As part of California’s nation-leading investment in farm to school programs, the California Department of Food and Agriculture Office of Farm to Fork (CDFA-F2F) is excited to announce $25.5 million in funding for 120 farm to school projects across the state.

In total, these projects represent 1,489,364 students, 163 school districts and educational entities, over 50 farms, four food hubs and enormous support from California’s urban, rural and suburban communities.

The 2022 California Farm to School Incubator Grant Program offered four funding tracks, with opportunities for K-12 school districts, early care and education centers, agricultural producers and farm to school partnerships to receive funding.

“Each of these projects will help us build a healthy, equitable, resilient food system, and will give California farmers more opportunities to share fresh, nutritious, delicious, and locally grown products with our schoolchildren” said CDFA Secretary Karen Ross.

The 2022 grant cycle received over $58 million in application requests and triple the number of project proposals from the previous year, highlighting the growth of farm to school across the state.

“Our investments in farm to school are investments in our health, our local economies, and our planet,” said First Partner of California Jennifer Siebel Newsom. “I am grateful for each of these projects for their commitment to supporting California children and our California farmers.”

Visit the CA Farm to School Incubator Grant Program website to view the full list of 2022 grantees. To learn more about CDFA’s farm to school programs, visit the CDFA Farm to School Program webpage.  

In recognition of Veterans Day tomorrow, here is a video from CDFA’s award-winning Growing California series on opportunities for veterans to become farmers and ranchers with assistance from the Farmer Veteran Coalition.

https://youtu.be/_FWbirZksUU

The Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF) has published an interview with Sarah Standiford of CDFA’s Produce Safety Program as part of a Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) case study series. The interview highlights how California farms can prepare for a FSMA Produce Safety Rule inspection.

The article’s Q&A format reviews the background of why CDFA performs these inspections on behalf of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the steps that occur during an inspection, and tips for farmers preparing for an inspection.

“CDFA really values ‘soft skills’ in their inspectors and we understand that growers’ farms are their livelihoods,” Standiford says in the interview. “CDFA’s Produce Safety Program is here to help farms feel comfortable with the FSMA produce safety requirements and to foster compliance with the Produce Safety Rule. It’s a shared responsibility between growers, inspectors and farm employees – we all need to work together to keep our food safe.”

Click here to read the CAFF interview, “FSMA Inspection Case Study: CDFA FMSA PSP Inspector.” 

From Morning Ag Clips

The American Star Awards, including American Star Farmer, American Star in Agribusiness, American Star in Agricultural Placement and American Star in Agriscience, are presented to FFA members who demonstrate outstanding agricultural skills and competencies through completion of an SAE (supervised agricultural experience). This year’s winner is Central Valley resident Peter Bliss.

Farming is a family business for many, but for folks like Peter Bliss, it’s more than that — it’s a lifelong dream.

“I definitely am going to farm for the rest of my life,” Bliss said. “I was about six years old when I told myself I was going to farm, and that’s what I’ve been doing ever since.”

Bliss is a member of Merced-Golden Valley FFA in central California, and his supervised agricultural experience (SAE) project sees him farming cotton, almonds and wheat. He started with only 30 acres inherited from his grandfather, but his operation has since grown to exactly 417 acres.

“I’m a fifth-generation Bliss farmer,” he said. “We started in the 1880s … and I want to continue this tradition.”

Specifically, Peter has 212 acres for cotton, 105 acres for almonds and 100 acres for wheat. Most of his land is rented, he said, but he wants to own it all someday.

In the future, Bliss plans to expand his operation by planting new kinds of crops in addition to his usual big three. In fact, he said he’s already planted corn silage just recently.

“I plan to diversify a little bit more, get into other crops like corn and hay,” Bliss said. “I’d like to grow in size. That’d be really nice.”

Although his SAE is successful now, Peter said he had a rocky start with FFA. He wasn’t satisfied with the program at his first high school, so he moved to a different high school between his sophomore and junior years.

“I just wasn’t comfortable inside the ag program,” Bliss said. “I’d say I switched [schools] solely for the purpose of FFA, and then my opportunities took off.”

He didn’t build his SAE alone, though. He said his biggest supporters are his family, his FFA advisor Cody Jacobsen, and a family friend named Scott Apupel — or, as Bliss likes to call him, “Dad Number Two.”

For FFA members starting their own SAE, his best advice is to give it your all.

“You’ve got to put in 100 percent effort,” Bliss said. “You can’t come in competing in an SAE contest … only doing 50 percent effort and trying to get 100 percent out of it. It just doesn’t work.”

Researchers at UC Merced, led by water resources management professor Dr. Josue Medellin-Azuara, have estimated direct agricultural losses due to drought total $3 billion over the last two years — $1.7 billion this year and $1.3 billion in 2021. As many as 752,000 acres of farmland could be fallowed this year because of water shortages, which could amount to a total of 2.6 million acre-feet.         

Dr. Medellin presented his initial findings this week to the California State Board of Food and Agriculture, while noting that a final report will be delivered soon.  

The research project–funded by CDFA–reports that California is in the midst of one of the hottest, driest three-year periods on record, and it also shows extensive losses in the food processing sector, with estimates reaching nearly $6 billion in 2021 and 2022, and more than 12,000 lost jobs.     

Learn more about the UC Merced research here.

When CDFA Undersecretary Christine Birdsong recently toured Yo’Ville Community Garden and Farm in Fresno, a resident-led community garden that also serves as an incubator farm, a large plot brimmed with marigold flowers being grown by historically underserved farmers.

Marigolds (cempasúchil in Spanish) feature in traditional Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) celebrations, which begin today and continue through November 2.

The occasion features decorated altars resplendent with offerings ranging from photographs of the dead to candles, keepsakes, favorite foods and drinks, and yes, marigolds.

Marigolds also hold spiritual significance in Hinduism for many of our farmers and food processing workers in places like Bakersfield, Patterson and throughout the valley, and the flowers were utilized in recent traditional Diwali observations.

“It was wonderful to see the cultural connections at Yo’Ville Community Garden, with agriculture tied to these significant holidays,” said Undersecretary Birdsong. “Our farmers and workers have personal connections to these occasions, and you can see the importance of growing these flowers for our local communities in the Central Valley.”

The Yo’Ville Farm Incubator Program recently received a grant from CDFA’s Beginning Farmer and Farmworker Training and Workforce Development Grant Program, and programs like Yo’Ville are firmly in mind with the ongoing development of the Fresno-Merced Future of Food Innovation Initiative (F3),

The Central Valley received $30 million for F3 in the 2021-2022 California State Budget, money that will be utilized to establish a Climate-Smart Agrifood Technology and Engineering Cluster while also serving the area’s approximately 4,500 historically underserved farmers, in addition to assisting workers with training to help meet agriculture’s future in technology.

And if that also means more marigolds, well, so much the better — along with the seemingly endless variety of culturally important foods, flowers, herbs, plants and other agricultural commodities that are planted and harvested in our state every day.

Today is the last day of state service for CDFA Deputy Secretary for Administration and Finance Kevin Masuhara, who is retiring after 16 years at the agency.

Masuhara has also served as CDFA’s Director of Marketing Services and as the County/State Liaison, a position that works directly with California’s agriculture commissioners and sealers of weights and measures.

As deputy secretary, Masuhara provided crucial leadership during the COVID-19 crisis, when the agency pivoted to a new workforce paradigm, first remote and then hybrid — and he has helped lead CDFA forward on equity initiatives both inside the department and among stakeholders seeking to participate in agency programs. In addition, he has guided CDFA through the booms and busts of fiscal cycles, and positioned the agency to strengthen its commitments to to leadership development, upward mobility, and succession planning.

CDFA Secretary Karen Ross: “We wish Kevin all the best in retirement but he will definitely be deeply missed. He has contributed significantly to the operations of the agency through leadership development, process improvement, emergency preparedness, and equity advancement; and as a farmer himself, he has been a tireless advocate for California’s farmers and ranchers and through his administrative leadership.”

Congratulations, Kevin!

Santiago Elementary School in Lake Forest (Orange County) is growing the next generation of water-wise Californians by encouraging students to recycle clean water for its school garden. In an Instagram post about the project the school asked, “Do you pour water from school down the drain each evening? When we see alternatives to the kitchen sink, there are lots of great ways to reuse our clean water – like giving it to plants!” CDFA applauds such forward thinking, in step with California agriculture’s water-wise practices, which have helped farmers and ranchers produce 38 percent more food with 14 percent less water over a 35-year period.

For more water-saving tips and ideas like this one, visit California’s Save Our Water website. And for more about what CDFA is doing to support the health and well-being of California students through food-based education and access to healthy foods, visit our Farm to School Program page.