http://www.dansvilleonline.com/lifestyle/x1213305601/A-growing-commodity-Female-run-farms-on-the-rise

The changing economy and Americans’ newfound interest in local, organic and artisanal foods are driving a revival of farming in this country, and the ranks of new farmers include more women than ever.

The number of female farmers has been on the rise for more than a decade, and experts expect that new census figures from the USDA this year will show even larger numbers of women turning to agriculture for a career.

Beth Holtzman, outreach education coordinator at the Women’s Agriculture Network at the University of Vermont, said changes in the way we count farmers and consumer food trends are contributing to those statistics.

“The census now recognizes that people don’t farm alone,” she said. “Farm operations aren’t typically just one farmer, and that left room for more women to be counted.”

The United States Department of Agriculture conducts an agricultural census every five years. Results of the 2012 survey aren’t available yet, but the 2007 information shows a growing trend in women-run agricultural operations.

– About 30 percent, or more than 1 million, of the country’s 3.3 million farmers were women in 2007. That was a 19 percent increase from 2002.

– Of America’s 2.2 million farms, about 14 percent were run by women.

– Between 2002 and 2007, the number of farms that had women as principal operators increased by almost 30 percent.

– Women farmers are much more likely than their male counterparts to operate specialty agricultural businesses that the USDA classifies as “other livestock farms.” For instance, women are more likely to have horse farms or hay farms. Men are more likely to have farms that specialize in grain or beef cattle.

In response to the growing number of new farms, The University of Vermont offers classes and other resources for rookie farmers, both male and female.

“We have seen a high percent- age of beginning farmers who are women,” Holtzman said. “A beginning farmer is anyone who has been in the business for 10 years or less, so that can mean daugh- ters who are taking over the family farm from their parents, or people who are choosing farming as a second career or a retirement career.”

Many new farmers — men and women — who are going in- to the field as a second job or a retirement career are choosing niche, specialty farming over large-scale, traditional commodities farming, Holtzman said. They launch small organic produce operations, goat dairy farms or other niche operations that let them sell directly to consumers, she said.

Many women who already participate in family-run conventional commodities farms are adding complementary niche operations to supplement the farm’s revenues in tough times, Holtzman said.

Some women, however, are still drawn to the large-scale, more traditional types of farming, she said.

“Female farmers are as diverse as agriculture,” Holtzman said.

The next segment in the Growing California video series, a partnership with California Grown, is “Onion Power,” a story of a California onion producer and its pioneering steps in waste reduction and renewable energy production.

The latest segment in the Growing California video series, a partnership with California Grown, is a look at the upcoming cherry season.

http://www.sacbee.com/2013/04/28/5375458/where-farm-to-fork-falls-short.html

By Elaine Corn

No sooner was the transcontinental railroad completed in 1869, than Sacramento began shipping oranges from Fair Oaks across the country.

By 1911, Sacramento County was shipping cherries and Flame Tokay grapes to New York.
If you lived in California, that food was local and still is. New Yorkers and anyone in areas that froze part of the year didn’t care that the food came 3,000 miles to delight the palate and improve human nutrition.

In the Midwest and anywhere there’s a long winter, it’s difficult to eat locally all year. That’s geography for you. But at the right time of year, farm-to-fork festivals have been held all over the country – Chicago and Naperville, Ill.; Roanoke, Ind.; and in cities in Northern Virginia, Colorado and Pennsylvania – in areas not exactly possessed of California’s Mediterranean climate nor Florida’s eternal yet humid growing season.

So you’d assume with so much food growing in our fertile region, and with the mantra of eating locally spreading like a new religion, that the rest of the world is getting less of our good stuff because we’re keeping it for ourselves.

It might come as a surprise that in the six-county area hubbed by Sacramento, of all the food grown here only 2 percent stays here. The rest ends up across the United States and around the world.

If the imperative to buy local flushes you with a twinge of guilt if you walk into a store and buy a cantaloupe from Guatemala, the pitch is twisting its way into your consciousness. Those not living in a “loca-bore” straitjacket might be curious what a Guatemalan cantaloupe tastes like and take one home. I would be malnourished were it not for the avocado. I’m sure throughout the year I’ve eaten dozens from Mexico.

The local food movement has been a long time coming, from fringe land worshippers to grocery store chains that now tout the phrase “farm-to-fork” in ads. Back in 1999, a huge nationwide food service and catering entity called Bon Appétit Management Co. required all chefs in its kitchens nationwide to purchase at least 20 percent of their ingredients from small, local growers.

That went for Minneapolis or Palo Alto, where Bon Appétit is headquartered (and not to be confused with Bon Appétit magazine). Of its 500 locations in 32 states, it mattered not whether the food was for a Midwestern university cafeteria or corporate dining rooms at Oracle, Genentech and Lucasfilm, or the restaurant at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.

The company defines a small grower as having under $5 million in sales. Local has no official distance, but Bon Appétit defines it as within a 150-mile radius of where the food will be cooked and served.

That leaves 80 percent coming from anywhere. And that’s pretty much how it works. Unless you get strident.

Nearly 20 years ago I was at a conference for the International Association of Culinary Professionals. In a workshop one afternoon, Alice Waters of Berkeley’s Chez Panisse said from her chair in the audience that we should be eating only the food grown in our ZIP code.
“Hey!” I said, springing out of my chair. “That’s not fair! A person in Minneapolis would never get a glass of orange juice.” Privately I wondered how I would use Waters’ statement in a joke.

What’s not fair is how we in California insinuate our climate expectations on others. Midwesterners and Northeasterners are never going to grow citrus, pomegranates or enough peaches to meet demand. California and other temperate states fill in.

It’s impossible to be all local, all the time, even in Sacramento. Any restaurant that bills itself as a farm-to-fork restaurant is working percentages, just like the Bon Appétit Management Co. Kurt Spataro, executive chef of the Paragary Group, twice attempted to sustain a company garden, but it needed constant staffing. A chef has a lot to do besides cook, and supervising a garden takes as much time as running several restaurants. With more than 80 boutique farms in the Sacramento area, deliveries now come direct from growers and through alternative distribution systems.

Compared with the 20 percent edict on local ingredients at Bon Appétit Management Co., Sacramento’s Ella Dining Room reports that, depending on the time of year, its locally driven menu can come in at an astounding 80 percent local for produce, dairy and such ancillary ingredients as honey, but not for mirepoix – the carrots, onions and celery needed every day for stocks.

And for obvious reasons, there’s no local chocolate, coffee, saffron, salt and pepper. At Mulvaney’s Building & Loan, the vinegar, olive oil, herbs, summer chiles, beer and wine are local, but not garlic – not yet.

Local protein is a problem. There’s not enough grass-fed, un-factory raised cattle and pigs to go around. Even the pickiest chefs choose their battles. Appropriately raised beef and pork often come here from Iowa, as if a chefs’ group handshake sealed this activity as permissible.

And what about winter and early spring when Sacramento goes lean on local? Magpie Café’s chef Ed Roehr strives for local ingredients in every dish but says, “I challenge any diner in the dead of winter to pay top dollar for anything from within a 25-mile radius. I don’t know how many people are going out to eat parsnips and curly endive.”

Sacramento may have billed itself as the America’s Farm-to-Fork Capital, but is it a gimmick? Probably, but you could do a lot worse as a city slogan than promoting an embarrassment of fresh produce from nearby growers.

Diners need to calibrate their expectations about just how much food in a restaurant is truly local. If you want farm-to-fork food at its purest, go to a certified farmers market. If you can accept that some of the food is from 200 miles away, then the “local” stuff there approaches 100 percent.

But remember, a lot of recipes start with the instructions: “Chop an onion.” Onions aren’t local. They come out of storage after arriving from Texas, Idaho, eastern Washington and Mexico. When they’re from California, they’re from the border 600 miles away.
Count on even the best of intentions being foiled by seasonal glitches in Sacramento’s bounty. We’re still relying on the triumphs of the railroad.

Elaine Corn is an award-winning cookbook author and former newspaper food editor. She reports about food for Capital Public Radio, 90.9 FM in Sacramento. Reach her at ElaineCorninForum@gmail.com

http://westernfarmpress.com/blog/honey-bee-robots-coming-agriculture

Could a robot honey bee actually pollinate an orchard or crop field? With a carbon fiber body and titanium wings, researchers say a mechanized honey bee is leading a microbot charge toward real world applications — agriculture included.

In a time of genuine bee crisis — CCD, neonicotinoid pesticide questions and varroa mite — the promise of mechanized bees is tantalizing, yet seemingly farfetched, even in an age of nanotechnology and genetic modification. For some, the idea of robotic insects carrying out nature’s perfect pollination system is agricultural heresy.

Heresy or not, researchers at the Harvard Microrobotics Lab believe they are close to bringing robot honey bees into action, maybe within a few short years — honey making is out, but pollination services are in.

The Microrobotics Lab has been working on the development of the “Robobees Project” since 2009. The prototype bee design, called a Mobee (Monolithic Bee), is built in “pop-up book” fashion, with layers of lightweight material forming the body. As described by Harvard: “In prototypes, 18 layers of carbon fiber, Kapton (a plastic film), titanium, brass, ceramic, and adhesive sheets have been laminated together in a complex, laser-cut design. The structure incorporates flexible hinges that allow the three-dimensional product — just 2.4 millimeters tall — to assemble in one movement, like a pop-up book.”

The Mobees barely have a physical shred of resemblance to bees — more like a tiny box with wings, but their structure is aimed toward functionality and not looks. Could the Mobees be programmed to autonomously fly from flower to flower as artificial pollinators? The Harvard team thinks so and the Mobees frame is built for sensory modification. “Now, I can put chips all over that. I can build in sensors and control actuators,” says Mobee designer Pratheev Sreetharan.

The weight, flight and control potential of the Mobees make for fascinating and hopeful conjecture, but far from a laboratory, could a robot bee function in an almond orchard? And even if functional, would the possibility even be financially viable? If robot bees are developed to a functional stage integrating flight control and sensory ability, the Harvard team likely will have created a miniature drone. An NPR report draws a direct line between robot bees and surveillance: “The real question hanging in the air, so to say, is how the bees themselves might be used once they’ve been endowed with the power, sensor and control mechanisms needed to fly and operate on their own. The obvious answer is surveillance of all types, whether it’s for the military in combat or scientists tracking changes in the environment or spooks keeping tabs on their targets.”

It’s easy to scoff and cast off the idea of industrial-scale production of robotic insects as the realm of dreamers, but lessons learned from technological advances over the past 100 years should mute such criticism. It’s far better to let time be the judge.

In connection with national Invasive Plant Pest and Disease Species Awareness Month, CDFA is making a new mobile app available for Californians interested in helping to keep an eye out for invasive species. The app is called “Report a Pest,” and it enables people to take photos of a suspected invasive insect or plant and send them to CDFA for evaluation. The app includes an option for GPS coordinates of the find, just in case a rapid response is necessary.

For now, the app is available for Apple iPhones and iPads and may be downloaded for free from the Apple App Store. An Android version is under development. The mobile app is an extension of the Report a Pest link on CDFA’s web site, which features more information on submitting photographs or even live samples of invasive species.

CDFA’s Divisions of Plant Health and Pest Prevention Services and Information Technology Services worked together to develop the app. The Division of Plant Health works to protect California’s food supply and environment from invasive species.

The next segment in the Growing California video series, a partnership with California Grown, is “Teen Harvesters,” a story about a farm putting young people to work and, hopefully, grooming them for future careers in agriculture.

As we celebrate Earth Day today, I would like to take a moment to talk about the future. In agriculture, we find ourselves considering a future that will include explosive population growth between now and 2050, along with projections that food demand will double. While that represents opportunity for our farmers and ranchers, the challenge they will face is meeting that demand with fewer natural resources. So agriculture is engaged at many levels evaluating efficiencies and conservation techniques that will establish a new paradigm.

At CDFA, we believe a key component is recognizing the value derived from working agricultural lands – the multiple benefits that come from farming and ranching. We call this Ecosystem Services, and it’s a recognition that that the management decisions and conservation practices of farmers and ranchers enhance open space, wildlife habitat and environmental quality; provide recreation opportunities; and offer social benefits. In our work to develop the Ecosystem Services concept, we recognize it will also inform us how we can improve environmental stewardship and enhance sustainability. Ultimately, we would like to identify how incentives can be applied to help growers with implementation costs, such as market-based trading systems. An example of this is in Michigan, where the Nature Conservancy has partnered with other organizations to offer financial incentives to farmers for groundwater recharge.

Rice growers provide an example of how Ecosystem Services work within a particular crop. Many of them are committed to conservation work on bird habitats in rice fields, enhancing the overall environmental quality of the landscape while sustainably producing a viable crop.

Looking ahead, people from different disciplines can find themselves part of the Ecosystem Services discussion. Engineers might work on water quality in agriculture to provide clean water for multiple uses. Bee experts might evaluate native pollinators and work closely with a habitat conservationist in agricultural lands to provide native pollinators to a specific region. This sort of environmental thinking will continue as our younger generation of farmers and ranchers prepares to lead us.

I am very optimistic about the next generation of farmers investing in both yield improvements and Ecosystem Services since they have grown up hearing about issues that intertwine the environment and agriculture. They will benefit from a foundation of environmental stewardship already established by their predecessors. I see future generations embracing tools that will help them effectively grow their crops while at the same time enhancing the environmental quality of their working lands. That is truly what sustainability is all about, as well as our recognition of Earth Day.