The 2024 UCCE Annual Strawberry Production Meeting will take place on ZOOM this coming February 14.  Registration link is here:

https://na.eventscloud.com/782075

A very good line up of speakers this time with lots of new material to partake and ponder!  Agenda linked below.

Hope you are all having a great holiday week.  I've been spending time in and out of work, doing some walking in the woods and thinking through the game plan for 2024.

Meanwhile, together with my colleagues Farm Advisor Emeritus Laura Tourte and Jeremy Murdock and Brittany Goodrich of the UC Davis Agricultural and Resource Economics department, we've completed the update of our cost of production study for fresh market primocane raspberries grown on the Central Coast.  Costs, in particular those for labor, have gone way way up so it was good to revise the study. As with our other cost of production studies, this raspberry study includes a summary of the cultural system, breaks down the costs and expected returns, with tables at the end for expected returns under a range of yield scenarios.

We very much appreciate all the input we got on this study from local growers and industry workers, who generously gave a lot of their time in providing input to make this study a good one.  Couldn't have done it without you!!

The file is attached below.

Look forward to seeing you all in 2024. 

I was noodling through the Internet the other day when I came across this gem from tech titan Jeff Bezos, who most of you know runs Amazon. In short, Jeff runs his general meetings quite differently than most of us do. For one, he spurns Powerpoint presentations (which he says are easy for the presenter, but not so much for the listener) in favor of everyone reading a very well crafted memo about the subject at hand after the meeting has begun (he calls this a "study hall"), and once everyone has completely read the memo only then discussing the topic with one another.  His point is that after people have read the whole memo, they are all literally on the same page and now can engage fully in the subject. He even goes as far to say that there is an aesthetic beauty to such a meeting because of the level of people can involve themselves into it.

Those of you have participated in meetings with me know that I tend to ask a lot of questions and make comments because I am working on getting my arms around the subject that simply l will not be able to if I am just sitting there listening.  Given the closer level of engagement on offer with Jeff's method of running meetings, I have to confess I am impressed, and seems to me worth giving it a shot sometime.

What I am NOT on board with is that Jeff does not stay to a strict schedule and his meetings often run overtime.  This is anathema to me, and will not happen on my watch.

Still, for my extension colleagues and others who are involved in getting ideas and information across at a meeting in a meaningful and effective way this is worth a try.  

One of the things those of us in the berry business on the Central Coast take for granted and don't think much about is the fog.  I was recently approached by reporter Dana Cronin of KQED on this very subject and the result in this really interesting recent article on the changing quality of fog in our area.  While it does get into some larger themes, such as the fate of redwoods in a fogless environment and real estate tips, it does include some good science and a great interview with local grower Rod Koda.

In particular, my curiosity comes from my impression and those of others that have our fogs gotten lighter?  Back in the nineties when I'd go out to coastal fields, it was THICK, so thick in fact that you would just hear the pickers working and not see them, even if they were close.  That doesn't seem to happen as much, or does it?

Does all this about climate change have anything to do with it?  In other words, if it gets hotter and bakes the ocean, does that mean we get less fog, or is it the other way around that if there is more heat inland, does that mean we get more fog?

Getting into this subject, Dana quotes CSU Monterey Bay Environmental Studies Professor Daniel Fernandez as saying first you have to define what you mean by fog, which is sort of complicated.  Generally speaking, fog means that the air consists of water droplets between one and 50 microns (essentially it's a landfallen cloud), and there must be enough of these tiny droplets that impede our vision beyond a kilometer.

For this droplet formation and density to happen, says Dr. Fernandez, there must be a temperature gradient over a given area to be conducive to fog formation.  And yes we certainly have that gradient, with cool ocean air coming into contact with hot Central Valley air especially during the summer.  Again, just by having this gradient exist doesn't mean that fog will necessarily be formed, and it cannot be forecast the way rain is.  Naturally there is disagreement within the fog science community on what climate changes would actually mean in terms of fog formation

Dr. Fernandez has been monitoring intensity with a network of fog collectors all over the state, but these haven't been established long enough to make a determination up or down on the intensity of the fog we have been experiencing.  Still, he does say that we may be in for seeing less fog than a generation ago, and this is supported by some studies which show a decline of some 30% in summertime fog since the 1950's, but this could be because there is less dirt in the air from the cleanup of our cities so the opportunity for water droplets to form is lessened.  So you can see it's sort of a complicated question to answer at the moment.

To cover what fog means for the actual berry grower,  there's great interview with local grower Rod Koda, who lives within sight of the ocean south of Watsonville and obviously knows the pattern of fog.  Rod shares that he hasn't seen major changes in fog in the many (but not too many!) decades he's been farming there.  Fog is beneficial to him, he says the berries ripen slower and so take on a higher sugar content, not to mention that the heaviest production of fruit takes place during the biggest months of fog.

All in all, this a first class story by Dana Cronin of KQED about the fog we don't pay much attention to here on the coast, yet is something so integral to our agriculture and our way of life here.

In case you missed the hyperlink embedded in my summary above, it's here too:

Bay Curious: About Fog