By Ashley Nickle

Jeff Huckaby, president of Bakersfield, Calif.-based Grimmway Farms (and member of the California State Board of Food and Agriculture), received The Packer’s Produce Man of the Year award June 10 at the United Fresh Produce Association conference and expo.

“Jeff is just a tremendous choice for the Packer award this year,” said United Fresh president Tom Stenzel. “He’s been such a leader in our industry. He’s a quiet leader. Not a lot of people outside the company or his customers know him … I’ve been able to work with Jeff on our board of directors, and very thoughtful, he brings an industry perspective to issues, but he’s always looking ahead, and that’s something that I think is great for the Packer to honor,” Stenzel said.

The Packer’s editor-in-chief Tom Karst presented the award to Huckaby and shared in his address the following comment from a buyer who works with Grimmway. The company is known for its carrots but also markets more than 50,000 acres of organic vegetables under the Cal-Organic brand.

“What I like and respect about Jeff is he backs up what he says he will do,” the buyer said. “Everything we get from Grimmway is top quality or he will not send it. In our initial meetings when we were expanding organics we talked about if it’s not right don’t send it.

“He will be the first one to call and say it’s not right and this is how long it will take before it is right,” the buyer said. “I wish every vendor partner would be like Jeff.”

Laura Batcha, CEO and president of the Organic Trade Association, praised Huckaby’s work developing programs with major retailers and described him as a visionary and ambassador for organic.

“He is a generous and informed educator of organic, speaking at conferences like ours throughout the year, conducting hundreds of farm tours for produce buyers, college deans and government officials – including the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture – to educate them on large-scale organic farming.

“He gives his time to supporting trade associations, sits on advisory boards representing organic, and regularly lends his voice and his influence to supporting organic and environmentally sustainable issues,” Batcha said.

U.S. agriculture secretary Sonny Perdue also offered an endorsement of Huckaby.

“Jeff Huckaby is a true leader helping American agriculture feed the world,” Perdue said. “I appreciate his invaluable insights and assistance and admire Grimmway Farms for its dedication to provide good value, consistent quality and dependable service to fulfill customers’ needs.

“I’ve had a chance to visit multiple Grimmway facilities and I know it’s a company with good moral values – they truly are salt-of-the-earth people,” Perdue said. “All of us at USDA admire Jeff’s storied career and hard work to become the number one organic producer in the country. Congratulations Jeff, on being named Produce Man of the Year. I cannot think of anyone more deserving than yourself.”

Huckaby is a member of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Fruit and Vegetable Industry Advisory Committee, the California State Board of Food and Agriculture, the United Fresh board of directors and the College of Agriculture Advisory Council at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo.

“It’s interesting the fact that he’s built such a relationship with the USDA secretary,” Stenzel said. “I don’t remember in any of the past awards where the secretary of agriculture actually sends in a note and says I want to help honor Jeff, so that was a great sign, I think, of his ability to represent our industry on a national level.”

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The food systems of the future must deliver healthy and quality food for all whilst preserving the environment, FAO (Food and Agriculture Association of the United Nations) Director-General José Graziano da Silva said as he called for a transformation of food systems to improve people’s diets.

Graziano da Silva spoke at the opening of the international symposium The Future of Food (10-11 June) in Rome, which brings together academics, researchers, policymakers, representatives from civil society and the private sector, parliamentarians and government agencies.

“We need to change our focus from producing more food to producing more healthy food,” the FAO chief said.

In fact, hunger is no longer the only major nutrition problem facing humanity.

Currently over 2 billion adults aged 18 or more are overweight, of which more than 670 million are obese. Moreover, the increase in the prevalence of obesity between 2000 and 2016 has been faster than that of overweight at all age levels. Also, nearly 2 billion people suffer from micronutrient deficiencies.

Projections estimate that the number of obese people in the world will very soon overtake the number of people suffering from hunger, which currently accounts for about 820 million.

There are several underlying factors driving the global pandemic of obesity and micronutrient deficiency, such as rapid urbanization.

One of the main drivers is the high consumption of ultra-processed food, which is mainly based on artificial ingredients. It contains high levels of saturated fats, refined sugars, salt and chemical additives.

Improving people’s diets

The FAO Director-General put forward four measures that could improve people’s diets.

Firstly, countries should put in place public policies and laws with proper incentives that protect healthy diets and encourage the private sector to produce healthier food.

Examples include taxes on unhealthy food products; easier-to-understand and more comprehensive food labels; and restrictions on advertising of food, particularly for children.

Secondly, governments should promote the consumption of local and fresh food by creating local circuits of food production and consumption. This means improving access to and promotion of local, fresh food.

Thirdly, international trade agreements must be designed to influence food systems in a positive way as ultra-processed food tend to fare better in international trade.

“Unfortunately, not all food that is considered safe is healthy. Trade must enable ways to bring healthy food to the table,” said Graziano da Silva.

“Fourthly, the transformation of food systems starts with healthy soils, healthy seeds, and sustainable agricultural practices. The whole food system needs to be readdressed,” said Graziano da Silva.

Graziano da Silva also highlighted the need for growing food in ways that preserve the environment.

He noted that the agricultural model that resulted from the Green Revolution is no longer sustainable as high-input and resource-intensive farming systems have increased food production, but at a high cost to the environment, generating deforestation, water scarcity, soil depletion, and high levels of greenhouse gas emissions.

FAO’s Director-General also lauded the role of academia in the transformation required for our food systems.

“We benefit from your work, and we need your guidance on what to do in the future,” he said.

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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 continue with the Centennial Reflections video series, featuring CDFA employees remembering their histories, and the agency’s.

By Caron Golden

On Saturday, June 8, chefs, farmers and community members will gather at Encinitas’ Farm Lab for its first “Green Feast.” It’s to be a celebratory meal to raise funds for this unique agricultural laboratory that educates local kids in science centered around nutrition and the environment.

The Farm Lab is a project of the Encinitas Unified School District in collaboration with The Ecology Center, which is based in San Juan Capistrano. Located across the street from the San Diego Botanical Garden and the Leichtag Foundation’s Coastal Roots Farm — with whom they partner, along with the local YMCA, the San Diego Heritage Museum and Seacrest Village as part of the Encinitas Environmental Education Cluster (known as the E3 Cluster).

The Farm Lab serves the district’s 5,400 kindergarten-through-sixth-grade students on its 10-acre campus. It’s filled with all kinds of enrichments to motivate children to expand their minds and get their hands dirty while doing it.

There’s an educational DREAMS campus (which stands for design, research, engineering, art, math and science) with six classrooms, including a space for a kitchen and audio-video work, as well as a 1-acre hands-on educational garden, 4 acres of fields that grow crops for “farm-to-school” EUSD school lunches, and a 3/4-acre community garden. A decked-out “eco bus” is parked by the fields. Three educators are on site.

The campus only broke ground in April 2018, so trees — avocado, lemon, peaches, plums, oranges, apples and more — are just being planted. Eventually there will be more than 200 fruit trees and fields brimming with crops. In conjunction with The Ecology Center, 19,000 pounds of produce was grown last year for the schools for pizza sauce, salads and other dishes. In Encinitas, farm manager Carter Wallace has been hard at work tilling soil that for years had been a dumping ground for nearby construction. Hard and lacking in nutrients, much of the farmland has been sown with rye, daikon, fava beans and vetch as cover crops. Wallace calls it a “nitrogen fixer.” And the plants don’t go unused. The Ecology Center is working with Rye Works to harvest the rye. The daikon produces tasty “daikon capers,” or pods that can be enjoyed by the students. And, of course, fava beans make for a nice edible harvest.

While those cover crops do their work, Wallace has been planting tomatoes in the north section of the farm and will soon be putting in peppers, lettuce and cucumbers. There will also be a couple of chicken coops. Wallace and Jonathan Zaidman of The Ecology Center collaborate with EUSD’s central kitchen chef to determine what’s grown.

The Farm Lab was the idea of Encinitas resident Mim Michelove, CEO and President of Healthy Day Partners. The site had been donated to EUSD as part of a mitigation deal for constructing the Encinitas Ranch housing development. It needed to be turned into a school campus or it would start accruing annual penalty fees to the state. The school district didn’t need another school, so they came up with a creative idea for a campus that would preserve some of Encinitas’ remaining open land and still be an educational site for its students.

Using Healthy Day’s 1-acre educational farm at Ocean Knoll as a model, EUSD asked Michelove to come up with a plan for the site that would scale up the successful concepts at Ocean Knoll. But bringing it to life required a director and budget — especially if it was to be eligible for outside funding.

In July 2015, the school board appointed Michelove as its founding director and gave her a $50,000 initial budget to build and redesign the campus, create the farm, bring in community partners and funding partners, coordinate large volunteer workdays, oversee the lease with the community garden and the neighborhood relationships, as well as help to rethink the educational programming, facility and the fields. She started communicating with The Ecology Center with the idea of eventually bringing them in as a partner.

“I took on the challenge, and added a community food forest and communications role,” Michelove said. “I had a clear vision from the start, to build a more inviting campus where all students would feel valued, to convey environmental messaging in everything the students used and saw, to grow as much healthy food as possible for all EUSD kids, to have the programming use the outdoors as an experiential teacher, and to have the programming, at least in part, reflect the environmental and nutritional values being used in our farming practices.”

Superintendent Tim Baird named the education campus DREAMS. Children from every grade level come and take on projects aligned with Next Generation Science Standards. On a recent visit, fourth-graders were working on a from-scratch miniature wind turbine project. Julie Burton, Coordinator of Innovation and Farm Lab Development for the EUSD, who has been running the campus since Michelove stepped down last year to return to her business, explained that second-graders are learning about the relationship between pollinators and sustainability of food sources. Sixth-graders have a longer-term competition with Jimbo’s to make organic vinaigrette, and also learn packaging, logo, branding and label creation as part of the project, along with integrating a range of subjects, including math, nutrition, drought and even desalination.

For Burton the various components of the campus are teaching students — and the surrounding community — “how to minimize their footprint, how to live a more sustainable life, and reuse, reduce and repurpose.”

In fact, including the community in the Farm Lab is a top priority for Burton and the EUSD. There’s the community garden and a Community Food Forest that stretches along Quail Gardens Road. And The Ecology Lab hosts regular community events at the Farm Lab campus, with weekly volunteer days and a Community Dinner Series.

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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 continue with the Centennial Reflections video series, featuring CDFA employees remembering their histories, and the agency’s.

By CDFA Undersecretary Jenny Lester Moffitt

California dairy and livestock operations play a significant role in mitigating and preventing climate change and are doing their part to champion sustainable practices.

In 2016, SB 1383 (Lara) established a statewide goal of reducing methane reductions by 40 percent below 2013 levels by 2030. This includes methane reductions in California’s dairy and livestock sector.

With funding from California Climate Investments, California farmers and ranchers have achieved annual manure methane reductions of 1.41 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalence (MMTCO2e) – about 12 percent of the 2013 level. This is important progress toward meeting the 40 percent target and is the result of hard work, innovation, and a commitment to sustainable practices.

The state of California has awarded $144 million dollars from the Climate Change Investment fund for dairy methane projects, marking a significant public/private partnership with California dairy and livestock operations and demonstrating what is possible when government agencies and businesses work together on solutions that benefit the environment.

To date, 64 dairy digester projects have received $114 million dollars in grant funding, which has been matched by developers and dairy families with an additional $199 million dollars. These 64 digester projects are responsible for the reduction of 1.28 MMTCO2e, annually.

In addition, $30 million dollars has been awarded to 56 alternative manure management projects, leading to an annual reduction of 131,049 metric tons of CO2 equivalent, annually.

These programs are each addressing water quality, air quality, and dairy herd size – and they have engaged stakeholders in important community outreach. Dairy digester projects must double-line ponds for water quality, minimize emission of air pollutants by meeting best available control technology, and identify actions to address community concerns.

To reduce methane reductions, it’s clear that we need all available strategies. We need dairy digesters and alternative manure management practices to combat climate change. These methane reduction projects show the importance of addressing greenhouse gas emissions and developing practices that generate renewable energy and compost to foster healthy soils – all of which are essential strategies in addressing climate change.

Most importantly, we need the continued innovation and leadership of California ranchers and farmers.

Over the past four years I’ve had the opportunity to travel the state to see this innovation and leadership in action, and to visit many of the dairy digester and alternative manure management projects that have received funding. With each visit and each conversation, I am continually reminded that California farmers and ranchers are committed to doing their part to address climate change.

To read CDFA’s Annual Report on Digester Projects, click here.

To read the recommendations from the SB 1383 Dairy and Livestock Working Group, click here

To read more about the state’s Healthy Soils Initiative led by CDFA, click here.

California residents are being urged to avoid transporting citrus fruit during the upcoming summer travel season due to the highest-ever threat of a deadly citrus tree disease called Huanglongbing (HLB).

HLB is spread by a tiny insect, the Asian citrus psyllid, as it feeds on citrus tree leaves. The small pest can have devastating consequences to California’s citrus trees – both backyard and commercial – if it is unknowingly transported on citrus tree leaves and stems. While HLB is not harmful to humans or animals, there is no cure for the disease and infected trees will die.

According to AAA, over 68 million families are expected to travel this summer. All citrus tree owners among those travelers should obey quarantine restrictions throughout the state that limit the transport of citrus across state and international lines, and between areas where the psyllid and disease have been found.

Currently, more than 1,000 square miles within Southern California in numerous communities of Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside counties are in an HLB quarantine area. At this time in 2018, 683 square miles were in quarantine, meaning the disease is spreading to new areas and the overall HLB quarantine area has increased by 47%.

“The threat of HLB in California serves as a reminder that all residents should not transport citrus in and out of quarantine areas, bordering counties, state lines or international borders,” said Victoria Hornbaker, interim director of the Citrus Pest & Disease Prevention Program at the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA). “We must work together to limit the spread of the pest and disease to ensure California citrus continues to grow in our backyards and commercial orchards.”

Tree owners may choose to share fruit with friends and family within their quarantine area, but all leaves must be removed and fruit washed thoroughly before moving it from the property. Residents should be sure to dry out citrus clippings or double bag them before disposal. This prevents the psyllids or leaves infected with Huanglongbing from spreading to new areas.

All California residents are critical to protecting the state’s citrus trees. Tips for citrus tree owners include:

• Proactively inspect citrus trees for the Asian citrus psyllid and HLB monthly, and whenever watering, spraying, pruning or tending trees.
• Look for the Asian citrus psyllid. Adults are brown, about one-eighth of an inch long, and feed with their body at a 45-degree angle on citrus leaves.
• Symptoms of HLB include blotchy and yellowing leaves, premature and excessive fruit drop, lopsided fruit, and bitter, inedible fruit.
• Call the state’s pest hotline at 800-491-1899 if the pest or disease is spotted.
• Cooperate with agriculture officials who may ask to inspect or treat citrus trees.
• As part of tree maintenance, visit a local nursery or garden center to get advice on products that can help protect citrus trees.
• When pruning citrus trees, be sure to dry out citrus clippings or double bag them before disposal.
• Refrain from moving citrus plants, foliage or fruit as doing this may unknowingly spread the pest.

More information and photos of the Asian citrus psyllid and HLB symptoms are available at the CDFA web site or at CaliforniaCitrusThreat.org.

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