CDFA Secretary Karen Ross today at agency headquarters with the Allen Hancock College Young Farmers and Ranchers Club, from Santa Barbara County. The group is in town for Ag Day festivities tomorrow at the State Capitol and has scheduled a series of meetings with state leaders. Secretary Ross: “It was great to meet so many enthusiastic young people and hear about their aspirations in agriculture. My congratulations to them, to Allen Hancock College, and to the Farm Bureau for organizing the first college-level young farmers and ranchers club in California!”

Please join us on the west side of the State Capitol tomorrow for Ag Day 2019, rain or shine! The grounds are open to the public from 11:30 am to 1:30 pm. Here’s a look back at Ag Day last year!

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 Padma Nagappan

The majority of California’s sunflower crop is grown in the Sacramento Valley, mostly for seed production.

The state accounts for 95 percent of the U.S supply and 25 percent of the world’s supply of sunflower seeds.

Planted acreage tends to vary greatly year-to-year, because most of it is used as planting seed for farmers that grow it for cooking oil, so the commodity markets dictate demand. Sunflower acreage was at 45,000 acres in 2016 and went up to 54,000 acres in 2017, according to the U.S Department of Agriculture’s estimate in 2018.

Khaled Bali is a University of California Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources statewide water and irrigation specialist who has been working since 2016 on a four-year trial on sunflower varieties.

He was asked by the University of Georgia to help ascertain which varieties were drought resistant. He chose to conduct his trial in the low desert region of the Imperial Valley, since it gets little rain during the growing season between February when it’s planted, and June when it’s harvested. This would make it easier to control and measure the actual water applied to the crop varieties.

“We’re looking at 285 varieties of sunflowers, to see which ones do well under stress,” Bali said. He has tested different plantings each growing season for the past three years, and will finish the trial this year.

Although he had not worked with sunflowers before, he found it was an easy crop to grow. The season can range from 120 to 140 days, but if the crop is planted later in the season, it cuts short the growing period.

He used subsurface drip irrigation to test the crops at different water levels, ranging from 60 to 100 percent. Bali explained that drip works better than furrow irrigation, since it offers better control and precision.

At the end of Year One, they found little difference between the stressed plants and the ones that got ample water, so they switched gears for Year Two. His team tested the stress group with 10 percent of water requirements, supplementing with 50 percent additional water from ground water sources.

For this current last round of trials, they will select the varieties that did well under stress conditions and plant them again, but spread out the planting timeframe from February through March, to see the impact this has on yield.

He will have conclusive findings at the end of the growing season this year. Some varieties yielded 100 grams of seed while others gave 300 grams.

This is a relatively new crop for the low desert region in California, with about 1,700 acres planted, half for seed production and half for cut flowers. But Bali said it’s a good crop given it has low water use.

Link to story

Make plans to join us next Wednesday, March 20 at the State Capitol for Ag Day 2019! Our theme this year is 100 years of agriculture leadership – a centennial celebration! The grounds will be open to the public from 11:30 am to 1:30 pm.

Op-ed by CDFA Secretary Karen Ross

A farm is a great teacher.  

Like so many rural kids, my education was augmented and illustrated on my family’s farm in western Nebraska. Bottle-feeding calves to ensure proper nutrition, timing wheat-planting around rainfall, rotating fields for soil health, and knowing all too well that we were at the mercy of weather and drought. These are lessons that last a lifetime, lessons that I carry with me as Secretary of the largest ag state in the country; and lessons that remind me, at a time when our farmers and ranchers are affected by climate change, that we in agriculture have the power to help restore balance to our changing climate.  

That’s why I’m heartened by the leadership of Speaker Nancy Pelosi on this pre-eminent issue – by creating a new House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis. In announcing the panel members Speaker Pelosi said, “I want everybody to be in on the act because this is deadly serious from the standpoint of health, security, economics and morality.”  She understands that time is short, and that action is needed by all of us – in urban and rural communities. 

Yes, this is an opportunity to shift the national conversation away from its focus on the “rural-urban divide” to instead recognize our strong rural-urban connection to each other and the critical role that our natural lands, forests, and working lands on farms and ranches can play in drawing down carbon. And by drawing down carbon in our soils, trees, grasses and shrubs, we also provide food, fiber and timber; and we enhance biodiversity and open space for recreation and tourism.  

The impacts of climate change are already being felt in agriculture. In California we have experienced loss of winter chill – crucial hours needed for our orchards and vineyards to maintain winter dormancy. The most recent drought of 2011-17 in California resulted in more than a half-million of acres of farmland fallowed in some years. And changes in precipitation affect grass growth for livestock. These all affect our $50-billion industry.  

Yet in California and around the county, farmers and ranchers are innovating climate-smart solutions. My friend Jimmy Emmons in Oklahoma has been trailblazing healthy soils practices on his farm by planting cover crops to revitalize soil; corn growers in the Midwest are practicing conservation and no-till; and, and here in California ranchers like the Stone Family in Yolo County have been applying compost and practicing prescribed grazing to build perennial grasses that build soil health and drought resiliency. I take great joy in talking with my brother, who farms our family land in western Nebraska, as he has adopted these kinds of practices over the last decade.

Agriculture and natural and working lands across rural America are an important part of our climate solution. California took bold action by setting a goal for carbon sequestration as part of our climate portfolio and just last month released a Natural and Working Lands Strategy to store carbon in our trees, shrubs, grasses and soils.  

Why are soils so important? They are the largest storage source for terrestrial carbon. They can store water to help mitigate drought and reduce erosion.  

California is supporting farmers in sequestering carbon as part of a comprehensive program to foster healthy soils, which are essential to sustainability. At the Global Climate Action Summit in September 2018, California launched a Global Soil Health Challenge in partnership with France, the Netherlands and Baja California. The good news is that California is not alone. Maryland, Hawaii, Oklahoma, Utah, and other states are moving forward in this arena, and we need increased public and private financing to help our rural communities and farmers scale-up as fast as possible. Practices that build healthy soils to sequester carbon also help conserve water, improve yields, protect pollinators, and generate new jobs for rural economies.  

The possibilities at-hand can act as a bridge to the urban and rural divide and issue an “all hands-on deck” invitation to all Americans to join together to restore our land, our communities, and our hope.  

Even as children, we inherently understand that healthy soil is a powerful, life-giving element in our world. Let’s take this opportunity to restore it, and to let it restore us.  

Karen Ross is Secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture. Ross grew up on the family farm in western Nebraska where she was an active 4-H member. Her brother is now the fourth-generation to farm this ground in Western Nebraska. During her time spent in California, Ross has advocated for farmer owned cooperatives, served as president of CA Winegrape Growers of America and was chief of staff to U.S. Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack. Ross was appointed CA Ag Secretary by Governor Jerry Brown in January 2011 and re-appointed by Governor Gavin Newsom in January 2019.

Link to op-ed

Link to CDFA climate programs