By Julie Cart

There’s not much anyone can tell Barry Sorensen about Idaho’s Big Desert that he doesn’t know. Sorensen, 72, and his brother have been running cattle in this sere landscape all their lives, and they’ve weathered every calamity man and nature have thrown at them — until this drought came along.

Sitting recently in a rustic cabin where he spends many months looking after his cattle, Sorensen’s voice was tinged with defeat.

“To be honest with you,” he said, “I think our way of life is pretty much going to be over in 10 years.”

Years-long drought has pummeled millions of acres of federal rangeland in the West into dust, leaving a devastating swath from the Rockies to the Pacific.

Add to that climate change, invasive plants and wildfire seasons that are longer and more severe, and conditions have reached a breaking point in many Western regions. The land can no longer support both livestock and wildlife.

All these issues — it’s changing the landscape of the West, dramatically,” said Ken Wixom, who grazes 4,000 ewes and lambs on BLM land in the Snake River Plain. For public lands ranchers like him who depend on federal acreage to sustain their animals, the mood ranges from brooding to surrender.

The situation was spelled out in stark terms in two recent letters from the federal Bureau of Land Management. They told the ranchers what they already knew: Unless something changes, the days of business as usual on the 154 million acres of federal grazing land are over.

This drought-stressed range in Idaho can no longer sustain livestock, the letter warned. Better plan to reduce herd numbers by at least 30% for the spring turnout.

“I knew it was coming,” said Sorensen, squinting as the afternoon sun poured through a window.

Sorensen’s grazing allotment is so compromised that he was forced to make multiple adjustments. He waited 2 1/2 weeks longer than usual before turning out his cows and calves on BLM pastures, and then released only half his herd. The rest he kept on his ranch, feeding them hay from his own fields.

Conditions could easily grow worse.

Livestock shares the range with wildlife, including the greater sage grouse, a species dependent on sagebrush and native grasslands to survive. The grouse population has plummeted by 93% in the last 50 years, and its habitat has shrunk to one-quarter of its former 240,000-square-mile range.

If the federal government grants endangered species protection to the grouse sometime next year, ranching on federal land will be cut back even more, federal officials say. In some regions, public lands ranching might end altogether.

The problem for livestock and wildlife alike is that the drought has been merciless on all plants in the West. Last week 60% of the 11 Western states were experiencing some degree of serious drought.

Climate change has altered weather patterns so much that vegetation in some regions is transforming from abundant sagebrush, grass and forbs to a new landscape of weeds and cheat grass — fast-burning fuels that propel wildfire and destroy rangeland.

In southern New Mexico, the transformation has gone one step further — from sagebrush to weeds to sand-blown desert — and biologists say the pattern is likely to be repeated across the West.

If that happens, the economics of cattle ranching will unravel.

Public lands grazing is a remnant of Washington’s interest in settling the West by providing a financial leg up to covered-wagon pioneers and private interests alike. Ranchers pay a fee, far below market rate, for each mother cow and calf they turn out to graze on BLM acreage.

If public land is not available, ranchers could find private property to graze their animals, paying as much as 16 times more than on federal ground. They could reduce their herds, losing valuable genetics and other breeding characteristics and getting perhaps $1,000 for a cow that would cost $1,600 to replace.

Ranchers could bring the cattle to their own land and feed them with hay or alfalfa they grow or buy. None of that is consistent with the business model of a public lands rancher.

“You buy hay at $200 a ton, so you feed one ton for each 100 head of cows,” said Sorensen. “If you’ve got 200 head of cows, you are feeding $400 to $500 dollars’ worth of hay a day.”

Critics of ranching on federal land have little sympathy. They say the operations are highly subsidized by taxpayers and are secondary to the goal of preserving wildlife and native ecosystems.

Grazing receipts in fiscal year 2013 were $12.2 million, while the program cost the government $48.2 million to operate. Fees are based on range conditions that existed in 1966, and the monthly charge of $1.35 for a cow and calf hasn’t significantly changed in 50 years. Sporadic attempts to raise fees have been fiercely and immediately quashed.

Ranchers argue that they are excellent stewards of the land and that they make improvements that benefit deer, birds and other wildlife as well as improve water quality.

“Without ranchers functioning, the landscape ceases to function,” said rancher Shane Rosenkrance, 52, who grazes on 110,000 acres of BLM and state land in eastern Idaho.

Equally persuasive arguments are made by biologists and conservation groups. They say historic overgrazing caused wholesale changes to the landscape and fostered the damaging growth of cheat grass — which has fanned wildfires in the West.

And, they say, when ranchers allow cattle to trample streams and riverbeds, especially in a drought, crucial riparian areas can be destroyed.

The sage grouse is particularly vulnerable to sagebrush loss. Cattle grazing reduces forbs and grasses the birds use for protection and cover, leaving them exposed to predators.

Alarmed Western state governors, fearful that an endangered species listing could also mean the end of energy, mining and other commercial activities on federal land, are scrambling to protect the birds and their breeding grounds.

Kurt Wiedenmann, a BLM manager in Boise, said the drought and the sage grouse have federal and state agencies working together to find room for both grazing and the imperiled birds. Ranchers have already been hit hard by grazing cutbacks, Wiedenmann said, noting that many of them are small-scale, not corporate operations.

The California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) is now accepting applications for the State Water Efficiency and Enhancement Program (SWEEP), authorized by emergency drought legislation (Senate Bill 103).  An estimated $10 million in competitive grant funding will be awarded to provide financial assistance to agricultural operations for implementation of water conservation measures that result in increased water efficiency and reduced greenhouse gas emissions.

“Water conservation is essential as we work our way through this drought and prepare ourselves for future challenges,” said CDFA Secretary Karen Ross. “We are pleased to offer this grant program for innovative, effective projects.”

Applicants must access the Application Guidelines for detailed information and program requirements. To streamline and expedite the application process, CDFA is partnering with the State Water Resources Control Board, which hosts an online application using the Financial Assistance Application Submittal Tool (FAAST). All applicants must register for a FAAST account at https://faast.waterboards.ca.gov .

Applications must be submitted electronically using FAAST by Tuesday, July 15, 2014 at 5:00 p.m. PST.

CDFA will hold application workshops and one webinar to provide information on program requirements and the FAAST application process (see below). There is no cost to attend the workshops or webinar. Space is limited at each workshop location. Individuals planning to attend should email grants@cdfa.ca.gov with their contact information, number of seats required and workshop location. Upon confirmation of registration further details will be provided.

Modesto – June 18, 2014
1:00 to 3:00 p.m.
Stanislaus County Agricultural Center
Harvest Hall, Room G
3800 Cornucopia Way
Modesto, CA 95358

Salinas – June 19, 2014
1:00 to 3:00 p.m.
Monterey County Agricultural Center
1428 Abbott St.
Salinas, CA 93901

Ventura – June 25, 2014
1:00 to 3:00 p.m.
County of Ventura UC Cooperative Extension
669 County Square Dr.
California Conference Rooms A & B
Ventura, CA 93003

Tulare – June 26, 2014
1:00 to 3:00 p.m.
Tulare County Agricultural Commissioner’s Office
Auditorium
4437 S Laspina
Tulare, CA 93274

Oroville – June 30, 2014
1:00 to 3:00 p.m.
Butte County Farm Bureau
2580 Feather River Blvd.
Oroville CA 95965

Webinar – July 8, 2014
9:30 to 11:30 a.m.
Webinar Information will be provided upon registration

Prospective applicants may contact CDFA’s Grants Office at grants@cdfa.ca.gov with general program questions.

Governor Brown has called on all Californians to reduce their water use by 20 percent and prevent water waste – visit  SaveOurH2O.org to find out how everyone can do their part, and visit  Drought.CA.Gov to learn more about how California is dealing with the effects of the drought.

Link to news release

Note – The farmer profiled in this story, Vonita Murray, was featured last year in CDFA’s Growing California video series. The segment can be viewed at the end of this story.

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 By Blair Anthony Robertson

Farming wasn’t Vonita Murray’s first choice, but after making a drastic career change, the 38-year-old Navy veteran, former office manager and longtime fitness enthusiastic now believes digging in the dirt, growing food and being her own boss may be the dream job she has always wanted.

The transition to farming for Murray, 38, happened gradually over the past several years. She eventually took stock of her life, sized up her talents, sharpened the focus on her dreams and decided she was no longer cut out for a desk job.

For several years, Murray had been an office manager and a CAD, or computer-assisted design, technician for an architecture firm. Much of her work focused on remodeling floor plans for a major fast food chain’s Northern California stores. But when the economic downturn hit the architecture and design industry, Murray got laid off. She saw it as a chance to make a change in her life.

“It was the best thing that ever happened to me,” she said.

Using a $5,000 grant she received from the Davis-based Farmer Veteran Coalition, Murray bought some basic farm equipment and managed to launch her new career. She also enrolled in the first class of the California Farm Academy, a six-month farming course run by the Center for Land-based Learning in Winters.

Murray knows it will take hard work and several years before she can make a comfortable living as a farmer. But she has a long-term plan and says farming – including many 12-hour days – is exactly the lifestyle she was seeking.

“I’ve never been so tired, so broke and so happy,” she said with a laugh. “For the first time in my life, I have worth and a purpose. What I do has value in people’s lives.”

More and more veterans are turning to farming to connect in a similar way. “We’re all a family and we all try to help each other succeed,” Murray said.

When Michael O’Gorman founded the Farmer Veteran Coalition in 2009, he searched throughout the U.S. and found just nine veterans interested in going into farming. By the end of that year, the number was up to 30. These days, O’Gorman and his group have helped 3,000 veterans transition into farming.

“What’s really attracting veterans to agriculture is it offers a sense of purpose and a sense of mission,” said O’Gorman, who has farmed for 40 years. “It’s about feeding their country, offeringfood security and a better diet.”

O’Gorman is seeing more women get into farming and says Murray is a great role model.

“Vonita is dynamic, creative, energetic and smart. Whatever she does, she will do it well and take it places,” he said. “She’s a growing phenomenon. About 15 percent of those who serve in the military are women and that’s about the same percentage we hear from. More and more women are going into agriculture. The military and farming are both male-dominated. The women who have taken on both of them just seem like a really exceptional group.”

Those who encounter Murray are often impressed by her energy and her holistic, lead-by-example approach to farming. Not only does she want to grow good food, she sees the work she does as a way to help people be healthy. Indeed, Murray’s physical presence says plenty. Though she no longer trains as a bodybuilder, she remains noticeably lean and muscular. Her workouts these days focus on functional training and she is a big advocate of Crossfit, which combines classic weightlifting with mobility exercises.

“I’m doing all this because I want to get people healthy,” said Murray, noting that she hopes to someday build an obstacle course on the property so people can use it to work out.

She also has a penchant for unorthodox and innovative approaches to growing food. Standing on a portion of the land she leases in rural Elverta next to the renowned Sterling Caviar facility, Murray watches water stream past. It’s runoff from the tanks where sturgeon are raised for their prized caviar. It’s also the key to what she will grow on her new “farm” site.

Murray essentially harnesses the water, 3 million gallons a day and loaded with nutrients, to create an innovative style of growing food called aquaponics, which combines modern hydroponics with forward-thinking environmental awareness.

The water goes through a settling pond to separate solids from liquids, travels through a moat and into small ponds where Murray is growing produce she sells to restaurants and to a growing number of customers at the Saturday farmers market in Oak Park.

“It’s an excellent use of water,” Murray said as she walked part of the nine acres she leases from the caviar company. In addition to the produce she is growing – squash, melons, heirloom tomatoes, mustard greens and more – Murray is raising free-range, organic chickens that lay about 10 dozen eggs a day. She hopes to soon expand to rabbits and other non-GMO (genetically modified organism) meat.

The outgoing and optimistic Murray has put some of her energy into tapping resources that can help get her going in farming. She obtained a $35,000 low-interest loan from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. She also received a grant to buy a 1956 Ford pickup truck, which she plans to use to sell her produce in low-income areas, in partnership with the Yolo County Family Resource Center.

Murray, whose produce operation is going to specialize in watercress, says she would have been at a loss as to how to proceed as a farmer without the education she got at the California Farm Academy. The program costs about $2,600 and various grants subsidize the tuition, according to Dawnie Andrak, director of development for the Center of Land-Based Learning.

Those who enroll run the gamut of age and work background. About 20 students graduate each year. To make it a real-world experience, they write a business plan and present it to a panel composed of people from the banking, business and farm community.

“There are more women like Vonita getting into farming,” Andrak said. “You will not find someone more dedicated and more clear about what it is she wants to do. She is certainly not one to give up.”

Jennifer Taylor, the director of the Farm Academy, is herself an example of a woman who made the career leap into farming. She was a research biologist who had no idea until well after college that a life in agriculture might appeal to her. She landed a four-month internship on a farm, was given four calves and eventually rented a barn and started dairy farming.

“If you have no connection to agriculture, it’s very difficult to imagine yourself doing it, Taylor said. “It’s a way many people want to live, an opportunity to be your own boss, work outside with your hands and be your own boss.”

But can you make a living?

“That depends,” said Taylor, noting that one young farmer from the program now sells to about 50 Bay Area restaurants and nets about $75,000 a year.

Back in Elverta, Murray is busy tending her crops and her chickens. She’s not making a profit yet, but she knows it takes time. More than anything, she loves the work, the lifestyle and the mission. She sometimes feels the stress of having debt and not knowing whether her crops will thrive.

But her farm is called Thrive Acres for a reason.

“You have to keep dreaming,” she said with a smile. “This is just the beginning.”

Link to story

This video content is no longer available.

By Ezra Klein and Susannah Locke

The future of the nations will depend on the manner of how they feed themselves, wrote the French epicurean Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin in 1826. Almost 200 years later, how nations feed themselves has gotten a lot more complicated. That’s particularly true in the US, where food insecurity coexists with an obesity crisis, where fast food is everywhere and farmer’s markets are spreading, where foodies have never had more power and McDonald’s has never had more locations, and where the possibility of a barbecue-based civil war is always near. So here are 40 maps, charts, and graphs that show where our food comes from and how we eat it, with some drinking thrown in for good measure.

 

By the Kitchen Sisters and Lisa Morehouse

In 1898, the U.S. Department of Agriculture created a special department of men called Agriculture Explorers to travel the globe searching for new food crops to bring back for farmers to grow in the U.S.

“These agricultural explorers were kind of like the Indiana Joneses of the plant world,” says Sarah Seekatz, a California historian who grew up in the Coachella Valley, the date capital of the U.S.

These men introduced the country to exotic specimens like the mango, the avocado and new varieties of sweet, juicy oranges. But of all the exotic fruits brought, the story of the biblical date — and its marketing, cultivation and pollination — remains one of the most romantic of all.

David Fairchild, a botantist who helped found the Agricultural Explorer program, was one of the first to travel to Baghdad to investigate dates.

“He chose Baghdad,” says Seekatz, “in part, because he remembered One Thousand and One Arabian Nights, and … stories of Aladdin, Sinbad the Sailor and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. The book was a well-known childhood tradition for generations of Americans.”

In 1900, Fairchild’s colleague and fellow USDA explorer Walter Swingle studied date-growing in Algeria. As Swingle took temperature readings and soil temperature, he decided that the conditions were very much like those in California’s hot, arid Coachella Valley, sometimes referred to as the American Sahara. Deep aquifers existed under the California valley providing perfect conditions for dates.

Unfortunately, planting date seeds does not yield commercially viable dates. Seeds vary, and you never know what you’ll get. So Swingle brought back large offshoots cut from the bottom of the palms that would produce trees identical to the parent tree.

“It wasn’t easy,” says John Popenoe, a horticulturist whose grandfather, Fred Popenoe, owned a nursery at that time in Altadena, a few hours from the Coachella Valley. “These date offshoots are 60 pounds or so. They have to be cut off the mother palm with a big chisel.”

Swingle’s date palm offshoots thrived in the Coachella Valley and farmers began clamoring for more. In 1911, John Popenoe’s grandfather sent his sons Paul and Wilson on a world tour, including a stop in Iraq, to collect date palms to sell at his nursery. They kept separate accounts of their travels, some of which are maintained by the Coachella Valley Historical Society.

“In Basra, the port from which Sinbad the Sailor always set sail on his hair-raising adventures, we entered the world’s greatest date growing country,” wrote Paul Popenoe.

The Popenoe brothers encountered some hair-raising adventures as well. Paul almost died of typhoid fever. Wilson suffered from malaria. As they traveled by camel to the Wadi Samali region of Oman, searching for the delicious Fard date, they were shot at.

“After Paul’s recovery from typhoid,” Wilson Popenoe wrote, “we bought several thousand young date palms along the banks of the Shatt-el-Arab River [in southern Iraq]. We went up to Baghdad and bought several thousand palms in that region. After having been shot at once more, we experienced relief when our 9,000 palms were safely stowed on board a tramp steamer and headed down the Persian Gulf.”

In the Red Sea, some of the offshoots washed overboard in a storm. The ship was short of drinking water, and Wilson had to trade his typewriter to the captain to keep the date palms watered.

The Arabian palms finally landed at Galveston, Texas, and were shipped overland in 17 freight cars to California. It was the first commercial introduction of date palms to the Coachella Valley.

“Between 1900 and 1930, America has a love affair with the Middle East going on,” says Seekatz.

In order to market this new fruit and promote the region, Coachella Valley date growers began capitalizing on the exotic imagery and fantasy many Americans associated with the Middle East.

“The Arabian theme was a way to interest people in coming to what otherwise was a rather forbidding, trackless desert,” says Pat Laflin, whose family has owned Laflin Date Gardens since 1912. “It made it seem more exotic, more romantic. They needed something to dress up the dry sand.”

They also dressed up the towns.

“In 1904, Walters became the town of Mecca. There was Oasis, Arabia and Thermal. Investors from Los Angeles would take the train out to the Coachella Valley, where they’d be greeted by guides dressed in Arabian costumes and taken on camelback out to a proposed development called The Walled Oasis of Biskra,” Seekatz says.

Hollywood stoked the craze, says Seekatz. Films like The Queen of Sheba, Cleopatra and the blockbuster 1921 silent movie The Sheik, starring Rudolph Valentino, inspired women’s fashion, architecture, jewelry, packaging and ad campaigns.

In 1922, the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun fueled peoples’ interest and imaginations even more. Along with the mummies and priceless treasures found in the tomb, one item in particular caught the attention of people in the Coachella Valley: preserved dates.

“One man from the area,” says Seekatz, “actually wrote to try and obtain dates from King Tut’s tomb to put on display in his date shop.”

During the 1950s, date shops dotted California Highway 111 from Palm Springs to Mecca, attracting tourists. There was the Pyramid Date shop, where you could purchase your dates in a pyramid. Sniff’s Exotic Date Garden set up a tent like those used by nomadic tribes of the Sahara.

One of the most well-known date shops that still exists today is Shields Date Garden, established in 1924. Floyd Shields lured in customers with his suggestively named lecture and slide show.

“For miles along the highway,” says Seekatz, “there were large yellow billboards urging people to see ‘The Romance and Sex Life of the Date.’ ”

The Sex Life Of The Date

“There are pictures in the pyramids of priests doing a ceremony around the female palms, waving the male flowers to increase the pollination,” says Doug Adair, owner of Pato’s Dream Date Garden in Thermal, Calif.

And they still hand-pollinate dates today to ensure a reliable, successful crop. Francisco Paniagua was a palm worker, or palmero, for decades and is now a farmer with an orchard neighboring Adair’s. During the spring pollinating season, he climbs up into the fronds of 50-foot female date palms. He works his way around the spiky branches of the crowns, spraying little puffs of yellow pollen gathered from the flowers of a male palm tree onto each flower of the female trees.

Adair grows several kinds of dates, including Bahri dates, which are golden yellow and can be eaten unripe or ripened. “The Bahri comes from southern Iraq around Basra. The tradition in that area goes back thousands of years to when Alexander the Great passed through … This is what he would have been eating, Barhi dates — the fruits of his victory when he conquered the Persian Empire,” says Adair.

In the late 1940s, the Coachella Valley farmers and boosters revved up their marketing strategy by hosting an annual International Festival of the Dates. Business and civic leaders encouraged townspeople to dress up for the duration.

“If you went to a movie in Indio, your ticket might be taken by someone in harem pants,” says Seekatz. “At a restaurant, your waitress might be wearing one of those little boleros. Or the produce guy at the grocery story would be dressed as a genie.”

“The first Date Festival I went to was in 1950,” says Pat Laflin. “The pageant uses the Arabian Nights theme. They chose Queen Scheherazade and the princesses. And they always had a genie, elephants and camels. Lots of chiffon, sequins, and the costumes showed quite a bit of flesh.”

An outdoor stage was constructed with domes and minarets designed by a Hollywood set designer. “It was supposed to look like Baghdad,” says Laflin, “or something people imagined Baghdad looked like.”

The camel races were a huge draw. And there were elaborate exhibits of all varieties of dates in the Taj Mahal building.

“I think people were really trying to pay homage to the place where their new crop had come from. But it’s an exotification of an entire group. It’s problematic, but it reflected popular conceptions in America of how the Middle East was,” Seekatz says.

Today’s World

The Coachella Valley High School sports teams have been known as the Arabs since the 1930s, a moniker that has become controversial in recent years.

“The picture is of an Arab that looks rather fierce. Which is what you want your football team to be. But in today’s world, there’s an Arab group that felt it was offensive. So the high school is in the process of re-evaluating,” says Laflin.

Since the 1970s, the demographics of the Coachella Valley have been changing.

“A lot of these mom-and-pop date growers sold their date groves to large-scale, industrial agricultural producers,” says Seekatz. “Newcomers were not attached to the story of the date gardens and the region’s long connection with the Middle East. The area began to market itself as a place where industry could grow.”

During the 1970s and ’80s, the American perception of the Middle East was changing as well. Politics and the media brought the region into sharp reality. The fantasy images of harem dancers and genies gave way to TV coverage of the oil embargo and the Iranian hostage crisis.

“People were concerned that it would hurt to be associated with the Middle East,” says Seekatz. “But a lot of people were still invested in the agricultural heritage of the date and its Middle Eastern origins.”

Returning To The Oasis Of Boudenib

Gardens of date palms stretch mile after mile through the Coachella Valley. More than 90 percent of the dates harvested in the U.S. are grown here. One of the most popular varieties is the Medjool date.

“All the Medjool dates can be traced back to a single oasis in Morocco,” says Doug Adair. Nine offshoots taken from the Oasis of Boudenib, Morocco, are the source of all the present trees.

But now, in Morocco and Algeria, where the Medjool originated, the palm has been wiped out by disease. Some Americans are trying to help by giving back. Laflin and her husband, Ben, have sent back healthy stock from their date garden to the areas where the Medjool once flourished.

The Laflins visited Boudenib in 1995. It’s over the Atlas Mountains from Marrakesh and far out into the desert.

“When we got to Boudenib, the mayor came out to greet us. It was a big occasion,” remembers Pat Laflin. “He said, ‘Why would anyone from the United States want to come to Boudenib?’ We had worked with the Medjool dates for so many years, and to see where they originated was very meaningful to us.”

Link to article

 

By Eliza Barclay

If you’re a scientist and you work for a pest control company, you’re used to thinking about bugs as the enemy you’re trained to kill.

Now try putting one in your mouth.

It took some mental rearranging for Nancy Troyano, an entomologist for Ehrlich Pest Control. But on Wednesday she did it for the first time in her life.

“I’m used to looking at grasshoppers under a microscope,” Troyano tells The Salt. “I know what their internal organs and the spines on their legs look like, so I was kind of thinking about them.”

Troyano actually had no intention of eating any insects at the event. Her company sponsored the tasting at the Occidental Grill in Washington, D.C., just a half block from the White House, and she was there to talk about what the company does.

But then her boss, Ehrlich CEO John Myers, pressured her into it. And she was pleasantly surprised: “It didn’t taste so bad — kind of like baked potato chips.”

Troyano was among many skeptics who found much to like about the pop-up Pestaurant, which drew tourists and Washingtonians onto the Occidental’s patio for about four hours Wednesday to taste grasshopper burgers, roasted crickets, Mexican spice mealworms and ant lollipops. It was one of 12 Pestaurant events sponsored by Ehrlich and its parent company around the world.

John Mongini, from Flagstaff, Ariz., initially winced at his first taste of cricket. But after a few chews, he relaxed, describing them as “kind of like sunflower seeds.”

Perhaps the greatest gastronomic success of the snacks laid out for the noshing were the turkey burgers with ground-up and whole grasshoppers mixed in.

The juicy, grilled burgers were garnished with peppers and lettuce and served with an array of gourmet condiments. And there were two key reasons they were delicious: They’d been concocted the night before by Rodney Scruggs, the Occidental’s executive chef. And they included a brilliant secret ingredient: duck fat, to keep them moist.

“I’ve never cooked with insects before, so this was new territory for me, but it took on a life of its own,” Scruggs says. “The grasshoppers gave the burgers a musty, earthy flavor, like a dried mushroom.”

The match-up, however, of one of Washington’s most iconic grand dame restaurants and a pest control company headquartered in Reading, Pa., was a bit puzzling.

Why exactly would exterminators throw a free luncheon to give out grasshoppers, mealworms and scorpions?

“We’re not recycling insects that were captured in people’s homes,” Ehrlich’s CEO John Myers insists.

Moreover, says Troyano, the only bugs being served that could be considered pests would be the crickets: “They’re occasional home invaders.”

Instead, Ehrlich was there for three reasons: “to have fun, raise awareness about the serious business of pest control and raise money for hunger,” says Myers.

The idea, Myers says, came from Ehrlich’s parent company, Rentokil, which sponsored the first Pestaurant in London in 2013. “They expected 200 people and got 2,000,” he says.

For the charity part of the event, Ehrlich had committed to donate a few dollars for everyone who tried the bugs to D.C. Central Kitchen, a local non-profit. And while Ehrlich isn’t in the business of raising insects or directly promoting their consumption, Myers notes that he does see them as a viable solution to hunger.

As we reported last year, insect cuisine isn’t just a kooky San Francisco fad anymore. The U.N.’s agricultural arm has been speaking up about why insects should be an option for dinner.

Among the attendees of the D.C. Pestaurant was Sonny Ramaswamy, director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

In an email to The Salt, Ramaswamy says he was pleased to see so many people partaking in bugs at the event. After all, insects are nutritious, and more efficient and better for the environment than other protein sources.

“Edible insects are going to be part of the toolkit for us to achieve global food security,” he says. “Unfortunately in Western countries we will need to overcome the ‘yuck’ factor, and events like Pestaurant will go a long ways to help people overcome the same.”

USDA, too, is now on the entomophagy bandwagon. In May, Ramaswamy gave the keynote address at the Insects as Food Conference, hosted by the Food and Agriculture Organization and Wageningen University in the Netherlands. (He also recently wrote this blog post about why everyone should get on board with eating bugs.)

 

Link to article

Alameda County Fair
6/18/2014 to 7/6/2014
Pleasanton, CA

El Dorado County Fair
6/12/2014 to 6/15/2014
Placerville, CA

Kings Fair
6/12/2014 to 6/15/2014
Hanford, CA

Merced County Fair
6/11/2014 to 6/15/2014
Merced, CA

Placer County Fair
6/19/2014 to 6/22/2014
Roseville, CA

Redwood Acres Fair
6/19/2014 to 6/22/2014
Eureka, CA

San Diego County Fair
6/7/2014 to 7/6/2014
Del Mar, CA

San Mateo County Exposition & Fair
6/7/2014 to 6/15/2014
San Mateo, CA

Shasta District Fair
6/11/2014 to 6/14/2014
Anderson, CA

Sonoma-Marin Fair
6/18/2014 to 6/22/2014
Petaluma, CA

CDFA’s Division of Fairs and Expositions

By Nick Miller

If Sacramento is truly the nation’s farm-to-fork capital, then the state Capitol has an opportunity this week to prove so by putting millions of budget dollars where its mouth is.

Here’s what’s at stake: California’s cap-and-trade carbon tax is expected to generate a cool $850 million next fiscal year. This money needs to be spent on projects that reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Gov. Jerry Brown’s budget proposes that $25 million of this nut go toward agriculture. That’s not a ton of funding, but it is direly needed, and would be spent on fertilizer management, methane mitigation at dairy farms, biofuels, farmland preservation, plus other sustainability programs that combat climate change.

The catch is that some Democrats in the Senate and Assembly have the governor’s ag money in their crosshairs. They want to use the millions for their own pet projects: urban infill, mass transit, etc. To that end, both houses of the Legislature have proposed their own budget plans.

This concerns sustainable-agriculture advocates. Since most lawmakers represent urban areas, not rural districts, they fear that farmers might end up losing out on some of the state’s first ag-related funding in years. Lawmaker’s budget deadline is next Sunday, June 15.

“I can’t predict how this will go,” said Jeanne Merrill, a policy director with California Climate and Agriculture Network, or CalCAN. But what she does know is that “you can’t seek agriculture solutions to climate change without protecting land.”

 

When most Californians think of the fight against climate change, they picture doing so by switching out lightbulbs and not running the air conditioner, or by buying hybrid cars and driving less.

“But agriculture’s total emissions … are roughly about 7 percent of the state’s total emissions,” said Ryan Harden, a staff researcher at UC Davis who works on studies for the California Air Resources Board and the California Energy Commission.

He concedes that 7 percent is “not very much compared to electricity use and cars.” But it can make a dent. “Every little bit helps.”

For sure, agriculture has definitely been part of the mix when California’s leaders look at ways to reduce emissions and meet the celebrated Assembly Bill 32’s global-warming goals.

“Natural- and working-land strategies to reduce greenhouse gases aren’t at the top of the list in the building,” said Merrill, “but I think we’ve seen good progress.”

One of the main ways agriculture addresses climate change is with fertilizer. Almost all crops in California need it. But UCD’s Harden said, “One of the bigger sources of greenhouse-gas emissions from agriculture is nitrous-oxide emissions from soils,” which comes from chemicals in fertilizer. Some 50 percent of ag’s overall emissions derive from this, he explained.

Harden and others aren’t saying we should stop using fertilizers, however. Farming is too complex and vulnerable to advocate for that, he said. The state does encourage farmers to adopt greenhouse-gas-mitigation tactics on a voluntary basis.

Brown’s budget would allocate $5 million to research ways to improve fertilizers and manage their emissions. Again, that’s not a huge chunk of change. But it’s needed, experts say.

“There are a 400 different kinds of crops in California, with different soil and different watering systems,” said Karen Ross, head of the California Department of Food and Agriculture. She argues that there’s “a huge need to develop a research road map” for how to manage fertilizers, and this funding will help pave the way.

But the feud over farm-to-fork’s funding future is over more than just fertilizer.

Democrat leaders in the Assembly have a different plan. They want to split the $850 million in cap-and-trade money into two pots: Some of this would eventually go toward reducing agricultural waste and “carbon farming,” a method of reducing emissions that is popular with farmers. But there aren’t any guarantees, and critics of the Assembly plan remain uncertain that money will be set aside for priority projects.

The governor’s plan would be managed by Ross’ Department of Food and Agriculture, while the Assembly’s would be under the Strategic Growth Council’s purview (of which Ross is a member).

Over in the Senate, lawmakers recommend setting aside a specific amount of the cap-and-trade revenue, $30 million, but for nonspecific emissions-reduction and water-efficiency projects. This plan builds off the governor’s drought bill, and the California Wildlife Conservation Board would oversee it.

Sustainable-ag groups put up a good face and say they are happy to have any state monies. “We want to make sure some funding goes to agriculture,” Merrill said. “And we’re pleased all three proposals recognize the agriculture as a solution to climate change.”

In a perfect world, however, farmers and advocates would like to see more investment in farmland preservation. This means investing in ag land and ending sprawl policies.

“If you look at the rate of emissions for an urban area, they tend to have 70 times higher emissions than your typical plot of agriculture land,” said Harden. This means that the more farmland conservation takes place, the more Sacramento and the rest of the state can stabilize—and hopefully reduce—emissions.

But, no surprise, conservation often takes a backseat to industry. This is why a large piece of the governor’s budget, $12 million, will go to big-time dairy producers, who hope to install pricey digesters to reduce methane emissions.

That’s not a bad thing. And Ross says it’s a priority, “considering that we have almost 2 million dairy cows in the state and only a handful of dairy digesters.”

But she also advocates for strategic growth, conservation and sustainability: investment in modernization of water irrigation, renewable energy on farms (more than 5,700 state farms primarily use renewable energy, she said), alternative fuels and soil health.

“We can do all these things, and we know they’re the right things to do,” Ross said. But it comes down to money and time.

“When I think about the next generation, I think we’re really going to see tremendous change,” she said.

 

 

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By Tamara Lush

University of Florida researchers say they’ve found a possible treatment for a disease that’s devastating citrus trees around the state, but caution that it could be years before the cure could become commercially available to growers.

The team from UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences said that it has discovered a chemical that kills the citrus greening bacteria (also known as huanglongbing or HLB).

The chemical — benzbromarone — has been used to treat gout in humans but has never been approved for use in the United States because of concerns over reports of acute liver injury. Researchers sprayed greenhouse tree shoots infected with greening with three different chemicals, and the benzbromarone halted the bacteria in 80 percent of the infected trees’ shoots.

The researchers published their findings in the journal PLOS Pathogens.

But researchers caution that this good news is the first step in a years-long process.

“We are getting closer and closer,” said Claudio Gonzalez, an associate professor at UF who is part of the three-person team in the microbiology and cell science department.

The chemical appears to break down the bacteria’s cellular structure — it doesn’t allow the bacteria to survive in the vascular system of the tree, the research found.

They’ve only tested the chemical in the lab. Researchers now must test the chemical in the real world — mature trees planted in a grove — and if that goes well, will eventually seek federal approval to use the chemical commercially. One of the key things to determine, said Gonzalez, is whether the chemical affects the taste of the citrus fruit.

The researchers will begin field experiments this year.

Ken Keck, the president of the California Citrus Research Board in Visalia, said that he’s read about the UF research and is measured with his optimism.

“Our industry growers are a sober bunch,” he said. “In that they realize that panaceas, magic bullets, when it comes to this challenging disease, they’ve been once bitten twice shy.”

Keck points out that if the chemical were to be effective on greening, it would still need USDA approval and approval from different states’ regulatory agencies.

Greening affects Florida’s $9 billion citrus industry. Florida growers are seeing the bacteria’s effects this season. This year’s orange crop is approaching the fruit’s lowest harvest in decades, and experts say greening is to blame.

Greening first enters the tree via the Asian citrus psyllid — which are jumping plant lice. The psyllid sucks on leaf sap and leaves behind bacteria. The bacteria starve the tree of nutrients which leads to sour, mottled fruit. The tree eventually dies.

Until now, greening has vexed researchers because there is seemingly no cure. It’s affected a large part of Florida’s orange crop and threatens the state’s entire citrus industry.

Other citrus growing regions, such as California, haven’t been as affected by greening as Florida. But researchers in California are also working to stave off the disease that threatens the state’s $1.8 billion citrus industry. Psyllids have been found in Fresno County, Tulare County and other parts of the state, and a 901-square-mile area in Tulare and Kern counties is under quarantine.

And state officials have confirmed that a psyllid had been found in a trap near Farmersville.