From the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences

January 2016 (was) much wetter than the previous Januaries during this drought. Precipitation is modestly above average, as is snowpack, and climatic conditions remain promising. The largest reservoirs are mostly fuller than a year ago, although not nearly to average conditions for this time of year. Groundwater is likely to be recharging, as it should this time of year in most places, but we still sit atop a large hole.

California remains in a drought. Precipitation and snowpack are now mostly above average for this time of the water year (the 2016 Water Year began October 1, 2015). So far, El Nino is delivering a somewhat above normal water year. But, overall 2016 drought conditions are likely to remain unclear until March.

The California Department of Water Resources’ California Data Exchange Center (CDEC) does a great job assembling data that give insights on water conditions. They update this every day at http://cdec.water.ca.gov.

Here are some recent highlights, with links.

Reservoir and Groundwater Storage Conditions

Most major reservoirs in California have more storage that at this time last year, but still have only about 60% of historical average for this time of year.  Folsom Lake is now at 100% of average for this time of year, rising from a record-low level in November. But California’s reservoir storage remains about 7 maf (about 7 full Folsom reservoirs) less than average for this time of year.

Groundwater statewide is harder to assess, but is doubtless making some recovery from last year’s levels. It still has a long way to recover from the drought in many places.

The drought so far has depleted total storage in California by about 22 maf cumulatively or nearly a year’s worth of water use in agriculture. Soil moisture conditions were also unusually dry following 2015, diverting and delaying some runoff from early storms.

• http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/products/rescond.pdf
• http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/reservoirs/RES

Precipitation and Snowpack

December and January storms have helped, with precipitation and snowpack mostly a bit above average for this time of year. We seem to have overcome the Curse of Zero Januaries; January precipitations for the last three years was nearly zero.   This January precipitation in the Northern Sierras is above average and exceeds the sum of all January precipitation for the last five years!

Snowpack in California is mostly above average for this time of year and already greatly exceeds last year’s snow accumulations. There is a ski season.

Is it El Nino yet?   Apparently, yes. But it is giving us slightly better than average conditions, which so far are much better than the last four years. No major floods yet. So far, the forecast for February looks good.

Snowpack:

• http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cdecapp/snowapp/sweq.action
• http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/snow/PLOT_SWC
• http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/products/swccond.pdf

Precipitation:

• http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/products/PLOT_ESI.pdf – Sacramento Valley
• http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/products/PLOT_FSI.pdf – San Joaquin Valley
• http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/products/PLOT_TSI.pdf – Tulare Basin

Concluding thought

Steady, above average precipitation and a decent snowpack, so far. Much better than the last four years. Let’s hope it continues, but remain prepared for another drought year, or at least lingering drought effects even if conditions are modestly wet this year.

Wonks might be interested in UC Davis’ ongoing seminar series on drought impacts and policy (most Mondays at 4pm on the UC Davis campus). The public is welcome and videos are posted some days after each talk. Details at:https://watershed.ucdavis.edu/education/classes/california-water-policy-seminar-series-drought  This Monday we’ll hear from Peter Moyle (UC Davis) and Jay Ziegler (TNC) on ecosystem impacts and management during the current drought.

Link to blog post

By Elizabeth Zach

Although Laura Jean Schneider comes from four generations of Midwest farmers, she is uncertain sometimes about her agricultural acumen.

For the past two years, she has ranched cattle across 100,000 acres on the Mescalero Apache Reservation in southern New Mexico with her husband. It is, she says, dangerous work compared with the farming she once did in Minnesota with her family. For one thing, should either she or her husband need immediate medical care, it would be a hard ride over 27 miles of uneven dirt roads that flood during monsoon season.

And at age 31, she suffers from debilitating migraines, back pain and ongoing dental work following a near-fatal car accident a decade ago. There are bank loans, and the West’s ongoing drought, that weigh on her. Yet she’s learned the ropes, as it were, keenly observing how cattle learn the landscape they live in, and how not all of them are naturally good at rearing their young.

“I rope, ride and build fence,” she says matter-of-factly. “This is what I do. It’s my job.”

As unique as Schneider seems, she is far from alone. According to the U.S. Agriculture Department, the number of women-operated farms increased from 5 percent to 14 percent between 1978 and 2007. Today, counting principal operators and secondary operators, women account for 30 percent of all farmers in the United States, or just under 1 million.

As striking as those numbers are, particularly when considering the financial risks and physical demands that accompany the work , researchers say they would like to learn more about the full contribution these women make, and what it means for the future of farming and ranching in the United States.

Researchers have observed some possible reasons why more women are farming and ranching. Some women regard themselves less as entrepreneurs and more as gentle stewards of the land, or bulwarks against corporations overtaking family farms and developers sweeping in with seductive offers. Others are drawn to the farm-to-fork movement, where locally grown produce and meat hold much greater appeal. Also, more women are inheriting farms and ranches.

Downsizing and mechanization have also made the work more affordable and less physically demanding — although “smaller parcels tend to require more physical labor because they are typically managed using hand tools and practices,” said Breanne Wroughton, program assistant for the California Farm Academy at the Center for Land-Based Learning in Winters, Calif.

To that end, Green Heron Tools in New Tripoli, Pa., is part of a burgeoning niche industry that customizes farm equipment for women, including a tractor rapid hitch, because the traditional tool for attaching and detaching parts “is at best difficult and at worst impossible for women (and many men) to safely manage on their own,” according to the company’s website.

None of this much matters, however, to Megan Brown, as she leans over her squealing Red Wattle pigs with a fork in her hand so that she can poke and stroke their backs, which, she claims, soothes them and stimulates their appetites. Born and raised on her parents’ sprawling ranch at the base of Table Mountain near Oroville in northern California, Brown, 34, has made a name for herself raising her heritage pigs and selling their savory meat to local residents and gourmet San Francisco restaurants.

With a swashbuckling demeanor that has attracted a loyal following to her Twitter account (@MegRaeB) and made her a regular fixture at agriculture conferences, she emphatically calls for more women to, so to speak, enter the field.

“My mother taught me to develop as many marketable skills as possible, so it’s not just the ranching with me,” said Brown, as she swerved her Polaris ATV across the rocky plateau skirting her parents’ ranch. “I cure olives, make beef jerky. I’ve planted tobacco, I can skin my own deer. I got a tractor, and I can lift heavy things with it myself. . . . I really believe any woman can do what I’m doing.”

According to the USDA, the women who identified themselves as earning their primary income from farming or ranching run the gamut in terms of what they produce. They raise cattle, sheep, poultry, pigs and goats in the West and Midwest. They are viticulturists — or, as they refer to themselves at times, “vit-chicks” — who nurture malbec and pinot noir grapes in California, Washington and Oregon. They grow lavender, melons and seemingly every other delicacy under the sun.Some have taken on teaching roles and find that more and more women are joining their ranks.

“[Women’s] enrollment in the classes has been fairly consistent throughout the last four years of the program,” said Wroughton, “and 51 percent of our graduates have been women.”’

And then there are women like Donna Schroeder, who at 77 was never schooled in ranching but was clearly born to the land and still ranches it in Shonkin, Mont.

She says she has no plans to retire, despite admitting to a small profit margin along with plenty of bank debt and machinery upkeep. “If someone wants to do ranching these days,” she said, “basically someone has to get out so you can get in. There’s only so much to go around.”

One of the few women to be inducted into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame, Schroeder is wizened and walks with a slight limp. Her husband died more than 30 years ago; neither of her two children live nearby nor plan to take over the ranch when she no longer can run it.

Cheryl Cosner, 52, who runs a sheep and cattle ranch with her husband in northeastern Oregon, speculates that one of her two daughters could eventually take the reins. She studied agriculture economics and animal science at a time when, she estimates, about only 30 percent of her fellow students were female. She later taught business administration in China and took art classes that proved helpful when she started marketing her farm products.

Last year, Brenda Kirsch Frketich prepared to take over her family’s Oregon farm. When her father retired, he appointed her to carry the torch at this 1,000-acre Willamette Valley farm that’s been in the family for four generations.

She’d proven her mettle: When she was pregnant with her first child, she was out in the fields — long days, long nights, she recalled, when she had to swath and cut the grass into rows so that the dew would hold the seed on the straw stems for when the combine came through. She is now 32 and has a business degree. In taking over the farm, she oversees three employees, seasonal workers and the planting and harvesting of perennial rye and tall fescu grass, wheat, crimson clover, hazelnuts, green beans, Swiss chard, peas, cabbage and radishes.

“When I started with all this, I was 11 years old,” she said. “My feet couldn’t reach the tractor pedals.”

While moving some records and files into her new makeshift office, she came across a weathered leather-bound ledger book, with orderly figures and notes marching across the pages. She marveled at the detailed, pristine penmanship, now fully aware of her grandmother’s essential role in the family’s business and legacy.

“You can learn the dirt, learn the soil, you can learn the tools,” Frketich said, “but you also need to understand the business. She did.”

Elizabeth Zach is a fellow at Stanford University’s Bill Lane Center for the American West

Link to article

At the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, a coalition of 30 leaders – Champions 12.3 – launched a new effort to inspire ambition and mobilize action to reduce food loss and waste globally. This leadership group aims to accelerate progress toward meeting Target 12.3 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which seeks to halve per capita food waste and reduce food losses by 2030.

Globally, a third of all food is lost or wasted between the farm and the fork. Reducing food loss and waste can be a triple win: It can save money for farmers, companies, and households; wasting less can feed more people; and reductions can alleviate pressure on climate, water, and land resources.

The Champions include CEOs of major companies, government ministers, and executives of research and intergovernmental institutions, foundations, farmer organizations, and civil society groups. These leaders will work to create political, business and social momentum to reduce food loss and waste around the world.

The Champions will inspire action by:

• Leading by example on how to reduce food loss and waste;
• Motivating others to meet SDG Target 12.3;
• Communicating the importance of food loss and waste reduction;
• Showcasing successful food loss and waste reduction strategies; and
• Advocating for more innovation, greater investment, better information, and increased capacity to reduce food loss and waste.

Food loss and waste has significant economic, social, and environmental consequences. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), food loss and waste amounts to $940 billion in global annual economic losses. It contributes to hunger. And lost and wasted food consumes about one quarter of all water used by agriculture, requires cropland area the size of China, and generates about 8 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Champions 12.3 will complement and build upon ongoing successful UN programs to reduce food loss and waste including SAVE FOOD and Think.Eat.Save, efforts such as EU FUSIONS and the global Food Loss & Waste Protocol, private sector action like the Consumer Goods Forum’s Food Waste Resolution, and other initiatives.

The Champions effort supports the UN Sustainable Development Goals adopted in September 2015. SDG 12 seeks to ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns. Target 12.3 specifically aims to halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer level, and reduce food losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses, by 2030.

Inspired by the “No More Food to Waste” conference in The Hague in June of 2015, the Government of the Kingdom of the Netherlands formally called for the coalition’s formation in September 2015, and is providing secretariat support for Champions 12.3, along with World Resources Institute.

See the full list of champions and get more information at:http://champions123.org.

Link to news release

Farmers and ranchers are a self-reliant group. They can tune and service tractor engines, repair irrigation systems, and find a way to fix all kinds of broken farm equipment. But there are other kinds of problems they face where they can use some outside assistance – issues with loans, creditors, and USDA agencies. The California Agricultural Mediation Program (CALAMP) is a new service that provides free mediation to the agricultural community in California on a variety of issues.

Mediation is a way to resolve all kinds of problems by utilizing a neutral person to keep the dialogue constructive, overcome challenges in communication, help the parties develop options, evaluate those options, and reach an agreement. Unlike arbitration or the court system, mediation is voluntary. The mediator doesn’t make an order or impose a solution on the parties. If you don’t like any of the options discussed at mediation, you can simply walk away and be in the same situation as you were prior to the mediation.

CALAMP is certified by CDFA and the USDA as the official agricultural mediation program for California. The most common issues where CALAMP can help involve adverse decision letters or other compliance issues with USDA agencies such as NRCS, farm loans regardless whether the lender is FSA, a Farm Credit System bank, or a private lender, and credit issues.

CALAMP’s director Matt Strassberg anticipates that in particular they will be able to help many small and medium sized farms with credit issues. According to Matt Strassberg, “farms that are behind on accounts are often charged interest and after awhile that interest really adds up. CALAMP can help the parties reach an installment payment plan that is affordable and acceptable to the creditor. Even though the creditors often make some compromises, they are usually willing to enter into settlement agreements because they know they will be paid.”

For more information about CALAMP, their website is www.calamp.org, or (916) 330-4500 ext 101 or info@emcenter.org.

By Charmayne Hefley

Animals have been known to be able to use their senses to detect things that humans require extensive technology to detect. Mary Palm, USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) national coordinator for citrus pest programs, said dogs have been successfully trained to detect canker disease, and now Huanglongbing disease (HLB), in citrus.

“Over the past four to five years,” Palm said, “a researcher in Florida first determined dogs could actually detect canker, began training dogs,” Palm said, “and then trained different sets of dogs to detect it. It turned out that they were very good at it. In a demonstration there, none of the people could find any symptoms in a particular citrus tree, but the dogs came through and found the symptoms. Once the people came back and looked very closely, sure enough, it was there.”

Palm said the USDA Huanglongbing Multi Agency Coordination (MAC) Group funded research to determine if dogs could detect HLB in citrus as well as they detected canker. There are now five dogs being trained and tested daily. If grower demand increases, the use of canines in pest management could increase.

Palm said they will probably come up in the next year or two with certification criteria for other companies to train dogs and certify them as detectors. Palm said, “They would be able to get a certificate to show they had conducted all of the tests necessary with the [proper] degree of accuracy.” Palm said the dogs in this program have a 99 percent success rate at detecting HLB disease.

Palm said approximately 80 trees are put inside every night, the positive ones in one greenhouse and the negative ones in another. The trees are taken out the next day and positioned in different patterns for dogs to inspect throughout the day. When the dogs are brought out, even their trainers don’t know which trees are positive or negative. The trained dogs are more than 99 percent accurate.”

Link to article

By Natasha Geiling

Though it’s just an hour south of California’s Silicon Valley, the Salinas Valley — better known for churning out lettuce and tomatoes than the world’s newest tech devices — might as well be a world away. In Silicon Valley, companies like Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, and Google reign supreme. In Salinas, the biggest names are those of fruit and vegetable producers — Dole Foods, Chiquita, Driscoll Berries, Taylor Farms.

But the distance between the two places could soon seem a little smaller, thanks in part to a new effort on the part of the agriculture industry to attract technology companies to the Salinas Valley. Last month, the Western Growers Association — a trade association representing local and regional produce growers from California, Arizona, and Colorado — opened the Center for Innovation and Technology in Salinas, CA. The space — which has room for 34 startups to work, take classes, and meet with farmers — hopes to serve as a midway point between the innovative ideas of tech companies and the technical know-how of industry experts.

“Demand for food is increasing dramatically across the world because of increased population,” Tom Nassif, CEO of the Western Growers Association, told ThinkProgress. “You also have diminishing natural and human resources, and you’ve got to increase your production by 70 percent in 40 years to feed the world’s population. How do you do that?”

The answer, according to Nassif, is through technology that helps farmers use as few resources as possible to produce the largest amount of food — from reducing the amount of water needed to grow certain crops to reducing the amount of wasted product left in the field.

Nassif and the Western Grower’s Association are far from the first to suggest that technological innovations could help propel agriculture into the future, nor is this the first time in history that agriculture and technology have entered into a close relationship. In the 1960s, scientists like Paul R. Ehrlich — Stanford professor and author of the best-selling Population Bomb — issued grave warnings of impending mass starvation due to population growth. Instead, thanks to a slew of technological innovations in crop breeding, the world was able to significantly increase the amount of yield per acre for key crops like maize, wheat, and rice. Dubbed the Green Revolution, technological advances helped double the yields of rice and wheat across Asia, sustaining a population that grew over the same period of time by 60 percent. Though not without controversy — especially with regard to the rapid adoption of chemicals in agriculture — over the course of a few decades, the Green Revolution succeeded in steering the world away from earlier predictions of global starvation.

But those predictions have begun to resurface in recent years, stirred by the potential for climate change to disrupt agricultural systems at a time when the world’s population continues to grow.According to the United Nations, the world will need to feed more than 9 billion people by 2050, meaning that food production will need to increase by 70 percent. That creates a huge potential for new technologies that can either boost agricultural production, efficiency, or both.

In the United States, federal funding for agriculture technology peaked in the years following the Dust Bowl and around World War II, when 40 percent of federal research and development expenditures went towards agricultural research. Today, with just 2 percent of federal research and development spending going towards agricultural research, private investment companies are looking to fill a void left by shifting governmental priorities.

“All indications are that this is the new industry for investment in high tech,” Nassif said. “We’ve only been open a month, and we already have a number of tenants, more coming in every day, and more people indicating a desire to sponsor the venture as well as invest in agricultural technology.”

Created as California looks to leave behind the historic drought that has plagued the state for the past four years, the Center for Innovation and Technology is especially interested in technology to help farmers maintain crop yields in the face of diminishing access to water.

“Obviously using less water and using less labor are our highest priorities,” Nassif said, citing technology like drones that can map where exactly on a field water is needed most, or technology that can help a crop retain more water in its roots, as examples of the kinds of innovation he hopes to see come from the center.

Jeffrey Orrey, president and CEO of GeoVisual Analytics — one of six start-ups working out of the Center right now — is already engaged in creating technology that would help farmers use drones, as well as smaller manned aircrafts, to create high resolution images of their fields — technology similar to work that he used to do for NASA. By giving farmers a way to better monitor how their crops are grown, Orrey says, farmers are able to use inputs — like water, or fertilizer — as efficiently as possible on their land.

“Over time, with resource shortages and increasingly severe changes in weather and climate, it’s going to become imperative that we are more quantitative and better at monitoring how crops are grown to better understand how to respond to these drastic changes,” Orrey told ThinkProgress.

Giving farmers better access to quantitative data in the field also has co-benefits for the environment — the more real-time information a farmer has about their field, the more precise they can be with their application of things like pesticide, fertilizer, and water. That could help reduce the amount of excess fertilizer that ends up degrading water quality as runoff, the amount of water used throughout an operation, or the amount of pesticide needed to treat a field.

Orrey was drawn to the Center, he said, because it allowed his company a chance to interact directly with farmers and industry — a piece of the puzzle that can be missing for some entrepreneurs hoping to create new technology for agriculture.

“Unless you come from a farming background, we saw that there was a disconnect between high tech companies that think they have solutions but really don’t appreciate the nuance of making them applicable to the farm,” he said. “[The Center creates] the opportunity to bring the tech together with people who are doing farming and know the complexity.”

Nassif said that the Center’s location — close to the farmers of the Salinas Valley and within driving distance of both Silicon Valley and San Francisco — makes it an ideal first location, but he hopes that more Innovation and Technology Centers will open throughout the state in the near future.

“I think we’ll outgrow the Center very quickly, and that’s a good thing,” he said. “I think that given the appropriate attention and investment, the Center has nowhere to go but up, and to attract more and more innovators through employment and high tech jobs in agriculture.”

Link to article

By David Boule’

This winter growing season marks the 140th anniversary since the Washington navel orange was first picked and enjoyed in California. Its success and heritage – by way of Goa, Portugal and Brazil – is one of the Golden State’s great stories.

The introduction of this especially large and flavorful orange transformed just about everything in California – from the state’s economy to its image – and started the second gold rush.

External video – no longer available

Visit the California Water Fix web site

Each year Governor Brown sponsors GEELA, the Governor’s Environmental and Economic Leadership Awards, which recognize individuals and organizations for exceptional achievements in conservation and environmental stewardship. It is the state’s highest environmental honor.

GEELA is a partnership with Cal-EPA, CDFA, the Natural Resources Agency, the Labor and Workforce Development Agency, the Health and Human Services Agency, the State Transportation Agency, and the Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency.

At the annual GEELA awards ceremony this week in Sacramento, it was my pleasure to help honor two great recipients from agriculture: Prather Ranch of Shasta County, for minimizing waste from animal food products and creating conservation easements to protect endangered species, and the Sonoma County Winegrowers, for advancing a goal to make Sonoma County the first fully sustainable wine region in the country by 2019.

Two years ago, when I first heard the Winegrowers’ leadership talk about this, I appreciated the ambition but wondered how they could reach that goal in five years. It seems they are well on their way thanks to the leadership and commitment of Sonoma County winegrape growers  – 49 percent of vineyard acres have been certified sustainable, so far. Sustanability is defined by a set of standards on environmental stewardship, economic viability and and social responsibility, what we call the triple bottom line.

Prather Ranch operates on approximately 40 thousand acres in five Northern California counties. More than 50 percent of the land is enrolled in conservation easements, meaning the properties will continue to be used for cattle grazing . The dry-aged natural beef operation embraces a philosophy of “Deep understanding of the importance of low-stress cattle handling, responsible stewardship of the land, and a desire to provide a stable and satisfying life for those who work on the ranch.”

Agriculture has great stories to tell! Programs like GEELA bring those stories to the forefront. I urge all of our farmers and ranchers to consider GEELA recognition in the years ahead.