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.”

By Edward Ortiz, Sacramento Bee

The effects of cattle theft did not fully dawn on rancher Candace Owen until she got a call in 2010 from a fellow rancher. It was a heads-up alerting her that some of her cows were missing their calves.

The clue that something was amiss was each cow was “tight bagged,” the term ranchers use to describe cows with sagging udders that have not been milked.

Owen soon discovered that as many as 25 calves had been taken from her ranch in Red Bluff. She had been hit by cattle rustlers, characters that for most people exist only in history books and cowboy movies.

Cattle rustling, it turns out, has never gone away. And it’s on the rise in California and nationwide.

“It’s a terrible crime when you steal someone’s livelihood,” said Owen, whose husband’s family has been ranching in and around Tehama County for generations.

Last year, 1,317 head of cattle were reported stolen or missing in California, said Greg Lawley, chief of the state’s Bureau of Livestock Identification. That’s a 22 percent increase from what was reported before the recession.

“We assume this is an outgrowth of cattle price rise,” Lawley said.

In many instances a cow can sell easily for $1,000. Cattle prices have been increasing steadily, with prices hitting record highs in 2011 and 2012, according to the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service.

“The thing with stealing livestock, and especially cattle, is you can get 100 percent of its value, especially with unbranded animals,” Lawley said. In most cases a brand is the only way to establish ownership.

Unlike the old days, when stolen cattle were herded on horseback, today’s rustlers use trailers and trucks. “The speed of transport means you can load up a gooseneck trailer full of cattle and be in Colorado 24 hours later,” Lawley said.

In Owen’s case, an investigation by the Bureau of Livestock Identification concluded that the thieves gathered at night and herded the calves by horseback. Both cows and calves were herded into trailers. They separated the calves from the cows and dumped the cows at different places in the countryside.

Owen said losing calves deepens her loss because of all the future productivity lost. “It’s a long-term loss,” she said.

As a result, she posted a $5,000 reward.

Owen has since had some of the stolen cattle returned. A witness identified the likely suspect in that theft, but there was not enough evidence to prosecute, Owen said.

In cattle ranching, it is well known that cattle theft is, typically, an inside job, said John Suther, senior investigator with the Bureau of Livestock Identification.

“They’re neighbors. They’re employees – hired men.” said Suther. “It’s a specialized business so people with knowledge of the cattle industry are the ones stealing these animals,” he said.

Suther has the herculean task of being the only cattle theft investigator for the whole state. He has to travel thousands of miles from his home in Shasta County to do his job. The state has roughly 3 million head of cattle. Of those, about 575,000 cows are beef or range cattle, and the rest are dairy cows. Suther mainly investigates the former, since dairy cow theft is relatively rare.

Although he is does not carry a firearm, Suther has the right to pull over and inspect vehicles used in transporting cattle. A lot of what he does is brand inspections. The bureau registers 11,000 brands every year.

Last year, the bureau, returned 1,604 cattle to ranchers. The value recovered was $1.4 million.

Suther said cattle theft tends to migrate from hot spot to hot spot. This year, there seems to be a lot of theft activity in the Central Valley, Suther said.

The cattle theft problem is likely larger than people think it is, Suther said. “We feel cattle theft is completely under-reported.”

Suther said that many ranchers hesitate to report cattle stolen because they do not want to be targeted again. Other ranchers believe there is a stigma attached to being a victim of theft. Many simply assume they will lose 2 percent of their cattle and won’t investigate until unless the number of stolen cattle is quite large, he said.

The rise in cattle theft in California is part of a national trend. In 2012, more than 10,400 head of cattle and horses were reported missing or stolen to the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association – a 36 percent increase from 2010.

Central Valley cattle rancher Mark Beck has had four steers stolen this year from his ranches in Sacramento, San Joaquin and Calaveras counties. “The thieves loaded them by roadways where there is easy access,” he said. “Sometimes they shoot the cattle and butcher them where they find them.”

Beck sees it as a crime driven by economics. “The way the job market has been since 2008, people are getting desperate, and they’re stealing things,” Beck said.

Cattle theft is hard to prosecute, and when thieves are caught and brought to trial, they usually avoid paying large fines or serving much jail time.

However, that may change with Gov. Jerry Brown’s recent signing of Assembly Bill 924, which sets potential fines for stealing cattle.

The new law is music to the ears of cattle ranchers, said Justin Oldfield, vice president of government relations with the California Cattlemen’s Association. The association is the major lobbying arm of the state’s cattle ranchers and was a big proponent of the bill.

“From a judicial perspective, we’ve been disheartened over the last few years,” said Oldfield.

He said it is common for thieves, when caught, to plead guilty to stealing 10 cattle – which brings a felony charge – and plead down the charge down to a misdemeanor. “They’ll get probation,” said Oldfield. “When people are punished, it’s usually a fine and not jail time. There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of seriousness from the courts.”

The new law, which takes effect Jan. 1, makes cattle theft punishable as a felony or misdemeanor and calls for fines up to $5,000. Previously, there was no set level of fines for cattle rustling; it was up to the judge’s discretion, and fines were rarely levied. The new law also requires fines to be paid to the Bureau of Livestock Identification instead of the state’s general fund.

Oldfield is uncertain whether the new law will deter cattle theft, but he believes that it will create awareness and is a step in the right direction.

“When you’re talking about the value of a steer worth $1,000 or more, and you lose five of those – that’s a substantial impact to an operation,” he said. “It can make or break the bottom line for that year.”

http://www.sacbee.com/2013/10/27/5850087/cattle-theft-increasing-in-california.html

CDFA Secretary Karen Ross (center) with students at the 20th anniversary celebration for the Center for Land-Based Learning in Winters. Founder and State Board of Food and Agriculture President Craig McNamara is in the foreground on the right.

Earlier this week I had the honor and pleasure to help celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Center for Land-Based Learning, a non-profit organization in Winters started by California State Board of Food and Agriculture President Craig McNamara and his wife, Julie, to help connect young people with nature and agriculture.

In the last two decades, the Center has become a force in this state for its extremely effective youth development and beginning farmer education. I want to commend Craig for his vision, passion and commitment of resources to make the Center an entity that touches so many people in such positive ways and is absolutely contributing to a better future for California agriculture.  Happy Birthday, Center for Land-Based Learning!