Cal Fire has set-up a command center for the King Fire at the El Dorado County fairgrounds.

With the massive King Fire northeast of Placerville continuing to burn, the El Dorado County Fairgrounds continues its critical role as a nerve center for fire fighters as they work to gain the upper hand.

The fairgrounds are serving as a command center for Cal Fire, and is home base for roughly 5,000 firefighters and support personnel. Fair staff members are providing 24-hour maintenance and support for what has become a small city with a number of urgent needs – fork lifts and drivers; garbage, electrical, tools and equipment; tables, chairs and stages; and coordination with neighbors for overflow issues such as signs, directional barricades  and traffic flow.

It is also the home for a number of evacuated animals – horses, cows, goats, poultry, alpacas and a llama. fairgrounds staff set up pens, water troughs  and cages for the animals, and the group South County Large Animal Rescue (SCHLAR) is assisting with 24-hour care of the animals, coordinating feeding, exercising and cleaning of the pens.

The office staff is busy fielding calls from the community with an outpouring of volunteers and donations. They are also accepting and posting letters, cards and posters filled with gratitude and well wishes for the firefighters.  The fair is using its Facebook page to keep people informed.

CDFA’s Division of Fairs and Expositions provides fiscal and policy oversight to the network of California fairs and ensures compliance with laws and regulations. California’s 78 fairs are located throughout the Golden State from the early spring to the fall of each year. We are proud to call them our partners.

The latest segment in the Growing California video series, a partnership with California Grown, is “Ag in the Classroom.”

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Chef and restaurateur Patrick Mulvaney

By Patrick Mulvaney, chef and restaurateur

When I read about climate change, I learn about rising sea levels and shrinking polar ice caps – problems for 100 years in the future. But when I talk to my friends and customers about climate change, the focus is on what is happening today. It seems little things are already adding up.

As a chef, I have always believed that the completed dish will only be as good as the ingredients used. The bounty of the 12-month growing season is the main reason we decided to open our restaurant here in Sacramento. Because of our close relationships with local farmers, our “supply chain” is basically a truck and the farmer’s market. We can see how the drought has affected their crops.

Three years of drought have taken a toll on the ranchers and farmers we depend on. Lack of rain to refill the state’s reservoirs has reduced water levels to historic lows. Some water allocations have been cut entirely, and most farmers have been forced to scale back on planting. Forty-five percent of rice land went unplanted this year; farmers were forced to sell off cattle this spring. Researchers at UC Davis estimate that drought will prevent farmers from planting nearly 430,000 acres and cost the state $2.2 billion.

This isn’t just a Sacramento problem; it will affect the whole country. California grows nearly half of the nation’s fruits and vegetables, including 70 percent of the lettuce, 76 percent of the avocados, 90 percent of the grapes and virtually all of the almonds. Unfavorable conditions in California mean higher prices for restaurants across the country.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture said produce prices could increase 5 to 6 percent this year. Even though beef prices are at historically high levels, the drought has raised the prices of feed even higher, forcing ranchers to sell the majority of their herds. A few years ago, the U.S. had 102 million head of cattle. That number is now under 88 million and dropping. It’s the smallest herd since 1951, so prices keep rising.

In addition to drought, climate change is causing other kinds of severe weather swings. Last winter was unusually brutal in the Midwest, causing an almost complete failure of the cherry crop and raising doubts about harvests for the rest of the tree fruits this summer.

In some ways, we are lucky at my restaurant; our daily-changing menus have allowed us to respond to climate disruptions. And while we continue to serve the best of what’s coming out of the nearby land, some items have become harder to find at a reasonable price. During the past year, restaurants have changed their menus to reflect higher meat prices, sudden collapses in citrus yields and the lack of products as farmers are forced to let their land lie fallow.

I worry that extreme weather, like California’s drought, may become the new normal. Our agricultural partners face the greatest risks. Many businesses will experience climate change through limited supply and poor supply-chain quality.

There’s something we can do about this. California has long been a national leader on clean-energy policies. Gov. Jerry Brown is supportive of the Environmental Protection Agency’s new regulations that will reduce carbon pollution. He said, “Clean-energy policies are already working in California, generating billions of dollars in energy savings and more than a million jobs. Bold, sustained action will be required at every level, and this is a major step forward.”

Now is the time to continue California’s clean-energy leadership tradition by implementing changes that encourage business leaders to use resources more efficiently. This will help prevent more extreme weather events and make our economy more resilient.

Patrick Mulvaney is the chef and proprietor at Mulvaney’s B&L restaurant in Sacramento.

Just how different are millennials?

So far, quite. Millennials (adults born in the 80s and 90s) are spending money differently than previous generations, preferring to throw cash at new experiences and adventures and to reward socially responsible companies that they can connect with and that they deem authentic. It’s easiest to see this change in the food industry, where millennials are helping to disrupt the landscape of casual restaurants and boosting the earnings of chains such as Chipotle or Panera.

As 2013 research from the Boston Consulting Group found, millennials anticipated spending the greatest amount of money in the coming year on fresh fruits, organic food, and natural products. Less favorable, in their minds, was the idea of spending on luxury goods, soda, applications, and handbags.

If there is one industry that millennials particularly dislike, it’s big banks. A three-year research study of more than 10,000 millennials found that a good handful of the least-liked brands were big financial institutions such as Bank of America and Citigroup, leading the authors to name the financial industry as one of the greatest areas for potential disruption by millennials. Community banks are trying to capitalize on this distrust by beefing up their technology offerings, social media, mobile banking, and customer service in an effort to attract more millennial customers.

The housing market is still pretty slow, weighing on the economic recovery. A big factor behind that sluggish recovery is the fact that first-time homebuyers (many of them young people) are staying out of the market, thanks to tight mortgage-lending standards, lots of career instability, and high levels of student debt. Heck, forget buying a house; many millennials in their late 20s and early 30s are still living with their parents.

Following the Great Recession, the millennial generation has suffered from high levels of both career instability and unemployment. Even in July 2014, roughly five years after the recession officially ended, millennials between the ages of 20 and 24 still suffered from an unemployment rate above 10 percent.

So where does this leave us? Around the country, various advocates, academics, businesses, and millennials themselves are carving out solutions to help the generation get on track financially. National Journal and The Atlantic‘s Next Economy project will spend this month exploring some of the best solutions and talking to people who spend their time figuring out how to help this generation succeed.

Link to story

KMAX-31, Sacramento.

KCRA-3, Sacramento. Note – There is a brief glitch in the video at the 35-second mark.

The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta will benefit from USDA conservation funding.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced that $328 million in conservation funding (more than $22 million to California) is being invested to help landowners protect and restore key farmlands, grasslands and wetlands across the nation. The USDA initiative will benefit wildlife and promote outdoor recreation and related sectors of the economy.

“Conservation easements help farmers and ranchers protect valuable agricultural lands from development, restore lands that are best suited for grazing, and return wetlands to their natural conditions,” Vilsack said. “These easements are making a dramatic and positive impact for our food supply, rural communities and species habitat.”

The funding is provided through the Agricultural Conservation Easement Program (ACEP), which was created in the 2014 Farm Bill to protect critical wetlands and encourage producers to keep lands in farming and ranching. Approximately 380 projects nationwide were selected to protect and restore 32,000 acres of prime farmland, 45,000 acres of grasslands and 52,000 acres of wetlands. A summary of ACEP funding provided to each state can be found online.

In addition to protecting cropland and critical habitats, conservation strengthens outdoor recreation and helps boost the economy. According to the National Fish and Wildlife Federation, annual United States conservation spending totals $38.8 billion, but it produces $93.2 billion of economic output throughout the economy – 2.4 times more than what is put in. This output takes the form of more than 660,500 jobs, $41.6 billion in income and a $59.7 billion contribution to national Gross Domestic Product, or GDP.

Through ACEP, private or tribal landowners and eligible conservation partners working with landowners can request assistance from USDA to protect and enhance agricultural land through an agricultural or wetland easement.

These easements deliver many long-term benefits. For example, this year’s projects will:

• Improve water quality and wetland storage capacity in the California Bay Delta region;
• Reduce flooding along the Mississippi and Red rivers;
• Provide and protect habitat for threatened, endangered and at-risk species including sage grouse, bog turtles, Florida panthers, Louisiana black bear, and whooping cranes to recover populations and reduce regulatory burdens; and
• Protect prime agricultural land under high risk of development in urban areas to help secure the nation’s food supply and jobs in the agricultural sector.

ACEP consolidates three former Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) easement programs – Farm and Ranch Lands Protection Program, Grasslands Reserve Program and Wetlands Reserve Program – into two components. One component protects farmlands and grasslands, and the other protects and restores agricultural wetlands.

Link to news release