CDFA was welcomed today to the Integrated Climate Adaptation and Resiliency Program Technical Advisory Council. The council is a centralized source of information and resources to assist decision makers at the state, regional, and local levels as they work together to adapt to climate change. Deputy Secretary for Climate and Working Lands Virginia Jameson is representing CDFA on the council.

Jameson’s addition underscores CDFA’s continuing efforts to address resiliency and adaptation to climate change through approaches such as the State Water Efficiency Enhancement Program (SWEEP), the Healthy Soils Program, the newly-launched Pollinator Habitat Program, the Conservation Agriculture Planning Grants Program, and technical assistance programs.

“I’m excited to participate in the Integrated Climate Adaptation and Resiliency Program Technical Advisory Council,” Jameson said. “It’s important for CDFA not only to share the many efforts underway to improve resiliency in agriculture, but also to learn from other state agencies and come together to coordinate our plans, so we have a robust climate change response.” 

By Elizabeth Ireland

After four years working for the San Diego County Agriculture, Weights & Measures Department, Podder the detector dog was honored Wednesday as he heads into retirement.

County staff organized a small ceremony at the Waterfront Park to acknowledge his work. His former coworker, Yeti, the county’s other detector dog, and Venus, a retired detector dog, and other officials were there to give him a pat on the back, a scratch on the head and lots of treats and toys.

“In honor of Podder’s service, I’d like to present this Service Award for four years of county service,” said Ha Dang, commissioner/sealer for Agriculture, Weights and Measures.

The Labrador and beagle mix has worked with his handler Kyle Moranton to intercept unmarked agricultural parcels that are shipped in violation of agricultural quarantine, or contain unwanted plant pests including insects, diseases and other harmful organisms to agriculture.

“He has a great nose,” Moranton said. “I’m going to miss him.”

Podder is six years old and is retiring due to a medical condition. He has been adopted into a loving home, Moranton said.

The California Department of Food and Agriculture started its Detector Dog Team program in 2009. The dogs sniff and identify unmarked parcels — considered a high-risk pathway for pests to enter the county. Dog teams conduct inspections at shipping facilities such as UPS, FedEx and the U.S. Postal Service. Dogs are trained to alert on packages that contain agricultural material such as plants, cuttings, fruits, vegetables, seeds and soil. Those packages are then opened and checked for insects, diseases, or quarantines.

During his career, Podder made 426 visits to those facilities, where he found 728 plants in unmarked parcels, including 137 rated insect pests capable of causing serious harm to agriculture or were questionable, Moranton said.

Another San Diego County agriculture inspector is now training to become a dog handler and will join the department in the summer with a new detector dog.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nVl6wxtH5I&t=46s

Link to story on Times of San Diego web site

CDFA secretary Karen Ross recently joined UC Merced’s chancellor, Dr. Juan Sánchez Muñoz,  at a seminar on campus called “Securing a Climate Resilient Water Future for the San Joaquin Valley.” Secretary Ross and Chancellor Muñoz share common concerns given the ongoing drought, the impacts of climate change on California agriculture, the need to support rural and local economies in California’s Central Valley, and the demand for science-based research into problems and policies.

The seminar brought together multiple irrigation districts, scientific researchers at UC Merced, university administrators, and others to understand the current impacts of climate change on water resources. It was organized by Dr. Joshua Viers, who is working to make advances in data integration to build climate resilience through artificial intelligence (AI). For example, the campus is planning to host a “smart farm” that will showcase agricultural technologies and seek to develop them further to ensure food security and support sustainability.

CDFA relies on UC Merced and its scientists for critical data on drought and climate change. A professor there, Dr. Josué Medellín-Azuara, is providing important drought information on expected fallowed acreage, job loss numbers, and economic impacts. CDFA uses this information to support farmers and ranchers as they work to adapt to fundamental changes brought about by drought and climate change. 

Ag Day returns to the west steps of the State Capitol today. The grounds are open to the public at 11:30 am. If you’re in the Downtown Sacramento area we hope to see you!

From the PBS program “Inside California Education.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JA6fROKQ1A

By Virginia Jameson, CDFA Deputy Secretary for Climate and Working Lands

When it comes to public policy, the term “natural and working lands” refers to California’s farms, ranches, rangelands, forests, urban green spaces, and wetlands. These lands are home to the most diverse sources of food, fiber, and renewable energy in the country. They support the state’s water supply as well as clean air, wildlife habitat, and local and regional economies. They’re also on the leading edge of climate change and have a critical function – they sequester carbon from the atmosphere, helping us adapt to our changing climate by reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs).

In connection with AB 32, a GHG reduction bill signed into law in 2006, state government maintains a climate change scoping plan that describes the approach California will take to reduce greenhouse gas emissions statewide, including natural and working lands.       

The scoping plan is updated every five years, and the California Air Resources Board (CARB) held an update workshop this week in which it addressed a new target: achieving carbon neutrality by 2045 as opposed to simply reducing emissions.

For the first time ever, CARB is modeling a series of scenarios for managing natural and working lands to show what the climate outcomes would be under various  strategies. The results indicate that without aggressive management, these lands are at risk of generating more emissions than they actually reduce. These results underscore the importance of making sure this doesn’t happen by making our lands a “carbon sink.”  

The modeling focuses on above-ground biomass (trees and shrubs) and prioritizes what may happen to these carbon stocks because they are most at risk for wildfire. The modeling did not include many areas and practices such as total soil carbon sequestration potential, irrigated pasturelands, whole orchard recycling, and cropping systems that use little to no synthetic fertilizers. In what was modeled, however, we see that management activities such as wetlands restoration and forest thinning on natural lands, and climate-smart agriculture practices like cover cropping and no-till, can all have a significant carbon benefit.

Conservation practices, including those that the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service classifies as “climate smart,” have increased in the agriculture sector in recent years, according to a new USDA report. The authors estimate that these increases resulted in 8.8 million tons of carbon gained on cultivated cropland nationally between 2013 and 2016. And we know there are significant co-benefits of these practices, including increased performance in the face of drought due to the water holding capacity in soils, as well as increased yields and improved air and water quality. All of this makes the lands that supply our food more resilient to climate change.

CDFA is committed to ongoing collaboration with our state agency and stakeholder partners to prioritize the active management of our natural and working lands, and to incentivize and expand the use of climate smart agriculture in pursuit of carbon neutrality and climate resiliency goals.

#AgDay2022

From Morning Ag Clips

 A new U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) report shows use of no-till, crop rotations, more efficient irrigation methods and advanced technologies have climbed in recent years.

The report from USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) demonstrates progress made through voluntary conservation over a 10-year period. Findings from the report will inform future conservation strategies, including USDA’s efforts to tackle the climate crisis.

The “Conservation Practices on Cultivated Cropland: A Comparison of CEAP I and CEAP II Survey Data and Modeling” was developed by USDA’s Conservation Effects Assessment Project (CEAP). It found significant gains for soil health and soil carbon storage, while also identifying areas where additional and targeted nutrient management strategies are needed.

“This latest CEAP report shows that farmers have done an outstanding job over the years in using innovative conservation strategies that help mitigate climate change,” said NRCS Chief Terry Cosby, “But we have more work to do. Reports like this one help us better understand conservation approaches and make improvements to increase positive impacts. This report will help steer our conservation efforts well into the future to help us adapt to changing trends in production, climate and technology.”

Key findings include:

• Farmers increasingly adopted advanced technology, including enhanced-efficiency fertilizers and variable rate fertilization to improve efficiency, assist agricultural economies and benefit the environment.
• More efficient conservation tillage systems, particularly no-till, became the dominant form of tillage, improving soil health and reducing fuel use.
• Use of structural practices increased, largely in combination with conservation tillage as farmers increasingly integrated conservation treatments to gain efficiencies. Structural practices include terraces, filter and buffer strips, grassed waterways and field borders.
• Irrigation expanded in more humid areas, and as irrigators shifted to more efficient systems and improved water management strategies, per-acre water application rates decreased by 19% and withdrawals by 7 million-acre-feet.
• Nearly 70% of cultivated cropland had conservation crop rotations, and 28% had high-biomass conservation crop rotations.

Because of this increased conservation, the report estimates:

• Average annual water (sheet and rill) and wind erosion dropped by 70 million and 94 million tons, respectively, and edge-of-field sediment loss declined by 74 million tons.
• Nearly 26 million additional acres of cultivated cropland were gaining soil carbon, and carbon gains on all cultivated cropland increased by over 8.8 million tons per year.
• Nitrogen and phosphorus losses through surface runoff declined by 3% and 6%, respectively.
• Average annual fuel use dropped by 110 million gallons of diesel fuel equivalents, avoiding associated greenhouse gas emissions of nearly 1.2 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalents.

About the Report

For this report, farmer survey data was collected from 2003-2006 and again from 2013-2016. NRCS evaluates conservation practice adoption through the CEAP Cropland Assessment, using a combination of farmer surveys, land use and soils information, along with resource models. CEAP project findings are used to guide USDA conservation policy and program development, along with assisting conservationists, farmers and ranchers and other land stewards with making sound and science-based conservation decisions.

Link to story on Morning Ag Clips web site