The annual California Ag Day has been scheduled for March 19 at the west steps of the State Capitol. Ag Day is one of a series of events scheduled that week to celebrate farming and ranching in our state and across the nation.

Ag Day is presented by CDFA and its co-sponsors, California Women for Agriculture, and the California Foundation for Agriculture in the Classroom, which is planning several activities that week to promote agriculture.

CDFA Secretary Karen Ross (left) speaking about the drought today at a meeting of the California State Board of Food Agriculture. To Secretary Ross’ left are Dr. Mark Starr of the California Department of Public Health, Secretary John Laird of the California Natural Resources Agency, and Mark Ghilarducci, Director of the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services.

Members of Governor Brown’s Interagency Drought Task Force visited UC Merced today for meetings with local government leaders and the California State Board of Food and Agriculture, which held its regular monthly meeting on the Merced campus. Task Force representatives were CDFA Secretary Karen Ross, California Natural Resources Secretary John Laird, State Water Board Chair Felicia Marcus, Office of Emergency Services Director Mark Ghilarducci, and Department of Public Health Deputy Director Dr. Mark Starr.  The Task Force is planning additional meetings around California to listen to the concerns of local communities as the drought continues.

Below is coverage of the State Board of Food and Agriculture meeting from Modesto Bee reporter John Holland

MERCED —Farmers and their allies pleaded with state officials Tuesday for quick action on the drought emergency and long-term solutions to keep it from happening again.

More than 200 people packed a University of California at Merced conference room for a meeting of Gov. Jerry Brown’s Drought Task Force and the State Board of Food and Agriculture.

“Your decisions will have a long and lasting effect on the local, regional and state economy,” said Aldo Sansoni, who grows almonds, tomatoes and other crops in Merced County.

Speakers warned that the drought, now in its third and by far worst year, could put many people out of work. “You have farmworkers right now, who feed the nation and world, and they’re in bread lines out in Mendota,” said Javier Guzman, a retired farmworker from Fresno. “This is very shameful.”

Members of the task force are traveling around the state to learn how communities are coping with the effects of the drought. It includes top officials involved with agriculture, water supplies, public health and other issues. The meeting came on the heels of President Barack Obama’s visit to Merced County on Feb. 14 to address the water shortage.

The drought has forced irrigation cuts of varying severity in the San Joaquin Valley. The state and federal water systems plan to deliver zero water to most farmers this year. The Merced Irrigation District could run out of reservoir water this year, and the Turlock and Modesto irrigation districts are striving for a small carryover for 2015.

Farmers are increasing their use of wells, if they have them, and could skip some annual crops so orchards and vineyards can get water.

“This is a lot more desperate than a lot of us realize,” said Laurian Bettencourt, a dairy farmer near Gustine. He said his groundwater is adequate but water district rules keep him from selling to orchard owners just outside the boundary.

The drought is forcing well pumping that could worsen the land subsidence problem in parts of Merced County, said Jean Okuye, a Livingston-area almond grower and president of the county Farm Bureau. She urged wastewater recycling and other measures to keep farms in production.

“If we destroy all of this, we will have nothing,” Okuye said. “We will be a dust bowl.”

Ron Macedo, an almond grower and chairman of the Turlock Irrigation District board, said TID has cut allotments to farmers by about 40 percent and will work to reduce canal spills and other waste. “Hopefully, it’s going to get us through this year all right,” he said.

Bill Harp, a Kern County almond grower, said yields will drop in orchards where water is extremely short, but others can get by if the reduced irrigation is timed right. He also noted the ripple effect from almonds, the state’s top farm export.

“The almond industry creates jobs, not only in farm operations but also as the crop moves down the supply chain,” Harp said.

He urged state officials to increase the capacity for recharging aquifers during wet years.

Labor advocates said farmworkers, most of whom emigrated from Mexico illegally in search of better lives, face a shortage of work in the months ahead. “Those impacts are huge for the small, rural towns we deal with,” said Marco Lizarraga, executive director of La Cooperativa Campesina de California, based in Sacramento.

Even with adequate water, farmworkers deal with low pay, poor housing and other problems, said Ilene Jacobs, an attorney for California Rural Legal Assistance, based in Oakland. “We know that these conditions are exacerbated by a drought,” she said. “They’re exacerbated by any disaster.”

Jacobs said the state will need to help out-of-work farmworkers through food banks, utility bill assistance and protection against eviction or forcelosure. A bill signed by Brown last week includes some of this, along with emergency water projects.

The snowpack stood at 39 percent of average in the central Sierra Nevada and 33 percent statewide Tuesday, the California Department of Water Resources reported. The recent storms, while welcome, will not nearly make up for a bone-dry stretch that started in early December.

When the rain did come last month, as much as 25,000 cubic feet per second of river runoff went out to sea rather than being stored, said Dan Nelson, executive director of the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority. “Do you know how many acres we could have kept in production?” he asked.

The authority represents 29 water suppliers from Tracy to Kern County, plus parts of San Benito and Santa Clara counties. Nelson said at least half of the 1.1 million total acres will not grow crops this year.

Task force member Felicia Marcus, chairwoman of the State Water Resources Control Board, said some of the precious river water will have to be released to keep ocean water from intruding into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. If that were not done, she said, salt would contaminate Delta water that is pumped to many farms and city users.

Task force member John Laird, the governor’s natural resources secretary, said the recent storms have lulled people into thinking the drought has eased. “It has brought us up to the level of the worst previous drought on record, in 1977,” he said.

Food and Agriculture Secretary Karen Ross said the state will work to get unemployment benefits, food and other services for the farmworkers who lose jobs. She also said climate change has made such disasters more likely.

“Droughts will happen, and we must be prepared every time,” Ross said.

The USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) is reminding public entities and their partners that there are $5 million in Emergency Watershed Program Protection (EWP) funds available for potential drought protection.

Eligible projects would include improvements to dirt or gravel maintenance roads to reduce water use for dust control, silt fences to protect homes and other structures from drought-caused silt deposition, area seeding and vegetation establishment, or anything that is feasible to keep soil in place.

In order for a project to qualify there must be a local unit of government willing to be a sponsor and provide property rights, permits and local cost sharing. Potential public entities would be government agencies, resource conservation districts, irrigation districts and tribes.

The NRCS is working quickly to try to get the word out to potential applicants and will be holding briefings via teleconference on March 3 and March 5. Additional briefings could be scheduled if there is ongoing interest. For more information about this program and the briefings, please visit the NRCS web site. You could also contact me directly at john.harrington@ca.usda.gov or Luana Kiger at Luana.kiger@ca.usda.gov.

CDFA Secretary Karen Ross talks with students at CSU Chico

By Heather Hacking

“We need to reconnect farmers with consumers and create an ag-literate populace,” said Karen Ross, secretary of California Department of Food and Agriculture, who spoke to students at the Chico State University Farm Tuesday. “If people don’t understand agriculture, we lose policy that keeps our food secure.”

A fortunate outcome of the drought is that people have become more aware of ag issues, Ross said. People are “paying more attention” and learning that with drought, land isn’t farmed, which means fewer jobs and impacts to local economies.

Ross was in Chico Tuesday as guest speaker at the Chico Rotary Club. She also toured the University Farm before meeting with students and local ag leaders.

The state Department of Agriculture has a lot going on, with 400 commodities grown in the state, and ongoing efforts to prevent the spread of animal diseases, invasive species and pests.

In addition to growing products used throughout the United States, California is also a major entryway for imports, she said.

This provides many challenges. Wood packaging on cargo ships is an especially important issue for keeping pests from crossing into the United States, Ross said.

As is the case with many government programs, CDFA is doing more with less, The budget was trimmed by 33 percent in the past two years, Ross said.

The strategy, for pests and weeds for example, will be to “identify high-risk pathways,” rather than “waiting at the borders.”

One student asked about a recent proposal by the governor to eliminate grant funding for FFA ag education.

When asked how to lobby against this move, Ross said students themselves can send a powerful message. Students in the “blue jackets” of FFA can and should “stand up at school board meetings” and talk about the importance of investing in youth, she continued.

Jamie Johansson, a member of the Butte County Farm Bureau, said Assembly Bill 2033 has been introduced to reinstate the $4.1 million in grant funding that is on the chopping block.

What about conflicting messages that come from various sectors of agriculture, asked Dave Daley, an instructor at Chico State?

Ross said there is room for many different segments of the food industry — organic and conventional and all the variations in between.

“Consumers want assurance that they have a choice,” Ross said. Having many different markets also provides opportunities for producers. She said she knows many farmers who grow organic fields, as well as genetically modified foods, to meet different market demands.

Embracing diversity provides resilience, she said.

The problem is when it feels like “us vs. them.”

For students wondering which direction to go with after college, Ross encouraged young people to consider careers with CDFA and USDA. Many people are at retirement age, and a fresh workforce is welcome, she said.

For any ag producer, it’s important to be able to communicate, and to clearly express themselves through writing, she added.

The stories of the farm cannot be told in “140 characters,” the length of a Twitter entry. Also, the ability to communicate science to non-farmers will become increasingly important, Ross noted.

Another job gap will be in farm management, Ross said. A trillion dollars worth of ag assets are ready to transition to new leadership, as farmers reach older ages.

Ross said climate change is another topic frequently discussed.

Farming has always included adaptation, Ross said, from equipment use to ongoing plant research. As the world population increases and open land decreases, improvements to farming will continue. Her dream, Ross said, is that plant breeders develop plants that provide food, and also useful byproducts. Or perhaps plants will be developed that help improve groundwater problems or other land issues, Ross said.

Link to story – http://www.chicoer.com/news/ci_25228259/california-ag-secretary-takes-spin-around-chico-state

MILWAUKEE (AP) — The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Tuesday it will spend millions of dollars to help farmers and ranchers improve pastures in five Midwestern states to provide food for the nation’s struggling honeybees.

Commercial honeybees pollinate an estimated $15 billion worth of produce each year. Many beekeepers bring hives to the Upper Midwest in the summer for bees to gather nectar and pollen for food, then truck them in the spring to California and other states to pollinate everything from almonds to apples to avocadoes.

But agricultural production has been threatened by a more than decade-long decline in commercial honeybees and their wild cousins due to habitat loss and pesticide use. Colony collapse disorder, in which honeybees suddenly disappear or die, has made the problem worse, boosting losses over the winter to as much as 30 percent per year.

The USDA hopes to stem those losses by providing more areas for bees to build up food stores and strength for winter. The new program will be “a real shot in the arm” for improving bees’ habitat and food supply, said Jason Weller, chief of USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.

Dairy farmers and ranchers in Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin and the Dakotas can qualify for about $3 million to reseed pastures with alfalfa, clover and other plants appealing to both bees and livestock. Farmers also can get help building fences, installing water tanks and making other changes that better enable them to move their animals from pasture to pasture so the vegetation doesn’t become worn down. The goal is to provide higher quality food for insects and animals.

“It’s a win for the livestock guys, and it’s a win for the managed honeybee population,” Weller said. “And it’s a win then for orchardists and other specialty crop producers across the nation because then you’re going to have a healthier, more robust bee population that then goes out and helps pollinate important crops.”

The USDA is focusing on those five states because 65 percent of the nation’s estimated 30,000 commercial beekeepers bring hives there for at least part of the year. With limited funds, Weller said, the goal is to get the biggest payoff for the investment.

Corn, soybean and other farmers can qualify for money to plant cover crops, which typically go in after the regular harvest and help improve soil health, or to grow bee-friendly forage in borders and on the edges of fields.

The program is just the latest in a series of USDA efforts to reduce honeybee deaths. The agency has partnered with universities to study bee diseases, nutrition and other factors threatening colonies. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack also recently created a working group on bees to coordinate efforts across the department.

The work is already paying off with changes to once-common beekeeping practices, such as supplementing bees’ diet with high-fructose corn syrup, said David Epstein, a senior entomologist with the USDA. He noted that the quality of bees’ food is as important as the quantity.

“You can think of it in terms of yourself,” Epstein said. “If you are studying for exams in college, and you’re not eating properly and you’re existing on coffee, then you make yourself more susceptible to disease and you get sick.”

Tim Tucker, who has between 400 and 500 hives at sites in Kansas and Texas, said he may take some of his bees to South Dakota this year because the fields around his farm near Niotaze, Kan., no longer provide much food for them.

“There used to be a lot of small farms in our area that had clover and a variety of crops, whereas in the last 20 years it’s really been corn, soybean and cotton and a little bit of canola,” Tucker said. “But those crops don’t provide a lot of good nectar and pollen for bees.”

Tucker, who is president of the American Beekeeping Federation, said the last “really good” year he had was 1999, when he got more than 100 pounds of honey per hive. Last year, he averaged about 42 pounds per hive.

He hopes dairy farmers, beef cattle ranchers and others will sign up for the new USDA program by the March 21 deadline.

It’s not a “cure all,” Tucker said, but “anything we do to help provide habitat for honeybees and for native bees and pollinators is a step.”

A solar receiver in a field in Firebaugh, Calif. It is part of a project developed by WaterFX to cleanse water at a lower cost than traditional desalinization. Credit – Peter DaSilva for The New York Times

By Todd Woody

FIREBAUGH, Calif. — The giant solar receiver installed on a wheat field here in California’s agricultural heartland slowly rotates to track the sun and capture its energy. The 377-foot array, however, does not generate electricity but instead creates heat used to desalinate water.

It is part of a project developed by a San Francisco area start-up called WaterFX that is tapping an abundant, if contaminated, resource in this parched region: the billions of gallons of water that lie just below the surface. Financed by the Panoche Water District with state funds, the $1 million solar thermal desalinization plant is removing impurities from drainage water at half the cost of traditional desalinization, according to Aaron Mandell, a founder of WaterFX.

If the technology proves commercially viable — a larger plant is to be built this year — it could offer some relief to the West’s long-running water wars.

WaterFX faces a daunting and urgent task. The water is tainted with toxic levels of salt, selenium and other heavy metals that wash down from the nearby Panoche foothills, and is so polluted that it must be constantly drained to keep it from poisoning crops.

And with California facing a record-breaking drought, the spigot has gone dry for farmers that depend on long-term contracts with the federal
government’s Central Valley Project to deliver cheap water from the north. Irrigation costs are expected to double or triple as growers are forced to buy water on the spot market. “Food prices are going to go up, absolutely,” said Dennis Falaschi,manager of the Panoche Water District, as he drove his pickup truck past bone-dry fields of almond trees and grapevines on an unseasonably warm day recently.

WaterFX’s project exploits two things the Central Valley possesses in abundance — fallow land and sunshine — to cut desalinization costs.
The parabolic-shaped receiver is a standard unit made by a Colorado company called SkyFuel for solar thermal power plants. It uses a reflective
film rather than expensive mirrors to focus the sun on tubes containing mineral oil that are suspended over the solar array. As the oil warms to 248 degrees, the heat is piped into refurbished,1960s-era evaporators to generate steam. The steam then condenses fresh water and separates the salts and heavy metals. The cycle is repeated to further concentrate the brine.

WaterFX relies on off-the-shelf equipment except for a heat pump of its own design. The pump recycles excess steam for reuse through a chemical
process rather relying on an electricity-driven compressor.“It cuts the number of solar collectors you need roughly in half,” Mr. Mandell said. That savings means WaterFX can purify water using half as much energy as conventional desalinization.

During the pilot project, WaterFX produced 14,000 gallons of purified water a day. A commercial version of the plant, set to be built this year on 31 acres of land, will produce 2,200 acre-feet a year. That’s the amount of water that would cover an acre of land at a depth of one foot, or 717 million gallons. The company will store excess heat generated by the solar array in molten salt to allow the plant to operate 24 hours a day.

Mr. Mandell said WaterFX currently produces an acre-foot of water for $450. That compares to about $280 an acre-foot charged by the Central
Valley Project — when water is available. This year, farmers in the Panoche district will receive no water. Last year, they received only 20 percent of their allocation, Mr. Falaschi said. In 2012, the allocation was 40 percent. Farmers elsewhere who rely on the State Water Project to irrigate 750,000 acres of farmland will also receive no water in 2014.

For agricultural water districts like Panoche, solar thermal desalinization promises to solve two persistent problems. One is a chronic
water shortage, even in rainy years, as regulators divert water to cities and for environmental purposes, like protecting endangered fish.
The other is the growing salt contamination of agricultural land that has led farmers to abandon more than 100,000 acres in the Central Valley in recent years.

For decades, water districts like Panoche have drained salty groundwater and disposed of it in places like the San Joaquin River. But new
environmental restrictions ban that practice. WaterFX could reduce the volume of drainage water that needs to be diverted while providing a new supply of fresh water for irrigation that is not dependent on the vagaries of snowpack and rainfall in far-off parts of the state.

“This subsurface groundwater is a possible gold mine,” Mr. Falaschi said. “You’re taking a water supply that is unusable now and you’re
converting it to a usable source.”

The desalinated water is of bottled-water quality, purer than what is needed for irrigation.

“We’re creating more water that can be transferred to other markets,” said Mr. Mandell, 38, a technology entrepreneur, who co-founded the
renewable energy companies AltaRock Energy and Coskata. “In some instances, that may be water that goes into the municipal-industrial market,
which is a higher-paying market.”

Michael Hanemann, a professor of agricultural and resource economics at the University of California, Berkeley, called desalinization a hedge against future shortages and the rising price of water. “It’s a form of insurance,” he said. “The issue isn’t turning over your whole water supply to desalinization but adding to it.”

Professor Hanemann said the economic viability of WaterFX’s technology depended on how much water farmers would have to buy on expensive spot markets because of drought and climate change. The more water they buy, and the greater the uncertainty surrounding future supplies,
the more attractive desalinization becomes.

He noted that traditional desalinization plants carried high capital costs as they were often built as backup sources of water and operated
infrequently. A solar thermal desalinization plant that runs continuously and relies on free sunlight for fuel could make the technology more competitive, he said.

Standard desalinization plants rely on membranes to filter out salt and other impurities from seawater. The process, called reverse osmosis, is
expensive. Membranes must be periodically replaced, and forcing seawater through them is energy-intensive, with electricity typically accounting for around a third of operating costs.

Given the high price of desalinization, most projects have been built in water-stressed regions, like the Middle East. But as water shortages persist in California, cities like San Diego are building desalinization plants. A project under construction north of the city, for instance, carries a construction cost of $700 million.

A $30 million, federally funded reverse osmosis plant, which will also treat drainage water, is being built next to the WaterFX pilot project.
Brent Giles, a senior analyst at Lux Research, said solar thermal desalinization’s competitiveness with reverse osmosis remained to be seen.
He noted that contaminated water like that found in the Central Valley contained far less salt than seawater and required less energy to purify.

“But for specialized applications like agriculture, I can see there being some value to solar thermal desalinization, ” Mr. Giles said.

WaterFX is among a small number of efforts to use the sun to desalinate water. A company called Sundrop Farms is using solar thermal technology
similar to WaterFX’s to desalinate seawater for use in growing greenhouse crops in southern Australia.

“It’s a technology that will ultimately be able to treat hundreds of thousands of acre-feet of water without having an enormous impact on the
environment or on the economics of agriculture,” Mr. Mandell said.

Link to story – http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/17/technology/water-cleaning-technology-could-help-farmers.html

Alan Thompson of G&F Agri Service LLC looks at a tree as he manages a crew of heavy equipment operators that removed an almond orchard at Baker Farming Company in Firebaugh, Calif., on Monday, Feb. 3, 2014. The state’s drought has forced farmers to remove some almond orchards earlier than they normally would because they don’t expect to have enough irrigation water. AP Photo — Scott Smith

By Scott Smith 

With California’s agricultural heartland entrenched in drought, almond farmers are letting orchards dry up and in some cases making the tough call to have their trees torn out of the ground, leaving behind empty fields.

In California’s Central Valley, Barry Baker is one of many who hired a crew that brought in large rumbling equipment to perform the grim task in a cloud of dust.

A tractor operator drove heavy steel shanks into the ground to loosen the roots and knock the trees over. Another operator, driving a brush loader equipped with a fork-like implement on the front, scooped up the trees and root balls and pushed them into a pile, where an excavator driver grabbed them up in clusters with a clawing grapple. The trees were fed into a grinder that spit wood chips into piles to be hauled away by the truckload and burned as fuel in a power plant.

Baker, 54, of Baker Farming Company, has decided to remove 20 percent of his trees before they have passed their prime. There’s simply not enough water to satisfy all 5,000 acres of almonds, he said. “Hopefully, I don’t have to pull out another 20 percent,” Baker said, adding that sooner or later neighboring farmers will come to the same conclusion. “They’re hoping for the best. I don’t think it’s going to come.”

There are no figures yet available to show an exact number of orchards being removed, but the economic stakes and risks facing growers are clear. Almonds and other nuts are among the most high-value crops in the Central Valley — the biggest producer of such crops in the country. In 2012, California’s almond crop had an annual value of $5 billion. This year farmers say the dry conditions are forcing them to make difficult decisions.

Gov. Jerry Brown last month declared a drought emergency after the state’s driest year in recorded history.

The thirst for water has sparked political battles in Washington, D.C., over use of the state’s rivers and reservoirs. This month President Barack Obama visited the Central Valley, announcing millions of dollars in relief aid that in part will help the state’s ranchers and farmers better conserve and manage water.

Baker, who favors farming over politics, explained the math leading to his decision. Between now and the summer almond harvest, he would need to irrigate his orchards with scarce, expensive water and pay to have the trees pruned and sprayed. Bringing in bee hives to pollinate the blossoms costs nearly $500 an acre.

That all would amount to a $2.5 million gamble, without knowing if the next couple of months will bring significant rain to the valley floor and snow to the mountains. “You’d have wrapped a lot of money up in those trees to see what happens,” he said.

Removing old trees is common practice. Almond trees remain productive for about 25 years, growers said. The state’s almond farmers removed over 10,000 acres of trees in 2012, according to a report by the California Department of Food and Agriculture. Most were past their prime. No figures are available on how many orchards farmers are removing today, said department spokesman Steve Lyle.

But Alan Thompson of G&F Agri Service LLC, who leads the crew ripping out Baker’s orchards, said the drought spiked his business by 75 percent. This time of year is typically slow, but Thompson, 31, said his heavy equipment operators start at dawn each day and works until sundown, removing orchards in short order.

“We don’t even mess around with cutting them up with chain saws,” he said. “That grinder is the way to do it right there.”

Ryan Jacobsen, executive director of the Fresno County Farm Bureau, said he expects that almond growers will be removing trees through the spring and summer because of the drought. “I have no doubt permanent crops will be taken out because of this,” he added.

Tim Lynch of Agra Marketing Group said power plants in the state nearly have more wood chips from almond trees than they can handle. Lynch’s firm acts as the middle man between growers getting rid of their trees and the power plants that need bio fuel to burn. The dry weather this winter has allowed growers to work in their orchards that are typically soggy, and the drought pushed them to take out trees earlier than normal, he said.

The high value of almonds has caught the eye of investors in recent years, who paid top-dollar for land to plant almond orchards and cash in on the bonanza. Their value remains strong, making the decision for farmers to remove orchards difficult.

William Bourdeau, executive vice president of Harris Farms in Coalinga, said he and his colleagues within the next 30 days will have to confront the hard decision about scaling back their almond orchards. They’ve already decided not to plant 9,000 acres of vegetables — including 3,000 acres of lettuce that would have produced 72 million heads and generated 700,000 hours of work.

Next, they may rip out 1,000 acres of almonds, a permanent crop, Bourdeau said.

“I hesitate to use a number that big. Unfortunately, it’s going to that big or bigger,” he said, still holding out hope the season will turn wet. “We’re trying to limp along as long as we can.”

Leaving the orchards un-watered and expecting they’ll somehow survive the drought is no option, Bourdeau said, because insects infest the dying trees and multiply, spreading to other orchards.

Drawing well water is a bad option, he said. Their wells sink 2,400 feet below ground in his region of the Central Valley, providing water that’s unhealthy and compromises the crops for years, if the trees survive at all, he said.

They have considered blending well and surface water to minimize the harm. Or they can remove some almonds to direct their limited water to fewer orchards.

“There’s a lot of what-ifs,” Bourdeau said. “There’s no good decision. It’s what’s the least worse option.”

Link to article