The next segment in the Growing California video series, a partnership with California Grown, is “Casa De Memories,” a profile of Casa de Fruta, a roadside landmark in San Benito County.

http://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/news/2013/11/08/ed-murrieta-lunch-with-karen-ross-esquir.html?page=all

By Ed Murrieta

Karen Ross, California’s head of Food and Agriculture, grew up on a cattle farm in western Nebraska. “This is a true confession,” Ross said over lunch (last month). “I grew up doing farm work and telling my dad that I was not going to stay on the farm. And every job I’ve ever had has been in agribusiness or ag policy.”

Appointed Secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2011, Ross was previously chief of staff for U.S. Department of agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, a position she accepted in 2009. Before that, she was president of the California Association of Wine Grape Growers for 13 years. And before that, she was vice president of the Agriculture Council of California, lobbying on behalf of farmer-owned collectives.

What follows are edited highlights of my conversation with Karen Ross over lunch at Esquire Grill on Oct. 31.

It was a wide-ranging conversation that covered food security and food safety; agritourism and public markets; the diversity of California’s crops and cultures; the role of women in agriculture and farming; and what kind of food California’s secretary of Food and Agriculture likes to cook and eat.

Ross ordered radicchio chicken salad that had an earthy fall glow. I had the colorful crab Louie surrounded by a bouquet of beets and edible flowers. Esquire Grill’s new executive chef Scott Ostrander had debuted his first menu the day before, and he sent out some tastes: lobster salad with pomegranate seeds and fiery chilies served on a blade of lobster shell; a playful twist on peanut butter and jelly featuring bread crumbs tossed in peanut oil, dotted with dabs of jelly and grapes; tempura-fried beef tenderloin deftly constructed with blue cheese and onions on a rosemary skewer; and ethereal apple fritters glistening in sugar and caramel.

Diverse bounty

“Not many people fully understand California agriculture — just the sheer size and diversity of it the ability we have to grow 400 crops, to be a year-round industry. I think one of the things we have and we don’t highlight enough is that the diversity of our population has given us some fabulous ethnic food, ethnic markets and ethnic farmers.

That’s how people travel: They taste the food and then they have a sense of where they want to go. I think that can be a fabulous way of celebrating what we have here.”

Farm to school

“This is happening at a time when we are understanding much better the connection between nutrition and the avoidance of chronic diseases like obesity, like diabetes, like high blood pressure — all the things that impact quality of life as well as the cost of health care. This is an investment in our future. These children have a better position to achieve their potential if they have good nutrition and start early in their life with good nutrition.”

Serving farmers

“Being away from the farm, I really realized that the values system I have, my work ethic, my interest in people came from being on that farm. I think farmers are very special people. They’re working with Mother Nature. Being able to serve farmers and ranchers and the people who eat their food, that is something I feel very fortunate to be able to do.”

Public markets

“Food is a common language so being able to celebrate it in a public atmosphere is an opportunity to reconnect people. I grew up in the middle of nowhere in western Nebraska. Everything we did on a community basis was always around ‘bring food.’ It’s sharing, it’s bringing people together. I think a public market can serve a very functional purpose in terms of commerce and I think it can serve a very important social purpose. I think if you create a space that’s inviting and inclusive, people will gather and share. People like that sense of community.”

Culinary tourism

“Culinary tourism is one of the fastest growing sectors of tourism. California tourism generated a little over a hundred billion dollars last year. Twenty-four-and-a-half billion of that was food and beverage. We have those opportunities in this six-county Sacramento region — in the foothills we have wineries orchards, then you come down along the rivers with biking and boating and then you have the openness of Yolo County. Unlimited possibilities and a variety of farms. In Santa Barbara County, a lot of ranch families have figured out how to do ecotourism with ranch stays. It’s not that we want to turn these places into event centers, but it’s about allowing that farm family to generate some additional revenues to keep those farms going.”

Food safety

“That’s part of the California brand. In overseas markets, we’re known for food safety and environmental safety. It’s sad that people are so afraid of their own food supplies and that’s why they’re seeking you out, but that is a fact. China’s had enough food scares, which are often times just about somebody cutting corners and trying to make a fast buck. That erosion of confidence and trust in the food supply is a very real issue in China. That’s not good in the long term for any of us. If you have people who are not accessing proper food or nutrition, or it’s too high-priced, you have civil unrest. I’ve met with many Chinese officials. The Chinese government definitely understands the importance of food security issues.”

Her tastes

“I love to cook from the farmers market. I over-buy everything — salads, vegetables and grilled fish. My dad was a cattle feeder so I eat beef several times a week. The downfall for me is pasta. If I haven’t been to Biba’s in a couple of weeks I just have to get to Biba’s. I love sushi. I love good Mexican food. I really love it when I go to Salinas and we’re out in the strawberry fields and there’s a local taco truck.”

Storyteller

“I really wanted to be an actress. And my dad let me for the first semester of college dabble in theater. I just loved being able to make people feel what the character is doing. I taught Sunday school for seven and a half years. I loved doing the storytelling because I love to bring characters to life.”

Women in ag

“It’s really changed pretty dramatically. When I started with the Agriculture Council in 1989, I remember just a few women. When I became president of California Wine Grape Growers, that was a really big deal. Shortly after that, Kathleen Nave was named president of the California Table Grape Commission. I remember somebody from the Bee calling and asking, ‘There’s two of you women running these major grape associations. Would you say it’s a new day?’ I said, ‘When there is a female president of Sun Maid Raisins or the raisin marketing association, then you can say it’s a new day. But I think we’re a few decades away from that.’ Today, nearly 20 percent of California’s farmers are women. In a lot of farming families I know, it’s the third and fourth generation daughters and granddaughters that are taking over.”

http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/sacramento-area-scientists-say-salmon-could/content?oid=11971472

Read the original story from the Sacramento Bee

The small city of Galt on Sacramento County’s southern edge was founded by farmers, ranchers and dairymen like Arlin Van Groningen, a third-generation dairy farmer who continues the family tradition on a 90-acre plot off Harvey Road just north of town.

“We concentrate on cows,” he said. “Our goal is to produce a clean milk product.”

And his 1,200 head of dairy cattle do that every day at New Hope Dairy, the operation he owns with fellow dairyman Arlan Van Leeuwen.

But it’s what else New Hope’s herd produces that caught the attention of the Sacramento Municipal Utility District and will soon mean enough electric power for 250 Sacramento-area single-family homes.

Biomass. Wet resources. Manure. Each of Van Groningen’s milking cows produces 120 pounds of combined manure and urine each day. That’s plenty of wet resources and more than enough to stock an advanced new dairy digester that produces and collects biogases to generate renewable electricity for SMUD.

The dairy digester – a storage tank 26 feet deep – collects and breaks down the massive amounts of manure New Hope’s cows produce, then sends the cleaned methane gases to an adjacent generator. The end product: 450 kilowatts of electricity.

Officials at the utility, state and federal energy and agriculture officials, and bioenergy advocates gathered Tuesday at New Hope Dairy to dedicate and tour the project.

“You couldn’t have a better fuel supplier,” said N. Ross Buckenham, chairman and chief executive officer of California Bioenergy, a partner in the three-year, $3.5 million project. “Dairy gas is a phenomenally valuable renewable resource and its time has come.”

SMUD is banking on it. The Sacramento utility received $5.5 million in grants from the federal Department of Energy and the California Energy Commission to help bankroll the building of New Hope’s digester and another at the nearby Van Warmerdam dairy in Galt.

German firm MT-Energie built the New Hope facility mimicking technology long used in Europe. The dairy’s biogas facility began operations in June and soon will be connected to SMUD’s grid.

Two other digesters operate in SMUD’s service territory west of Galt and south of Elk Grove. SMUD board President Bill Slaton said the biogas has become a vital part of the utility’s energy portfolio. About 27 percent of SMUD’s energy supply comes from renewable sources, he said.

It’s also a hedge against costly peak-hour power, Slaton said. The New Hope generator produces energy that SMUD would use during the peak hours of 4 to 7 p.m.

“It’s 400 megawatts that we need for about 40 hours a year,” Slaton said. “When you buy it at the peak of the season – that’s a higher cost.”

But financing, regulatory hurdles and other factors have frustrated other California farmers hoping to diversify their dairies by developing biofuels, said Julia Levin, executive director of the Bioenergy Association of California.

“This should be the first of 100 projects. We’re the No. 1 dairy state in the country. We should be the No. 1 dairy digesting state,” Levin said. “It’s unique, but let’s make it one of many, not the only one.”

Van Groningen admits that persuading him to convert his dairy waste into biofuel took some doing.

He wasn’t skeptical of the technology. But, “being in the dairy industry, we’ve seen projects like this come and go,” Van Groningen said. “The technology’s been there for many years, but financing was the biggest hurdle. SMUD tore down walls and made it happen.”

And as the renewables industry continues to grow, New Hope Dairy and other dairy operations are poised to turn waste into a much more valuable resource.

“When he first told me, I said it was a great opportunity to use the byproduct to generate power,” said Arlin’s father, Art Van Groningen, a dairy farmer near Visalia in Tulare County. “It’s a whole new way of doing it.”

“Nutrient Management for Farmland Irrigation Systems” is one of a series of videos on conservation from the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service. The series is called, “There’s a Plan for That.”

The Sand County Foundation’s Leopold Conservation Award Program honors landowners across the U.S. for outstanding voluntary achievement in conservation practices that improve their bottom line and our environment. The award has been called, “The Nobel Prize for agriculture.”

The next segment in the Growing California video series, a partnership with California Grown, is “Melon Masters.”