By Cristina Davies

Big research is happening at the Kearney Agriculture and Extension Center in Fresno County.

Sorghum, a crop that looks similar to corn, is under a microscope.

Jeff Dahlberg, director of the center, said that sorghum is very drought tolerant.

“What we are looking for is the mechanism behind the drought tolerance in sorghum and if we can elucidate the genetics behind that, what we believe is we can use those genetics to see if the genetics in corn, or in rice, or in wheat,” he said.

Dahlberg said they ultimately want to figure out if they can make other crops like sorghum drought tolerant.

“I think the genes may be there. We just don’t have the tools yet to search for the genes in those crops,” he said while talking about other cereal crop,” he said.

Dahlberg mentioned sorghum can be used as animal feed and a corn substitute in the ethanol market.

He added sorghum uses less water, leaving more water for other crops.

Dahlberg explained doing the study in California is the perfect spot because we don’t see too much rain in the summer. So they can control how much water the crop gets.

“We’ve been really thrilled with the data that’s been coming out of this, like most research, we are learning so many things we don’t understand. We are finding things like ‘Wow, why is this happening’,” he said.

He mentioned that there are over 100 genetic markers that the center is looking at to figure out what makes the crop drought tolerant.

Besides the amount of water it soaks up, scientists are also studying what’s happening in the soil.

Devin Coleman-Derr, research scientist with the United States Department of Agriculture, said their goal is to help other plants survive under drought stress.

“Like humans take probiotics, there may be a use for microbes in sort of promoting better and better yields in the field,” he explained.

Coleman-Derr was helping to collect samples and researchers were cutting up the roots to put them into tubes.

“There’s a lot of potential benefits that is captured under there, various bacteria and fungi that the plant normally brings in to help it when it undergoes periods of stress. We like to figure out who those are and try to capture some of those so we can bring it back to the field in the following year,” he said.

Dahlberg said they are still in the early stages of their research and have a long way to go but are excited about their current findings.

Watch the story below,

October is National Farm to School Month and we’re highlighting the work of CDFA’s Farm to School Program. Stay tuned for weekly posts!

When school cafeterias develop relationships with local farmers and ranchers, students and families may be in a position to make healthier food choices. That’s the first step in a process we call “Farm to School.” It’s an approach that starts local and also helps the environment by reducing food waste and sequestering carbon in soil.

For example, at King Middle School in Berkeley, the Edible Schoolyard Project (a recipient of CDFA grant funding) sequesters carbon by adding compost to the school garden – a process that provides science lessons for students. The compost piles are created in part from leftover lunch food, and the result is healthier garden soil.  

Compost is a viable alternative to food waste at a time when up to 40 percent of the U.S. food supply is wasted, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). In 2010, that led to 133 billion pounds of food sent to landfills–with a value of $161 billion.

The food waste challenge also raises concerns about the waste of land, water, and energy inputs to create that food; as well as air pollutants created while transporting and disposing discarded food.

As our nation becomes more educated about food waste and its environmental impacts, the USDA and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have set a goal to cut our nation’s food waste by 50 percent by 2030. California and CDFA are committed to reaching that goal.

By Lauren Smiley

The Central Valley of California doesn’t begin so much with a gradual change in the landscape as with an abrupt line. Suddenly, a barren plain that looks like an apt cue for “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” theme song is interrupted by the first row of leafy, irrigated crops.

Since the 1930s, the region has run on human control of water, carefully distributing the melting mountain snowpack through reservoirs and dams, pumping stations and irrigation pipelines, through drips, sprinklers and intentionally flooded fields. Combined with groundwater pumps, the system turned the valley’s Mediterranean and desert climates into the country’s produce basket, producing one-fourth of the country’s food on just 1 percent of its land.

Recent years have brought severe droughts that have forced farmers to become more efficient with water use. With nearby Silicon Valley teeming with the promise of efficiency and data-fueled intelligence, a natural relationship between technology and agriculture has developed.

For decades, many farmers let the irrigated water flood over their soil to sink in. Some still do. They would inspect rows of fruit-bearing trees to try to spot the thirsty ones. They dug up soil samples to feel in their hand. It was all very analog and imprecise.

“We were taken aback by the fact that some of our best ranch managers, who we thought had it all figured out, still had quite a bit of error going on under their watch,” said Zac Ellis, a senior agronomist at Olam International, a multinational grower that farms 12,000 acres of nuts throughout California. “Through no fault of their own — just the lack of visibility.”

Growers are getting help in making their field conditions more visible with venture capitalists sinking billions in recent years into a growing number of agtech start-ups.

A share of this new crop of businesses is dedicated to what’s known as precision agriculture — the Platonic ideal of providing just enough water, fertilizer and pesticide that a crop needs for maximum yields in an era of climate change and increasing global population. The United Nations estimates that the world’s growers will have to produce 70 percent more food using just 5 percent more land by 2050 — and technology is seen as the force that will get them there.

Among the new start-ups are those flying planes over fields to capture highly detailed images, seeing factors that the naked eye and even satellites cannot. The flyovers use heavy, sophisticated imaging cameras that provide growers with an unprecedented level of data about their crops, including where they need water or, just as importantly, where they already have enough.

One company, Ceres Imaging, began in 2013 while its founder, Ashwin Madgavkar, a Texas-raised engineer, was working on his M.B.A. at Stanford University. Ceres uses high-resolution cameras to capture various wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum — measuring the amount of light reflected by the crops in near-infrared as well as green, blue and red edge. A separate thermal camera measures the radiation emitted by the crops, which allows the company to calculate their temperature within a degree Celsius.

Software then runs this data through proprietary algorithms to calculate the water stress down to the individual crop level. Artificial intelligence interprets the resulting patterns to identify what is causing water shortages. For example, a row indicates a problem with that particular irrigation line. Another algorithm generates a chlorophyll index — which can help detect a lack of iron or nitrogen, showing where plants may need more fertilizer.

The company’s tools rank the issues that the farmer should consider, and Ceres reps can also consult with growers on the phone or in person, and visit fields to investigate issues.

The increased use of the imaging has been striking: A Ceres survey revealed about 30 percent of specialty crop acres in California — with products like nuts, grapes, broccoli, artichokes and cucumbers — are being imaged aerially, half of those with Ceres. TerrAvion, a competitor also based in the Bay Area since 2013, is imaging fields in the United States, Canada and Brazil.

“There’s a myth out there about the slow-to-adopt farmer,” said John Bourne, Ceres’ vice president of marketing. “Name another industry where you’ve had A.I.-powered technology adopted this quickly.”

Ceres has 100 employees, the majority based in its Oakland, Calif., headquarters — with small teams in the Midwest, Argentina and Ukraine — and has expanded to irrigated crops throughout the West, to the Pacific Northwest’s apples, potatoes and pears, corn and soybeans in central states, and is experimenting with tropical crops in Hawaii. The company originally used drones, yet quickly realized planes were better for hauling the heavy imagery equipment and allowed them to cover more customers during peak sunlight.

Another reason for the quick uptake is simple economics. The wine grapes and nut industry have higher profit margins than commodity crops, so have more incentive to spend money trying new technology.

Alex Bergwerff, a 32-year-old Central Valley grower, was well-primed to be one of those early adopters. After studying at California State University, Fresno, he worked at a series of agtech start-ups, landing as a sales manager for an app that let growers digitally control and monitor their irrigation lines. Now as a farm manager of Winters Farming, Inc., he drives out to almond, walnut and grape fields in his Chevy truck with his Samsung tablet and smartphone plugged into his dash to check the apps that help him run his ranches — an Oakley-sunglass-wearing version of Matthew McConaughey’s farmer of the near-future in “Interstellar.”

The Ceres flyover of his almond ranch in Oakdale, Calif., in June revealed a couple rows of trees showing up as red, the color that indicates severe stress. After investigating, Mr. Bergwerff found those rows’ drip irrigation tubes had, for whatever reason, been shut off. Images from other farms showed what turned out to be a twisted irrigation line that was preventing water from flowing, or that trees on hills weren’t getting as many nutrients as the ones on flat land.

“What it allows more than anything is for us to be more efficient,” he said. The imaging allows his workers to focus on the problem spots, rather than endlessly driving and walking the rows.

Mr. Ellis, the agronomist at Olam, said he had hired Ceres to fly over the company’s pistachio, walnut and almond farms in California for years: “We nerd out to the images once a month.” He said now that the ranches were more efficient with irrigation, there was less room for error given the surrounding soil had less of a reserve of water. The images helped him pinpoint problems before it affected his yield.

He was able to detect that fertilizer put in the irrigation stream was not reaching half a field in the middle of growing season. Before imaging, Mr. Ellis said “we would have figured it out at harvest, but it would have been too late.”

Also useful, he added, was the Ceres tool that calculated a crop’s estimated yield, allowing him to calculate whether intervening in low-performing areas with more water or fertilizer was worth the cost.

“I wanted to fix those areas and make them better producers, but after crunching the numbers, it didn’t make sense,” Mr. Ellis said. “So I, in a sense, saved a lot of money by not doing that.”

The only drawback to the service itself, Mr. Bergwerff said, was the price: about $4 an acre, though he said it did pay for itself. Depending on the frequency, type of crop, and level of analysis, the service can run up to $30 an acre.

“I wish we could do it more,” he said. Still, he admitted that daily or weekly flights could make for an overload of information. Already, between interpreting the aerial images, joined with his other technological tools like remote irrigation apps, a spreadsheet of watering times and weekly sample tests, the nature of work for farmers like Mr. Bergwerff had changed.

By the end of a workday buried in analyzing information on screens, Mr. Bergwerff said he felt the same as many desk toilers: He just wanted to unplug.

Link to article in the New York Times

The California Department of Food and Agriculture is celebrating its 100^th anniversary as a state agency in 2019. Throughout the year this blog will feature a number of items to commemorate this milestone. Today we have an encore from the Centennial Reflections video series, featuring CDFA employees remembering their histories, and the agency’s.

Today, our California Trade Mission to Mexico concluded with a meeting with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development of the United Mexican States (SADER). The meeting provided the opportunity for CDFA and SADER to renew our ongoing partnership with a signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) focusing on climate smart agriculture, plant/animal health and international collaboration.

It was truly a privilege to work with Secretary Villalobos and his team in developing a proactive work plan to further agricultural sustainability which we be implemented over the coming months.

This has been a great trip that reinforces the strong connections, partnerships and business opportunities that California and Mexico share – I look forward to our continued work and friendship.

I also thank Lieutenant Governor Kounalakis for her leadership and representation of California on the international stage.

By Dale Kasler

On the Changala family farm in Tulare County, the past and future are separated by a dirt road and a barbed-wire fence.

On the south side sits a wheat field. On the north, a solar farm, built three years ago, sending electricity to thousands of Southern Californians.

Alan Changala sees little difference between the two.

“We’re still farming the sun,” he said.

Farmers in the San Joaquin Valley are finding a lucrative new cash crop: solar electricity. As they struggle to cope with the Valley’s chronic water shortages, they’ve increasing turned to solar as a means of supplementing their revenue and keeping the remainder of their farming operations afloat. An estimated 13,000 acres of Valley farmland already have been converted to solar farms, said Erica Brand, the California energy program director at the Nature Conservancy.

And now solar energy is about to swallow even larger patches of Valley farmland.

Beginning in January, California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, or SGMA, will require farmers across the state to gradually reduce the amount of groundwater they can extract from their wells. In the Valley, where groundwater basins have been seriously depleted by decades of over-pumping, the Public Policy Institute of California predicts that at least 535,000 acres of Valley farmland could be permanently retired over the next 20 years as farmers curtail their water consumption.

The institute estimated that 50,000 idled acres could go solar, converting some of the world’s most productive tomato farms, pistachio orchards and dairies into vast fields of teal-colored photovoltaic panels, delivering electricity to the four corners of California’s power grid.

But the solar rush won’t rescue the Valley’s struggling economic base from the ravages of the groundwater law. Simply put, solar farms create few permanent jobs. They’re major employers when they’re under construction but turn into ghost towns once the solar panels become operational.

When panels were being installed on the Changala farm in 2015 and 2016, workers were everywhere. “They brought them in, in school buses,” Changala said.

Now, however, the site is a job-free zone, except for the occasional maintenance employee who arrives to make repairs. The day-to-day work is performed remotely, out of Southern California.

The scarcity of permanent employees is a drag on the economy. In Kern County, where thousands of acres of land have been converted to solar, farmland that’s been taken out of production “doesn’t pay for libraries,” said Lorelei Oviatt, the county’s planning and natural resources director. “We have 900,000 people who live in Kern County who need jobs and services and quality of life.”

Local government officials also say solar doesn’t pay its way as a tax generator. They are dismayed about a tax break, bestowed years ago by the Legislature, that lets project owners avoid paying property taxes on the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of solar panels they’ve installed on their facilities. In other words, the properties are taxed as if they’re still being used for agriculture. The tax break is in effect until 2025.

“It’s no longer an infant industry. Fifteeen years later, solar is doing very well, thank you very much,” said Paul Smith, vice president for government affairs at Rural County Representatives of California. “It’s a concern for the long-term health of counties.”

Solar does nourish California’s insatiable hunger for renewable energy, however. California utilities get one-third of their power from renewable sources and, by state law, have to raise that figure to 60 percent by 2030 and 100 percent by 2045.

Solar could be a big part of the solution.

“You could theoretically see the San Joaquin (Valley) single-handedly be able to meet California’s renewable energy goals,” said Daniel Kim, a vice president at Golden State Clean Energy, which plans to develop one of the world’s largest solar projects on farmland that was retired years ago near Naval Air Station Lemoore in Kings County.

“From a region that has relied primarily on agriculture, you could create the hub for new energy, and the new economy,” Kim said.

Con Edison, the big New York utility, spent $1.6 billion last year buying solar farms in multiple states, including at least five in the Valley. The Wonderful Co., the pistachio mega-grower controlled by Southern California billionaires Stewart and Lynda Resnick, earlier this year announced plans to build three solar farms on a total of 157 acres it owns in Kern and Madera counties. All of the electricity produced on the solar farms will be used to power Wonderful’s farming operations.

Golden State Clean Energy — backed by the financial muscle of Los Angeles real estate investment firm CIM Group — expects to break ground later this year on the 4,000-acre first phase of its project, known as Westlands Solar Park. Kim said the project eventually will consume 20,000 acres of land in Kings County, about half of which is owned by Westlands Water District, the big farm-irrigation agency serving the west side of the Valley.

Link to story in the Sacramento Bee

The California Department of Food and Agriculture is celebrating its 100^th anniversary as a state agency in 2019. Throughout the year this blog will feature a number of items to commemorate this milestone. Today we have an encore from our Centennial Reflections video series, featuring CDFA employees remembering their histories, and the agency’s.