ANR news blog

'Low carbon diet' reduces food's footprint

Every Tuesday, students at the University of San Francisco are presented with "low carbon" diet choices in the school cafeteria, according to a story in the San Jose Mercury News. Gone is cheese pizza and hamburgers. Such savory treats are being substituted with options that are equally delicious - like guacamole and cucumber relish - but are produced on farms that release less greenhouse gasses than dairies and livestock operations.

USF is one example of institutions looking at changing food consumption to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases floating into earth's atmosphere. According to the article, the United Nations reported in a 2006 publication, "Livestock's Long Shadow," that the livestock sector is responsible for 37 percent of human-caused methane release, which is 23 times more potent a heat-trapping gas than carbon dioxide. Livestock emit 65 percent of all human-caused nitrous oxide, which is nearly 300 times the potency of carbon dioxide.

Reporter Suzanna Bohen called UC Davis food systems analyst Gail Feenstra to comment on information from the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. The association's spokeswoman said that critics of beef production's ecosystem effect fail to factor in the environmentally beneficial role of grazing cattle. That includes pastureland absorbing carbon dioxide as it regrows after grazing.

"That's debatable," the article paraphased Feenstra. She is embarking on a project to measure greenhouse gases linked to all aspects of producing agricultural products in California, including feed, fertilizer, energy, transportation and numerous other facets.

Perhaps if cattle were grazing only on unfertilized grasslands, they might provide a net carbon benefit, "however, the proportion of cattle raised in this manner is extremely small," Feenstra was quoted.

A 'Perfect Storm' is not the weather California craves

UC Cooperative Extension director for Tulare County Jim Sullins says a "Perfect Storm"  brewing in the San Joaquin Valley is turning the coming spring and summer into a time of uncertainty and challenge about water, according to an article in the Porterville Recorder.

The convergence of three years of below average rain and snowfall with recent court decisions about the fate of water in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is just one of farmers' concerns.

“It’s almost a perfect storm situation. We have low commodity prices, the economic situation and now the uncertainty that the drought has brought,” Sullins was quoted in the story. “Any one of those things would have made life difficult and now we have all three.”

Reporter Jim Stone provided a breakdown of water availability in Tulare County with information from the Friant Water Authority. A FWA public information consultant told the reporter that a significant amount of Tulare County’s water depends on supplies pumped from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and delivered through the Friant-Kern Canal as a result of a complex set of water exchanges that date back to the 1870s.

The first 800,000 acre-feet of water is allocated to irrigation and water districts that carry Class 1 contracts. Any water over that amount goes to districts with Class 2 contracts. As it now stands, only 25 percent of Class 1 supply is scheduled to be delivered, leaving farmers to rely on more costly alternatives such as pumping groundwater, fallowing acreage or suspending irrigation on crops already planted.

“Some crops that are particularly vulnerable [to drought] are citrus,” Sullins was quoted in the story. “There’s not groundwater available in many of those locations.”

Without a trace

The case of the missing workers has frustrated investigators for years. There are no dead bodies and few clues; a "disease" is suspected, but can't be pinpointed. How can the culprit be foiled when there is no evidence of wrongdoing?

Entomologists all over the world are trying to figure out what, if anything, is going down in honey bee hives. The story has been widely publicized and made headlines again yesterday when the BBC News published an article and video focused on what has been called Colony Collaspe Disorder. The story notes that even that term is stirring controversy.

An Australian scientist interviewed for the article said that assigning a name without nailing down a syndrome is distracting.

"It's misleading in the fact that the general public and beekeepers and now even researchers are under the impression that we've got some mysterious disorder here in our bees," he was quoted. "And so researchers around the world are running round trying to find the cause of the disorder - and there's absolutely no proof that there's a disorder there."

The story included a video featuring UC Davis entomologist Eric Mussen. He provided information about what is perhaps one component of the problem plaguing bees, the varoa mite.

He said the mite is quite large compared to the honey bee.

"It would be sort of like having something the size of a softball running around on your body," Mussen said.

Excellent word picture.

Worker bees congregate on a hive.

Farmers' drought concerns summed up in AgAlert

The California Farm Bureau Federation's weekly publication AgAlert contains a clear and concise rundown of farmers's concerns about the 2009 California drought.

Here are some facts presented in the article, written by Steve Adler:

• Farmers who will get no water allocations are abandoning plans for planting annual crops like cotton and processing tomatoes in order to divert whatever water they have to permanent crops like almonds, pistachios and grapes
   
• These decisions will lead to 847,000 acres of fallow farmland this year, according to an estimate from economists at the UC Davis
   
• The water shortages could lead to the loss of as many as 80,000 jobs in the Central Valley, and up to 95,000 jobs statewide, according to a UC Davis economic study 
   
• It takes about 3 1/2 acre-feet of water to produce an almond crop and about 1 foot of water to keep trees alive
   
• Last year when diesel fuel hit $4 per gallon, it cost about $250 an acre-foot to pump well water 
   
• The drought has been compounded by recent regulatory decisions. Endangered Species Act protection for fish species in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta restricts movement of water from delta pumps operated by the federal Central Valley Project and the state project

 

Fresno Bee drought story highlights UC expertise

Fresno Bee reporter Robert Rodriguez opened a story in yesterday's paper about the impending drought with the thoughts of UC Davis pomologist Kenneth Shackel. According to Rodriguez' lead, Shackel is "feeling more like an emergency room doctor than an agricultural researcher."

"It's like triage," Shackel was quoted. "For some, this isn't about controlling diseases or yields, it's about survival."

Shackel was one of several UC experts whose imput was sought on the desperate efforts being planned by farmers to save water and keep their valuable permanent crops alive. Valley growers are already taking "drastic action to cope with the drought," the article said, such as bulldozing older trees, cutting off trees' canopies, and spraying chemicals that prevent fruit and nut development.

"I'm telling people that if you don't have enough water to set a crop, don't spend $150 a hive to pollinate your trees," the story quoted Brent Holtz, the Madera County UCCE farm advisor, Holtz is planning a meeting for March 31 where UC's resident deficit-irrigation expert, David Goldhamer, will speak. Goldhamer is currently working in Spain, so the reporter had Holtz explain the concept.

"What happens is that the trees will become stressed and not set much of a crop," Holtz was quoted. "But the trees stay alive."

Rodriguez spoke to Fresno County UCCE farm advisor Dan Munk about irrigating West Side crops with well water. Almond trees, unlike pistachio trees, do not tolerate high-salt, high-boron groundwater very well.

"And you could have some situations where the water is so bad that you may not want to irrigate your crop at all," Munk was quoted. "This is a tough situation."

Read more