From Morning Ag Clips

For years more than 15 bacterial species have ruined millions of dollars worth of onion crops across the United States. That is bound to change, as a group of 24 researchers from 12 states across the country, including one researcher from South Africa, plan to take on these bugs, armed with more than $8 million over the next four years.

The USDA Specialty Crops Research Initiative recently announced the award of $4 million to the group in their project entitled, “Stop the rot: Combatting onion bacterial diseases with pathogenomic tools and enhanced management strategies” (Award No. 2019-51181-30013). The project comes with a match of $4.2 million match from onion growers, universities and seed companies all recognizing the severity of bacterial diseases on America’s onion crops.

“They all have skin in the game,” said Lindsey du Toit, principal investigator for the project and a professor and extension plant pathologist with the Department of Plant Pathology at Washington State University. “This is a stakeholder-driven need. It’s not driven by academics in their ivory towers thinking they need money to fund their pet projects.”

“For five to six years, I’ve been jotting down notes about key things that could be looked at, in relation to hearing many stories about losses due to bacterial diseases,” du Toit said. “I became increasingly aware of the need to pull together a team to really focus on how we can do a better job, and the importance of the stakeholders being involved in that planning.”

The project could help reduce the annual $16 million-plus losses to America’s onion industry through this coordinated, multi-state evaluation “to determine how specific production practices, environmental conditions, and inoculum sources can be managed using practical, economically viable and environmentally-sound strategies to limit losses from bacterial rots,” du Toit said.

America’s onion farmers and researchers have yet to fully get a handle on bacterial rots, which can affect an onion at all stages of growth. Typically the only way to eliminate these pathogens is through getting rid of the affected onions. Sometimes an entire load of onions can be affected but not detected until that load has shipped across the country, which can devastate smaller, family-run farms, the backbone of America’s agriculture industry.

At present, onion growers do not have highly effective bactericides to rely on to eliminate bacterial diseases.

“These diseases are not easy to manage,” du Toit said. “If they were, growers would have figured it out by now. They’re ingenious and pretty creative.”

An important aspect of this research will be on the use of cultural practices to manage the problem such as modifying irrigation practices. Part of this project also will be identifying ways of screening for resistance in onion varieties to develop stronger cultivars.

“We know from experience that cultural practices can make a big difference at increasing or reducing the risk of these diseases,” du Toit said. “A lot of it comes down to managing irrigation, nitrogen levels, the timing on when you undercut the onions, and how you cure then in the field and manage the soil.”  In turn, that may be the most economical tool in this war on bacteria.

Researchers had to wage a herculean effort to get this project off the ground. Though they were notified in January that the pre-proposal submitted in December was accepted for submission of a full grant, they weren’t aware of the new reinstatement of a 10-year-old requirement for a 100 percent match in funding, authored under the new Farm Bill. The researchers had just three months to figure out how to come up with at least $4 million in funding to match the federal funding requested in the proposal.

Those involved dug deep, and from in kind donations of farming and implement costs as well as professor’s and other staff and student salaries or assistantships, they were able to come up with it, du Toit said. About $2 million of that came from growers alone.

“They looked at the value of their projected in-kind contributions to the project, whether it be land, the value of the crop used for trials, and the cost of the farm work done to maintain the trials, and tallied all that up to come up with their matches,” du Toit said.  “This is the perfect example of the kind of problem this Specialty Crops Research Initiative program was developed to address.”

The Co-Principle Investigators in the project are Bhabesh Dutta, University of Georgia; Christine A. Hoepting, Cornell University; Brian Howard Kvitko, University of Georgia; Mark Uchanski, Colorado State University; and Brenna J. Aegerter, University of California.

The Specialty Crops Research Initiative is a part of the USDA National Institute for Food and Agriculture, and addresses the critical needs of the specialty crops industry by awarding grants to support research and extension that address key challenges of national, regional, and multi-state importance in sustaining all components of food and agriculture, including conventional and organic food production systems.

Link to story in Morning Ag Clips

The California Department of Food and Agriculture is celebrating its 100^th anniversary as a state agency in 2019. Throughout the year this blog will feature a number of items to commemorate this milestone. Today we continue with the Centennial Reflections video series, featuring CDFA employees remembering their histories, and the agency’s.

After Terry Garrett witnessed his ailing brother lose the ability to pursue his love of gardening, he took it upon himself to ensure that anybody—regardless of whether they are confined to a wheelchair—could keep their green thumbs in the dirt.

Garrett is the mastermind behind the Elevated Garden: a tabletop garden that has been designed specifically for people in wheelchairs. The idea for the elevated garden was born after his brother was diagnosed with Stage IV chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

“He loved gardening but could no longer handle the physical demands of traditional gardening,” says the veteran. “I designed and built my first elevated garden… and by the end of the year, my brother was taking care of 40 units and growing all his produce for the winter.”

“I saw how it benefited him with an improvement in his quality of life, and an increased sense of self worth and accomplishment,” he continued.

“This spurred me on to developing, patenting, and trade-marking what we are currently manufacturing and marketing.”

Standing at just 30 inches tall, the gardens have been used in nursing homes and assisted living facilities because they limit the amount of bending and physical activity that is typically required by traditional gardening.

The components are made and manufactured in Tennessee, by the veteran’s company, T&L Group. Additionally, the mobile gardens are built on wheels so they can be used indoors through all seasons.

Garrett, who was recently named a “Horticultural Hero” for his design, is now looking to develop handicap-accessible gardening tools so his company can continue to uplift disabled and geriatric patients who want to garden ‘outside the box’.

Link to story

California farmers and ranchers affected by wildfires in 2018 and 2019 can apply through the Wildfire and Hurricane Indemnity Program Plus (WHIP+). Sign-up for this U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) program is underway.

WHIP+ will be available for eligible producers who have suffered eligible losses of certain crops, trees, bushes or vines in counties with a Presidential Emergency Disaster Declaration or a Secretarial Disaster Designation (primary counties only). Disaster losses must have been a result of hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, typhoons, volcanic activity, snowstorms or wildfires that occurred in 2018 or 2019. Also, producers in counties that did not receive a disaster declaration or designation may still apply for WHIP+ but must provide supporting documentation to establish that the crops were directly affected by a qualifying disaster loss. 

A list of counties that received qualifying disaster declarations and designations is available at farmers.gov/recover/whip-plus. Because grazing and livestock losses, other than milk losses, are covered by other disaster recovery programs offered through FSA, those losses are not eligible for WHIP+.

Eligible crops include those for which federal crop insurance or Noninsured Crop Disaster Assistance Program (NAP) coverage is available, excluding crops intended for grazing. A list of crops covered by crop insurance is available through USDA’s Risk Management Agency (RMA) Actuarial Information Browser at webapp.rma.usda.gov/apps/actuarialinformationbrowser.

The WHIP+ payment factor ranges from 75 percent to 95 percent, depending on the level of crop insurance coverage or NAP coverage that a producer obtained for the crop. Producers who did not insure their crops in 2018 or 2019 will receive 70 percent of the expected value of the crop. Insured crops (either crop insurance or NAP coverage) will receive between 75 percent and 95 percent of expected value; those who purchased the highest levels of coverage will receive 95-percent of the expected value.

At the time of sign-up, producers will be asked to provide verifiable and reliable production records. If a producer is unable to provide production records, WHIP+ payments will be determined based on the lower of either the actual loss certified by the producer and determined acceptable by FSA or the county expected yield and county disaster yield. The county disaster yield is the production that a producer would have been expected to make based on the eligible disaster conditions in the county.

WHIP+ payments for 2018 disasters will be eligible for 100 percent of their calculated value. WHIP+ payments for 2019 disasters will be limited to an initial 50 percent of their calculated value, with an opportunity to receive up to the remaining 50 percent after January 1, 2020, if sufficient funding remains.

Both insured and uninsured producers are eligible to apply for WHIP+. But all producers receiving WHIP+ payments will be required to purchase crop insurance or NAP, at the 60 percent coverage level or higher, for the next two available, consecutive crop years after the crop year for which WHIP+ payments were paid. Producers who fail to purchase crop insurance for the next two applicable, consecutive years will be required to pay back the WHIP+ payment.

Additional information about WHIP+ program eligibility and payment limitations can be found at farmers.gov/recover or by contacting your local USDA Service Center.

Additional Loss Coverage 

The Milk Loss Program will provide payments to eligible dairy operations for milk that was dumped or removed without compensation from the commercial milk market because of a qualifying 2018 and 2019 natural disaster. Producers who suffered losses of harvested commodities, including hay, stored in on-farm structures in 2018 and 2019 will receive assistance through the On-Farm Storage Loss Program.

Additionally, producers with trees, bushes or vines can receive both cost-share assistance through FSA’s Tree Assistance Program (TAP) for the cost of replanting and rehabilitating eligible trees and WHIP+ will provide payments based on the loss value of the tree, bush or vine itself. Therefore, eligible producers may receive both a TAP and a 2017 WHIP or WHIP+ payment for the same acreage. In addition, TAP policy has been updated to assist eligible orchardists or nursery tree growers of pecan trees with a tree mortality rate that exceeds 7.5 percent (adjusted for normal mortality) but is less than 15 percent (adjusted for normal mortality) for losses incurred during 2018. 

For more information on FSA disaster assistance programs, please contact your local USDA service center or visit farmers.gov/recover. For all available USDA disaster assistance programs, go to USDA’s disaster resources website.

By Kevin Hecteman

There’s a bumper crop of ideas growing in Woodland—from measuring a plant’s water needs to fighting nefarious pests to streamlining markets.

A Farm-to-Fork Live event recently brought about 70 people to Woodland Community College and AgStart, a business incubator, to learn about agricultural technology and the need for it in a rapidly changing farm world.

“The sustainability of agriculture is under serious threat,” said Gabe Youtsey, chief innovation officer for University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, citing climate change, a rising world population and changing customer tastes.

To address all this, he said, technologies currently being developed individually must come together and work in concert.

AgStart, created nearly 10 years ago, works to help people turn ideas into viable businesses. The incubator currently has 10 paying members and stays in touch with its graduates, said Leanna Sweha, AgStart program director.

“We’re very well connected within the community, and we’re able to suggest contacts for companies to search for potential customers, to look for pilot project opportunities with growers,” Sweha said. “One of the things that we’d like to do here at AgStart is to be able to develop programming that will help facilitate those pilot projects that can really prove out the commercial viability of new technology. “

Among the hopefuls is Michael Santiago, who founded Florapulse with the aim of going commercial with a water-measurement sensor he helped develop while studying for a doctorate at Cornell University in New York.

“It’s a little microchip that goes into the trunk of the tree and directly measures the thirst of the plant,” Santiago said, adding that the goal is to give the farmer accurate information as to when the plant needs water. The chip sends data to the cloud, and the farmer can access it with a smartphone.

Santiago became involved in the project while studying mechanical engineering at Cornell, “and then we just saw that people really wanted this.” That led him to move to Davis, closer to his target markets—winegrapes and almonds.

He’s not the only one who made a transcontinental move. Pheronym, launched in Florida, settled in Yolo County to perfect its idea of using nematode pheromones as a means of pest control.

“It was the right ag location, the right talent pool from UC Davis, and they had internships,” Fatma Kaplan, Pheronym chief executive and the technology’s developer, told the attendees, noting that AgStart has been a big help as well.

“Two years ago, we had an idea,” Kaplan said. “Now, we have a proven technology.”

Of course, it helps to know where the problem is. Tracking pest and disease pressures is the objective of Robert Sisson, chief executive of PestScope, who’s developing mapping software aimed at pest management.

“We’re really addressing a problem that came from a pest-control adviser,” Sisson said, adding that the PCA told him he knows what’s on the property he’s scouting, but if he knew whether there were potential threats on neighboring fields, he could take preventive action to protect his client’s crops.

Based on field trials, Sisson is adding a weed and insect database with image recognition, to allow a farmer or PCA to identify a potential problem by taking a photo of it.

Comparing the PCA-farmer relationship to that of a doctor and patient, Sisson said protecting proprietary information represents a “critical issue.”

“We spent a lot of time trying to draw a line between what can be shared and what is kept private,” he said. “In agriculture, there are a lot of solutions that can be found by sharing some information, and finding the balance on how to do that is important.”

With the Food Safety Modernization Act the law of the land, keeping track of what came from where will be crucial. Daniel Cathey started Inputs to help streamline marketplaces—allowing farmers to sell directly to processors and end users, or manufacturers to sell directly to farmers. Along the way, he realized cutting out the middleman could have other benefits.

“When you don’t have all these distributed networks that make it hard to track that product, it’s shortened next to nothing,” Cathey said. “It makes traceability a whole lot easier.”

Along with helping new businesses get going, Sweha said AgStart wants to help start a laboratory where chemicals and biological matter are tested and analyzed, known as a wet lab, to house ag-tech and food-tech startups.

“We really believe that if we are able to get such a project off the ground and create a space where dozens of companies could rent wet-lab space, we would be able to attract even more companies, say from the Bay Area or from even other states,” Sweha said.

Link to article in Ag Alert

In 2018, California’s farms and ranches received almost $50 billion in cash receipts for their output. This represents a slight increase over adjusted cash receipts for 2017.

California’s agricultural abundance includes more than 400 commodities. Over a third of the country’s vegetables and two-thirds of the country’s fruits and nuts are grown in California. California is the leading US state for cash farm receipts, accounting for over 13 percent of the nation’s total agricultural value. The top commodities for 2018 include:

• Dairy Products, Milk — $6.37 billion
• Grapes — $6.25 billion
• Almonds — $5.47 billion
• Cattle and Calves — $3.19 billion
• Pistachios — $2.62 billion
• Strawberries — $2.34 billion
• Lettuce — $1.81 billion
• Floriculture — $1.22 billion
• Tomatoes — $1.20 billion
• Oranges — $1.12 billion

Note: The full report for the 2018 crop year, including agricultural exports, will be released in late 2019.

California agricultural export data for 2017 may be viewed at this link.

Link to CDFA’s agricultural statistics page.

The California Department of Food and Agriculture is celebrating its 100^th anniversary as a state agency in 2019. Throughout the year this blog will feature a number of items to commemorate this milestone. Today we continue with the Centennial Reflections video series, featuring CDFA employees remembering their histories, and the agency’s.

Today, the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture (NASDA) passed a new climate resiliency policy supporting voluntary, incentive-based climate smart agricultural programs on a national scale.

This amendment, sponsored by California and colleagues in Colorado, Minnesota, Oregon and Washington, will enable NASDA to engage at a federal level on priorities, programs and legislation that support the ongoing work of farmers and ranchers in using on-farm practices to reduce emissions, sequester carbon, and improve resiliency.

“Recognizing and supporting the voluntary actions of the nation’s farmers and ranchers to protect and enhance land, water and other natural resources is critical as we continue to address a changing climate,” said CDFA Secretary Karen Ross. “California is pleased to join and support NASDA in taking action at the federal level on Climate Smart Agriculture programs.”