier this year. She replaces the retired Tassie, who once intercepted a package infested with the Asian citrus psyllid, a major industry menace.

During warm seasons, longans – an Asian fruit associated with lychee – send up red flags. “We see a lot of those coming through during the summer,” Thom says, adding that they often come from Florida, attached to the branch. They can harbor fruit flies as well as a scale insect alien to California.

Senders and receivers contacted about a tagged package generally are agreeable, Thom says. “The majority of the people will understand.”

Still, sob stories abound concerning packages tossed, such as the South Bay-bound Hawaiian leis that failed to reach their 80-year-old birthday recipient. “Much pleading and crying was involved (from shipper and receiver),” according to the program’s annual report. Laboratory tests determined the blooms carried ants thought to be destructive. Before disposing of the package, county staff photographed the leis so the mother could see the aloha gifts sent by her daughters.

Shipping tips

To find out about restrictions or quarantines in place, call the agricultural commissioner’s office in the county of your package’s destination and speak to the biologist on duty. For more information, go to cdfa.ca.gov and type “quarantine manual” in the search link.

After labeling a package in the standard manner with sender’s name and address on upper left-hand side and receiver’s name and address on middle of package include:

— Name of the plant, fruit or vegetable

— Name of the country, territory or state of origin of produce/plant material

— “OK to open for ag inspection”

Monterey County writer Laramie Treviño is a master gardener with the University of California Cooperative Extension. home@sfchronicle.com

Learn more about the parcel inspection dogs at CDFA’s web site.