Category Archives: Uncategorized

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 … Continue reading →

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 … Continue reading →

Note – National Pollinator Week for 2014 is now underway.    OFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR June 16-23, 2014                                             … Continue reading →

A walk through any of California’s 700 certified farmers markets is all it takes to make the point: This state’s farms are something special. Our farmers are innovators —as creative as they are productive, to the tune of $42.6 billion … Continue reading →

By Eric Holthaus In a year with (practically) no water, here’s something that was inevitable: farming without any water at all. Small farms around the Bay Area are reviving an ancient technique that is just what it sounds like. Add “dry farming” … Continue reading →

By Alice Daniel Beekeeper Chris DePrada wears protective clothing to check the health of the bees for Bradshaw Honey Farm.(Alice Daniel/KQED) These are hard times for honeybees; colonies are collapsing for reasons ranging from pesticides to parasites. And with this … Continue reading →

By Julie Cart There’s not much anyone can tell Barry Sorensen about Idaho’s Big Desert that he doesn’t know. Sorensen, 72, and his brother have been running cattle in this sere landscape all their lives, and they’ve weathered every calamity … Continue reading →

The California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) is now accepting applications for the State Water Efficiency and Enhancement Program (SWEEP), authorized by emergency drought legislation (Senate Bill 103).  An estimated $10 million in competitive grant funding will be awarded … Continue reading →

Note – The farmer profiled in this story, Vonita Murray, was featured last year in CDFA’s Growing California video series. The segment can be viewed at the end of this story. ———————————————-      By Blair Anthony Robertson Farming wasn’t … Continue reading →

By Ezra Klein and Susannah Locke The future of the nations will depend on the manner of how they feed themselves, wrote the French epicurean Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin in 1826. Almost 200 years later, how nations feed themselves has gotten … Continue reading →