A beekeeper checks a hive at San Francisco’s Fairmont Hotel.
By Kristin J. Bender
At the Clift Hotel in San Francisco, there are more than 370 rooms inside and 100,000 bees buzzing above in rooftop hives outside.
Yes, honeybees.
Aware of the well-publicized environmental threats to honeybees that have reduced numbers worldwide, seven San Francisco hotels have built hives on their rooftops. The sustainability effort also benefits the hotels as the bees produce honey for cocktails, food and spa treatments. It’s the latest in a series of environmental programs at hotels that includes low-flow toilets and aggressive recycling programs.
“This is not about making money, it’s really about raising awareness about sustainability,” said Melissa Farrar, spokeswoman at the Fairmont in San Francisco. “There’s not one solution so we wanted to do our part to help. It’s part of the bigger effort for helping the planet.”
Farrar said the four hives on the rooftop garden support about 250,000 bees and produce about 1,000 pounds of honey each year.
In this foodie city, the honey is used in such things as the Clift’s Purple Haze drink with gin-infused lavender, honey syrup and lavender bitters, and their compressed watermelon salad with lavender-infused honey and goat cheese. Honey is used in beer at the Fairmont Hotel, and the jars of the product are sold in the gift shop. At the W, they make honey ice cream.
The bee hives at hotels are not new, but the effort is growing every year.
Fairmont’s first beehives were built in 2008 at the company’s hotels in Toronto and in Vancouver in an effort to help combat Colony Collapse Disorder. Since then, dozens have been installed at Fairmonts from Seattle to China and Africa.
At the Clift, high above the city on the rooftop garden, 10 hives are buzzing with activity. Most guests don’t even know they are there. But the fruits of their labor are evident in the cocktails and food. You won’t find the squeezable honey bear container in Chef Thomas Weibull’s kitchen.
“Since we are chefs in California, we like to use a lot of things that are local,” he said, talking about his pork adobo appetizer with a honey glaze. “Ninety five percent of our products are local and sustainable.”
The bees produced more than 70 pounds of honey last year and are on track to do much more this year. The colony is expected to grow to 800,000 by next year, said General Manager Michael Pace.
His interest in bee hotels started last year when he took on the job of chairman of the Sustainability Committee for the Hotel Council of San Francisco. He spearheaded a larger effort between numerous local hotels to put bees on their rooftops as well. There are now seven hotels from Nob Hill to Fisherman’s Wharf with rooftop hives.
At six of the hotels, the man who tends the hives is Roger Garrison, a waiter at the W San Francisco turned bee keeper. At the W, Garrison, who seems to like serving bees as much as people, configured the boxy hives like miniature skyscrapers to mimic the city grid below, with the gold dome of City Hall in the distance.
Sometimes the job is painless.
“Most of the time you just open the hives and everything is copasetic,” he said.
Other times, it’s not. He gets stung almost daily.
“It’s like taking a daily vitamin,” he said.
But the payoff is big. Last year, the hotel produced 300 pounds of honey.
Garrison cares for and tracks the bees. He said they have a natural GPS system that allows them to fly up from the 32nd floor up to two miles daily to forage for pollen and find their way back to the hive. “There’s a lot of gardens in San Francisco that aren’t visible to the eye but are visible to bees,” he said.
Rice farmer and California State Board of Food and Agriculture member Bryce Lundberg in an Imperial Valley quinoa field – courtesy LA Times.
By Geoffrey Mohan
Bryce Lundberg is elated, which is saying a lot for a California farmer these days.
“Hop on in,” he says, wading into eight acres of ragged stalks, their seed tassels turning russet in the desert sun.
Lundberg, 54, soon is chest-high in quinoa, a crop that is thriving in an unexpected place: on a patch of mediocre soil that lies below sea level in the scorching-hot Imperial Valley, more than 4,500 miles removed and some 10,000 feet down in elevation from its native range in South America’s Andes Mountains.
If the harvest proves profitable here, California could dominate yet another niche crop, as the grain-like seed graduates from health-craze fad to a popular ingredient in energy bars, cereals and even drinks. Acreage dedicated to quinoa may reach into the thousands in the next two years in California, a state that already is a hub for quinoa imported from South America. That’s about where kale was in 2007 before it took off.
All Lundberg wanted to do was find a crop to rotate with the 19 varieties of organic rice his family already grows on about 6,000 acres in the Sacramento River Valley.
Lundberg decapitates a tassel of oro del valle quinoa and rolls it between his broad palms. “It looks so healthy. It’s really robust,” he says. “You can see it’s full of nice, white seed.”
Anthony Stiff, who manages the acreage, stands aloof. He hasn’t tried quinoa and isn’t eager to change that. But he already knows more about it than the average foodie.
“It’s a weed,” he says, his humor as dry as the soil. “I fight all day long to get rid of it; now I plant it. What the heck’s up with that?”
Stiff’s homegrown botany isn’t far off. Chenopodium quinoa is not a grain, but a pseudo-cereal, an herbaceous annual that’s a cousin to beets, chard and spinach and offers a balanced suite 10 amino acids. Its leaves make a sweet pesto, but it’s the seeds that land on consumers’ plates.
There are at least 120 varieties of quinoa, and plant scientists have sifted through most of them trying to figure out which can grow well outside the high and dry altiplano that sprawls across Peru and Bolivia. In the U.S., quinoa has taken root in Colorado, the Pacific Northwest, Idaho, Northern California, and now, Brawley, just 20 miles from Mexico in the heart of the Sonoran Desert. Lundberg already dominates U.S. West Coast production of organic quinoa, with 800 acres contracted out on small farms scattered from the Washington’s Olympic Peninsula through northern California.
What worries Stiff is that quinoa also is nearly identical to lambs quarters (Chenopodium album), an invasive weed that can be toxic to livestock and hosts a virus that can ruin alfalfa, which is planted on more acreage in Imperial Valley than any other crop, and ranks second in sales value only to the cattle that eat it. The acreage Lundberg visited harbored both plants, though the quinoa had the upper hand. Still, quinoa seeds won’t last to next year. Lambs quarters will sprout again in spring.
That makes Stiff much less enthusiastic than Lundberg or even his employer, Benson Farms, which agreed to try out quinoa on Lundberg’s behalf, on a forsaken plot they rented from a hay baler who hadn’t grown anything on it for nearly a decade.
When the crop began to show in early winter, a neighbor came up to Stiff and said, “Can I ask you why you’re growing a weed?”
If all he has to abide is some ribbing, Stiff will be getting off lightly. Quinoa’s history in North America has been so checkered that some early adapters came to believe it might carry an Incan curse.
One researcher was shot to death in 1986 while visiting a ruin in Bolivia, where he had gone seeking seed to bring back to Colorado’s San Luis Valley. Bolivia accused Colorado State University of “biopiracy” after its researchers patented a hybrid derived from Bolivian seed in 1994. Bolivia since has enshrined “food sovereignty” — the right to protect culturally important food from the economic pressures of international corporations — in its 2009 constitution. The university has let the patent expire.
U.S. growers, meanwhile, watched their crops produce seed that crumbled into powder. Even when quinoa thrived, buyers were few, particularly before growers found a way to remove the seed’s soapy coating.
With a reputation for ruin and not much of a market, quinoa was a miracle food in need of a miracle until the mid-2000s, when food shows, social media and Oprah’s diets pushed it into the mainstream.
That’s when California transplant Sergio Nuñez de Arco became the king of quinoa. A former development worker at the United Nations, Nuñez de Arco returned to Bolivia, where a few exporters were packaging quinoa in retail-sized bags under their own labels. Nuñez de Arco had more ambitious plans. He would pool the crops of subsistence farmers and create a reliable supply chain for big bulk shipments of quinoa, stretching from the Andes to California and beyond.
In 2005, he sold only $25,000 worth of quinoa through his company, Andean Naturals. Today, the Yuba City importer sells $26 million from its facilities in Bolivia and about $40 million from other facilities, and recently partnered with agro-industrial giant ADM.
“That’s how you ended up seeing it in Trader Joe’s, Costco,” he said. “Now, it’s in Quaker bars and Kellogg Special-K cereals.”
Andean nations now export more than 40,000 tons of quinoa, valued at $111 million — a nearly 40-fold increase since 2002, according to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Program. More than half of that goes to the United States, according to the program.
If the story of quinoa ended there, Americans would be healthier and impoverished subsistence farmers would be better off.
But major media soon questioned that story line, suggesting the new diet obsession was stealing food from the mouths of the indigenous Aymara and Quechua who had cultivated it for centuries and could no longer afford the inflated prices, which had nearly tripled, to about $3 a pound.
Guilt-ridden foodies began pointing fingers.
“I get that a lot — hey, don’t you feel crappy doing what you’re doing?” Nuñez de Arco said. “I say: well, what is it I’m doing? … Basically what we did was prove the small-holder farm didn’t have to sit back and be part of just the farmers’ markets and sell on the weekends. It could be part of the industrial food supply, just like the mega-large factories that you see here in the U.S.”
About two years ago, Lundberg said, Whole Foods suggested it might be more politically palatable to market home-grown quinoa. Lundberg was ready. After three years of failed experiments in the Sacramento Valley, Lundberg Farms produced its first 40 acres of commercial product, a tri-colored quinoa, in 2014, in Northern California. That swelled last year to about 250 acres. The Richvale-based company now cultivates close to 800 acres on farms from the Canadian border to Brawley, where the Bensons say they may add as many as 500 acres next year.
Consumers worried about the plight of Andean cultures now can feel better buying U.S.-grown quinoa.
“Isn’t that noble?” said Marc Bellemare, an agricultural economist at University of Minnesota. “It’s mighty compelling. It tells a nice story.”
Unfortunately, the data don’t support it, Bellemare found. Overall household consumption in Peru, a common proxy economists use to gauge well-being, improved during the price spiral, even for those not making money on exports. “The rising tide lifted all boats, however modestly,” he said.
Lundberg Farms says it is not crowing from the moral high ground, however squishy it may now seem.
“It’s not like we’re wrapping an American flag around the whole package and saying ‘buy USA’,” said Todd Kluger, Lundberg’s vice president of marketing. “It’s really about if you want to know where your crop is coming from.”
Lundberg and Nuñez de Arco also don’t see themselves as rivals. Lundberg is even considering processing his quinoa at Andean Naturals’ state-of-the-art mill, newly constructed in Yuba City.
“I’m so new in this — maybe I don’t want to be naive — I think there’s a lot of room.” Lundberg said. Quinoa may just be the new brown rice, he said. “I think everybody finds their own place and works their own space and I think that will be the case in quinoa.”
But Bellemare has a fresh warning. With so much more quinoa being grown outside the Andes highlands, prices have come back down to 2010 levels, and many farmers appear to be hoarding supply in hopes that the good old days will return.
“I just don’t expect the price to go back up, which is pretty sad,” he said. “That’s kind of a downer end to the whole tale. ”
During your next meal, I encourage you to look down at your plate. More closely. No matter if you live in San Diego or Baltimore, chances are, one or more of the foods on that plate was grown or raised right here in California. With nearly half of American-grown nuts, fruits and vegetables produced in California, the state is on your plate.
But the delicious and diverse array of California food available to us is only half the story. The other half involves the California farmers and ranchers, like my family, who have been consistently, quietly, reducing their environmental footprint and enhancing their practices to grow “more crop per drop.
We’ve done this by implementing new technologies and water management procedures to improve water efficiency and sustainability. It’s time we told this story louder.
At our farm, Rancho Monte Vista in the Pauma Valley of San Diego County, we employ a variety of water and soil-moisture monitoring techniques in growing citrus fruit and avocados. My dad, Warren, brother, Tim, and I are proud of the long-term investments we’ve made to upgrade our irrigation systems in part by installing solar power for pumps. For us — drought or no drought, and day in and day out — we are serious about getting the most out of our limited water supplies.
We’re not alone. For us and many others, innovations have been central to the success of farming and ranching — not only during California’s lingering drought, but over the last several decades.
Another example is Cannon Michael, from Bowles Farming Co. in Los Banos, who uses tablet apps and unmanned aircraft to monitor temperature, soil moisture and irrigation efficiency as he grows tomatoes, field crops and grains. And at De Jager Dairy North and Corona Ranches in Chowchilla, Mike and Gerrilynn De Jager are experimenting with the use of recycled dairy wastewater through a drip irrigation system to irrigate feed crops.
These actions aren’t exceptions; they’re examples of the types of innovation that occurs every day on California farms and ranches. By producing more crop per drop, California farmers set a remarkable efficiency standard.
Entering a fifth year of drought has forced all Californians to re-examine how and why we use water the way we do, in our homes, businesses, public spaces and, certainly, on our farms and ranches. Water experts estimate a person needs about 50 gallons of water a day to satisfy basic health and safety needs.
But we must also take into account the amount of water required to produce the foods we eat. According to a 2015 study by the science and engineering company Exponent, it takes 1,326 gallons of water to grow the food an average American eats each day, or a 2,000 calorie diet.
Considering the vital role California farming and ranching plays in our daily lives and in growing food for us all, we must work together to ensure that farms have the water they need to continue producing that food, in the most efficient ways for local conditions.
As we continue to read about the partial relief winter storms have brought to the state, we cannot lose sight of the fact that improvements and updates to California’s water system are critical if we are to support a growing population, a thriving ecosystem and productive farms and ranches. We must also support farmers and ranchers as we continue our commitment to developing innovative ways to use water efficiently.
Farmers have been open-source technology innovators since long before that term was invented. We understand that using water-efficient technology — both hardware and software — will be crucial to our ability to keep the state on every Californian’s plate, now and into the future.
Andy Lyall operates Rancho Monte Vista with his father and brother in the Pauma Valley in San Diego County, growing Navel, Cara Cara and Valencia oranges as well as avocados.
Executive Order Aims to Make Water Conservation a Way of Life in California
SACRAMENTO – Moving to bolster California’s climate and drought resilience, Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. today issued an executive order that builds on temporary statewide emergency water restrictions to establish longer-term water conservation measures, including permanent monthly water use reporting, new permanent water use standards in California communities and bans on clearly wasteful practices such as hosing off sidewalks, driveways and other hardscapes.
“Californians stepped up during this drought and saved more water than ever before,” said Governor Brown. “But now we know that drought is becoming a regular occurrence and water conservation must be a part of our everyday life.”
Californians have responded to the call to conserve water during the drought by dialing back sprinklers, replacing lawns, fixing leaky faucets and installing more efficient toilets and washing machines. Between June 2015 and March 2016, Californians reduced water use by 23.9 percent compared with the same months in 2013 – saving enough water to provide 6.5 million Californians with water for one year.
While the severity of the drought has lessened in some parts of California after winter rains and snow, the current drought is not over. For the fifth consecutive year, dry conditions persist in many areas of the state, with limited drinking water supplies in some communities, diminished water for agricultural production and environmental habitat, and severely depleted groundwater basins. The executive order calls for long-term improvements to local drought preparation across the state, and directs the State Water Resources Control Board to develop proposed emergency water restrictions for 2017 if the drought persists.
California droughts are expected to be more frequent and persistent, as warmer winter temperatures driven by climate change reduce water held in the Sierra Nevada snowpack and result in drier soil conditions. Recognizing these new conditions, the executive order directs permanent changes to use water more wisely and efficiently, and prepare for more frequent, persistent periods of limited supply.
These new actions will help achieve a top priority in the Governor’s Water Action Plan – to “Make Conservation a California Way of Life.” The administration will seek public input in the coming months on new water conservation and efficiency standards called for in this executive order.
The following is a summary of the executive order issued by the Governor today:
Use Water More Wisely
The Department of Water Resources (DWR) and the State Water Board will require monthly reporting by urban water suppliers on a permanent basis. This includes information regarding water use, conservation and enforcement. Through a public process and working with partners such as urban water suppliers, local governments and environmental groups, DWR and the State Water Board will develop new water use efficiency targets as part of a long-term conservation framework for urban water agencies. These targets go beyond the 20 percent reduction in per capita urban water use by 2020 that was embodied in SB X7-7 of 2009, and will be customized to fit the unique conditions of each water supplier.
The State Water Board will adjust emergency water conservation regulations through the end of January 2017, in recognition of the differing water supply conditions across the state, and develop proposed emergency water restrictions for 2017 if the drought persists.
Eliminate Water Waste
The State Water Board will permanently prohibit wasteful practices, such as hosing off sidewalks, driveways and other hardscapes, washing automobiles with hoses not equipped with a shut-off nozzle, and watering lawns in a manner that causes runoff. These temporary prohibitions have been in place since emergency water conservation efforts began in July 2014.
The State Water Board and DWR will take actions to minimize water system leaks across the state that continue to waste large amounts of water. DWR estimates that leaks in water district distribution systems siphon away more than 700,000 acre-feet of water a year in California – enough to supply 1.4 million homes for a year. Audits of water utilities have found an average loss through leaks of 10 percent of their total supply.
Strengthen Local Drought Resilience
In consultation with urban water suppliers, local governments, environmental groups and other partners, DWR will strengthen standards for local Water Shortage Contingency Plans, which are part of the Urban Water Management Plans that water districts must submit every five years. Under new strengthened standards, districts must plan for droughts lasting at least five years, as well as more frequent and severe periods of drought. These plans must be actionable, so that districts can turn to them to guide their drought response.
For areas not covered by the Water Shortage Contingency Plan, DWR will work with counties to improve drought planning for small water suppliers and rural communities.
Improve Agricultural Water Use Efficiency and Drought Planning
DWR will update existing requirements for Agricultural Water Management Plans so that irrigation districts quantify their customers’ water use efficiency and plan for water supply shortages.
Current law requires agricultural water districts serving 25,000 acres or more to file such plans. The executive order increases the number of irrigation districts who must file water management plans by lowering the threshold to irrigation district serving 10,000 acres or more. DWR will check the plans to ensure they quantify conservation efforts and adequately plan for water shortages.
DWR will work with the California Department of Food and Agriculture in seeking public input on the updated standards, with a public draft made available by the end of this year.
To ensure compliance with these new targets and water management plan requirements, DWR, the State Water Board and the California Public Utilities Commission will work together to develop methods which could include technical and financial assistance, regulatory oversight and enforcement mechanisms.
The full text of the executive order can be found here.
To learn more about the state’s drought response, visit: Drought.CA.Gov. Every Californian should take steps to conserve water. Find out how at SaveOurWater.com.
The Sand County Foundation, the California Farm Bureau Federation and Sustainable Conservation are accepting applications through July 8 for the $10,000 California Leopold Conservation Award. The award honors California farmers, ranchers and other private landowners who demonstrate outstanding stewardship and management of natural resources.
Given in honor of renowned conservationist Aldo Leopold, the Leopold Conservation Award inspires other landowners by example and provides a visible forum where farmers, ranchers and other private landowners are recognized as conservation leaders. In his influential 1949 book, A Sand County Almanac, Leopold called for an ethical relationship between people and the land they own and manage, which he called “an evolutionary possibility and an ecological necessity.”
“Because approximately half of California is privately owned, farmers, ranchers and other landowners are on the front lines in keeping the state’s environment – our land, air, water, wildlife and climate – vibrant,” said Sustainable Conservation Executive Director Ashley Boren. “The Leopold Conservation Award is proud to celebrate those deserving, but often overlooked, landowner heroes who do their part every day to steward our environment in ways that benefit people, our economy and the planet.”
“Farmers and ranchers must continually adapt to changing conditions from weather, markets for their products and regulatory compliance,” said Paul Wenger, President of the California Farm Bureau Federation. “There is no blueprint for growing the unique and diverse cornucopia of crops California is known for, in equally unique and diverse geographical regions throughout our state. The Leopold Conservation Award recognizes those farmers and ranchers who strive to maximize their economic opportunities while also protecting and enhancing the natural resources that are the basic foundation of their farm or ranch.”
“There are a number of agriculturalists in California that are caring for the environment through ecologically sound practices and conservation on their farms and ranches,” said 2015 award recipients Jim and Mary Rickert of Prather Ranch. “It’s an incredible honor to receive the Leopold Conservation Award, and we would like to encourage others to apply for this very prestigious award and share their story with others.”
The 2016 California Leopold Conservation Award will be presented in December at the California Farm Bureau Federation’s Annual Meeting in Monterey. The award recipient will receive $10,000 and a crystal depicting Aldo Leopold.
Nominations must be postmarked by July 8, 2016, and mailed to Leopold Conservation Award c/o Sustainable Conservation, 98 Battery Street, Suite 302, San Francisco, CA 94111. Nominations may be submitted on behalf of a landowner, or landowners may nominate themselves. For application information, please visit www.leopoldconservationaward.org.
The California Leopold Conservation Award is possible thanks to generous contributions from The Harvey L. & Maud S. Sorenson Foundation, The Nature Conservancy, Environmental Defense Fund, American AgCredit, DuPont Pioneer and The Mosaic Company.
ABOUT THE LEOPOLD CONSERVATION AWARD The Leopold Conservation Award is a competitive award that recognizes landowner achievement in voluntary conservation. The award consists of a crystal award depicting Aldo Leopold and $10,000. Sand County Foundation presents Leopold Conservation Awards in California, Colorado, Kansas, Kentucky, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
ABOUT SAND COUNTY FOUNDATION Sand County Foundation is a non-profit conservation organization dedicated to working with private landowners to advance the use of ethical and scientifically sound land management practices that benefit the environment. www.sandcounty.net
ABOUT CALIFORNIA FARM BUREAU FEDERATION
The California Farm Bureau Federation works to protect family farms and ranches on behalf of more than 53,000 members statewide and as part of a nationwide network of more than 6.2 million Farm Bureau members. www.cfbf.com
ABOUT SUSTAINABLE CONSERVATION
Sustainable Conservation helps California thrive by uniting people to solve the toughest challenges facing our land, air and water. Since 1993, it has brought together business, landowners and government to steward the resources that we all depend on in ways that make economic sense. Sustainable Conservation believes common ground is California’s most important resource. www.suscon.org
For many climate change activists, the latest rallying cry has been, “Keep it in the ground,” a call to slow and stop drilling for fossil fuels. But for a new generation of land stewards, the cry is becoming, “Put it back in the ground!”
As an avid gardener and former organic farmer, I know the promise that soil holds: Every ounce supports a plethora of life. Now, evidence suggests that soil may also be a key to slowing and reversing climate change.
“I think the future is really bright,” said Loren Poncia, an energetic Northern Californian cattle rancher. Poncia’s optimism stems from the hope he sees in carbon farming, which he has implemented on his ranch. Carbon farming uses land management techniques that increase the rate at which carbon is absorbed from the atmosphere and stored in soils. Scientists, policy makers, and land stewards alike are hopeful about its potential to mitigate climate change.
Carbon is the key ingredient to all life. It is absorbed by plants from the atmosphere as carbon dioxide and, with the energy of sunlight, converted into simple sugars that build more plant matter. Some of this carbon is consumed by animals and cycled through the food chain, but much of it is held in soil as roots or decaying plant matter. Historically, soil has been a carbon sink, a place of long-term carbon storage.
But many modern land management techniques, including deforestation and frequent tilling, expose soil-bound carbon to oxygen, limiting the soil’s absorption and storage potential. In fact, carbon released from soil is estimated to contribute one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
Ranchers and farmers have the power to address that issue. Pastures make up 3.3 billion hectares, or 67 percent, of the world’s farmland. Carbon farming techniques can sequester up to 50 tons of carbon per hectare over a pasture’s lifetime. This motivates some ranchers and farmers to do things a little differently.
“It’s what we think about all day, every day,” said Sallie Calhoun of Paicines Ranch on California’s central coast. “Sequestering soil carbon is essentially creating more life in the soil, since it’s all fed by photosynthesis. It essentially means more plants into every inch of soil.”
Calhoun’s ranch sits in fertile, rolling California pastureland about an hour’s drive east of Monterey Bay. She intensively manages her cattle’s grazing, moving them every few days across 7,000 acres. This avoids compaction, which decreases soil productivity, and also allows perennial grasses to grow back between grazing. Perennial grasses, like sorghum and bluestems, have long root systems that sequester far more carbon than their annual cousins.
By starting with a layer of compost, Calhoun has also turned her new vineyard into an effective carbon sink. Compost is potent for carbon sequestration because of how it enhances otherwise unhealthy soil, enriching it with nutrients and microbes that increase its capacity to harbor plant growth. Compost also increases water-holding capacity, which helps plants thrive even in times of drought. She plans to till the land only once, when she plants the grapes, to avoid releasing stored carbon back into the atmosphere.
Managed grazing and compost application are just a few common practices of the 35 that the Natural Resources Conservation Service recommends for carbon sequestration. All 35 methods have been proven to sequester carbon, though some are better documented than others.
David Lewis, director of the University of California Cooperative Extension, says the techniques Calhoun uses, as well as stream restoration, are some of the most common. Lewis has worked with theMarin Carbon Project, a collaboration of researchers, ranchers, and policy makers, to study and implement carbon farming in Marin County, California. The research has been promising: They found that one application of compost doubled the production of grass and increased carbon sequestration by up to 70 percent. Similarly, stream and river ecosystems, which harbor lots of dense, woody vegetation, can sequester up to one ton of carbon, or as much as a car emits in a year, in just a few feet along their beds.
On his ranch, Poncia has replanted five miles of streams with native shrubs and trees, and has applied compost to all of his 800 acres of pasture. The compost-fortified grasses are more productive and have allowed him to double the number of cattle his land supports. This has had financial benefits. Ten years ago, Poncia was selling veterinary pharmaceuticals to subsidize his ranch. But, with the increase in cattle, he has been able to take up ranching full time. Plus, his ranch sequesters the same amount of carbon each year as is emitted by 81 cars.
Much of the research on carbon farming focuses on rangelands, which are open grasslands, because they make up such a large portion of ecosystems across the planet. They are also, after all, where we grow a vast majority of our food.
“Many of the skeptics of carbon farming think we should be planting forests instead,” Poncia said. “I think forests are a no-brainer, but there are millions of acres of rangelands across the globe and they are not sequestering as much carbon as they could be.”
The potential of carbon farming lies in wide-scale implementation. TheCarbon Cycle Institute, which grew out of the Marin Carbon Project with the ambition of applying the research and lessons to other communities in California and nationally, is taking up that task.
“It really all comes back to this,” said Torri Estrada, pointing to a messy white board with the words SOIL CARBON scrawled in big letters. Estrada is managing director of the Carbon Cycle Institute, where he is working to attract more ranchers and farmers to carbon farming. The white board maps the intricate web of organizations and strategies the institute works with. They provide technical assistance and resources to support land stewards in making the transition.
For interested stewards, implementation, and the costs associated with it, are different. It could be as simple as a one-time compost application or as intensive as a lifetime of managing different techniques. But for all, the process starts by first assessing a land’s sequestration potential and deciding which techniques fit a steward’s budget and goals. COMET-Farm, an online tool produced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, can help estimate a ranch’s carbon input and output.
The institute also works with state and national policy makers to provide economic incentives for these practices. “If the U.S. government would buy carbon credits from farmers, we would produce them,” Poncia said. These credits are one way the government could pay farmers to mitigate climate change. “Farmers overproduce everything. So, if they can fund that, we will produce them,” he said. While he is already sequestering carbon, Poncia says that he could do more, given the funding.
Estrada sees the bigger potential of carbon farming to help spur a more fundamental conversation about how we relate to the land. “We’re sitting down with ranchers and having a conversation, and carbon is just the medium for that,” he said. Through this work, Estrada has watched ranchers take a more holistic approach to their management.
On his ranch, Poncia has shifted from thinking about himself as a grass farmer growing feed for his cattle to a soil farmer with the goal of increasing the amount of life in every inch of soil.
Sally Neas is a freelance writer and community educator based in Santa Cruz, California. She has a background in permaculture, sustainable agriculture, and community development, and she covers social and environmental issues. She blogs at www.voicesfromthegreatturning.com.
Keeping an eye on our food supply is at the core of what we do at the California Department of Food and Agriculture. Nutrition, food safety, quality – that’s important work. But there’s a lot more to it than that, and seeing that this is Public Service Recognition Week (May 1 – May 7), I’d like to dig deeper and tell you a little bit more about who makes it all work.
It starts with the experts who work for CDFA, beginning with our veterinarians, biologists, entomologists and other “ologists” in the Animal Health and Plant Health offices. Some of them check the health of cattle and chickens, or the safety of eggs and milk. More than a few of our vets wear cowboy boots on a daily basis (and get them dirty) because their job isn’t in an office – it’s in the field, on the farm, in the barn, at the bottling plant, the auction yard, the butcher shop, the farmers’ market. Others working in our labs peer through a microscope at weeds and seeds and feeds, not to mention a long list of bugs and much smaller crawlers. We either want them (pollinators) or we don’t (E. coli), and knowing we have highly-educated eyes doing the looking is essential.
There are other kinds of scientists here as well, though they may not fit our assumptions about what an agricultural department does. Specialists and technicians in our Division of Measurement Standards, for example, are renowned for their expertise in the field of motor vehicle fuels, from the petroleum-based variety to hydrogen, electricity, bio-fuels, and whatever is next in the pipeline. When you go to the gas station, the confidence you have in the quality of that fuel is a direct result of this work. This division also makes sure next-generation companies like Uber and Lyft are operating with apps and systems that are fair for consumers. There is also oversight of the scanners at the supermarket, the scales in the produce aisle, and that empty space at the top of the cereal box? (That’s called “slack fill.” And yes, I am surrounded – and fascinated – by these technical terms.)
We have a wealth of experience working for us in our Inspection Services and Marketing Services divisions, including inspectors who check fruits, vegetables and nuts for everything from ripeness to size, weight, and the accuracy of labeling. We go to farmers’ markets to make sure vendors are growing what they sell, and we have economic experts who regulate milk pricing at the farm level.
Did you know we also help dairy farmers fund, design and install digesters that turn methane emissions from their cows into energy that they can use and even sell back to the power grid? And we are responding to this historic drought by helping farmers install highly efficient irrigation systems, soil moisture monitors and related solar-powered systems that ratchet up our water use efficiency and even improve the health of our soils. That’s science at work for all of us, and those scientists are right here at CDFA.
Food will always be at the heart of our mission. And people – scientists, specialists, technicians, trappers and everyone else who works for you here at CDFA – will always be the heart of this organization, along with absolutely crucial supporting contributions from administrators, administrative assistants, information technology technicians, human resource specialists, budget analysts, and our legal and public affairs shops. Like all of us, their lives extend beyond their jobs – but being public servants is part of who they are, and that distinction is worthy of our appreciation.
Thanks to all CDFA employees on the occasion of Public Service Recognition Week as well as their tireless efforts throughout the year. Every healthy meal – and a whole lot of other important things that happen just the way they should – is proof of their value to us all.
If you would like to learn more about the wide range of CDFA’s activities, here’s a video that covers much of it.
California faces major changes in its water supply. The sooner everyone realizes these changes are coming, the better the state will be able to cope with what lies ahead.
Today’s changes are driven by efforts to end groundwater depletion, by sea level rise and loss of snowpack, salts and nitrate accumulating in groundwater, new invasive species, population growth and California’s globalized economy and agriculture.
Here are six inevitable changes that California will need to deal with to sustain the state’s ecosystems and water supplies:
1. The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta will export less water and some islands will flood.The Delta will remain California’s most difficult water problem. Some deeply subsided Delta islands and levees are financially unsustainable and will flood without large state subsidies. With land subsidence, sea level rise, increasing seepage and chance of earthquakes, their agricultural value is limited and repair costs are high. Environmental requirements already reduce Delta water diversions. New flow requirements and climate changes are likely to further reduce water diversions upstream and within the Delta. Ending groundwater overdraft will increase demands for Delta water.
2. The San Joaquin Valley will have less irrigated land. The southern Central Valley is a huge productive agricultural region that relies on water from Delta imports, groundwater overdraft and San Joaquin River diversions. Reductions in these sources will decrease availability by 1.5 million to 4 million acre-feet per year, requiring the fallowing of 500,000 to 1 million acres of its 5 million irrigated acres. Some of this land will be retired due to salinization and urbanization. Continued shifts to higher-value crops, especially orchards, will help maintain agricultural revenues and jobs, as they have during the drought.
3. Urban areas will use less water, reuse more wastewater and capture more stormwater. Water supply risks and costs will drive cities to use less and capture more water. These changes will improve supply reliability and free some water for agriculture and environmental uses, at some cost. But not all actions are equally effective. Water conservation, reuse and stormwater capture are all effective in coastal areas, which drain to the sea. Reducing landscape irrigation is more effective for inland conservation.
4. Some wild native species will become unsustainable. A warmer climate, combined with continued stress on water and land, and the dilution of wild genetic stock by hatchery fish, will make some native fish species unsustainable in the wild, despite concerted restoration efforts. Native plants and animals throughout California face similar risks. Not all can be expected to survive. This challenges our endangered-species laws and demands more attention to effective ecosystem management.
5. Water solutions and funding will become more local and regional. As federal and state governments face diminished funding and capability, local and regional agencies will become more central to solving water problems. Making state and federal regulations more effective and supportive of local and statewide interests in public health, the economy and environmental protection is a major challenge.
6. Water will be managed more tightly. California’s 2014 groundwater legislation will require many areas to account for and manage groundwater, and all water, more closely. Less cumbersome court procedures, groundwater rights and water-accounting practices are needed. Tighter accounting will make water rights more valuable and make groundwater more sustainable, but will add some costs.
Change is never easy, and responding to these changes will be hard but will ultimately improve the sustainability of California’s ecosystems and water supplies. Most solutions will be funded and implemented by local and regional governments. State agencies must support them with transparent, workable water-accounting and legal authorities, and represent statewide environmental and health interests. Thoughtfully preparing for the inevitable changes in water policy will be messy, but it is needed to support California’s environment and economy.
Jay Lund is the Director of the Center for Watershed Sciences and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California – Davis.
