By Julia Wick

The long road to a more perfect avocado certainly didn’t begin in Parlier, Calif. But the tiny agricultural town 30 minutes southeast of Fresno is where a U.S. Department of Agriculture flavor scientist has been pushing samples through sliding doors into evaluation booths, for a panel of tasters to individually consider.

The goal of the study is to figure out how people describe the flavor of a good avocado and what components in the fruit contribute to that perceived flavor, said Mary Lu Arpaia, a leading avocado researcher and director of UC Riverside’s avocado breeding program.

Every Tuesday and Thursday morning, the nine trained participants spend an hour evaluating avocado samples in a University of California sensory science building specifically designed for testing like this, just down the street from an agricultural research service division of the USDA.

The tasters are paid $10 an hour, plus all that free avocado, and their ranks include a few retired schoolteachers and an IT professional. They’re given no more than three avocado samples during each session to avoid burnout, and answer around 14 questions about each sample.

Their analysis is concentrated on two varieties of avocado, Hass and GEM.

The black-skinned Hass variety (rhymes with “class”) is the current gold standard on the market, and accounts for 95% of avocados consumed in the United States. The GEM is a newer species produced out of Arpaia’s lab at UC Riverside, aimed to be better adapted to grow in the San Joaquin Valley, which — if successful — could potentially mean California avocados produced more months of the year. (California avocados are typically in season from spring to late summer or early fall, with production largely limited to coastal Southern California. They account for roughly 90% of all U.S.-produced avocados, but just a fraction of the overall avocados consumed across the country.)

Year-round avocado dishes may dominate your Instagram feed, yet its current nationwide post-seasonal ubiquity is heavily dependent on a delicate balance of geopolitics. But first, let’s backtrack.

Avocados have been cultivated in what is now Mexico and Central America since 500 B.C. The California avocado industry began in earnest around 1915, about a decade before a California postman accidentally originated the Hass avocado in his La Habra Heights backyard.

When the North American Free Trade Agreement was ratified in 1994, the vast majority of avocados consumed in the U.S. were still California grown, and therefore limited to a short seasonal window. NAFTA opened the door for mass avocado importation from Mexico, but it wasn’t until 1997 that an eight-decade ban on importing the fruit from Mexico into the U.S. was lifted.

U.S. avocado consumption has generally trended upward since 1970, but the post-NAFTA influx of access to a year-round supply — coupled with broader culinary and health trends, along with a fast-growing Latino population across the country, and their cultural influence — fueled explosive growth among American consumers. (A 1990s-era concerted effort by avocado marketers to integrate guacamole into the Super Bowl experience is also said to have played a crucial role in boosting sales.)

California still overwhelmingly dominates U.S. avocado production, but imports now account for roughly 85% of all avocados consumed in the U.S., with the vast majority of those coming from Mexico.

California has had a smaller-than-average crop this year, making the country more reliant on Mexican avocados, and prices spiked dramatically in April after President Trump threatened to close the border. Due to a confluence of factors, prices remain so high that some L.A. taqueros have resorted to providing a faux-guacamole that substitutes Mexican squash for the avocados, as Javier Cabral recently reported for L.A. Taco.

The quest to cultivate an avocado that can consistently bear fruit year-round in California has long been a kind of the Holy Grail for horticultural researchers like Arpaia, but it takes on new urgency with the fate of NAFTA potentially hanging in the balance.

Meanwhile, the panel of Central Valley tasters who meet twice a week in Parlier for the USDA’s research have become true avocado evangelists. The group has become friends through the yearlong process, and recently gathered for an avocado-themed potluck, complete with homemade avocado ice cream, avocado cream pie and avocado deviled eggs.

Link to story in the Los Angeles Times

Agricultural insect pests seek out familiar scents to find their plant hosts. However, they can also be repelled by odors from other plant species.

A new study from the University of Vermont published in Scientific Reports offers a novel framework for exploiting plant odors to repel insect pests. The study is the first to show how the similarity of plant odors and phylogenetic relatedness can predict insect repellency.

The team applied this conceptual framework to swede midge, a tiny fly that is becoming a major problem for Northeastern growers of broccoli, kale and other cabbage-family crops. They found that particular essential oils – garlic, spearmint, thyme, eucalyptus lemon and cinnamon bark – were most effective at repelling the midge. The findings come as good news to organic farmers who are without an effective solution for managing the pest.

While essential oils have long been used in pest management, determining which oils are effective has followed a “trial by error” approach, said senior author Yolanda Chen, associate professor in UVM’s Department of Plant and Soil Science.

“People often think more aromatic plant oils, like mint, basil and lavender will repel insects, but usually there is no rhyme or reason for choosing,” said Chen, who is also a fellow of UVM’s Gund Institute for the Environment. “It turns out that as we go along the family tree, plants that are more distantly related from the host plant are generally more repellent.”

Headless crops

Swede midge is a recent invader on vegetable farms in the Northeastern United States. Midge larvae must feed on the brassica plant family in order to survive, which includes many popular vegetables like broccoli, kale, cauliflower, cabbage, brussels sprouts, kohlrabi and collards. Making a mistake and laying eggs on the wrong plant would result in the death of the midge’s offspring.

“Smell plays a major role in host location,” said Chase Stratton, the study’s lead author, who recently completed his PhD at UVM. “Just one landing of one fly is enough to cause marketable damage,” he said.

The larvae “hijack the plant’s control system” resulting in distorted growth, such as headless broccoli and cauliflower, puckered leaves, and brown scarring. Unfortunately for farmers, the damage is not observable until it’s too late and the midge have already dropped off the plant. In areas where the midge has become well established, including parts of Canada, New York, and Northern Vermont, the midge can cause 100 percent crop losses.

To manage the midge, conventional growers have turned to neonicotinoid insecticides, which have been implicated in honeybee decline. With no methods for killing the pest, some organic farmers have simply stopped growing vulnerable brassica crops. This led Chen and Stratton to explore new control options for organic farmers.

A sustainable solution

“It’s hard to get away from using insecticides because they’re good at killing insects,” said Stratton, who is now a postdoctoral researcher at the The Land Institute in Salina, Kansas. “But plants have been naturally defending against insect herbivores for millions of years. Why are we so arrogant to think we can do it better than plants?”

Fascinated by the complexity of plant odors and species interactions, Stratton identified essential oils from 18 different plants that vary in their degree of relatedness to brassica host crops. He and Chen hypothesized that oils from plants that are more distantly related to brassicas would have more diverse odors and be more repellent. Comparing the chemical structures of the odors might hold clues for predicting repellency, they thought.

To test the theory, the researchers observed how female midges behaved when presented with broccoli plants that had been sprayed with each of the essential oils. They found the midges were less likely to lay their eggs on broccoli plants that had been treated with essential oils, compared to the untreated plants, and avoided flying towards certain oils more than others. In general, oils from plants that were more distantly related from brassicas on the plant family tree were more likely to repel the midge. They also found that odors that were more chemically different were also more likely to be repellent. However, the oil that was most repellent – spearmint – actually had odors more similar to the brassica crop.

“Biologically, it makes sense that midges would be able to detect and avoid these plants because the similar odors would make it easier for them to misinterpret these plants as hosts, which would be deadly for their offspring,” said Stratton. “For swede midge, garlic appears to be one of the most promising repellents, particularly because certified organic products using garlic are already available for growers.”

The study suggests a new sustainable solution for this new invasive pest and provides a novel framework for testing pest management strategies in other species.

Link to item on EurekAlert

The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) and the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) are urging visitors attending fairs to practice good hygiene when visiting farm animal exhibits. Direct and indirect contact with the animals could put individuals at risk of developing Shiga-toxin producing Escherichia coli O157 (STEC O157) and other infections.

“Visiting animals can be one of the highlights of the fair,” said Dr. Charity Dean, CDPH Acting State Public Health Officer. “It is important to remember to practice good hygiene when working with or visiting animals.”

Every year, infections and illnesses in children and adults after exposure to animals at county fairs, petting zoos, and farms have been reported to public health. These have included bacterial infections such as STEC O157 and Salmonella, viruses such as swine influenza virus, and parasites such as Cryptosporidium.

There are steps you can take to protect you and your family at the fair, petting zoo, or other settings where farm animals are present:

*         Wash your hands with soap and running water after touching animals or being in areas where animals are housed or exhibited, even if you did not touch the animal.

·         Do not eat, drink, or put anything in your mouth while in an area where animals are housed or exhibited.

·         Avoid touching your eyes, nose, or mouth until you have exited the animal area and washed your hands with soap and running water.

·         Do not take toys, pacifiers, cups, baby bottles, strollers, or similar items into animal areas.

·         Always supervise children around animals and supervise handwashing for young children.

·         Don’t let children sit or play on the ground in animal areas.

·         Avoid contact with animals that look or act ill.

People in high-risk groups should take extra care around animals. These include senior citizens, children under five, pregnant women, and people with a weakened immune system or chronic health conditions.

“We want all California families to enjoy their local community fair, but it is important for them to know good common sense precautions and be sure to wash their hands after contact with animals,” said CDFA Secretary Karen Ross.

If you develop any illness after visiting animal exhibits, including fever, vomiting/diarrhea, or flu-like symptoms, see your health care provider and inform them of your animal contacts.

For more information on how to stay healthy at animal exhibits, visit this Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) web page.

Additional information about STEC infections may be found on the CDPH and CDC websites.

An estimated 820 million people did not have enough to eat in 2018, up from 811 million in the previous year, which is the third year of increase in a row. This underscores the immense challenge of achieving the Sustainable Development Goal of Zero Hunger by 2030, says a new edition of the annual The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report.

The pace of progress in halving the number of children who are stunted and in reducing the number of babies born with low birth weight is too slow, which also puts the SDG 2 nutrition targets further out of reach, according to the report.

At the same time, adding to these challenges, overweight and obesity continue to increase in all regions, particularly among school-age children and adults.

The chances of being food insecure are higher for women than men in every continent, with the largest gap in Latin America.

“Our actions to tackle these troubling trends will have to be bolder, not only in scale but also in terms of multisectoral collaboration,” the heads of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Food Programme (WFP) and the World Health Organization (WHO) urged in their joint foreword to the report.

Hunger is increasing in many countries where economic growth is lagging, particularly in middle-income countries and those that rely heavily on international primary commodity trade. The annual UN report also found that income inequality is rising in many of the countries where hunger is on the rise, making it even more difficult for the poor, vulnerable or marginalized to cope with economic slowdowns and downturns.

“We must foster pro-poor and inclusive structural transformation focusing on people and placing communities at the centre to reduce economic vulnerabilities and set ourselves on track to ending hunger, food insecurity and all forms of malnutrition,” the UN leaders said.

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Slow progress in Africa and Asia

The situation is most alarming in Africa, as the region has the highest rates of hunger in the world and which are continuing to slowly but steadily rise in almost all subregions. In Eastern Africa in particular, close to a third of the population (30.8 percent) is undernourished. In addition to climate and conflict, economic slowdowns and downturns are driving the rise. Since 2011, almost half the countries where rising hunger occurred due to economic slowdowns or stagnation were in Africa.

The largest number of undernourished people (more than 500 million) live in Asia, mostly in southern Asian countries. Together, Africa and Asia bear the greatest share of all forms of malnutrition, accounting for more than nine out of ten of all stunted children and over nine out of ten of all wasted children worldwide. In southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, one child in three is stunted.

In addition to the challenges of stunting and wasting, Asia and Africa are also home to nearly three-quarters of all overweight children worldwide, largely driven by consumption of unhealthy diets.

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Going beyond hunger

This year’s report introduces a new indicator for measuring food insecurity at different levels of severity and monitoring progress towards SDG 2: the prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity. This indicator is based on data obtained directly from people in surveys about their access to food in the last 12 months, using the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES). People experiencing moderate food insecurity face uncertainties about their ability to obtain food and have had to reduce the quality and/or quantity of food they eat to get by.

The report estimates that over 2 billion people, mostly in low- and middle-income countries, do not have regular access to safe, nutritious and sufficient food. But irregular access is also a challenge for high-income countries, including 8 percent of the population in Northern America and Europe.

This calls for a profound transformation of food systems to provide sustainably-produced healthy diets for a growing world population.

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Key facts and figures
-Number of hungry people in the world in 2018: 821.6 million (or 1 in 9 people)

• in Asia: 513.9 million
• in Africa: 256.1million
• in Latin America and the Caribbean: 42.5 million

-Number of moderately or severely food insecure: 2 billion (26.4%)
-Babies born with low birth weight: 20.5 million (one in seven)
-Children under 5 affected by stunting (low height-for-age): 148.9 million (21.9%)
-Children under 5 affected by wasting (low weight-for-height): 49.5 million (7.3%)
-Children under 5 who are overweight (high weight-for-height): 40 million (5.9%)
-School-age children and adolescents who are overweight: 338 million
-Adults who are obese: 672 million (13% or 1 in 8 adults)

–FAO

Link to article 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.

By Kate Cimini

A new tool to more efficiently harvest Monterey County’s $143 million spinach crop might bring relief for farmers struggling to find enough fieldworkers to pick it. 

The spinach guard, developed by Harvest Moon Automations Inc., looks like nothing so much as a series of piano keys, splayed mere inches above the ground. It attaches to the front of a harvester, sticking just a few feet out in front of the machine.

When the tiny cameras positioned above the keys sense irregularities in the spinach — such as downy mildew, bird droppings, or something else you wouldn’t want showing up in your salad — the piano keys depress that patch of spinach, pushing it below the reach of the bandsaw or laser that slices through the stems of spinach leaves.

Last year spinach was the tenth-highest grossing crop in the county, valued at $143,376,000 by the 2018 Monterey County Agricultural Commissioner’s Crop Report. More than 16,000 acres were dedicated to cultivating spinach.

With a dwindling, aging farmworker labor market, Harvest Moon Automations co-founders Stephen Jens and Tom Garnett hope to appeal to farmers who find themselves short on laborers.

Sitting on either side of a John Street diner booth one March morning, gripping mugs of coffee, Garnett and Jens were eager to show off their technology but aware they have a long way to go before they earn the trust of farmers, despite strong early results.

“You can assume we are snake oil salesmen before (we) prove (ourselves),” Garnett said, smiling broadly. But, he said, they intended to help farmers and farmworkers with their machine.

“The first thing we hear about is a lack of labor,” Jens said. “If we gave them a machine that helps with that, they can have their laborers do something else where they can add value to the work.”

Monterey County’s 2018 “Farmworker Housing And Action Plan” for the Salinas and Pajaro Valleys shows more than 91,000 agricultural workers lived and worked in Monterey and Santa Cruz counties in 2016.

An estimated half of California farmworkers are undocumented and the average age of documented farmworkers is dramatically increasing. As such, the area is in need of an injection of younger, documented laborers. 

Farmers have also seen labor shortages over past years due a deficiency in H-2A programs, which allow people from certain countries to enter the U.S. for farmwork.

The U.S. Department of Labor recently announced plans to modernize and improve the existing H-2A program.

After several years of development, the spinach guard is due to hit the market in 2019. Earthbound Farms was among some of the farms that were willing to test out the harvester for Harvest Moon.  

David Martinez, who worked for Earthbound Farms until they were bought by Taylor Farms, was a maintenance supervisor who oversaw the pilot use of the spinach guard.

He said the guard allows Earthbound Farms to harvest far more spinach out of a mildew-contaminated field than it used to, though he added that there were still some kinks to work out. 

“Like every piece of technology, it’s a work in progress,” Martinez said. “I heard from the guys in the plant that when it came down to mildew, instead of wasting the field and discing it, they would get a lot more (spinach) out of it with the guard.”

Some, though, are worried that machines like Harvest Moon’s will put fieldworkers out of business, cutting jobs for which skilled pickers might earn about $25,000 a year, according to a 2017 article by the Economics Policy Institute.

“Ag is place-specific,” said United Farm Workers Vice President Erik Nicholson. “As there’s conversations in other areas where tech’s being introduced, new jobs will flow from that. There could be new jobs but it’s doubtful that they’re going to be in Spreckels, California. Most likely those jobs are going to be high-tech, high-income, far from where the tech is being deployed.”

Although Nicholson said he is unaware of laborers being replaced by high-tech machinery yet, he felt it was only a matter of time. However, he saw some light in the creation of what he called “unintended jobs.”

“It’s kind of like what supermarkets have tried to do with self-checkout,” said Nicholson. “The original idea was that we could pay for our products and check out but now they realized they have to keep them staffed. They break down or have issues. It’s created a different type of job. We’re starting to see that in the field – it’s unintended jobs.”

Nicholson added that when farmers tie themselves to one crop via expensive machinery like the spinach guard, they have a harder time resetting when that crop takes a nose dive on the open market, like spinach did after the 2009 E.coli scare.

However, Jens and Garnett don’t see their company as tying growers to any one thing.

Harvest Moon is looking at expanding its tech, finding ways to modify the spinach guard or create new guards using the same technology that will aid in the harvesting other crops like romaine, iceberg or even soybeans, a Midwestern-grown crop.

Furthermore, Jens and Garnett believe this guard could even cut down on farmers’ application of fungicides or pesticides to their crops. 

“We’re looking at this from a sustainability standpoint, using machine vision to replace herbicides,” said Jens. “We’re just touching the potential.”

“We all have to believe in tech, right?” Asked Martinez. “It takes time.”

This guard, which will cost between $250,000 and $285,000, is made in Boston, where Jens is located, and shipped to the Salinas Valley, where Garnett has spent most of his life. They monitor the machines though data collection to diagnose issues, which they then contract with local Salinas Valley mechanics to fix.

Link to story in the Salinas Californian

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.

USDA News Release

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has announced up to $16 million in available funding to help socially disadvantaged and veteran farmers and ranchers own and operate successful farms. Funding is made through the USDA’s Outreach and Assistance for Socially Disadvantaged Farmers and Ranchers and Veteran Farmers and Ranchers Program (also known as the 2501 Program). The program is administered by the USDA Office of Partnerships and Public Engagement (OPPE).

“All farmers and ranchers deserve equal access to USDA programs and services,” said Mike Beatty, director of the USDA Office of Partnerships and Public Engagement. “2501 grants go a long way in fulfilling our mission to reach historically underserved communities and ensure their equitable participation in our programs.”

For 30 years, the 2501 Program has helped reach socially disadvantaged agricultural producers – farmers and ranchers who have experienced barriers to service due to racial or ethnic prejudice. The 2014 Farm Bill expanded the program’s reach to veterans. The 2018 Farm Bill boosts mandatory funding for the program through FY 2023. With 2501 Program grants, nonprofits, institutions of higher education and Indian Tribes can support underserved and veteran farmers and ranchers through education, training, demonstrations, and conferences on farming and agribusiness, and by increasing access to USDA’s programs and services.

Since 1994, the 2501 Program has awarded 451 grants totaling more than $103 million. Among recent 2501 projects, an FY 2018 grant awarded to the Mississippi Minority Farmers Alliance in Okolona, Mississippi helped agricultural community leaders connect senior farmers and new and beginning farmers to preserve farming legacies. A 2501 grant to Florida International University helped veterans and young urban farmers build sustainable urban agriculture operations in South Florida.

Eligible 2501 Program applicants include not-for-profit organizations, community-based organizations, and a range of higher education institutions serving African-American, American Indian, Alaska Native, Hispanic, Asian, and Pacific Islander communities. 

The deadline for applications is August 15, 2019. See the request for applications for full details.

OPPE will host two teleconferences during the open period of this announcement to answer questions from interested applicants.   

July 23, 2019, 2:00 p.m. ET, 800-230-1085, passcode: 469845

August 6, 2019, 2:00 p.m. ET, 800-230-1059, passcode: 469846