The California Department of Food and Agriculture is celebrating its 100th 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 Secretary Karen Ross
What a fabulous and inspiring event in Woodland recently to celebrate the groundbreaking of the new home for the Center for Land Based Learning! Hoorah to founders Craig and Julie McNamara for the vision to create a place with programs to introduce young people to agriculture and stewardship of our natural resources. Twenty-five year’s later the Center is leading the way with cutting-edge programs for new beginning farmers and ag apprenticeship programs.
The Clark family’s no-cost long-term lease on a beautiful site that includes 30 acres of farm land, and the generous lead-gift of $1.5 million from the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation illustrate the faith and optimism in the Center’s ability to touch lives and make communities stronger for the good of all.
My heart is full of gratitude for this organization and its fabulous people.
By Daniel Oropeza
With the world’s population estimated to reach 9.8 billion people by 2050, is vertical farming a viable option for feeding our rapidly growing cities while keeping us from committing climate suicide?
City life is in demand. According to the United Nations, 3 million people all over the world are moving to cities every week, and this number is expected to keep increasing. The UN predicts that, in 15 to 30 years, two-thirds of the world will be living in cities.
The U.S. is no different — we love our cities too. Today, 82% of Americans live in medium or large-sized cities, and this percentage is expected to spike in the future as well. Where we get our food to feed these growing cities will play a major role in whether we achieve our climate goals under the Paris Agreement or not.
According to experts, up to 23% of our global greenhouse gases can be traced back to agriculture and land use. That’s almost a fourth of our total greenhouse gas emissions. But that only accounts for production: food then needs to be transported to the big cities, and in many cases, that means taking big diesel-emitting 18-wheelers across the country, or exporting food out of the country altogether.
California’s agriculture industry is huge. We have 77,500 farms producing more than 400 different commodities, and we produce two-thirds of the nation’s fruits and nuts. We export one-fourth of our total food production to other countries. And all this comes at a carbon price we might not be able to afford as the food demand for our hungry cities increases.
A simple solution to reduce our food mileage — the distance food travels from production to consumption — is to grow food near our cities. But an even better solution could be to grow food right inside our cities.
Vertical farming is the act of growing food in vertically-stacked layers indoors year-round by controlling light, temperature and water, often without the use of soil. Two of vertical farming’s biggest perks are its climate control mechanisms and potential to make production more efficient.
As climate change gets worse, many places where we’ve been able to grow food for years will start experiencing unprecedented problems. Rain seasons, drought years, flash floods and irregular weather patterns can become less predictable. Habitable areas for insects will change as well, which could introduce pests and disease to new areas. The ability to grow food indoors, and without soil, gets rid of these future uncertainties.
Growing food indoors without concerns about climate or soil means extreme-weather Chicago, congested New York and even dry Las Vegas can become independently sustainable food producers, grow food year-round and feed themselves locally.
Soil-free agriculture will eliminate any use of pesticides and herbicides, which would make consuming food much healthier. It also alleviates the problem of dealing with the declining health of our soil. According to the UN, half of the soil usable for agriculture has been lost in the past 150 years, leaving us with only 60 more years of viable soil.
Vertical farming also brings potential for solving our current and projected water issues in California. By using hydroponic system technology, water is constantly recycled and uses 98% less water per item than traditional farming. Adopting this technology would be greatly beneficial for our future, considering that California’s agricultural sector uses 40% of our water.
Vertical farming also means potential economic profit for farmers. With 3.5 million workers maintaining the fields in the U.S., labor comes at a price. But vertical farming can automate most of its production, meaning that more businesses can afford to jump into the market and bring the cost of food down.
Ecologically, vertical farming can help the land harmed by deforestation and desertification to regenerate and return to its natural state. This would allow many species to retake their natural habitats and help slow the alarming rates of extinction.
While vertical farming has the potential to solve a lot of our current and future problems, it’s still very early in its development, and there are many questions we don’t know the answers to. Will the food grown under LED lights be as nutritious as the food grown under the sun? Is the carbon footprint of substituting the sun’s energy with LED lights sustainable? Where will the energy to run these vertical farms come from?
Vertical farming is not the answer to all of our problems and is not a technology meant to replace conventional farming altogether. But it can allow for our growing cities to take some load off farms and become more self-sufficient.
The California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery has awarded $11 million in grants to 36 local projects that prevent waste, reduce pollution, and combat climate change by getting good food to Californians who need it.
CalRecycle’s Food Waste Prevention and Rescue Grant Program aims to reduce methane emissions by keeping edible food out of California landfills through food waste prevention, donation, and redistribution to the 1 in 8 Californians (including 1 in 5 children) who lack the resources to guarantee their next meal.
The estimated 93 million pounds of food diverted from landfills by these projects equates to about 78 million meals, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“Edible food disposal is a humanitarian tragedy and a tremendous waste of California’s resources,” CalRecycle Director Scott Smithline said. “These local food waste prevention and rescue projects make our communities healthier and help California combat climate change by getting us closer to the revolutionary methane reduction targets required under California’s new Organics Recycling and Food Waste Prevention law.”
Food waste makes up nearly 20 percent of California’s disposal stream.
CalRecycle’s Food Waste Prevention and Rescue Grant Program is part of California Climate Investments, a statewide initiative that puts billions of Cap-and-Trade dollars to work reducing greenhouse gas emissions, strengthening the economy, and improving public health and the environment—particularly in disadvantaged communities.
Projects eligible for the grant program must be located in California; result in permanent, annual, and measurable greenhouse gas emissions reductions; and increase the quantity of California-generated food materials prevented, reduced, or rescued from disposal. Many of the following grant recipients serve multiple counties.
Scientists from CDFA’s Center for Analytical Chemistry (CAC) and its Plant Pest Diagnostics Center participate in State Scientist Day at Capitol Park yesterday, May 8th.
Booth demonstrations included how dry ice vibrates a hammer when its warm face causes the ice to sublimate directly to gas, and how a chemical reaction creates fake snow (see photo gallery, below) in addition to interesting insects from the state lab’s collection.
Busloads of schoolchildren from across Northern California visited the event to learn about how scientists are impacting Californians’ lives every day, as well as perhaps be encouraged to work in agriculture or for CDFA as a scientist themselves one day.
“I like to advocate for scientists working in state government,” CAC Branch Chief Barzin Moradi said. “And today, the public gets to meet the scientists making sure fruits and vegetables are safe to eat without harmful chemicals.”
Visit www.cdfa.ca.gov/is/cac to learn more about how the Center for Analytical Chemistry helps CDFA ensure a safe, abundant, quality food supply for all Californians.
Coverage of the event by local TV station KOVR 13 (CBS) here.
By CDFA Secretary Karen Ross
In addition to speaking at the awesome and amazing 91st annual meeting of the FFA leadership conference in Anaheim late last month, I also toured The Giving Farm at Westminster High School.
Wow! What an inspiring model partnership between the Orange County Food Bank and the Huntington Beach Union High School District! An 8-acre farm (that’s a lot of farm in this very urban area) for the Ag program; fresh produce to the Food Bank; and an annual harvest day for the whole school to inspire students about community service!
I could go on and on. But something as good as this doesn’t happen without visionaries like my friends, Mark Lowry of the Food Bank, my predecessor–Orange County farmer A.G. Kawamura–and his farming buddies. It has strong support from the school district’s board of trustees, the superintendent, and the Westminster High School principal.
The Giving Farm has a passionate and committed Ag teacher and students who are discovering the wonder of growing food and sharing it with community members in need. Oh, and the program has helped the school increase the numbers enrolled in the Ag program and FFA!
Is that win-win-win or what?!
NOTE -May 5-11 is Public Service Recognition Week.
Wendy McNaughton is a New York Times writer/illustrator who creates the column “Meanwhile” in the paper’s Sunday Business Section. She recently spoke with CDFA Secretary Karen Ross about healthy soils, their essential place in food production, and their vital role in adapting to climate change. The story is told in the images above and below. A quote from Secretary Ross is featured in two separate slides: “It’s easy to take the soil beneath our feet for granted because it’s always been there. We need to pay attention to what’s feeding our soil so it can continue to feed us.”
Today is the seventh annual School Lunch Hero Day, a time to honor those who work tirelessly to bring healthy meals to American school children. During the production of CDFA’s Growing California video series, we profiled a School Lunch Hero making a difference in Riverside, Rodney Taylor. While Taylor has since moved on to a school district in the Washington DC-area, his story in Riverside, “Salad Bar Superstar,” is worthy of sharing once again.
The California Department of Food and Agriculture is celebrating its 100th 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.
