- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
Carvalho named UCCE feedlot management specialist
Pedro Carvalho joined UC ANR as a UC Cooperative Extension feedlot management specialist in the UC Davis Department of Animal Science, located in Imperial County, on Aug. 1, 2020.
Carvalho grew up on his family's cattle and crop farm in the state of Goias in Brazil. In 2012, while an undergraduate, he came to the United States to work as an intern in the beef cattle reproduction and nutrition labs at The Ohio State University. After earning a bachelor's degree in animal science at Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul in Brazil, he completed a master's degree at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
He recently earned his Ph.D. at Pennsylvania State University, where he conducted research projects to enhance the efficiency of Holstein steers in the feedlot.
“My plan as an extensionist and researcher at the Desert Research and Extension Center is to first understand what the needs are from our feedlot operations in Imperial County,” Carvalho told Stacey Amparano, Farm Smart manager, who wrote a Q&A with him. “After that, I plan to implement and conduct actions (research projects and on-farm training) to help our beef producers and farmworkers. I really hope that I can bring value to our stakeholders by providing information on nutrition and management, as well as helping to train and improve the lives of the workers in feed yards of our state.”
Read the full text of Carvalho's Q&A with Stacey Amparano at https://ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=43442.
Carvalho is based at UC Desert Research and Extension Center and can be reached at pcarvalho@ucdavis.edu and (217) 418-0202.
Sorooshian honored by American Meteorological Society
Soroosh Sorooshian, distinguished professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Irvine and Director of the Center for Hydrometeorology and Remote Sensing, will receive an award from the American Meteorological Society (AMS).
AMS named Sorooshian, who is the director of UC ANR's International Rosenberg Forum on Water Policy, the recipient of its 2021 Hydrological Sciences Medal “For ingenious, groundbreaking work on surface hydrology and the remote sensing of precipitation that has profoundly impacted the field of hydrometeorology.”
The award will be presented during the AMS annual meeting scheduled to be in New Orleans Jan. 10-14, 2021.
Sacramento Valley Orchards newsletter wins award
A group of UCCE farm advisors won an award for the educational contributions of their Sacramento Valley Orchard newsletter. The Extension Division of the American Society of Horticultural Science presented an Education Materials award in the Newsletter Category for the “2019 Quarterly Publication of Almond, Walnut and Prune Sacramento Valley Newsletters.”
Coauthors of the newsletters are UCCE advisors Franz Niederholzer, Katherine Jarvis-Shean, Luke Milliron, Allan Fulton, Janine Hasey, Joe Connell, Rick Buchner, Dani Lightle and Emily Symmes, and UC Davis graduate student Drew Wolter.
Amid increasing orchard acreage, and reduced University of California Cooperative Extension orchard advisor appointments, advisors in the eight counties of the Sacramento Valley formed collaborative newsletters to increase their impact.
Quarterly newsletters for almonds, walnuts, and prunes provide a compelling model to better serve the approximately 1 million acres of tree nuts and fruit crops in the valley.
The team has created a sustained connection with more than 5,000 newsletter recipients and together published over 50 articles in 2019 alone. These articles made an even greater impact through publication on their own SacValleyOrchards.com website and frequent reprints by agricultural news media.
NOW team wins ESA IPM Team Award
The Navel Orangeworm Mating Disruption Adoption Team will receive the 2020 IPM Team Award from the Plant-Insect Ecology Section of the Entomology Society of America.
The Navel Orangeworm Mating Disruption Adoption Team is composed of
- David Haviland, UC Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program
- Bradley Higbee, Trécé, Inc.
- Charles Burks, USDS-ARS Commodity Protection and Quality Research Unit, Parlier
- Jhalendra Rijal, UC Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program
- Emily Symmes, Suterra, LLC.
- Robert Curtis, former associate director of agricultural affairs for the Almond Board of California
- Stephanie Rill, UC Cooperative Extension, Kern County
Normally the award is given in person at the ESA Annual Meeting in November, but there will be a virtual ceremony this year.
Diaz honored by state Sen. Morrell
Claudia Diaz, 4-H youth development advisor for Riverside and San Bernardino counties, recently received a prestigious award from state Senator Mike Morrell recognizing her work engaging underserved urban youth in environmental stewardship.
“She has also been instrumental in helping the Urban Conservation Corps develop greater capacity to engage youth of color in environmental education and stewardship, especially as it relates to resource development,” said Sandy Bonilla, founder of Urban Conservation Corps of the Inland Empire. “Her work engaging diverse children (Latinos, African-Americans, Native Americans) into the environmental movement is to be applauded.”
Aguiar honored by Riverside County Supervisors
In a ceremony held online due to COVID-19 constraints, Supervisor Manuel Perez presented Aguiar with a proclamation on behalf of the Riverside County Board of Supervisors, saying, “It is signed by all the supervisors and it is in gratitude for all you have done, Jose. We appreciate you, Jose. We appreciate what you have done for the agricultural industry.”
See an excerpt of Perez's remarks at https://youtu.be/SyafbarGJNU.
- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
UC Cooperative Extension in Sutter and Yuba counties is celebrating a century of serving its community.
“Earlier this year, we unexpectedly found two boxes full of our historical records,” said Janine Hasey, director of UCCE Sutter‐Yuba counties. “In those boxes were original reports and photos from 1918 through 1959 for both Sutter and Yuba counties.” The counties merged into one UCCE office in 1974 located in Yuba City.
Sutter County administrator Scott Mitnick paid tribute to UCCE in his blog, writing:
“The Community Memorial Museum of Sutter County conducted a great deal of research into the 100-year history of the Agricultural Extension and discovered that the UC Cooperative Extension has been helping to solve agricultural industry problems from its beginnings. They've tested new crops - they abandoned cotton as a failure here in 1926 - conducted demonstrations on proper tree pruning practices, advocated for the establishment of an adequate system of rural roads, and have played pivotal roles in pest management, best irrigation management practices and orchard nutrition. In 1927 they placed bees in almond orchards and yields increased by 158 percent. Varieties developed by the UC Cooperative Extension make up 85 percent of California's walnut industry. Seven years after introducing safflower in 1950, more safflower was grown in Sutter County than any other in the United States.”
With Hougen's assistance, the UCCE Sutter-Yuba staff wrote articles highlighting UCCE's contributions to the local agriculture industry, which Agricultural Commissioners Lisa Herbert of Sutter County and Steve Scheer of Yuba County published in their annual crop reports.
Beginning on page 15, the 2017 Yuba County Crop Report outlines the history of UCCE in the county, starting with the hiring of William Harrison as Yuba County's first UCCE farm advisor on July 1, 1918, then listing a timeline of contributions that resulted in economic benefit to farmers and reduced impacts on the environment.
The first two pages of the 2017 Sutter County Crop and Livestock Report list major contributions of UCCE to the county over the past 100 years, with a sidebar focusing on rice.
“Our partnership goes back to our first farm advisors, who were housed in the same buildings with the ag commissioners in each county,” Hasey said.
UCCE Sutter-Yuba staff invited elected and appointed officials, 4-H and Master Gardener volunteers, farmers, former UCCE employees, UCCE specialists and UC faculty collaborators, commodity board members and others to celebrate the local UCCE centennial Aug. 24 at John Heier Historic Howard House at the foot of the Sutter Buttes.
After dinner, the guests were given an overview of UCCE history by Chris Greer, UCCE area IPM advisor and former UCCE Sutter‐Yuba director and former ANR vice provost of Cooperative Extension. David Ramos, UCCE specialist emeritus and former California Walnut Board research director, who started his UC career as an extension assistant in Sutter County in 1959, provided his perspective on UCCE for the past 60 years.
During the event, Hasey was presented a Senate/Assembly Resolution for UCCE Sutter-Yuba by Laura Nicholson, senior district representative for state Senator Jim Nielsen, and Joe Brennan, who represented Assemblymember James Gallagher. Sutter County Supervisor Mat Conant presented Hasey with a resolution on behalf of Sutter County and Andy Vasquez, Jr., chair of the Yuba County Board of Supervisors, and Supervisor Randy Fletcher, presented a Yuba County Proclamation.
“It is recognition of our value to the community that the boards of supervisors in both counties have funded our operating budget for CE for 100 years for a non-mandated program,” Hasey said in her closing remarks. “Back in the 1920s and early 1930s, the Giannini Foundation at UC Berkeley did a six-year study on the value of Cooperative Extension in Sutter County and found it was over $3 million dollars for that time period. I'm not aware of another study that has determined the value of CE to these counties since then. We thank you, Sutter and Yuba supervisors, for supporting CE's operating budgets for 100 years!”
The Marysville Appeal-Democrat's Chris Kaufman interviewed Hasey, Ramos and local 4-H leader Nancy Perkins for an article about UCCE published Sept. 30.
“When I started in Sutter County, Hartley was the leading walnut and all the others in production were varieties that were brought in from Europe and elsewhere,” Ramos told Kaufman. “Today, virtually all the walnut acreage is almost all university-developed. It revolutionized the nature of the industry with higher quality and more production.”