Cannon Michael (L) is president of the Bowles Farming Company

By Ann Hayden

During times of water scarcity, like California’s recent drought, it’s tempting to take on a binary view of the world.  This was definitely the case with agriculture, which appeared to be at odds with everyone: farms vs. fish, farm vs. cities, farms vs. regulators.  As a dominant water user in the state, they were easy targets.

But when one digs deeper, it’s obvious that many in the agricultural community want to move beyond this debate and do things differently. Yes growing food and fiber takes water, but there are plenty of farmers laser-focused on improving efficiency, maximizing multi-benefit solutions and striking a balance between growing crops and preserving the environment.

I recently visited with Cannon Michael, president of Bowles Farming Company, which oversees an 11,000-acre farm near Los Banos in California’s San Joaquin Valley. He is the great, great, great grandson of Henry Miller, “the Cattle King of California,” so farming is in his blood. He has senior water rights, and while he still had to make difficult management decisions during the drought, he ended up with more water than many of his neighbors and found ways to share it, a tremendous display of collaboration in the farming community.

Now Cannon is working with Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) to create a plan to enhance agriculture and wildlife benefits on his property and serve as a model for others. Below, he shares his thoughts.

Your family has a long and storied history in California agriculture. Did you always know you would follow the family tradition?

I’m the 6th generation of my family to work in California agriculture. But it wasn’t always the career path I was planning on. I was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area and I often visited the farm as a young boy. I have vivid memories of driving out to the country, opening the car door and running for miles – the freedom was amazing. In high school I worked every summer on the farm and enjoyed learning to irrigate, drive tractors and the value of a hard day’s work. I graduated from UC Berkeley and started down a different career path, but eventually I found my way back to the country. Agriculture is in my blood, and I was destined to be a farmer.

How have you adjusted to less water availability?

We were pretty proactive over a decade ago and installed drip irrigation. To be frank, this wasn’t done over water concerns alone; we saw it as an opportunity to increase yield and improve the quality of our products, especially tomatoes. During the recent drought, we were able to leverage drip irrigation and continue to grow our operations. It also opened up opportunities for us to strategically fallow some ground and transfer water to some of our neighbors who had no supply at all.

To what degree do sustainability and conservation factor in to the management decisions you make on the farm? What drives your conservation ethic?

Farmers inherently know what sustainability is. We must be sustainable if we want to continue to grow good products and stay in business. I don’t see any farmer intentionally wanting to do things that impact their workers, the surrounding environment that they live in or their end consumers. That isn’t a good or logical strategy.

That’s not to say that farmers can’t be doing more. There’s a learning piece to sustainability. I may be able to grow a great crop of tomatoes, but I didn’t know what it took to successfully restore habitat areas on the farm. My core strength isn’t being a biologist or a habitat restoration expert. That’s why it’s nice to have partners, like EDF, and the opportunities presented through the Central Valley Habitat Exchange. That way I can make sustainable, holistic management decisions that benefit my farm and the surrounding environment.

What type of conservation practices or restoration projects have you implemented on your property?

We worked with biologists and habitat restoration specialists to reestablish water fowl habitat and riparian corridors on the property. It really had a profound impact on me when I realized just how much diversity we were supporting. I remember when we got the first bird survey back after we completed the riparian corridor work it said we had 49 different species of bird. Looking at a field of tomatoes, there are variances – but it’s still just a field of tomatoes. So it’s pretty amazing that in the same area there’s also all these species of birds, butterflies and terrestrial species. It adds a richness to the place and brings diversity to the day. I used to find myself looking out of only one side of my truck window at the cropland, but now as I drive, I slow down and focus equally on our habitat.

Farmers and environmentalists have often been at odds when it comes to land and water management. Are you hopeful this dynamic can change?

I think the dynamic is changing because the agricultural community and environmentalists are finding a lot of overlap in our work and shared goals for a healthy environment and reliable water supply. We all recognize the challenges of a limited water supply so everyone is coming to the table to figure out how to cope. It’s important to remember that there are intelligent and motivated people on both sides. The environmental community brings a lot of information and expertise on habitat and riparian restoration. Farmers know how to get projects done, and they know the local context. So there’s a really great synergy happening between the two groups. At the end of the day, we all want a vibrant and healthy environment in California and a reliable and safe food supply.

Link to blog post

By Jeff Cox

How lucky we are to live in this region’s Mediterranean climate — because we can eat fresh, tree-ripened figs!

Folks who live outside of (our region) may have never tasted a fig pulled right off the tree. A tree-ripened fig is sweet and fruity, luscious, intriguingly flavored, and pure joy on the palate.

Here’s how you can spot a tree-ripe fig. Unripe figs may color up but they’re not quite ripe yet. They stand out from the branch on stiff peduncles — the bit of wood that attaches the fruit to the branch. When the fig is truly tree-ripe, that peduncle softens and the fig hangs loosely from the branch. That’s the signal — and then the race is on — between the human fig aficionado and the little Argentine ants that have turned our state into a giant ant colony — to see who can harvest them first. (They) love figs as much as we do.  Maybe more.

Figs are native to the Levant (the nations of Cyprus, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Turkey) and have been cultivated for about 11,000 years, making them one of the first crops when agriculture was developed. An early farmer would certainly have loved the fact that they dry easily and store that way for months, providing energy and food during lean winters

For many people, the Black Mission variety, first planted in California at Mission San Diego in 1769, sets the standard for quality. Lovers of yellow figs praise Calimyrna figs, whose amber flesh is sweet and nutty.

If you’ve driven around Fresno on Highway 99, you may have seen acres of fig trees with paper bags attached to them. The bags cover the fruits to prevent over-pollination and subsequent split fruit.

While most figs don’t need pollination to develop, Calimyrna figs do. Of the thousands of cuttings of Turkish Smyrna figs brought to California in the 1880s, not one bore fruit. It was discovered that a tiny fig wasp must pollinate the Turkish figs, and so the wasps were imported to California and now work those paper bag fig orchards producing Calimyrnas.

Calimyrna is a name combining “California” and “Smyrna.” The variety itself, however, is not one produced through a breeding program, but it is from one of the cuttings brought to California in the latter part of the 19th century. It is identical to the Lob Injir variety (a sub-variety of Smyrna) that has been grown in Turkey for many centuries and is considered by many to be the world’s tastiest fig. Figs are nutritious, with sugar, dietary fiber, calcium, potassium and good stores of thiamine, riboflavin and niacin.

Link to full article

Learn more about California figs

The Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR), a nonprofit organization established through bipartisan congressional support in the 2014 Farm Bill, has joined with a number of private sector partners to launch the Crops of the Future Collaborative, a new consortium that will accelerate crop breeding to meet global food demand 20-50 years in the future. FFAR’s initial $10 million commitment is expected to leverage significant additional investment from partners.

With the world population projected to reach 9.8 billion people by 2050, the Crops of the Future Collaborative will accelerate crop breeding through an innovative public-private model that pools proprietary knowledge, financial resources and technology to carry out crop-specific research initially focusing on maize, leafy greens, and wheat and small grains. The consortium will hone in on how a crop’s genetic information can yield traits needed to meet global nutritional demands in a changing environment.

The new consortium will increase capacity to breed crops with specific traits, leading to plants that are adapted to different environments. Target crop characteristics might include enhanced nutritional qualities or ability to withstand environmental challenges such as drought, heat, or flooding. Ultimately, knowledge generated by the Collaborative will be publicly available through scientific publications and informational platforms, benefiting public and private crop breeding efforts.

Link to news release

CDFA Secretary Karen Ross presents a proclamation to Nirmal Saini in honor of his 41 years of public service.

Surrounded by his wife, four children, grandchildren, and extended family and friends, Nirmal Saini celebrated his retirement at a luncheon on Friday, June 30. A banquet room full of his colleagues and peers paid tribute to their friend, led by both California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) Secretary Karen Ross and Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) Director Brian Leahy.

Nirmal Saini’s career in public service has spanned 41 years, 39 of which were at CDFA’s Center for Analytical Chemistry, also known as the chem lab or just “the lab.” In a nutshell,  the lab protects the food supply by ensuring that various foods and feeds meet established standards, from organics and pesticide levels to a range of other chemical analyses for both CDFA and DPR. As branch chief at the lab, Nirmal has had a hand in every major hire, purchase, upgrade or project for decades. He took a sincere interest in the lives and families of lab employees, serving as mentor to many.

He leaves the lab in the capable hands of people whose careers he has nurtured throughout his tenure. Their work is informed by his example and inspired by the spirit of his service. Thank you, Nirmal,  and congratulations.