“Pollinator Hedgerows” 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.” This segment discusses the benefits of foraging plants for honeybees and other pollinators and is a topical follow-up to the two-part series on honeybees that ran on Planting Seeds earlier this month. Also, June 17-23 was National Pollinator Week.

Scientists study modern snails, shed light on ancient humans?

By Eryn Brown

Genetic analysis of certain snails in Ireland suggests that the creeping mollusks may have arrived on the Emerald Isle when humans carried them there some 8,000 years ago — all the way from the Pyrenees Mountains between France and Spain.

In a study published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE, University of Nottingham researchers Angus Davison and Adele Grindon described how they examined DNA samples cut from the foot muscles of 880 separate individuals of the common land snail species Cepaea nemoralis. The snails, which represented 111 separate populations, were collected by researchers and volunteers throughout Europe between 2005 and 2007.

Analyzing a fragment of DNA from the mitochondrial gene COI from each sampled snail, the researchers found that most of the snails they studied from Ireland shared their genetic lineage with snails from Andorra and the eastern Pyrenees — but with few other snails from anywhere else in Europe, including nearby Britain.

The simplest explanation, they wrote, is that the snails came to Ireland in a “single historic long disperal event.”

“What we’re actually seeing might be the long lasting legacy of snails that hitched a ride, accidentally or perhaps as food, as humans traveled from the South of France to Ireland 8,000 year ago,” Davison said, in a statement.

A range of archaeological evidence supporting that interpretation, he and Grindon wrote, including “deep middens of burnt shells…found during Pyrenean cave excavations” which indicate “that humans have either been collecting or possibly ‘farming’ land snails for thousands of years, with the majority of these shells being C. nemoralis.”

In the introduction to their study, Davison and Grindon also noted that scientists have long been curious about species that are exclusive just to Ireland and the Pyrenees, including the strawberry tree, the Kerry slug and the Pyrenean glass snail. Back in 1846, the naturalist Edward Forbes called the pattern “Lusitanian.”

“If other Irish species have a similarly cryptic Lusitanian element,” Davison and Grindon wrote, ” then this raises the possibility of a more widespread and significant pattern.”

But it will take more DNA studies, they added, to know for sure that such a pattern really exists.

Several years ago, the late public television personality Huell Howser produced a series of reports called California’s Golden Fairs. One of the segments featured the Alameda County Fair in Pleasanton, which begins its 17-day run today.

California’s Golden Fairs #109 – ALAMEDA COUNTY FAIR from Huell Howser on Vimeo.

The next segment in the Growing California video series, a partnership with California Grown, is “For the Love of Olives.”

Northern California’s Feeding Crane Farms, founded in 2011, is an example of the new farming operations and farmers needed in California and the U.S.

Farm demographics continue to change in California. The average age of a farmer is 58 years old, relatively few heirs are willing to take over farms, and fewer people are interested in becoming farmers because of a variety of challenges. This dynamic is made more troublesome by the fact that food demand is expected to double worldwide by the year 2050. As a result, the opportunity and need for California farmers will be significant, and the cultivation of new farmers and ranchers is more important than ever.

Because of this, the California State Board of Food and Agriculture, which first embraced this subject in a meeting  in 2011,  devoted  its June 4^th, 2013 meeting to continue the discussion of programs that assist  new farmers and ranchers. Presentations were heard from the Center for Land-Based Learning and the California Farm Academy, founded by board president Craig McNamara; the Agriculture and Land Based Training Association (ALBA); California FFA; the California Department of Veterans Affairs; and the Farmer Veteran Coalition.

One of the beginning farmers who participated in the ALBA program spoke of the difficulties he faced as a new farmer, primarily in the distances he must travel in order to sell his products. This was met by a suggestion from board member Rodney Taylor that the farmer contact his local school district in order to acquire a more local customer, a path the farmer said he had never thought to explore.  Farm to school programs are a growing opportunity for small farmers to develop a volume-consistent customer.

The theme of the meeting was clearly established – identifying ways the board could assist the development of the next generation of farmers and ranchers. Whether they come from programs such as ALBA, are veterans returning from combat, or high school students who are excited about a life in farming, the board is committed to creating a place for each of them in California agriculture  and doing all it can to facilitate their success.