This is Food Day, which is described by organizers as a nationwide celebration and movement for healthy, affordable, and sustainable food. That’s something we can all get behind, and I’d like to talk a little about how it helps position us for the future.

We are part of a system that will be asked to produce roughly twice as much food by 2050, while utilizing fewer natural resources. California farmers and ranchers must prepare to meet the challenges and opportunities of a growing population at home and abroad. In Asia, we believe we’ll see an exploding middle class as we move deeper into the 21st Century, and that many of those newly-minted consumers will want the quality, safety and reliability of California products. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to travel to Asia twice over the last year. I witnessed that interest first-hand.

We are encouraged by the vision of a World Food Center at UC Davis. The Center will address perhaps the most critical issue facing society today – how to feed and nourish a growing planet in an environmentally sustainable way. Few major universities, if any, have the interdisciplinary research strength and close connection to a diversity of agricultural crops nearby to support an enterprise like this.

Now, as we consider a sustainable food production system, we recognize that it must include producers of all sizes and approaches – from those serving the export markets, to large-scale producers, to smaller-scale operations that include the farm-to-fork movement that has attracted so much interest in recent years. The California Department of Food and Agriculture is doing its own work in this arena by opening a Farm-to Fork Office, which has a special interest in healthy food for children, and in schools. While local food procurement can sometimes be a challenge for schools, this office will work to establish best practices for procurement of locally grown produce by large-scale buyers.

Ultimately, our target is young people, as evidenced by the fact that October is National Farm-to-School Month! My friend Alice Waters said it best in her blog post on the Food Day website, “The greatest thing we can do is educate and empower the next generation.” I couldn’t agree more. The most important work we do is to teach children about healthy eating and the origins of food. If it is to remain sustainable, healthy and affordable, it will be up to them.

Read the original story from the LA Times

It seems like every time you hear someone mention processed food, it’s accompanied with the words “bad” or “unhealthy,” plus a shaking finger. Unless you’re author Rachel Laudan.

Laudan challenges the contemporary food movement and its belief that processed food is the enemy. She will give a talk on “What’s Not to Love About Modern Industrially Processed Foods? A Historical Perspective,” presented by the Culinary Historians of Southern California on Nov. 9.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/20/disruptions-silicon-valleys-next-stop-the-kitchen/?_r=0

SAN FRANCISCO — Megan Miller knows that cockroaches are packed with protein and she says they can be made into a surprisingly tasty treat. But if that is a bit too avant-garde to believe, do you think you might like crickets if they were “ground up into a powder so you can’t see wings or legs?”

Ms. Miller believes you would.

She is the co-founder of Chirp Farms, a start-up firm here that is dedicated to making food like the company’s flagship Chirp bars, which are $2.50 morsels made of crickets. They are expected to arrive in stores next year.

While making food from insects might sound fascinating — or icky — the approach she is taking, treating Chirp Farms like a technology start-up rather than a food outfit, is what really makes the company interesting.

“My background is digital product development,” Ms. Miller said in an interview. “I’m using the same kinds of thinking that I used in technology start-ups while I build this food business, too.” In addition to starting Chirp Farms, she is the director of research and development for Bonnier, a publishing company.

While a growing number of start-ups like Chirp Farms have received money from big venture capital firms, exactly how these companies plan to compete with the entrenched giants of the food industry has not been clear.

Nonetheless, they are undeterred. They see a big, slow-moving market just begging to be invaded by someone with new ideas and a new way of building a business.

“What is happening right now is that Silicon Valley is starting to see opportunities for disruption in other areas besides traditional technology,” Ms. Miller said.

If this sounds familiar, it is. Just as tech took on music, first with Napsterand later with services like iTunes and Spotify; just as Amazon took on books and eventually the entire world of retailing; and just as Craigslist took on traditional classified advertising, these food start-ups think it is not so far-fetched to go after the food industry.

“The food system is bizarre and ineffectual and completely lacking in innovation,” said Josh Tetrick, founder and chief executive of Hampton Creek Foods, which makes imitation egg products using plants.

Creating a successful food company requires a lot more than just a good idea. There are government rules and regulations and competition from entrenched conglomerates with vast distribution systems.

These obstacles will not be easily overcome. But these start-ups are trying to do that by behaving like the most successful tech outfits that have gone from ideas to multibillion dollar businesses.

Some have programmers writing code to test out snacks and determine the types of ingredients that can go together. Some approach management in the same way start-ups run their operations, using a process called Agile methodology, in which project managers work in very small teams with programmers and have software development practices like Scrum that are intended to move and build products very quickly.

Essentially, they are organizing the development of food products in much the same way that tech start-ups organize code.

“You have to think in terms of scaling, like software, and that’s what Silicon Valley brings to the food start-ups, where we know how to create something small, then iterate rapidly, and finally scale it,” Ms. Miller said.

The interior of the San Francisco offices of Hampton Creek looks like a cross between Walter White’s meth lab in “Breaking Bad,” a nightclub and a standard-issue start-up. Plants that might soon be turned into substitute egg products sit along the windowsill. Thirty young (and hip) programmers, marketers and scientists zip about to loud music blaring from speakers.

Employees at the company do not talk about food as food, but rather as if they were programming an app to be sold in the iTunes store.

“While a chicken egg will never change, our idea is that we can have a product where we push updates into the system, just like Apple updates its iOS operating system.” Mr. Tetrick said. “So our mayo is version 1.0, and the next version will be 2.0, which will be less expensive and last twice as long.”

Grocery stores are starting to pay attention. Hampton Creek announced last week that it had set up a partnership with Whole Foods that would bring Just Mayo, the company’s plant-based mayonnaise, to retail shelves across the country.

Thomas Manuel, the chief executive of Nu-Tek Food Science, which makes a lower-sodium salt product, has worked in the food and agriculture industry for 43 years. He knows the difficulties of entering the business and questions if some of these food start-ups will eventually be snapped up by the giants they are trying to change or simply copied out of existence.

“Unlike other industries in technology, where people can carry patents and protect their ideas, the majority of the food industry doesn’t have that,” Mr. Manuel said. “So if you come along with a great idea and it starts to become really successful, then someone else can just come along and copy it.”

But there might be room for both entrenched corporations and start-ups in the future of the food industry.

A report issued by the United Nations this year warned that by 2050, the world’s population is expected to reach nine billion people and that there are not enough resources on the planet to feed them. The report suggested insects as a solution.

Can Silicon Valley ingenuity make eating insects appetizing to Western palates?

“As the population grows, there is not going to be enough protein for people. There is no way we can produce meat at the scale,” Ms. Miller said. “What we’re trying to do is popularize a protein that hasn’t made it into Western culture yet, and that’s going to be very disruptive.”

http://www.californiareport.org/archive/R201310181630/c

 

http://www.capitalpress.com/article/20131017/ARTICLE/131019914

There’s little that Barbara Allen-Diaz wouldn’t do to raise money for education.

The vice president of the University of California-Davis agriculture department has promised to “wear” thousands of honey bees if she can raise $2,500 by Oct. 31 for the university’s “Promise for Education” campaign.

If she can raise $5,000, she’ll eat insect larvae to promote awareness of alternative protein sources.

The pledges are part of an effort to provide more scholarships to UC students around the state in need of financial help, said Pamela Kan-Rice, spokeswoman for the Davis campus’ Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources.

“In the end, I decided to wear bees so I could highlight the importance of pollinators — and bee pollinators in particular — to the future of agriculture and food production, and the future of our planet,” Allen-Diaz told the Capital Press in an email.

Eating the larvae “enables me to highlight that there are many places in the world where insects provide a sustainable source of protein, and furthermore insects may provide a new source of protein for some human populations that are protein deficient,” she said.

Allen-Diaz will do the demonstrations with the help of Norm Gary, a retired UC-Davis entomologist. The bees will be clustered onto either a UC ANR T-shirt or banner.

The administrator will have to overcome a fear after having had numerous unpleasant encounters with bees, including when she jumped off a rock wall as a child and landed on a bee hive, receiving 11 stings on her neck and face.

Most people are afraid that bees want to sting them, Gary said, but they don’t if they’re well-fed and are near powerful synthetic queen bee odors — pheromones — which pacify them.

Gary holds the Guinness Book of World Records mark for the most bees — 109 — in his mouth. He kept them there with his mouth closed for 10 seconds. He has trained bees to perform action scenes in movies and TV shows.

Is Allen-Diaz nervous?

“You bet,” she said, “although I am probably just as nervous about eating insects and/or insect larvae.”

Allen-Diaz said she was assured that Mark Hoddle, a Cooperative Extension specialist at UC-Riverside, has experimented with lots of flavorful, edible larvae dishes.

“Thus, this is an opportunity to raise undergraduate scholarships for UC students, an opportunity to highlight the importance of agriculture and natural resources programs in UC, and an opportunity to highlight the extensive research and extension programming that we do in UC ANR,” she said.

http://www.montereyherald.com/opinion/ci_24287055/karen-ross-and-sue-sigler-feeding-those-need

By Karen Ross and Sue Sigler

It’s another day at Ocean Mist Farms in Castroville, and work crews are picking broccoli and cauliflower for two clients — with one harvest bin for retail customers and another for the state’s food banks. It’s a prime example of California farmers and ranchers doing their share to help people in need, a need that continues to grow.

One in six Americans — nearly 47 million people — and one in four children are food-insecure and must rely upon others to help them get enough to eat. In California, more than 4 million people don’t know where their next meal is coming from. In Monterey County, more than 67,000 people are food insecure.

As our nation faces epidemic rates of diet-related diseases, we have developed a deeper understanding of the value of high-quality food. Food banks around the state place a high value on distributing fresh fruits and vegetables to people in need.

Ocean Mist Farms is a stalwart supporter, contributing more than 1 million pounds of produce last year to a California Association of Food Banks (CAFB) program called Farm to Family. Not far away, a Watsonville farming operation, Driscoll Berries, donated 4 million pounds of berries last year to local food banks. This year, the state’s farmers and ranchers are expected to donate approximately 135 million pounds of product to food banks through the Farm to Family program alone. Many support other outstanding efforts, such as Ag Against Hunger in Monterey County, which provides well over 11 million pounds of produce to food banks and distribution agencies each year.

As advocates for food banks, we’re hoping the numbers will increase. One measure that may help is legislation passed last year to create a state tax credit for 10 percent of the inventoried value of fresh fruit and vegetable donations to food banks. If growers have product available but not a workable logistical operation for donations, CAFB may be able to provide funding to cover picking and pack-out costs.

CAFB is committed to moving product quickly from farm or packing house, helping to free dock, cooler and warehouse space. This can reduce farmer costs by eliminating dumping fees and allowing coolers to be emptied and turned off, saving energy costs. When a donation is accepted, CAFB provides reliable on-time pick up from a professional carrier. CAFB can move truckloads of inventory within 24 to 48 hours. Regular weekly pickups can also be scheduled.

State board (of food and agriculture) members, many of them farmers, are making contributions and encouraging friends, neighbors and associates to join in. J. Miles Reiter, CEO of Driscoll, says the objective is to get nutritious foods to people rather than the landfill.

The process is simple, said Fresno County almond grower and state board member Marvin Meyers.

“We just called our handler, told him how much product we wanted to contribute, and that was all there was to it,” he said.

We envision a day when farmers plant a small percentage of their crop for the benefit of those in need. With a streamlined food bank system in place, the availability of a tax credit and the ability to help cover some production costs, we hope all farmers and ranchers will consider joining us.

Karen Ross is California secretary of food and agriculture. Sue Sigler is executive director of the California Association of Food Banks. More information: cafoodbanks.org or, for the Farm to Family Program, SteveLinkhart@cafoodbanks.org.

This week’s meeting of the California State Board of Food and Agriculture focused on agricultural research and how the state can best position itself to meet future research needs.  With increasing on-farm challenges, research institutions need to be flexible and responsive in meeting the needs of California’s farmers and ranchers.

Research is critical for California agriculture and the public investments we make in research today will have significant advantages for our future.  We need to develop more partnerships between our agricultural organizations and our academic research institutions to leverage the outstanding research resources we have available within this state. California agriculture has had a long legacy of partnership with the UC and CSU system, but in reinvigorating this collaboration across multiple disciplines, we can see great gains for our industry.

What we heard from several farm and commodity representatives at the meeting is that improved communications are necessary to ensure research meets academic and research priorities; that there are questions and issues to be addressed regarding intellectual property protections; and that there needs to be a process to allow agriculture a seat at the table in funding and research decisions. We have world-class research institutions with the UC and CSU systems and working collaboratively with our agricultural community we can address some of the key challenges and opportunities that are before us.

“Promoting Agricultural Research that Anticipates 21st Century Challenges” is a core recommendation of the California Ag Vision.  As a convener, this Board will work with CDFA and our agricultural stakeholders to further the discussion and address concerns that could hinder the ability of California agriculture to be continue its leadership in fast-changing regional, national and global markets.

We share the concerns over the recent reports of salmonella illness connected to poultry and wish to convey our empathy for the people who have contracted illness and their families.

Food safety is a primary concern of California food producers and for California government as it works with food producers to provide a wholesome, nutritious and safe food supply for all people. All of agriculture and the food-supply chain have a responsibility to protect people from food-borne illness, and I am determined to do all I can as secretary to accomplish that to the best of our ability. The key is a commitment to continual improvement. We have that in California.

The California Department of Public Health (CDPH), which has jurisdiction over food recalls, has not requested Foster Farms to recall chickens because, with proper handling and preparation, CDPH says the product is safe for consumption. A key message for consumers is that they should follow safe food-handling practices with raw poultry, as it is a raw animal protein that is expected to have some level of naturally-occurring bacteria present. It is important to understand that cooking chicken fully to 165 degrees Fahrenheit will kill the bacteria that are present. According to Dr. Ron Chapman, director of CDPH, chicken is safe to consume as long as consumers follow that guideline and do not cross-contaminate fully cooked chicken with raw chicken juices.

The illnesses being investigated by CDPH, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the USDA have been detected over a seven-month period. These agencies are working with Foster Farms to ensure proper manufacturing processes, and to ensure proper interventions are in place to reduce the presence of naturally-occurring bacteria. Additionally, Foster Farms is continually working to implement improved processes to reduce the presence of bacteria.

The next segment in the Growing California video series, a partnership with California Grown, is “Here’s the Beef,” a story about Harris Ranch.

http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-urban-agriculture-law-20131003,0,3253879.story

SAN FRANCISCO – Sandwiched between rows of homes in the fog-kissed Mission Terrace neighborhood, Little City Gardens provides salad greens and fresh-cut flowers to local restaurants from what was once a weedy vacant lot.

Like many of California’s urban agriculture practitioners, however, Caitlyn Galloway is plagued by a key uncertainty: She is on a month-to-month lease with a landlord who must recoup the lot’s steep property taxes and may soon sell or develop.

Now, California cities and counties eager to encourage community gardens and small-scale farms in urban pockets have a novel tool at their disposal that could help solve Galloway’s problem. Legislation recently signed by Gov. Jerry Brown will allow municipalities to lower the assessed value — and property taxes — on plots of three acres or less if owners pledge to dedicate them to growing food for at least five years.

“As urban farmers one of the biggest obstacles we’ve faced is land tenure,” said Galloway, 32. “It’s a huge step for urban agriculture.”

The legislation authored by Assemblyman Phil Ting (D-San Francisco) arose from this city’s rich blend of urban ag interests: community gardens with long waiting lists, nonprofits that offer hands-on nutritional education, and small enterprises like Galloway’s that took root when officials here changed zoning laws.

The program is voluntary: Interested cities can now move forward to create “urban agriculture incentive zones.” County supervisors must then sign off. (Counties can also directly create their own zones.)

It passed the Senate unanimously and garnered just six no votes in the Assembly. Sole opposition came from the California Assessors’ Assn., which cited potential for abuse by corporate property owners who might cut deals with local government. The bill was later amended to curtail lot size.

Local governments that opt in would feel most of the pain of lost property tax revenue, while the Senate Appropriations Committee estimated the general fund hit at “less than $1 million” in increased school aid annually.

Ting, a former San Francisco assessor, described it as “a subsidy with a very limited fiscal impact. We’re trying to drive better land use for people who might have a parking lot or an empty lot they’re waiting to develop.”

For years, Ting had backed cutting-edge San Francisco policies that helped transform eyesore parcels, raising property values on entire blocks. The idea spread.

“We started to see a movement in cities all over California that have really decided they want to be growing their food,” he said. “They want to have access to agricultural space.”

The concept for the zones is a hybrid of the Wiliamson Act, which offers tax subsidies to owners of rural land maintained for agricultural purposes, and the Mills Act, under which cities may enter into contracts with private owners who receive subsidies in exchange for restoring and preserving historic buildings.

It was conceived by Nicholas Reed and Juan Carlos Cancino, Stanford Law School grads who helped launch the San Francisco Greenhouse Project, an effort to turn a lot dotted with 18 decrepit greenhouses in the Portola district into an urban agriculture showcase.

The pair also took an interest in Little City Gardens, helping Galloway with number crunching. Even if she could afford the million-dollar cost of the property she cultivates, property taxes could easily sink her. The property owner wrote a letter in support of the bill but his next steps are unclear.

They concluded that if the city wanted urban farms that didn’t rely on public land, or heavy philanthropic support, “we need to see some change in the tax law that would recognize a different use — that this wasn’t a residential or commercial use but an agricultural one,” Cancino said.

They turned to Eli Zigas, food systems and urban agriculture program manager for SPUR, a San Francisco urban planning organization. Zigas is also a member of the San Francisco Urban Agriculture Alliance — which ultimately became the bill’s sponsor — and invited Ting to hear Cancino and Reed present their idea.

Support flowed in from organizations in Sacramento, Oakland, East Palo Alto and San Diego, as well as more than half a dozen in Los Angeles County.

“Land is a premium, particularly when you have empty parcels going for hundreds of thousands of dollars,” said D’Artagnan Scorza, executive director of the Inglewood-based Social Justice Learning Initiative, who called the law a “huge market incentive for land owners who are not intending to do development.”

Scorza’s organization has already created 40 gardens in Los Angeles that donate the food they grow to needy families who live where supermarkets are scarce. They are predominantly located at schools or on other public land as well as in private yards. But the organization hopes to create a commercial farm that will create jobs while funding its educational efforts and food giveaways.

His next step is to lobby Los Angeles lawmakers to get onboard.

Elsewhere, Sacramento city officials supported the bill and have expressed interest in participating in the program, as has San Francisco Supervisor David Chiu, who is moving forward to seek local approval.

“We simply want to create the impetus and awareness for property owners that this is a viable and productive use of land,” Chiu said. “This is an option many communities are excited about.”