The Sand County Foundation’s Leopold Conservation Award Program honors landowners across the U.S. for outstanding voluntary achievement in conservation practices that improve their bottom line and our environment. The award has been called, “The Nobel Prize for agriculture.”

The next segment in the Growing California video series, a partnership with California Grown, is “Melon Masters.”

By Edward Ortiz, Sacramento Bee

The effects of cattle theft did not fully dawn on rancher Candace Owen until she got a call in 2010 from a fellow rancher. It was a heads-up alerting her that some of her cows were missing their calves.

The clue that something was amiss was each cow was “tight bagged,” the term ranchers use to describe cows with sagging udders that have not been milked.

Owen soon discovered that as many as 25 calves had been taken from her ranch in Red Bluff. She had been hit by cattle rustlers, characters that for most people exist only in history books and cowboy movies.

Cattle rustling, it turns out, has never gone away. And it’s on the rise in California and nationwide.

“It’s a terrible crime when you steal someone’s livelihood,” said Owen, whose husband’s family has been ranching in and around Tehama County for generations.

Last year, 1,317 head of cattle were reported stolen or missing in California, said Greg Lawley, chief of the state’s Bureau of Livestock Identification. That’s a 22 percent increase from what was reported before the recession.

“We assume this is an outgrowth of cattle price rise,” Lawley said.

In many instances a cow can sell easily for $1,000. Cattle prices have been increasing steadily, with prices hitting record highs in 2011 and 2012, according to the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service.

“The thing with stealing livestock, and especially cattle, is you can get 100 percent of its value, especially with unbranded animals,” Lawley said. In most cases a brand is the only way to establish ownership.

Unlike the old days, when stolen cattle were herded on horseback, today’s rustlers use trailers and trucks. “The speed of transport means you can load up a gooseneck trailer full of cattle and be in Colorado 24 hours later,” Lawley said.

In Owen’s case, an investigation by the Bureau of Livestock Identification concluded that the thieves gathered at night and herded the calves by horseback. Both cows and calves were herded into trailers. They separated the calves from the cows and dumped the cows at different places in the countryside.

Owen said losing calves deepens her loss because of all the future productivity lost. “It’s a long-term loss,” she said.

As a result, she posted a $5,000 reward.

Owen has since had some of the stolen cattle returned. A witness identified the likely suspect in that theft, but there was not enough evidence to prosecute, Owen said.

In cattle ranching, it is well known that cattle theft is, typically, an inside job, said John Suther, senior investigator with the Bureau of Livestock Identification.

“They’re neighbors. They’re employees – hired men.” said Suther. “It’s a specialized business so people with knowledge of the cattle industry are the ones stealing these animals,” he said.

Suther has the herculean task of being the only cattle theft investigator for the whole state. He has to travel thousands of miles from his home in Shasta County to do his job. The state has roughly 3 million head of cattle. Of those, about 575,000 cows are beef or range cattle, and the rest are dairy cows. Suther mainly investigates the former, since dairy cow theft is relatively rare.

Although he is does not carry a firearm, Suther has the right to pull over and inspect vehicles used in transporting cattle. A lot of what he does is brand inspections. The bureau registers 11,000 brands every year.

Last year, the bureau, returned 1,604 cattle to ranchers. The value recovered was $1.4 million.

Suther said cattle theft tends to migrate from hot spot to hot spot. This year, there seems to be a lot of theft activity in the Central Valley, Suther said.

The cattle theft problem is likely larger than people think it is, Suther said. “We feel cattle theft is completely under-reported.”

Suther said that many ranchers hesitate to report cattle stolen because they do not want to be targeted again. Other ranchers believe there is a stigma attached to being a victim of theft. Many simply assume they will lose 2 percent of their cattle and won’t investigate until unless the number of stolen cattle is quite large, he said.

The rise in cattle theft in California is part of a national trend. In 2012, more than 10,400 head of cattle and horses were reported missing or stolen to the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association – a 36 percent increase from 2010.

Central Valley cattle rancher Mark Beck has had four steers stolen this year from his ranches in Sacramento, San Joaquin and Calaveras counties. “The thieves loaded them by roadways where there is easy access,” he said. “Sometimes they shoot the cattle and butcher them where they find them.”

Beck sees it as a crime driven by economics. “The way the job market has been since 2008, people are getting desperate, and they’re stealing things,” Beck said.

Cattle theft is hard to prosecute, and when thieves are caught and brought to trial, they usually avoid paying large fines or serving much jail time.

However, that may change with Gov. Jerry Brown’s recent signing of Assembly Bill 924, which sets potential fines for stealing cattle.

The new law is music to the ears of cattle ranchers, said Justin Oldfield, vice president of government relations with the California Cattlemen’s Association. The association is the major lobbying arm of the state’s cattle ranchers and was a big proponent of the bill.

“From a judicial perspective, we’ve been disheartened over the last few years,” said Oldfield.

He said it is common for thieves, when caught, to plead guilty to stealing 10 cattle – which brings a felony charge – and plead down the charge down to a misdemeanor. “They’ll get probation,” said Oldfield. “When people are punished, it’s usually a fine and not jail time. There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of seriousness from the courts.”

The new law, which takes effect Jan. 1, makes cattle theft punishable as a felony or misdemeanor and calls for fines up to $5,000. Previously, there was no set level of fines for cattle rustling; it was up to the judge’s discretion, and fines were rarely levied. The new law also requires fines to be paid to the Bureau of Livestock Identification instead of the state’s general fund.

Oldfield is uncertain whether the new law will deter cattle theft, but he believes that it will create awareness and is a step in the right direction.

“When you’re talking about the value of a steer worth $1,000 or more, and you lose five of those – that’s a substantial impact to an operation,” he said. “It can make or break the bottom line for that year.”

http://www.sacbee.com/2013/10/27/5850087/cattle-theft-increasing-in-california.html

CDFA Secretary Karen Ross (center) with students at the 20th anniversary celebration for the Center for Land-Based Learning in Winters. Founder and State Board of Food and Agriculture President Craig McNamara is in the foreground on the right.

Earlier this week I had the honor and pleasure to help celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Center for Land-Based Learning, a non-profit organization in Winters started by California State Board of Food and Agriculture President Craig McNamara and his wife, Julie, to help connect young people with nature and agriculture.

In the last two decades, the Center has become a force in this state for its extremely effective youth development and beginning farmer education. I want to commend Craig for his vision, passion and commitment of resources to make the Center an entity that touches so many people in such positive ways and is absolutely contributing to a better future for California agriculture.  Happy Birthday, Center for Land-Based Learning!

This is Food Day, which is described by organizers as a nationwide celebration and movement for healthy, affordable, and sustainable food. That’s something we can all get behind, and I’d like to talk a little about how it helps position us for the future.

We are part of a system that will be asked to produce roughly twice as much food by 2050, while utilizing fewer natural resources. California farmers and ranchers must prepare to meet the challenges and opportunities of a growing population at home and abroad. In Asia, we believe we’ll see an exploding middle class as we move deeper into the 21st Century, and that many of those newly-minted consumers will want the quality, safety and reliability of California products. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to travel to Asia twice over the last year. I witnessed that interest first-hand.

We are encouraged by the vision of a World Food Center at UC Davis. The Center will address perhaps the most critical issue facing society today – how to feed and nourish a growing planet in an environmentally sustainable way. Few major universities, if any, have the interdisciplinary research strength and close connection to a diversity of agricultural crops nearby to support an enterprise like this.

Now, as we consider a sustainable food production system, we recognize that it must include producers of all sizes and approaches – from those serving the export markets, to large-scale producers, to smaller-scale operations that include the farm-to-fork movement that has attracted so much interest in recent years. The California Department of Food and Agriculture is doing its own work in this arena by opening a Farm-to Fork Office, which has a special interest in healthy food for children, and in schools. While local food procurement can sometimes be a challenge for schools, this office will work to establish best practices for procurement of locally grown produce by large-scale buyers.

Ultimately, our target is young people, as evidenced by the fact that October is National Farm-to-School Month! My friend Alice Waters said it best in her blog post on the Food Day website, “The greatest thing we can do is educate and empower the next generation.” I couldn’t agree more. The most important work we do is to teach children about healthy eating and the origins of food. If it is to remain sustainable, healthy and affordable, it will be up to them.

Read the original story from the LA Times

It seems like every time you hear someone mention processed food, it’s accompanied with the words “bad” or “unhealthy,” plus a shaking finger. Unless you’re author Rachel Laudan.

Laudan challenges the contemporary food movement and its belief that processed food is the enemy. She will give a talk on “What’s Not to Love About Modern Industrially Processed Foods? A Historical Perspective,” presented by the Culinary Historians of Southern California on Nov. 9.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/20/disruptions-silicon-valleys-next-stop-the-kitchen/?_r=0

SAN FRANCISCO — Megan Miller knows that cockroaches are packed with protein and she says they can be made into a surprisingly tasty treat. But if that is a bit too avant-garde to believe, do you think you might like crickets if they were “ground up into a powder so you can’t see wings or legs?”

Ms. Miller believes you would.

She is the co-founder of Chirp Farms, a start-up firm here that is dedicated to making food like the company’s flagship Chirp bars, which are $2.50 morsels made of crickets. They are expected to arrive in stores next year.

While making food from insects might sound fascinating — or icky — the approach she is taking, treating Chirp Farms like a technology start-up rather than a food outfit, is what really makes the company interesting.

“My background is digital product development,” Ms. Miller said in an interview. “I’m using the same kinds of thinking that I used in technology start-ups while I build this food business, too.” In addition to starting Chirp Farms, she is the director of research and development for Bonnier, a publishing company.

While a growing number of start-ups like Chirp Farms have received money from big venture capital firms, exactly how these companies plan to compete with the entrenched giants of the food industry has not been clear.

Nonetheless, they are undeterred. They see a big, slow-moving market just begging to be invaded by someone with new ideas and a new way of building a business.

“What is happening right now is that Silicon Valley is starting to see opportunities for disruption in other areas besides traditional technology,” Ms. Miller said.

If this sounds familiar, it is. Just as tech took on music, first with Napsterand later with services like iTunes and Spotify; just as Amazon took on books and eventually the entire world of retailing; and just as Craigslist took on traditional classified advertising, these food start-ups think it is not so far-fetched to go after the food industry.

“The food system is bizarre and ineffectual and completely lacking in innovation,” said Josh Tetrick, founder and chief executive of Hampton Creek Foods, which makes imitation egg products using plants.

Creating a successful food company requires a lot more than just a good idea. There are government rules and regulations and competition from entrenched conglomerates with vast distribution systems.

These obstacles will not be easily overcome. But these start-ups are trying to do that by behaving like the most successful tech outfits that have gone from ideas to multibillion dollar businesses.

Some have programmers writing code to test out snacks and determine the types of ingredients that can go together. Some approach management in the same way start-ups run their operations, using a process called Agile methodology, in which project managers work in very small teams with programmers and have software development practices like Scrum that are intended to move and build products very quickly.

Essentially, they are organizing the development of food products in much the same way that tech start-ups organize code.

“You have to think in terms of scaling, like software, and that’s what Silicon Valley brings to the food start-ups, where we know how to create something small, then iterate rapidly, and finally scale it,” Ms. Miller said.

The interior of the San Francisco offices of Hampton Creek looks like a cross between Walter White’s meth lab in “Breaking Bad,” a nightclub and a standard-issue start-up. Plants that might soon be turned into substitute egg products sit along the windowsill. Thirty young (and hip) programmers, marketers and scientists zip about to loud music blaring from speakers.

Employees at the company do not talk about food as food, but rather as if they were programming an app to be sold in the iTunes store.

“While a chicken egg will never change, our idea is that we can have a product where we push updates into the system, just like Apple updates its iOS operating system.” Mr. Tetrick said. “So our mayo is version 1.0, and the next version will be 2.0, which will be less expensive and last twice as long.”

Grocery stores are starting to pay attention. Hampton Creek announced last week that it had set up a partnership with Whole Foods that would bring Just Mayo, the company’s plant-based mayonnaise, to retail shelves across the country.

Thomas Manuel, the chief executive of Nu-Tek Food Science, which makes a lower-sodium salt product, has worked in the food and agriculture industry for 43 years. He knows the difficulties of entering the business and questions if some of these food start-ups will eventually be snapped up by the giants they are trying to change or simply copied out of existence.

“Unlike other industries in technology, where people can carry patents and protect their ideas, the majority of the food industry doesn’t have that,” Mr. Manuel said. “So if you come along with a great idea and it starts to become really successful, then someone else can just come along and copy it.”

But there might be room for both entrenched corporations and start-ups in the future of the food industry.

A report issued by the United Nations this year warned that by 2050, the world’s population is expected to reach nine billion people and that there are not enough resources on the planet to feed them. The report suggested insects as a solution.

Can Silicon Valley ingenuity make eating insects appetizing to Western palates?

“As the population grows, there is not going to be enough protein for people. There is no way we can produce meat at the scale,” Ms. Miller said. “What we’re trying to do is popularize a protein that hasn’t made it into Western culture yet, and that’s going to be very disruptive.”

http://www.californiareport.org/archive/R201310181630/c