USDA secretary Sonny Perdue is making available an additional $45 million to the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) and its partners to address the ongoing virulent Newcastle disease (VND) outbreak in Southern California.  This funding will allow APHIS and the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) to strengthen their joint efforts to stop the spread of this disease and prevent it from affecting additional commercial flocks. 

“Virulent Newcastle disease is a serious concern for our nation’s poultry industry and we need to step up our response in order to keep this disease out of additional commercial flocks,” said Greg Ibach, USDA Undersecretary for Marketing and Regulatory Programs.  “At this point, the trade impacts of this outbreak are minimal because APHIS has negotiated agreements with many countries to promote the principle of regionalization, or limiting trade restrictions to areas affected by outbreaks rather than entire States or the entire country.  However, if VND were to spread into additional commercial flocks – in California or other states – the impacts could increase substantially.”

“I want to thank Secretary Perdue and USDA for making additional resources available to fight this highly-contagious poultry disease,” said Karen Ross, Secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture.  “The strong partnership between USDA and CDFA, local government, industry and homeowners is the united stand we need.   With everyone’s full effort we can eradicate this disease, just like we did in 2003.”

It is vital that USDA and CDFA put more responders on the ground to increase surveillance and detection in backyard flocks; ensure rapid euthanasia of likely-exposed birds; implement wider mandatory surveillance on commercial farms and help ensure that they are enhancing biosecurity in light of the increased threat; and increase outreach to backyard flock owners. 

USDA will also work with CDFA on several steps to strengthen the response and prevent additional disease spread.  These include:

• Ensuring any poultry, poultry products and poultry materials that move out of affected areas will be done with a permit;
• Enforcing the quarantines and mandatory fallow periods for backyard locations to ensure the disease is eliminated before new birds are allowed onsite; and
• Rapid euthanasia of likely-exposed birds.

The $45 million USDA will use for these efforts is being reallocated from emergency funds transferred to USDA, but not used during the highly pathogenic avian influenza outbreak response in 2014-2015.  USDA will routinely reassess this plan and readjust tactics as needed. The goal remains to rid Southern California of VND, while protecting the rest of the country’s poultry from the disease. 

Link to CDFA’s VND information page

CDFA Secretary Karen Ross today at agency headquarters with the Allen Hancock College Young Farmers and Ranchers Club, from Santa Barbara County. The group is in town for Ag Day festivities tomorrow at the State Capitol and has scheduled a series of meetings with state leaders. Secretary Ross: “It was great to meet so many enthusiastic young people and hear about their aspirations in agriculture. My congratulations to them, to Allen Hancock College, and to the Farm Bureau for organizing the first college-level young farmers and ranchers club in California!”

Please join us on the west side of the State Capitol tomorrow for Ag Day 2019, rain or shine! The grounds are open to the public from 11:30 am to 1:30 pm. Here’s a look back at Ag Day last year!

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 Padma Nagappan

The majority of California’s sunflower crop is grown in the Sacramento Valley, mostly for seed production.

The state accounts for 95 percent of the U.S supply and 25 percent of the world’s supply of sunflower seeds.

Planted acreage tends to vary greatly year-to-year, because most of it is used as planting seed for farmers that grow it for cooking oil, so the commodity markets dictate demand. Sunflower acreage was at 45,000 acres in 2016 and went up to 54,000 acres in 2017, according to the U.S Department of Agriculture’s estimate in 2018.

Khaled Bali is a University of California Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources statewide water and irrigation specialist who has been working since 2016 on a four-year trial on sunflower varieties.

He was asked by the University of Georgia to help ascertain which varieties were drought resistant. He chose to conduct his trial in the low desert region of the Imperial Valley, since it gets little rain during the growing season between February when it’s planted, and June when it’s harvested. This would make it easier to control and measure the actual water applied to the crop varieties.

“We’re looking at 285 varieties of sunflowers, to see which ones do well under stress,” Bali said. He has tested different plantings each growing season for the past three years, and will finish the trial this year.

Although he had not worked with sunflowers before, he found it was an easy crop to grow. The season can range from 120 to 140 days, but if the crop is planted later in the season, it cuts short the growing period.

He used subsurface drip irrigation to test the crops at different water levels, ranging from 60 to 100 percent. Bali explained that drip works better than furrow irrigation, since it offers better control and precision.

At the end of Year One, they found little difference between the stressed plants and the ones that got ample water, so they switched gears for Year Two. His team tested the stress group with 10 percent of water requirements, supplementing with 50 percent additional water from ground water sources.

For this current last round of trials, they will select the varieties that did well under stress conditions and plant them again, but spread out the planting timeframe from February through March, to see the impact this has on yield.

He will have conclusive findings at the end of the growing season this year. Some varieties yielded 100 grams of seed while others gave 300 grams.

This is a relatively new crop for the low desert region in California, with about 1,700 acres planted, half for seed production and half for cut flowers. But Bali said it’s a good crop given it has low water use.

Link to story