The University of California, Davis, ranks No. 1 in the world for teaching and research in agriculture and forestry as well as veterinary sciences, according to data released today by QS World University Rankings. This is the third consecutive year that UC Davis has been ranked first in agriculture and forestry by QS.

QS rankings are based on reputational surveys and research citations. The full report is available online.

The UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences was founded in 1905 as the University of California’s University Farm. Today, it has more than 6,200 undergraduate students in 27 majors and more than 1,000 graduate students in 45 graduate groups and programs. Its programs have characteristically received top-tier rankings from the Chronicle of Higher Education, U.S. News & World Report and ISI Essential Science Indicators.

More than 3,000 acres of UC Davis’ 5,000-acre campus are devoted to agricultural research.

UC Davis also is home to the World Food Center, established in 2013 to increase the economic benefits from research across campus; influence national and international policy; and convene teams of scientists and innovators from industry, academia, government and nongovernmental organizations to tackle food-related challenges in California and around the world.

The UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine annually cares for more than 48,000 animal patients and is educating more than 500 veterinary students plus residents and grad students. The school runs a veterinary medical teaching hospital at UC Davis and satellite clinics in San Diego and the San Joaquin Valley community of Tulare.

Veterinary faculty members work to solve society’s most pressing health issues by collaborating with colleagues from human medicine and other disciplines. An example of its “one health” approach is a recent $100 million grant to the veterinary school to coordinate surveillance for disease-causing microbes, discovering new viruses and strengthening global health capacity in more than 20 countries.

The QS World University Rankings by Subject this year evaluated 3,467 universities and ranked 971 institutions. The rankings are prepared by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), a British firm that previously was the data provider for the annual Times Higher Education rankings. The firm is widely considered to be one of the most influential international university rankings providers.

Link to news release

Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. today issued an executive order to establish a California greenhouse gas reduction target of 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 – the most aggressive benchmark enacted by any government in North America to reduce dangerous carbon emissions over the next decade and a half.

“With this order, California sets a very high bar for itself and other states and nations, but it’s one that must be reached – for this generation and generations to come,” said Governor Brown.

This executive action sets the stage for the important work being done on climate change by the Legislature.

The Governor’s executive order aligns California’s greenhouse gas reduction targets with those of leading international governments ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris later this year. The 28-nation European Union, for instance, set the same target for 2030 just last October.

California is on track to meet or exceed the current target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, as established in the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB 32). California’s new emission reduction target of 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 will make it possible to reach the ultimate goal of reducing emissions 80 percent under 1990 levels by 2050. This is in line with the scientifically established levels needed in the U.S. to limit global warming below 2 degrees Celsius – the warming threshold at which scientists say there will likely be major climate disruptions such as super droughts and rising sea levels.

Climate Adaptation
The executive order also specifically addresses the need for climate adaptation and directs state government to:

– Incorporate climate change impacts into the state’s Five-Year Infrastructure Plan;
– Update the Safeguarding California Plan – the state climate adaption strategy – to identify how climate change will affect California infrastructure and industry and what actions the state can take to reduce the risks posed by climate change;
– Factor climate change into state agencies’ planning and investment decisions; and
– Implement measures under existing agency and departmental authority to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

California’s Response to Climate Change

In his inaugural address earlier this year, Governor Brown announced that within the next 15 years, California will increase from one-third to 50 percent our electricity derived from renewable sources; reduce today’s petroleum use in cars and trucks by up to 50 percent; double the efficiency savings from existing buildings and make heating fuels cleaner; reduce the release of methane, black carbon and other potent pollutants across industries; and manage farm and rangelands, forests and wetlands so they can store carbon.

Since taking office, Governor Brown has signed accords to fight climate change with leaders from Mexico,China, Canada, Japan, Israel and Peru. The Governor also issued a groundbreaking call to action with hundreds of world-renowned researchers and scientists – called the consensus statement – which translates key scientific climate findings from disparate fields into one unified document. The impacts of climate change are already being felt in California and will disproportionately impact the state’s most vulnerable populations.

The text of the executive order is below:

WHEREAS climate change poses an ever-growing threat to the well-being, public health, natural resources, economy, and the environment of California, including loss of snowpack, drought, sea level rise, more frequent and intense wildfires, heat waves, more severe smog, and harm to natural and working lands, and these effects are already being felt in the state; and

WHEREAS the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded in its Fifth Assessment Report, issued in 2014, that “warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia” and that “continued emission of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems;” and

WHEREAS projections of climate change show that, even under the best-case scenario for global emission reductions, additional climate change impacts are inevitable, and these impacts pose tremendous risks to the state’s people, agriculture, economy, infrastructure and the environment; and

WHEREAS climate change will disproportionately affect the state’s most vulnerable citizens; and

WHEREAS building on decades of successful actions to reduce pollution and increase energy efficiency the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 placed California at the forefront of global and national efforts to reduce the threat of climate change; and

WHEREAS the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has identified limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius or less by 2050 as necessary to avoid potentially catastrophic climate change impacts, and remaining below this threshold requires accelerated reductions of greenhouse gas emissions; and

WHEREAS California has established greenhouse gas emission reduction targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and further reduce such emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050; and

WHEREAS setting an interim target of emission reductions for 2030 is necessary to guide regulatory policy and investments in California in the midterm, and put California on the most cost-effective path for long term emission reductions; and

WHEREAS all agencies with jurisdiction over sources of greenhouse gas emissions will need to continue to develop and implement emissions reduction programs to reach the state’s 2050 target and attain a level of emissions necessary to avoid dangerous climate change; and

WHEREAS taking climate change into account in planning and decision making will help the state make more informed decisions and avoid high costs in the future.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, EDMUND G. BROWN JR., Governor of the State of California, in accordance with the authority vested in me by the Constitution and statutes of the State of California, in particular Government Code sections 8567 and 8571 of the California Government Code, do hereby issue this Executive Order, effective immediately

IT IS HEREBY ORDERED THAT:

1.A new interim statewide greenhouse gas emission reduction target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 is established in order to ensure California meets its target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

2.All state agencies with jurisdiction over sources of greenhouse gas emissions shall implement measures, pursuant to statutory authority, to achieve reductions of greenhouse gas emissions to meet the 2030 and 2050 greenhouse gas emissions reductions targets.

3.The California Air Resources Board shall update the Climate Change Scoping Plan to express the 2030 target in terms of million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.

4.The California Natural Resources Agency shall update every three years the state’s climate adaptation strategy, Safeguarding California, and ensure that its provisions are fully implemented. The Safeguarding California plan will:
-Identify vulnerabilities to climate change by sector and regions, including, at a minimum, the following sectors: water, energy, transportation, public health, agriculture, emergency services, forestry, biodiversity and habitat, and ocean and coastal resources;
-Outline primary risks to residents, property, communities and natural systems from these vulnerabilities, and identify priority actions needed to reduce these risks; and
-Identify a lead agency or group of agencies to lead adaptation efforts in each sector.

5.Each sector lead will be responsible to:
-Prepare an implementation plan by September 2015 to outline the actions that will be taken as identified in Safeguarding California, and
-Report back to the California Natural Resources Agency by June 2016 on actions taken.

6.State agencies shall take climate change into account in their planning and investment decisions, and employ full life-cycle cost accounting to evaluate and compare infrastructure investments and alternatives.

7.State agencies’ planning and investment shall be guided by the following principles
-Priority should be given to actions that both build climate preparedness and reduce greenhouse gas emissions;
-Where possible, flexible and adaptive approaches should be taken to prepare for uncertain climate impacts;
-Actions should protect the state’s most vulnerable populations; and
-Natural infrastructure solutions should be prioritized.

8.The state’s Five-Year Infrastructure Plan will take current and future climate change impacts into account in all infrastructure projects

9.The Governor’s Office of Planning and Research will establish a technical, advisory group to help state agencies incorporate climate change impacts into planning and investment decisions.

10.The state will continue its rigorous climate change research program focused on understanding the impacts of climate change and how best to prepare and adapt to such impacts.
This Executive Order is not intended to create, and does not, create any rights or benefits, whether substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity, against the State of California, its agencies, departments, entities, officers, employees, or any other person.

I FURTHER DIRECT that as soon as hereafter possible, this Order be filed in the Office of the Secretary of State and that widespread publicity and notice be given to this Order.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Great Seal of the State of California to be affixed this 29th day of April 2015.

______________________________
EDMUND G. BROWN JR.
Governor of California

ATTEST:

______________________________
ALEX PADILLA
Secretary of State

Link to news release

By Karen Ross, Secretary, California Department of Food and Agriculture

A recent survey by the Farm Water Coalition indicated that 41 percent of California’s irrigated farmland will lose 80 percent of its surface water in 2015 due to cutbacks because of the drought. Add that to a reduction of more than 30 percent last year and it’s obvious that farmers and ranchers have suffered the brunt of drought-related losses, so far.

That’s why the reactions to Gov. Jerry Brown’s announcement of urban water cutbacks earlier this month were eye-opening, with the farming community now finding itself under the spotlight in an entirely new way. While there are moments of discomfort with the some of the assumptions that have emerged, I see this new attention as an opportunity to explain the significance of California food production – especially in the Central Valley.

I tell people all the time about the uniqueness of California – that we have one of the few Mediterranean climates necessary to produce a truly astounding array of nutritious, healthy foods sought by people around the world. You might have heard the statement that roughly half the nation’s fruits, nuts and vegetables come from California – it’s also true that 25 percent of that comes from just eight counties in the Central Valley.

It is clear that the water our farmers and ranchers use is actually consumed by the people they feed. In my mind, that’s the most critical point to consider through the avalanche of information and positioning that’s developed over the last several weeks.

Critics point to the Central Valley as a desert made artificially fertile by irrigation. Allow me to explain why that’s not true.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author John McPhee wrote in his book “Annals of the Former World” that there are 10 types of soil on Earth, and that nine are in the Central Valley. Each soil is suited to different crops, so we have plums, kiwifruit, apricots, oranges, olives, nectarines, beets, peaches, grapes, walnuts, almonds, cantaloupe, prunes, tomatoes, and much, much more. McPhee called the Valley the “North American fruit forest,” and pointed out the only places on this planet possibly similar to it are in Chile and Pakistan.

That is definitely a definition of unique.

So as the court of public opinion outside of farming considers fundamental shifts like California growing less food or different food, let’s all remember why it’s not that simple. Additionally, the Central Valley has a well-established infrastructure to support its farm production, through manufacturing, food processing and other essential services along the supply chain.

Having said all that, it’s also very clear that farmers and ranchers must continue working with other state water interests to use every precious drop as carefully as possible. Agriculture has an impressive track record in that regard – using 5 percent less water with 96 percent more economic efficiency and a substantial increase in yield over the last 50 years.

However, agriculture will be asked to do more, and there is room for improvement. More than half of farmers and ranchers in California have moved to modern, more efficient irrigation techniques. That still leaves a little more than 40 percent that hasn’t, and it should be apparent that the time for change is now.

Gov. Brown, the state legislature and CDFA are helping to facilitate that with the State Water Efficiency and Enhancement Program, $20 million in greenhouse gas reduction funds provided through emergency drought legislation for on-farm projects that save water and reduce harmful gasses.

As we move further into these unprecedented times, it’s critical that California farmers and ranchers tell their stories of water efficiency and conservation, and continue with their unparalleled record of innovation to find new and better ways to manage this precious, ever-more-scarce resource.

Link to article

Last fall, the results of trapping for the European Grapevine Moth (Lobesia botrana or EGVM) in California were recounted during a conference call for the partners working to eradicate this invasive insect: zero, zero, zero, one moth.

We’ve gone from more than 100,000 EGVM trapped in 2010 to just one in 2014. This success makes the EGVM detection and eradication partnership one of the most effective programs for the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA), county departments of agriculture, University of California Cooperative Extension (UC Coop), and growers in the last decade.

We’ve come a long way, but our work isn’t finished yet. One of APHIS’ top goals is the complete eradication of EGVM from California in the next two to three years.

EGVM was first detected in Napa County, California in 2009. Subsequent surveys detected EGVM in 11 counties in the State. The detection of this pest put fruit crops worth more than $5.7 billion at risk and threatened to close valuable export markets for U.S. grapes and stonefruit around the world. In 2009, 90 percent of U.S. grape production came from California, so the finding of EGVM was especially concerning to grape growers, as well as the wine industry.

Napa Valley grape producer Ron Wicker recalled the impact the EGVM had on his crops. “In one week, our crop went from isolated clusters of rotting grapes to spreading through the entire vineyard. We lost 11 acres of chardonnay – all 60 tons of fruit.”

Greg Clark, Napa County Agricultural Commissioner said “in Napa County, wine grape production accounts for 99% of annual crop production, or over $656 million in 2013. This translates into approximately $14 billion in economic activity for the county. Napa is world renowned and we have to be good stewards of the crop, wine, and image.”

Faced with this enormous threat, we and our partners in California moved quickly. We designed an eradication program that would produce results by closely involving growers and the community. The plan called for growers to carry out pest treatments, while state and county partners set traps and lures for detection purposes and reported findings. We also relied on the excellent support of the EGVM Technical Working Group, which met regularly to provide APHIS and its partners with the best science and data to combat EGVM.

“Another key reason for success was the grower liaison role that was created early in the program,” said Nick Condos, Chief of the EGVM Quarantine Program for CDFA’s Plant Health Programs. “The grower liaisons were critical to conveying information to growers and ensuring they understood the voluntary treatments planned.”

“Growers worked closely with the liaisons and cooperated fully with both the quarantine and treatment plans,” Condos continued. “The reason WHY is because the pest was doing significant damage immediately. We were dealing with a potential game changer for how industry exports and operates.”

The quick response, sound scientific strategy, hard work by growers and industry, and the support of the community has produced fantastic results. We have eliminated EGVM from nine of 11 counties, and more than 80 percent of the acres that were quarantined have been declared free of the moth.

Now, with one moth detected in 2014, success is even closer. Some day soon, we’ll get the news that we’ve accomplished our goal: no more EGVM in California.

One of the unfortunate byproducts of the current drought are the myths circulating regarding water use and the means for addressing the water crisis in the state.  Some are perpetuations of myths developed during past water crises.  Others build upon misinformation that has a more recent origin.  Below are four myths that you may see in media accounts of the drought.

1) Agriculture uses 80 percent of water in the state.

According to the 2013 California Water Plan, in an average water year, agriculture uses 41 percent of the applied water in California (California Water Plan 2013, Volume 1, page 3-35).  Urban water uses total 10 percent and various environmental uses total 49 percent of applied water in the state.

Click on image to see the full infographic.

But, if we are truly talking about the “water in the state,” according to the Water Plan, “California, in an average water year…receives about 200 maf [million acre-feet] of water from precipitation and imports from Colorado, Oregon, and Mexico.”  Agricultural water use totals 32.9 million acre-feet in an average year, or 16.5 percent of water received in the state (California Water Plan 2013, Volume 1, page 3-31 and 3-32).

2) Unlike urban water users who have just received a mandatory 25% reduction in water use, agricultural water users have not had their water supplies cut.

Last year, while those of us living in urban areas were tasked with voluntarily reducing water use, agricultural water users were suffering devastating cutbacks in supplies, many receiving no water or up to 5 percent of their contracted amounts.  This year, even the most senior agricultural water rights holders in the state will be cut back at least 25 percent.  Most will be cut back much more than that, if they get any water at all.  According to the California Farm Water Coalition, this will result in 30 percent of the irrigated farmland in the state receiving no surface water and approximately 620,000 acres (which equals almost 970 square miles) of fallowed land this year. These cutbacks will not only impact agricultural lands, but also the terrestrial habitat lands (such as wildlife refuges and managed wetlands) that are supplied water by the agricultural water agencies.

3) The water rights in the state are over-appropriated.

Over the past several years, there have been claims that California’s water system is overappropriated by five times and is therefore somehow broken. This statement mischaracterizes the California water rights system and ignores the fundamental and sophisticated way water is managed in the state.

Those claiming that the water rights are overappropriated have taken all of the water rights maintained by the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB), added them up, and declared that the state’s water rights total more than the available water and thus the state is overappropriated.  What this ignores are the considerable non-consumptive water rights, the substantial water reuse and recoverable losses in the state’s water system and the restrictions on water rights.  The overappropriation myth is debunked in more detail in the following blog: Using Water Multiple Times in California Explaining the California Water Rights Over-Appropriation Myth.

For more information on California’s water rights system, visit the State Water Resources Control Board website at: FAQS: Water Rights.

4) New surface water storage would not help during a drought year.

As an example of how additional surface storage would help during a drought year, the Department of Water Resources has analyzed that if Sites offstream reservoir was in place in 2015, it would have stored an additional 410,000 acre-feet of water this very dry water year. The water that would have filled Sites reservoir is largely from the December 2014 and the February 2015 storms.  Importantly, if Sites reservoir was in operation today, total north of Delta storage this year would have increased by 900,000 acre-feet, including an additional 280,000 acre-feet in Shasta reservoir.  This additional water could be used for multiple purposes: fish, farms, birds, cities, recreation and to help maintain salinity levels in the Delta.

For more information from the Department of Water Resources on the benefits Sites reservoir would provide this year, visit: FAQS: The Drought and Sites Reservoir.

Link to post by the Northern California Water Association

External video = no longer available

When Jim Houston was growing up, he said, “Eating was considered healthy.”

Thousands of cases of childhood obesity and millions of skipped school lunches later, school districts and nutrition experts are working together in earnest to make sure eating really does equal good health for young students.

Houston — now California’s undersecretary for food and agriculture — was at Heights Elementary School on Thursday to help celebrate “California Thursdays,” a joint project coordinated by 42 state public school districts and the Berkeley-based Center for Ecoliteracy, a nonprofit that promotes ecological education, with the full blessing of (and in partnership with) the California Department of Food and Agriculture.

In Contra Costa and elsewhere, the school districts use their joint purchasing power to buy healthy, regionally grown food at the lowest price possible. For now an initiative to provide lunches on Thursdays, officials hope to one day expand the new healthier food to every day of the week.

On Thursday, the gym/cafeteria at Heights was serving roasted chicken drumsticks from a Fresno County producer, as well as asparagus grown on a Stockton-area farm.

Pittsburg, along with the Oakland, Mt. Diablo, Antioch, West Contra Costa, Brentwood and Oakley districts, all held celebrations Thursday of their participation in the program. Most of the 42 districts are concentrated in the Bay Area and in Southern California; Contra Costa has the most districts participating so far.

Many of those districts have used grants to help pay for kitchens and other related equipment; Pittsburg received a $100,000 grant in 2013 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Matt Belasco said Pittsburg has had that healthier emphasis for a few years and that a kitchen at each of the district’s 13 schools enables preparation of the healthy ingredients. “We’ve been a catalyst for the other districts in the county,” said Belasco, the Pittsburg district’s director of child nutrition services.

“California Thursdays” ramps up what Pittsburg already has been doing, he said, in large measure to work more area-grown produce into the menu. The “local” food aspect is touted for several reasons; it supports local and regional jobs, and shipping food shorter distances is hailed as an environmentally friendly move.

Belasco said that when Pittsburg got into full production with its kitchens, food-related jobs in the district rose from 43 to 108. Some nutrition expenses, including for the food itself, have gone down, but he said higher overall costs from hiring more workers to prepare better food are worth it.

Besides taste, a key to getting kids to eat what’s good for them, and not simply throw it in the organic recycling bin, Belasco said, is putting a human face to it. And on the walls of the Heights gym, one of those faces belongs to Stockton-area grower Dino Del Carlo, whose asparagus was being served Thursday on Heights’ salad bar. That large photo of “Farmer Dino” is there for a reason, Belasco said.

“It’s not a machine, it’s not magic. … It’s a real person producing that food.”

The bigger idea, several people said Thursday, is that kids who like their school meals are more likely to eat them and more likely to attend school in general. Better attendance begets better grades, which Sandip Kaur said in turn leads students to better colleges and better jobs.

“Kids who are well-nourished, well-fed, can give back so much more to the community,” said Kaur, director of the state Department of Education’s Nutrition Services Division, also on hand at Heights on Thursday.

A handful of Heights students questioned Thursday give the school lunches thumbs up. None had ever eaten the more processed, often more fatty and sodium-laden fare on which some school districts depend.

“I like the burgers — they’re made of real meat,” said fifth-grader Terrell Pike, 11. “I like the asparagus and fruit, too; it’s real food.”

Wendy Lawrence said she’s glad Heights’ food isn’t the heat-and-eat variety.

“I wouldn’t really eat it that much if it was like that,” the 11-year-old fifth-grader said.

Link to article

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is seeking nominations to fill five vacancies on the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB). Vacancies for the 15-member organic standards board include: two farmers, two consumer/public interest representatives, and one USDA accredited certifying agent. The positions are specifically designated to represent various sectors of the organic community. Appointees will serve a 5-year term of office beginning January 24, 2016.

The NOSB is an advisory committee of organic community representatives established by the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990. The board recommends whether substances should be allowed or prohibited in organic production or handling, assists in developing standards for substances to be used in organic production, and advises the Secretary of Agriculture on other aspects of the organic regulations.

Written nominations, with cover letters, resumes and a required form, must be postmarked on or before May 15, 2015. Nominations can also include endorsements or letters of recommendations. All applicable information should be sent to Rita Meade, USDA–AMS–NOP, 1400 Independence Avenue, SW., Room 2648–S, Ag Stop 0268, Washington, D.C. 20250. For more information, contact Rita Meade at (202) 720-3252; e-mail: Rita.Meade@ams.usda.gov.

Link to news release

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is announcing a comprehensive and detailed approach to support farmers, ranchers, and forest land owners in their response to climate change. The framework consists of 10 building blocks that span a range of technologies and practices to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, increase carbon storage, and generate clean renewable energy. USDA’s strategy focuses on climate-smart practices designed for working production systems that provide multiple economic and environmental benefits in addition to supporting resilience to extreme weather, reduced emissions and increased carbon storage.

Through this comprehensive set of voluntary programs and initiatives spanning its programs, USDA expects to reduce net emissions and enhance carbon sequestration by over 120 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent (MMTCO2e) per year – about 2% of economy-wide net greenhouse emissions – by 2025. That’s the equivalent of taking 25 million cars off the road, or offsetting the emissions produced by powering nearly 11 million homes last year.

USDA will use authorities in the 2014 Farm Bill to provide incentives and technical assistance to farmers, ranchers, and forest land owners.

Specifically, USDA will encourage actions that promote soil health, improve nutrient management, and conserve and enhance forest resources on private and public lands. In addition, USDA will redouble efforts to improve energy efficiency, develop renewable energy, and use biomass both as a liquid fuel and to contribute to heating, cooling, and electric needs.

USDA’s strategy will be based on the following principles:

Voluntary and incentive-based: Farmers, ranchers, and forest land owners are stewards of the land. USDA has a track record of successful conservation though voluntary programs designed to provide technical assistance for resource management. These efforts fit within USDA’s approach of “cooperative conservation.”

Focused on multiple economic and environmental benefits: To be successful, the proposed actions should provide economic and environmental benefits through efficiency improvements, improved yields, or reduced risks.

Meet the needs of producers: This strategy is designed for working farms, ranches, forests, and production systems. USDA will encourage actions that enhance productivity and improve efficiency.

Assess progress and measure success: USDA is committed to establishing quantitative goals and objectives for each building block and will track and report on progress.

Cooperative and focused on building partnerships: USDA will seek out opportunities to leverage efforts by industry, farm groups, conservation organizations, municipalities, public and private investment products, tribes, and states.

USDA’s strategy is made of these 10 building blocks:

Soil Health: Improve soil resilience and increase productivity by promoting conservation tillage and no-till systems, planting cover crops, planting perennial forages, managing organic inputs and compost application, and alleviating compaction. USDA aims to increase no-till implementation from the current 67 million acres to over 100 million acres by 2025.

Nitrogen Stewardship: Focus on the right timing, type, placement and quantity of nutrients to reduce nitrous oxide emissions and provide cost savings through efficient application.

Livestock Partnerships: Encourage broader deployment of anaerobic digesters, lagoon covers, composting, and solids separators to reduce methane emissions from cattle, dairy, and swine operations. USDA plans to support 500 new digesters over the next 10 years, as well as expand the use of covers on 10 percent of anaerobic lagoons used in dairy cattle and hog operations.

Conservation of Sensitive Lands: Use the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) and the Agricultural Conservation Easement Program (ACEP) to reduce GHG emissions through riparian buffers, tree planting, and the conservation of wetlands and organic soils. By 2025, USDA aims to enroll 400,000 acres of CRP lands with high greenhouse gas benefits, protect 40,000 acres through easements, and gain additional benefits by transferring expiring CRP acres to permanent easements.

Grazing and Pasture Lands: Support rotational grazing management, avoiding soil carbon loss through improved management of forage, soils and grazing livestock. By 2025, USDA plans to support improved grazing management on an additional 4 million acres, for a total of 20 million acres.

Private Forest Growth and Retention: Through the Forest Legacy Program and the Community Forest and Open Space Conservation Program, protect almost 1 million additional acres of working landscapes. Employ the Forest Stewardship Program to cover an average of 2.1 million acres annually (new or revised plans), in addition to the 26 million acres covered by active plans.

Stewardship of Federal Forests: Reforest areas damaged by wildfire, insects, or disease, and restore forests to increase their resilience to those disturbances. USDA plans to reforest 5,000 additional post-disturbance acres by 2025.

Promotion of Wood Products: Increase the use of wood as a building material, to store additional carbon in buildings while offsetting the use of energy from fossil fuel. USDA plans to expand the number of wood building projects supported through cooperative agreements with partners and technical assistance, in addition to research and market promotion for new, innovative wood building products.

Urban Forests: Encourage tree planting in urban areas to reduce energy costs, storm water runoff, and urban heat island effects while increasing carbon sequestration, curb appeal, and property values. Working with partners, USDA plans to plant an average of 9,000 additional trees in urban areas per year through 2025.

Energy Generation and Efficiency: Promote renewable energy technologies and improve energy efficiency. Through the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Loan Program, work with utilities to improve the efficiency of equipment and appliances. Using the Rural Energy for America Program and other programs, develop additional renewable energy, bioenergy and biofuel opportunities. Support the National On-Farm Energy Initiative to improve farm energy efficiency through cost-sharing and energy audits.

Link to full news release

Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. today issued a proclamation declaring April 22, 2015 as “Earth Day” in the State of California.

Since taking office, Governor Brown has signed accords to fight climate change with leaders from Mexico, China, Canada, Japan, Israel and Peru. The Governor also issued a groundbreaking call to action with hundreds of world-renowned researchers and scientists – called the consensus statement – which translates key scientific climate findings from disparate fields into one unified message and reiterates the hazards listed below in a world under even greater threat than it was in 1992, when the “Warning to Humanity” was first issued.

In his inaugural address earlier this year, Governor Brown announced that within the next 15 years, California will increase from one-third to 50 percent our electricity derived from renewable sources; reduce today’s petroleum use in cars and trucks by up to 50 percent; double the efficiency of existing buildings and make heating fuels cleaner; reduce the release of methane, black carbon and other potent pollutants across industries; and manage farm and rangelands, forests and wetlands so they can store carbon.

The impacts of climate change are already being felt in California, and will disproportionately impact the state’s most vulnerable populations.

The text of the proclamation is below:

PROCLAMATION

In 1992, some 1,700 of the world’s leading scientists, including the majority of Nobel laureates in the sciences, signed the following Warning to Humanity about the critical challenges facing the world’s environment. This document was written by the late Henry Kendall, chairman of the Union of Concerned Scientists. On Earth Day this year, it is appropriate–indeed mandatory–that we reflect on the progress we have made in dealing with these challenges and the far greater challenges that stand in front of us.

The current drought in California is an example of the kind of human and environmental catastrophe that will increase in frequency if we do not reverse the trend of climate change caused by human activity. While we cannot say conclusively that the drought itself was caused by rising temperatures, the warmer climate exacerbates dry conditions. Wildfire, for the first time, has become almost a year-round problem in California, and the harm to watersheds could prolong the drought or increase its severity. The world would be wise to look to California, and to the words below, as a warning of what will come if we do not act immediately and concertedly to cut climate pollution and adapt to this already warmer world.

INTRODUCTION

Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources. If not checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future that we wish for human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know. Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present course will bring about.

THE ENVIRONMENT

The environment is suffering critical stress:

The Atmosphere

Stratospheric ozone depletion threatens us with enhanced ultraviolet radiation at the earth’s surface, which can be damaging or lethal to many life forms. Air pollution near ground level, and acid precipitation, are already causing widespread injury to humans, forests, and crops.

Water Resources

Heedless exploitation of depletable ground water supplies endangers food production and other essential human systems. Heavy demands on the world’s surface waters have resulted in serious shortages in some 80 countries, containing 40 percent of the world’s population. Pollution of rivers, lakes, and ground water further limits the supply.

Oceans

Destructive pressure on the oceans is severe, particularly in the coastal regions which produce most of the world’s food fish. The total marine catch is now at or above the estimated maximum sustainable yield. Some fisheries have already shown signs of collapse. Rivers carrying heavy burdens of eroded soil into the seas also carry industrial, municipal, agricultural and livestock waste–some of it toxic.

Soil

Loss of soil productivity, which is causing extensive land abandonment, is a widespread by-product of current practices in agriculture and animal husbandry. Since 1945, 11 percent of the earth’s vegetated surface has been degraded–an area larger than India and China combined–and per capita food production in many parts of the world is decreasing.

Forests

Tropical rain forests, as well as tropical and temperate dry forests, are being destroyed rapidly. At present rates, some critical forest types will be gone in a few years, and most of the tropical rain forest will be gone before the end of the next century. With them will go large numbers of plant and animal species.

Living Species

The irreversible loss of species, which by 2100 may reach one-third of all species now living, is especially serious. We are losing the potential they hold for providing medicinal and other benefits, and the contribution that genetic diversity of life forms gives to the robustness of the world’s biological systems and to the astonishing beauty of the earth itself. Much of this damage is irreversible on a scale of centuries, or permanent. Other processes appear to pose additional threats. Increasing levels of gases in the atmosphere from human activities, including carbon dioxide released from fossil fuel burning and from deforestation, may alter climate on a global scale. Predictions of global warming are still uncertain–with projected effects ranging from tolerable to very severe–but the potential risks are very great.

Our massive tampering with the world’s interdependent web of life–coupled with the environmental damage inflicted by deforestation, species loss, and climate change–could trigger widespread adverse effects, including unpredictable collapses of critical biological systems whose interactions and dynamics we only imperfectly understand.

Uncertainty over the extent of these effects cannot excuse complacency or delay in facing the threats.

POPULATION

The earth is finite. Its ability to absorb wastes and destructive effluent is finite. Its ability to provide food and energy is finite. Its ability to provide for growing numbers of people is finite. And we are fast approaching many of the earth’s limits. Current economic practices which damage the environment, in both developed and underdeveloped nations, cannot be continued without the risk that vital global systems will be damaged beyond repair.

Pressures resulting from unrestrained population growth put demands on the natural world that can overwhelm any efforts to achieve a sustainable future. If we are to halt the destruction of our environment, we must accept limits to that growth. A World Bank estimate indicates that world population will not stabilize at less than 12.4 billion, while the United Nations concludes that the eventual total could reach 14 billion, a near tripling of today’s 5.4 billion. But, even at this moment, one person in five lives in absolute poverty without enough to eat, and one in ten suffers serious malnutrition.

No more than one or a few decades remain before the chance to avert the threats we now confront will be lost and the prospects for humanity immeasurably diminished.

WARNING

The Warning to Humanity

Five inextricably linked areas must be addressed simultaneously:

1. We must bring environmentally damaging activities under control to restore and protect the integrity of the earth’s systems we depend on. We must, for example, move away from fossil fuels to more benign, inexhaustible energy sources to cut greenhouse gas emissions and the pollution of our air and water. Priority must be given to the development of energy sources matched to third world needs–small scale and relatively easy to implement. We must halt deforestation, injury to and loss of agricultural land, and the loss of terrestrial and marine plant and animal species.

2. We must manage resources crucial to human welfare more effectively. We must give high priority to efficient use of energy, water, and other materials, including expansion of conservation and recycling.

3. We must stabilize population. This will be possible only if all nations recognize that it requires improved social and economic conditions, and the adoption of effective, voluntary family planning.

4. We must reduce and eventually eliminate poverty.

5. We must ensure sexual equality, and guarantee women control over their own reproductive decisions.

The developed nations are the largest polluters in the world today. They must greatly reduce their over-consumption, if we are to reduce pressures on resources and the global environment. The developed nations have the obligation to provide aid and support to developing nations, because only the developed nations have the financial resources and the technical skills for these tasks.

Acting on this recognition is not altruism, but enlightened self-interest: whether industrialized or not, we all have but one lifeboat. No nation can escape from injury when global biological systems are damaged. No nation can escape from conflicts over increasingly scarce resources. In addition, environmental and economic instabilities will cause mass migrations with incalculable consequences for developed and undeveloped nations alike.

Developing nations must realize that environmental damage is one of the gravest threats they face, and that attempts to blunt it will be overwhelmed if their populations go unchecked. The greatest peril is to become trapped in spirals of environmental decline, poverty, and unrest, leading to social, economic and environmental collapse.

Success in this global endeavor will require a great reduction in violence and war. Resources now devoted to the preparation and conduct of war–amounting to over $1 trillion annually–will be badly needed in the new tasks and should be diverted to the new challenges.

A new ethic is required–a new attitude towards discharging our responsibility for caring for ourselves and for the earth. We must recognize the earth’s limited capacity to provide for us. We must recognize its fragility. We must no longer allow it to be ravaged. This ethic must motivate a great movement; convince reluctant leaders and reluctant governments and reluctant peoples themselves to effect the needed changes.

The scientists issuing this warning hope that the message will reach and affect people everywhere. We need the help of many.

We require the help of the world community of scientists–natural, social, economic, political;
We require the help of the world’s business and industrial leaders;
We require the help of the world’s religious leaders; and
We require the help of the world’s peoples.
We call on all to join us in this task.

NOW THEREFORE I, EDMUND G. BROWN JR., Governor of the State of California, do hereby proclaim April 22, 2015, as “Earth Day.”

IN WITNESS WHEREOF I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Great Seal of the State of California to be affixed this 21st day of April 2015.

____________________________
EDMUND G. BROWN JR.
Governor of California

ATTEST:

___________________________
ALEX PADILLA
Secretary of State