Bird owners in Southern California are responding to outreach provided over the past several days related to virulent Newcastle disease (VND), and have started reporting sick birds. VND has now been confirmed in a number of flocks of backyard birds in San Bernardino County. CDFA is working closely with USDA to respond to these findings, and is investigating any potential links between these cases and a case recently identified in Los Angeles County.

Bird owners are urged to practice biosecurity to help protect their birds from VND and other infectious diseases. These include simple steps like washing hands and scrubbing boots before and after entering a poultry area; cleaning and disinfecting tires and equipment before moving them off the property; and isolating any birds returning from shows for 30 days before placing them with the rest of the flock.

In addition to practicing good biosecurity, all bird owners should report sick birds or unusual bird deaths to California’s Sick Bird Hotline at 866-922-BIRD (2473).

California agencies combatting the spread of invasive quagga and zebra mussels remind boaters to remain cautious over Memorial Day weekend.

Quagga and zebra mussels are invasive freshwater mussels native to Eurasia. They multiply quickly, encrust watercraft and infrastructure, alter water quality and the aquatic food web and ultimately impact native and sport fish communities. These mussels spread from one waterbody to another by attaching to watercraft, equipment and nearly anything that has been in an infested waterbody.

Invisible to the naked eye, microscopic juveniles are spread from infested waterbodies by water that is entrapped in boat engines, bilges, live-wells and buckets. Quagga mussels have infested 33 waterways in Southern California and zebra mussels have infested two waterways in San Benito County.

To prevent the spread of these mussels and other aquatic invasive species, people launching vessels at any waterbody are subject to watercraft inspections and are strongly encouraged to clean, drain and dry their motorized and non-motorized boats, including personal watercraft, and any equipment that contacts the water before and after use.

Boaters are urged to take the following steps both before traveling to and before leaving a waterbody to prevent spreading invasive mussels, improve the efficiency of the inspection experience and safeguard California waterways:

• CLEAN — inspect exposed surfaces and remove all plants and organisms,
• DRAIN — all water, including water contained in lower outboard units, live-wells and bait buckets, and
• DRY — allow the watercraft to thoroughly dry between launches. Watercraft should be kept dry for at least five days in warm weather and up to 30 days in cool weather.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) has developed a brief video demonstrating the ease of implementing the clean, drain and dry prevention method, which can be viewed at www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaeAIPLoK-k. In addition, a detailed guide to cleaning vessels of invasive mussels is available on the CDFW’s webpage at https://nrm.dfg.ca.gov/filehandler.ashx?documentid=4957&inline. Additional information is available on the Division of Boating and Waterways (DBW) website at http://dbw.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=28996.

Travelers are also advised to be prepared for inspections at California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) Border Protection Stations. Over the past nine years, more than 1 million watercraft entering California have been inspected at the Border Protection Stations. Inspections, which can also be conducted by CDFW and California State Parks, include a check of boats and personal watercraft, as well as trailers and all onboard items. Contaminated vessels and equipment are subject to decontamination, rejection, quarantine or impoundment.

Quagga and zebra mussels can attach to and damage virtually any submerged surface. They can:

• Ruin a boat engine by blocking the cooling system and causing it to overheat
• Jam a boat’s steering equipment, putting occupants and others at risk
• Require frequent scraping and repainting of boat hulls
• Colonize all underwater substrates such as boat ramps, docks, lines and other underwater surfaces, causing them to require constant cleaning
• Impose large expenses to owners

A multi-agency effort that includes CDFW, DBW, CDFA and the California Department of Water Resources has been leading an outreach campaign to alert the public to the quagga and zebra mussel threats. A toll-free hotline, (866) 440-9530, is available for those seeking information on quagga or zebra mussels.

By Frank Lopez

A new study commissioned by the Citrus Research Board (CRB) values the total economic impact of California’s citrus industry at $7.117 billion.

Bruce Babcock, Ph.D., a professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of California, Riverside, conducted the research and his findings quantified the impact of citrus on the state economy.

“California citrus is a major contributor to the economic value of the state’s agricultural sector and is much larger than just the value of its sales,” Babcock said. “Estimated full-time equivalent California citrus jobs totaled 21,674 in 2016-17, and estimated wages paid by the industry during that same timeframe totaled $452 million.”

According to Babcock, the California citrus industry added $1.695 billion to the state’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2016.

Babcock found that for the years of 2016-17, the total direct value of California citrus production was $3.389 billion. Economic activity from related business that supplied materials and services to the citrus industry generated an additional $1.263 billion, and on top of that, $2.464 billion in economic activity generated by household spending income that they received from California’s industry brought the total economic impact to $7.117 billion.

The study revealed that 79 percent of the state’s citrus was packed for the fresh market and 21 percent was processed in 2016-17, a big significance, as fresh market fruit is valued higher than processed fruit.

California Citrus Mutual President Joel Nelsen commented that the report sheds some positive news about the state but insists that farmers and growers should be cautious of a deadly crop disease epidemic.

“This enthusiasm must be tempered by the fact that huanglongbing (HLB) can destroy all this in a matter of a year if the partnerships that exist between the industry and government cannot thwart the spread of this insidious disease,” Nelsen said. “Reading how that would affect our family farmers, employees and the state is sobering.”

The study also looked into the possible impact of a potential 20 percent reduction in California citrus or yield, or a combination of both, from increased costs related to government regulations, and crop diseases.

According to Babcock, such a reduction could cost 7,350 jobs and reduce California’s GDP by $501 million in direct, indirect and induced impacts.

Link to story

By Nathanael Johnson

EXCERPTED

Chris Sayer pushed his way through avocado branches and grasped a denuded limb. It was stained black, as if someone had ladled tar over its bark. In February, the temperature had dropped below freezing for three hours, killing the limb. The thick leaves had shriveled and fallen away, exposing the green avocados, which then burned in the sun. Sayer estimated he’d lost one out of every 20 avocados on his farm in Ventura, just 50 miles north of Los Angeles, but he counts himself lucky.

“If that freeze was one degree colder, or one hour longer, we would have had major damage,” he said.

Avocado trees start to die when the temperature falls below 28 degrees or rises above 100 degrees. If the weather turns cold and clammy during the short period in the spring when the flowers bloom, bees won’t take to the air and fruits won’t develop. The trees also die if water runs dry, or if too many salts accumulate in the soil, or if a new pest starts chewing on its leaves. “All of which is quite possible in the next few decades, as the climate shifts,” Sayer said.

The weather had been strange lately, Sayer told me. In the past year, Californians have lived through a historic drought, a massive wildfire that blotted out the sun, and a strangely warm winter followed by that unseasonable freeze. When I visited in April, his lemon trees were already loaded with ripe fruit — that usually doesn’t happen until June. “Things are screwy,” Sayer said.

From the vineyards of the north coast to the orange groves of Southern California, farmers like Sayer have been reeling from the weird weather.

It might feel like we’re peering into the distant future when we hear that by 2050, temperatures may very well climb 4 degrees, seas could rise a foot, and droughts and floods will become more common. But for farmers planting trees they hope will bear fruit 25 years from now, that seemingly distant future has to be reckoned with now.

A lot of the country’s tree crops grow in California, which produces two-thirds of the fruits and nuts for the United States. The same is true of grape vines, which bear abundant fruit for about 25 years (they slow down after that, but can keep going for hundreds of years). It’s in large part because so many farmers are making these long-term gambles on orchard crops that a recent scientific paper noted: “Agricultural production in California is highly sensitive to climate change.”

Jay Famiglietti, the senior water scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, goes even further: “It’s a virtual certainty that California will get drier. I don’t think it’s a climate that’s conducive to orchard crops anymore.”

In other words, for anyone trying to make money off long-lived crops, climate change is already here. And yet new saplings are pushing out of the ground all over the state.

If these farmers were planting an annual crop, like cilantro, they’d be making a bet on the weather for the next 45 days. But they’re planting trees, which means making a bet on the next 40 years.

After years of putting it off, Sayer is about to place such a four-decade bet by planting a bunch of new avocado trees. There’s no way Sayer can foresee oncoming climate disaster, if that’s what’s hurtling toward the land his family has worked for the past 130 years in Ventura. He can see just a little bit of what might be coming — as if he’s straining to glimpse signs of danger while blinkered. When I asked him how it felt, he said: “Like I’m about to cross a very busy road with my hood pulled over my head.”

When Katherine Jarvis-Shean was a doctoral candidate researching the decline of cold winters a few years back, she thought more farmers should be freaking out. “I used to think, ‘Why aren’t you guys more worried about this? It’s going to be the end of the world.’”

After all, many fruit and nut trees require a good winter chill to bear fruit. But after spending a few years as an extension agent for the University of California — working directly with farmers and translating science into techniques they can apply on the land — she understands better. It comes down to this: Farmers have a ton of concerns, and the climate is just one of them.

“If you decide what to plant based on climate, but then can’t make the lease payment, that’s not sustainable,” Jarvis-Shean said.

If you are worried about water running out in 15 years, you might think it’s a good idea to cut down half the state’s almond groves — but if those almond trees are still putting money in your pockets, that wouldn’t make sense until the killer drought hits. That’s the crux of the matter for Sayer, and other farmers I interviewed. They’re concerned about the changing climate, but they always come up with ingenious plans to adapt to bad weather. It’s much harder for them to adapt to an overdrawn bank account.

Sayer grows mostly lemons right now, but they’re not long for this world. “You can see these lemon trees are getting a little rangy looking,” Sayer said, gesturing toward a leafless branch. “This is going to be their last harvest, then they’ve got a date with the chipper.”

Sayer knows lemons. He knows how to coddle them in old age, how to nudge them to produce more, how to keep them alive when rains fail, how to protect them from aphids and snails and scale insects and the nematodes in the ground. But this land has provided a home to a citrus orchard for 70 years, and each year more pests accumulate to suck the life from the trees. So Sayer needs to move on from lemons, and he’s settled on avocados.

From a climate perspective, the leather-skinned fruit are a risky choice. Avocado trees like their surroundings not too hot and not too cold, and they always need water. One study estimated that climate change would hurt California avocado trees so much that the state’s production could be cut in half by 2050.

As the sun burned off the marine layer of clouds over the orchard, Sayer patiently laid out the reasoning that led him to plant avocado trees. He explained that climate poses risks that are easy for outsiders to see — when you’re reading about historic droughts in the newspaper and driving past acres of withered crops, it seems crazy to plant orchards. But farmers often have to contend with other risks that outweigh the danger of bad weather. Sayers puts them into three categories: climate risk, market risk, and execution risk.

If he were only worried about climate risk, Sayer said, he’d plant prickly pear. “They would grow in any post-apocalyptic hellscape you could imagine,” he said. But who would buy them?

Full article: “What will we be eating in 2050? Farmers weigh several factors” from Grist

As CDFA continues its work with federal and local partners and poultry owners to respond to a recent detection of virulent Newcastle disease in Los Angeles County, it offers these reminders to bird owners in California and elsewhere.

A newly planted vineyard and lush green cover crop near Santa Ynez, California. George Rose/Getty Images

Just 5 percent of California farmers use cover cropping, but that’s likely to increase as researchers work to quantify the amount of water that can be saved by the practice and its benefit for river ecosystems.

By Jane Braxton Little, Water Deeply

THIS SPRING IN California several orchards around Solano and nearby counties sported a new look: lush carpets of mixed grasses growing as tall as 3ft beneath the trees’ bare branches. By summer the scene will change as farmers grow and harvest their nut crops, but the work of the grasses will continue unseen.

Cover cropping, an agricultural technique as old as dirt, is taking root in California. Used to enhance soil nutrition and improve the growth of plants, it fell out of favor after World War II when the practice was replaced by the use of chemical fertilizers.

Today just 5 percent of California growers are using cover crops – and 3 percent nationwide – but that’s likely to change.

Farmers have used off-season plantings for millennia to build soil and keep it from blowing or washing away. Like their predecessors, walnut and almond growers are using these seasonal noncash crops to hold in moisture and provide habitat.

Farmers are also returning to the practice to curb the effects of a changing climate. As hotter and drier conditions hit most of the state, Central Valley growers are planting grasses and legumes under their trees to increase the carbon and nitrogen in their soils. And as implementation of the state’s new drought-driven groundwater regulation approaches, they are testing the ability of cover crops to increase the amount of water stored in the ground that grows their nuts and vegetables.

“Folks are really thinking hard about where their water comes from, and they’re thinking about carbon, too – things that are new in terms of farming systems in relationship to the world,” said Wendy Rash, a district conservationist with the United States Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.

She is part of a loose coalition of growers, scientists and conservationists working to expand the use of cover crops and identify the places where they can provide the greatest ecological benefit at the lowest cost to the farmer. Some are weighing the economic advantages and risks, some the potential for effecting agricultural policies.

Among these efforts is an ambitious project aimed at a seemingly incongruous goal: river restoration. The Freshwater Trust, a Portland-based conservation group, is designing a tool that will help monitor and track efforts to increase the health of water and soil at a landscape scale. It is based on the premise that cover crops help boost the water that goes into the ground, recharging the aquifer. Maximizing these groundwater reserves lessens the demand for surface water, which leaves more water for rivers. And more water in streams benefits fish and riparian species, said Erik Ringelberg, the Freshwater Trust’s California director.

“From a conservation perspective, that’s a win for us,” he said.

Funded by a $779,000 grant through the Natural Resources Conservation Service, the Freshwater Trust is developing a data-driven system to demonstrate the on-the-ground benefits of cover cropping – and those below the ground, too. It’s a high-tech tool for a humble, time-tested practice.

The use of cover crops is definitely on the rise in the northern Sacramento Valley, said Sara Tiffany. As a specialist with the Community Alliance of Family Farmers Climate-Smart Farming program, she works with growers not represented by larger agricultural organizations. On a farm in Colusa County, the grower was losing topsoil to erosion, which carried it down the slopes of his mature walnut orchard. Tiffany suggested a mix of clover and small grasses to create a perennial cover crop designed to hold the soil in place and reseed itself. It worked, she said.

Just how much water is actually percolating into the water table is largely a matter of anecdotal observation. That, however, could change as the Freshwater Trust gathers data related to water usage. It should also help growers and the conservation community identify steps they can take collectively to maximize effective groundwater management at a watershed scale.

The Freshwater Trust project focuses on the state’s 2014 policy regulating groundwater management, and on the recent application of a 2003 policy regulating agricultural discharge. Both involve farmers, and both are often viewed as onerous, said Ringelberg. The Freshwater Trust has taken the approach that these regulations, administered by separate agencies, can be used to benefit growers as well as the larger watershed.

Ringelberg is working through special districts to monitor the effects of cover cropping on groundwater. As the roots of clover and beans reach down through the soil, they loosen it, making it more receptive to water soaking in from the surface. This also helps farmers deal with agricultural runoff, monitored through the regulation initially designed to limit pesticides entering waterways but now applied to all discharges. By helping absorb water where it falls, cover crops contribute to compliance with the state Irrigated Lands Regulatory Program.

Ringelberg, who helped the Freshwater Trust launch its program early this year, is optimistic that it will demonstrate benefits to both growers and the aquifer. “There’s a lot of additional water that can be brought into the systems immediately helping the conservation of fish and wildlife, and in many cases it can significantly enhance farmers’ productivity,” he said.

To determine how much or how little productivity is affected, Alyssa DeVincentis is building an economic model showing the costs and benefits of cover cropping over time. These are basically unknown despite the longevity of this practice, said DeVincentis, a PhD candidate in hydrologic sciences at University of California, Davis.

Her study is calculating the direct cost-benefits such as planting and purchasing seeds. She is also analyzing the indirect costs and benefits – more important but harder to quantify, she said. They include healthier soil, reduced water usage and “the feeling that things just run more smoothly with cover cropping,” DeVincentis said. She hopes to be able to say the benefits will outweigh the risks within a determined range of years, and to quantify how much water cover cropping actually uses. Although it is beneficial in numerous ways, “at the end of the day cover crops use water,” she said.

But do they ultimately increase groundwater on a piece of property? John Curry, director of the Dixon Resource Conservation District, thinks that likelihood is responsible for the increase in growers interested in cover cropping. California’s new groundwater regulations hold regional groundwater basins responsible for developing and implementing plans to achieve sustainable groundwater management. He is interested in determining if cover crops can increase groundwater retention significantly enough to craft policies for local groundwater management agencies. “There’s a lot of potential in the concept,” he said.

The data the Freshwater Trust, DeVincentis and others are generating could contribute to policies that include cover cropping among the methods for managing groundwater sustainably. Combined with the on-the-ground work of Rash, Tiffany and others, California’s Central Valley farmers may be pioneering techniques that can be applied around the world as the planet becomes hotter and drier.

For Ringelberg, the ultimate goal is to change the pace and scale of conservation – “to actually help the health of an entire watershed.” Improving groundwater recharge by encouraging cover cropping near rivers is one way to do that. He believes the Freshwater Trust model will provide the data to make site-specific decisions with far-reaching effects.

Rash is as anxious as anyone to have data that proves her hunches about the multiple benefits of cover cropping. But she does not need it to validate the inner satisfaction she gets when she sees orchard floors blanketed by winter carpets of green. “They are just good for my soul,” she said.

See the original post on News Deeply/Water Deeply here.