What do Joseph Gallo Farms, Gills Onions and Parducci Wine Cellars have in common? Yes, they are all California farms with well-known, high-quality products, but they have something else in common. They are all past winners of a Governor’s Environmental and Economic Leadership Award (GEELA), the state’s highest environmental honor.

This year, for the first time, GEELA has an agricultural category titled “Agricultural Ecosystem Services”. This category was designed for farmers and ranchers that demonstrate innovative and sustainable approaches to water conservation, efficiency and protection of working ecosystems.

CDFA has defined Ecosystem Services in agriculture as “the multiple benefits we gain from farming and ranching including crop and livestock production. In addition to valuable open space and wildlife habitat, the management decisions and conservation practices of farmers and ranchers also enhance environmental quality, provide recreational opportunities and offer social benefits.”

CDFA recognizes there are many farmers and ranchers doing a lot on water conservation, especially in consideration of the drought.

In less than two weeks, the current application process will close for GEELA. Applications will be accepted through July 11, 2014. We hope farmers and ranchers will consider applying. Click here to apply.

CDFA Secretary Karen Ross (right) and State Board of Food and Agriculture President Craig McNamara join University of California President Janet Napolitano for her announcement of a UC Global Food Initiative.

NOTE – a video from the meeting featuring President Napolitano and Secretary Ross may be viewed at the bottom of this post 

Excerpts of UC News Release:

University of California President Janet Napolitano and chancellors from all 10 campuses are joining forces on an audacious and far-reaching goal: harnessing the collective power of UC to help put the world on a path to sustainably and nutritiously feed itself.

The initiative brings together the university’s research, outreach and campus operations in an effort to develop and export solutions throughout California, the United States and the world for food security, health and sustainability.

“It is a commitment to apply a laser focus on what UC can do as a public research university — in one of the most robust agricultural regions in the world — to take on one of the world’s most pressing issues,” Napolitano said.

The initiative will harness UC’s leadership in the fields of agriculture, medicine, nutrition, climate science, public policy, social science, biological science, humanities, arts and law, among others.

It comes at a crucial time, Napolitano said.  A billion people — most of them in the developing world — suffer from chronic hunger or serious nutritional deficiencies. More than half a billion — primarily in the industrialized nations of the world — are obese. Against this backdrop, climate change and population growth fuel additional uncertainty and urgency about how to sustainably feed the world.

Napolitano said that she and campus chancellors decided to launch the Global Food Initiative after recognizing that the university system is uniquely positioned to play a leading role in addressing the related challenges of nutrition and sustainability.

“This initiative shows great vision and leadership from President Napolitano and the University of California,” said Karen Ross, secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture. “Climate change and population growth will greatly strain our ability to provide healthy food to people here and around the world.  President Napolitano’s proposal to leverage the strategic assets of the entire UC organization makes it a valuable partner in addressing the significant challenges and opportunities for our production agriculture and food system.”

Examples of projects that will be undertaken in the first phase of the UC Global Food Initiative include:

• Expanding experiential learning, including demonstration gardens;
• Creating a course catalogue of all food-related courses available on UC campuses;
• Leveraging food purchasing power to encourage sustainable farming practices to serve nutritious fare in dining halls and cafeterias;
• Data mining of existing information to help develop insights and action plans for agriculture and responses to climate change;
• Organizing food pantries, so that food reaches hungry mouths instead of going to waste; and
• Developing policies to better enable small growers to become suppliers.

Link to full University of California news release

Secretary Ross in Fresno for an event promoting agritourism in the Central Valley.
Photo credit – Helen Tracey-Noren, Fresno Bee

By Helen Tracey-Noren

Two top state officials for agriculture and tourism paid Fresno a visit Monday to talk about how local growers can benefit from the fast-growing trend of agritourism.

About 60 agriculture and business leaders gathered at the California State University, Fresno campus to hear Food and Agriculture Secretary Karen Ross and Caroline Beteta, Visit California’s chief executive officer, explain how the CA Grown and Visit California brands will work with Sunset and Food and Wine magazines to promote agritourism.

Self-proclaimed foodies want to see where their meals comes from and meet the farmers behind this farm-to-fork movement.

“It’s about, ‘here’s what farmers and ranchers are doing as your neighbors,’ their environmental stewardship,” said Ross. “It’s about the pride of what we produce here, and it’s about this wonderful lifestyle and supporting the economy at the same time.”

Fresno County is the top producing agriculture county in the nation with the value of the 2012 crops reaching $6.5 billion. Of the $112 billion spent on tourism in 2012 in California, about a fourth of that was spent on food.

That same year, tourism brought $1.3 billion to Fresno County, according to Ross. Much of this is due to Yosemite tourists, the Blossom Trail and Fruit Trail, she said.

The Blossom Trail is a self-guided motor and bike tour of blossoming orchards along Fresno Country roads. The Fruit Trail is similar to a wine trail and features a drive through the county where visitors can taste and purchase local produce fresh from the farm.

The University of California at Davis runs the agricultural tourism directory for the state. Penny Leff, the agritourism coordinator with UC Davis and the Small Farm Program, said that from 2007 to 2012, agritourism has really picked up in California.

“Most families don’t have anyone on the farm anymore to go visit,” said Leff. “Farmers are interested in educating the public in what’s going on, what goes into making the food. They really want to share with the public and make them understand.”

According to UC data, the amount of sales from agritourism and recreation services has increased 84% in the state from 2007 to 2012, to $64.5 million.

A Sanger couple has seen the rise of agritourism first hand. Debbie Van Haun and her husband, Jim, own a bed and breakfast with a winery attached. She said that during the busy summer season, the area could use more businesses to handle all the tourists.

Van Haun said that most of their business comes from tourists traveling to Yosemite or Sequoia Kings Canyon National Parks, but they do see local couples trying to get away for an anniversary weekend.

“It’s a lot of hard work and is a labor of love,” Van Haun said. “We moved here thinking agritourism would make a difference in the area and it has.”

The couple opened Sequoia View Bed and Breakfast first about 15 years ago, and fixed up the vineyard in 2003. They produce 130 barrels, or 7,800 gallons, of mostly red wines annually.

Van Haun said that the Blossom Trail and Fruit Trail have increased the agritourism in the Sanger area, and the couple attributes much of the credit to the Fresno County Office of Tourism.

With the booming wine industry and traffic picking up at the bed and breakfast, Van Haun said she is seeing their revenue return to what it was in 2008.

Through CA Grown and Visit California, the state hopes to create the kind of interest in locally grown food to rival the desire people have for California wine, Beteta said.

CDFA continues to accept applications for the State Water Efficiency and Enhancement Program, or SWEEP. The deadline to apply is July 15, 2014.

The program is designed to provide financial assistance to agricultural operations for the implementation of water conservation measures that increase water efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Approximately $10 million has been made available for SWEEP through emergency drought legislation (Senate Bill 103).

Although CDFA is leading this effort, the development, implementation and success of this program is dependent on collaborative efforts across state and federal agencies and with multiple partners. CDFA is working closely with the State Water Board and Department of Water Resources on several aspects of the program, including program design and the collection of applications through the State Water Board’s electronic application program, the Financial Assistance Application Submittal Tool (FAAST).

The United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Natural Resources Conservation Services (NRCS) and the CDFA Environmental Farming Act Science Advisory Panel have been valuable assets by providing guidance and feedback on many aspects of program design.

SWEEP requires a high level of technical expertise to review the applications. Irrigation experts from the Cal Poly Irrigation Training and Research Center, the Center for Irrigation Technology at Fresno State and the University of California’s Cooperative Extension are partnering with CDFA to provide application technical review and recommendations for funding.

Verifying that projects are implemented at the farm level is a critical part of SWEEP. To achieve that, CDFA is partnering with the California Association of Resource Conservation Districts, which regularly works with farmers and has conservation practice experience on irrigation systems.

SWEEP was implemented under the 1995 Environmental Farming Act, which recognizes that many farmers engage in practices that contribute to the well-being of ecosystems, air quality and wildlife, and states that CDFA shall provide incentives for those practices.

California’s floriculture crop leads the nation with a value of $1.13 billion in sales, according to a new report from the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS). In 2013, California producers increased their sales from $1.10 billion to $1.13 billion, an increase of 3 percent, giving California 26.6 percent of the total U.S. wholesale value.

California cut flower production accounts for 78.2 percent of the total cut flower wholesale value. The $327 million value was down 2.7 percent from the 2012 value of $337 million.

California leads the nation in potted flowering plant values for 2013 with a total value of $297 million, a 17 percent increase in value from $253 million in 2012. California potted flowering production accounted for 38 percent of the 15-state wholesale value.

The top cut flowers in California are lilies, daisies, roses, chrysanthemums and snapdragons. The top potted flowers are orchids, roses, poinsettias, spring bulbs and chrysanthemums. The top garden plants are vegetable varieties, pansies/violas, petunias, impatiens and marigolds.

As a drought-stricken California moves further into a hot summer, Save Our Water – a partnership between the Association of California Water Agencies(ACWA) and the California Department of Water Resources(DWR) – is launching Don’t Waste Summer, a campaign devoted to providing daily tips and news to help Californians find ways to conserve at home and at work every day.

Don’t Waste Summer kicks off this week with the official start of summer. Tips will range from simple ideas such as shutting water off as you brush your teeth, to checking for and fixing leaks, to helpful ways businesses big and small can do their part in saving water during the drought. The campaign will also showcase the efforts of Save Our Water partners to conserve this summer.

A encore presentation from the Growing California video series – “Farmers’ Markets.”

This video content is no longer available.

By Edward Ortiz

GLENN COUNTY — Olive farmer Dan Kennedy scores a pellet-size olive with his fingernail. The scoring offers a burst of clear liquid. It’s a telling mix of oil and water.

For Kennedy, the oozing oil portends the olive’s promising future; the water is a testament to the olive as a drought-resistant crop.

In the midst of one of California’s worst droughts, that’s no small matter in the vast agricultural expanse of the Central Valley.

Farmers like Kennedy have taken notice. “We can produce (an olive) crop with 1 acre-foot of water per acre,” he said.

Typically, high-value crops such as almonds and rice demand – at minimum – twice as much water, if not much more.

In the Sacramento Valley, where water districts have been shrinking water allocations, the gritty olive tree, with its gnarly bark and thin, dusty-looking leaves, has become a go-to crop.

“Olives are a crop adaptable to warm and dry conditions. Most of the olives grown in the world are not irrigated,” said Dan Flynn, executive director of the Olive Center at the University of California, Davis.

Flynn holds up the olive tree as a model of a sustainable crop. “Olives, generally, are low-impact from the standpoint that they take less water than permanent tree crops, and they do not require the use of many pesticides and fungicides,” he said.

The California Olive Council, a statewide advocacy group, estimates that an increase in the planting of olive trees is a long-term trend, with 3,500 new acres expected to be planted each year in California through 2020. Most of the olive trees planted in the state have been put in within the last 15 years.

Currently, more than 35,000 acres of olive trees have been planted in the state. Most of the olives grown in Sacramento and San Joaquin counties are used to produce extra virgin olive oil. It is olives grown for olive oil that is the growth industry. Olives destined for oil usage accounted for 4 percent of the olive crop in the 1990s. That percentage rose to 46 percent in 2012, according to data.

Kennedy, who farms olives and other crops near the sleepy town of Artois in Glenn County, started with 125 acres of olives in 2006. He now farms 500 acres, with most of his crop sold to olive mills for crushing into oil.

Pressures from the drought pushed Kennedy to swap 250 acres of rice for olives. Olives began to look good when the Orland-Artois Water District cut his water allocations down to zero earlier this year, he said.

However, Kennedy must deal with another problem borne from drought: the difficulty of accessing plunging groundwater levels. Kennedy is pumping groundwater from nine wells to water his trees. The water is parsed out with a drip irrigation system.

Recently, Kennedy had to dig 50 feet deeper on three of his wells to reach groundwater. If thewater table continues to drop, he said, he will be forced to fallow some of his land.

Luckily, the olive tree is hardy. Unlike other crops, if olive trees are not watered, they will survive – and produce olives in subsequent years when water is available.

Kennedy grows his trees with what is called a “super high density” method – a vineyard-like approach where trees are tightly packed and kept short, usually under 12 feet. That approach, introduced in California in 1999, is seen as deeply economical because it allows the olives to be harvested completely by machine. Initially, the method was spurred by agricultural investors who saw high profitability in the approach.

High density groves are a far cry from the traditional image of an olive orchard, where trees are lightly, almost randomly spaced, and do not look pruned. The high density approach allows Kennedy to fit 559 trees into 1 acre. Traditional olive growing typically will assemble around 100 trees on an acre.

The rise in olive cultivation is also occurring nationwide. A U.S. International Trade Commission report last year established that production of olive oil has increased 50 percent annually, on average, since 2008. Olives are now grown in states like Georgia and Texas, and in Florida, where farmers are looking to the crop to replace citrus groves that have been ravaged by citrus greening disease. However, by far, the biggest olive grower is California, which produces 98 percent of domestically grown olives.

Brady Whitlow, president of Corto Olive in Lodi, said his company has gone from producing a few thousands gallons of olive oil in 2003 to a million gallons this year.

“This is a crop that has been around for a long time, but up until now it’s always been a boutique business,” he said.

Whitlow said he sees a great potential for the region’s olive oil producers. Presently, 97 percent of the olive oil consumed in the United States is imported. Most of it comes from Europe, especially Spain.

But scandal has rocked the European olive oil industry, where it has been established that much of the oil sold as extra virgin olive oil is actually low-quality or adulterated oil.

“Our biggest opportunity will come when consumers begin to understand that a lot of imported olive oil is not what it says it is,” Whitlow said. “Extra virgin olive oil that comes from Italy? It’s labeled extra virgin olive oil, but for the most part, it’s not. Americans are being deceived.”

Link to story

SAN DIEGO – Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. today signed a balanced, on-time state budget that pays down debt, shores up the teachers’ retirement system, builds a solid Rainy Day Fund and directs additional funding for local schools and health care.

“This on-time budget provides for today and saves for the future,” said Governor Brown. “We’re paying off the state’s credit card, saving for the next rainy day and fixing the broken teachers’ retirement system.”

The budget includes a plan of shared responsibility among the state, school districts and teachers to shore up the State Teachers’ Retirement System (STRS). The first year’s contributions from all three entities total approximately $276 million, growing in subsequent years to more than $5 billion annually. This is projected to eliminate the unfunded liability in the system by 2046.

The budget also directs $1.6 billion into the state Rainy Day Fund – the first deposit into the fund since 2007. The fund is expected to grow to $4.6 billion by 2017-18, if voters approve of the measure on the November ballot that was proposed by the Governor and passed by the Legislature.

When Governor Brown took office, the state faced a massive $26.6 billion budget deficit and estimated annual shortfalls of roughly $20 billion. These deficits, built up over a decade, have now been eliminated by a combination of budget cuts, temporary taxes approved by voters and the recovering economy.

Significant details of the 2014-15 Budget:

Paying Down Debts and Liabilities
The budget reduces the Wall of Debt by more than $10 billion by paying down $5 billion in deferred payments to schools, paying off the Economic Recovery Bonds one year ahead of schedule, repaying various special fund loans and reimbursing $100 million in mandate claims that have been owed to local governments since at least 2004. Under the budget plan, the Wall of Debt would be completely eliminated by 2017-18.

Investing in Education and Health Care
The budget continues the state’s reinvestment in local schools, providing more than $10 billion this year alone in new Proposition 98 funding. This includes $4.7 billion for the second year of implementation for the Local Control Funding Formula, which directs new education revenues to districts serving English language learners, students from low-income families and foster youth. The budget also expands the number of low-income preschool students served, increases the rates paid to preschool providers and provides grants to improve the quality of these programs.

In health care, last year the state adopted the optional expansion of Medi-Cal under the Affordable Care Act, providing millions of Californians with affordable health coverage. Enrollment is now expected to rise from 7.9 million in 2012-13 to 11.5 million in 2014-15, for a total cost increase of $2.4 billion.

Addressing Climate Change
The budget includes $872 million of Cap-and-Trade auction proceeds – authorized by AB 32 – for greenhouse gas reduction, with an emphasis on assisting disadvantaged communities. The plan will modernize the state’s rail system, including high-speed rail and public transit, and encourage local communities to develop in a sustainable manner. It will also increase energy, water and agricultural efficiency, restore forests in both urban and rural settings and create incentives for improved recycling. The budget permanently allocates 60 percent of future auction proceeds to sustainable communities, public transit and high-speed rail. The remaining proceeds will be allocated in future budgets.

Additional details on the 2014-15 budget, including line-item vetoes, can be found at www.ebudget.ca.gov.

Link to news release