Each analysis is based upon a hypothetical farm operation using practices common to the region. Input and reviews were provided by growers, UC Cooperative Extension farm advisors and other agricultural associates. The authors describe the assumptions used to identify current costs for individual crops, material inputs and cash and non-cash overhead. A ranging analysis table shows profits over a range of prices and yields. Other tables show the monthly cash costs, the costs and returns per acre, hourly equipment costs, and the whole farm annual equipment, investment and business overhead costs.
The studies for establishing orchards to produce lemons and oranges estimate costs for growing in Kern and Tulare counties. Revenue for the citrus is based on estimated sales to the fresh packaging market.
The study for organic strawberries takes into consideration growing conditions on the Central Coast of California and complying with the National Organic Program. In particular, it focuses on growing organic strawberries in Santa Cruz and San Benito counties for the fresh packaging market.
The study for producing paddy rice in the Sacramento Valley focuses on the costs of growing medium-grain rice, under a rice-only rotation in Butte, Colusa, Glenn and Yolo counties.
The field corn study focuses on the production costs of a full-season corn crop in the Sacramento Valley and the northern San Joaquin Valley. This region would include Colusa, Glenn, Sacramento, Sutter and Yolo counties. The study based costs on a farm using furrow irrigation and Roundup Ready-GMO seed.
The study on silage corn, double cropped under conservation tillage methods, focuses on production costs of corn silage using minimum tillage operations in the northern San Joaquin Valley. The corn is planted in the spring after a winter forage crop is harvested. The study is based its costs on a farm using border/flood irrigation and Roundup Ready-GMO seed.
- “Sample Costs to Establish an Orchard and Produce Lemons in the San Joaquin Valley-South-2015”
- “Sample Costs to Establish an Orchard and Produce Oranges in the San Joaquin Valley-South-2015”
- “Sample Costs to Produce Organic Strawberries in the Central Coast Region-2014”
- “Sample Costs to Produce Rice in the Sacramento Valley-2015”
- “Sample Costs to Produce Field Corn in the Sacramento Valley and Northern San Joaquin Valley-2015”
- “Sample Costs to Produce Silage Corn-Conservation Tillage Practices in the Northern San Joaquin Valley-2015”
These cost-of-production studies can be downloaded for free from the UC Davis Department of Agriculture and Resource Economics website http://coststudies.ucdavis.edu. Sample costs are also available for many other commodities. Many earlier production cost studies for agricultural commodities are also available at http://coststudies.ucdavis.edu/archived.php.
For additional information or an explanation of the calculations used in the studies, contact Don Stewart, staff research associate in the Department of Agriculture and Resource Economics at UC Davis at (530) 752-4651, destewart@ucdavis.edu.
- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
“Working with people who feed millions and millions of people is awesome!” exclaimed the UC ANR Cooperative Extension farm advisor emeritus for Santa Clara, Santa Cruz and San Benito counties. “Working with colleagues who share knowledge, willingly, is humbling. Working for an organization that, despite its imperfections, gets the best out of you is fulfilling.”
For the past three decades, Baameur has worked to help family farmers.
“Aziz has been a tremendous source of knowledge and information for South County growers like me,” said Pete Aiello, general manager of Uesugi Farms, Inc. in Santa Clara County.
“He has been especially helpful with my bell and chili pepper programs,” Aiello said. “From studies on irrigation efficiency to fertilizer uptake to pest management to varietal analysis, I've learned a lot about my own crops from Aziz, and have used this knowledge to improve yields and quality while decreasing inputs such as water and fertilizer.”
“This job is a gift from the gods,” Baameur said, adding, “I could have made more money – and faster – elsewhere, but I doubt I'd get the same fulfillment.”
In 2002 he transferred to Santa Clara County, where he continued to work with small-scale farmers, many of them immigrants who grow berries, bell peppers and chili peppers and Asian vegetables such as Chinese broccoli (gailan), bok choy, baby bok choy, bitter melon, daikon, Chinese chive, waterspinach, and Chinese mustard greens.
Baameur and his colleagues conducted research on specialty crops. For example, they evaluated 10 varieties of mini watermelons to provide farmers with data about how the varieties grow in different climates, their yields and quality characteristics.
An immigrant himself from Morocco, Baameur frequently brought interpreters to his meetings to translate his talks for Cantonese- and Spanish-speaking clients.
In 2005, the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board began an agricultural waiver program for water discharge, requiring that participating farmers manage their irrigation and run-off water quality. To earn the conditional waiver, growers had to complete a series of agricultural water-quality short courses. By offering the courses in Cantonese, Baameur enabled about 75 small-scale ethnic Chinese farmers to learn how to produce cleaner water run-off and reduce water waste, and thus earn the waiver.
An ethnic Chinese vegetable grower in Santa Clara County who had heard about changes in food safety regulations was concerned that although she did not speak very much English, she was expected to develop a plan and obtain a food safety certification, and that otherwise her sales contracts would be cancelled. To help her and other Chinese growers better understand the new regulations, Baameur developed a training program complete with a bilingual handbook and sample templates. He also helped her to prepare for audits and create a food safety plan specific to her farm.
“I get enormous satisfaction from the fact that I don't sell and I don't buy and I don't advertise products,” Baameur said. “The relationships are based on trust; that has no tangible value. Once in a while, when we help someone out of a tough situation and they smile and thank you, it's like a prayer sung in the still of dawn. Gives you shivers.”
“We will miss his technical expertise and his infectiously great attitude,” said Aiello of Uesugi Farms. “The UC Cooperative Extension has some big shoes to fill!”
Baameur's most recent research has been focused on trying to grow spicier jalapeño peppers by fine-tuning the amount of nitrogen applied to the plants. In retirement, he is finishing his research, but plans to pursue a few hobbies – writing, drawing, painting and photograph – and to stay physically active by hiking, biking and camping.
Baameur and his wife of 41 years, Kathy, look forward to having more time to volunteer in the community. He has joined the board of directors of San Jose-based Abrahamic Alliance International, an organization that brings together Jews, Christians and Muslims to serve the poor.
This month, a lime tree and a kumquat tree with HLB were identified in residential areas of the San Gabriel Valley. In March 2012, an infected multi-grafted citrus was found in a Hacienda Heights backyard.
“So far, the bacterium that causes HLB has been found infecting only three trees, which have all been destroyed,” said Beth Grafton-Cardwell, UC ANR Cooperative Extension citrus entomology specialist. “However, it is highly likely there are other infected trees in California. It will be critical for all Californians to assist with efforts to reduce psyllids and detect and remove infected trees to prevent this disease from devastating California citrus.”
HLB disease is spread from tree to tree by Asian citrus psyllid, an invasive insect first identified in California in 2008. ACP has become established in many Southern California communities and is seen occasionally in the state's San Joaquin Valley and Central Coast commercial citrus production areas. Locations where ACP are found are quarantined by CDFA. No untreated or unprocessed citrus fruit and no citrus trees may be moved from these areas. UC ANR maintains an online map that delineates the quarantined locations. The map also shows the area quarantined because of the recent HLB find.
Once a tree is infected with the bacterium that causes HLB, there is no cure. To prevent HLB infections, citrus owners in areas where Asian citrus psyllids are found may wish to treat their trees with insecticides.
“We believe about 60 percent of Californians have at least one citrus tree in their yard, so HLB could have a devastating effect on the California residential landscape,” Grafton-Cardwell said. “There are safe and effective ways to reduce the ACP population, which reduces the chances of losing a tree to HLB.”
Grafton-Cardwell developed a website for farmers and residents with detailed information on managing Asian citrus psyllid. In some urban areas, a natural enemy of ACP, Tamarixia radiata, has been released. In those areas, Grafton-Cardwell recommends the use of “soft” insecticides that will reduce the number of psyllids and allow the Tamarixia to control the rest.
To help California residents and commercial citrus growers deal with the ACP and HLB citrus threats, UC ANR, UC Davis and UC Riverside scientists are conducting research on a number of possible solutions.
For example, Abhaya Dandekar, professor in the Department of Plant Sciences at UC Davis, and his colleagues are studying gene fusion, which fuses two immunosuppressive genes that attack HLB in different ways to make the plant more effective at fighting the disease.
Mikeal Roose, a professor in the Department of Botany and Plant Sciences at UC Riverside, is working with researchers in Florida to sequence a rootstock that has some natural resistance to HLB and locate the gene or genes that cause HLB resistance.
Mark Hoddle, UC ANR Cooperative Extension biocontrol specialist at UC Riverside, has identified a second natural enemy of ACP from the Punjab, Pakistan. (The first one was Tamarixia radiata.) Populations of Diaphorencyrtus aligarhensis have also been released in urban areas and Hoddle is monitoring the insect's ability to attack ACP.
Because it is important to remove trees infected with HLB as soon as possible to reduce spread, UC scientists are also studying ways to identify trees with the disease before visual symptoms occur.
For example, Hailing Jin, professor in the Department of Plant Pathology at UC Riverside, has identified small RNAs that are induced by the bacterium that causes HLB and could be used for early diagnosis.
Carolyn Slupsky, professor in the Department of Food Science and Technology at UC Davis, has identified metabolites that change in concentration when citrus is infected with the bacterium that causes HLB. She is working with the Citrus Research Board (CRB), CDFA, Texas A&M, and USDA to validate her results and determine how quickly the disease may be detected once the tree has been exposed to the pathogen. She is also part of a USDA collaborative grant to study the vector that transmits the disease to help find ways to stop transmission.
Wenbo Ma, professor in the Department of Plant Pathology Microbiology at UC Riverside, has developed antibodies against proteins secreted by the HLB pathogen – revealing whether the plant is infected. These antibodies have been evaluated in California, Florida and Texas for HLB detection.
An initiative to manage endemic and invasive pests and diseases is part of UC Agriculture and Natural Resources Strategic Vision 2025.
This story is also available in Spanish.
Author: Jeannette Warnert
As farmers pump groundwater to keep their crops alive during the California drought, many of the state's aquifers are being drained rapidly. UC Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR) researchers are working on a new approach to replenish these critical underground supplies once the rains return: using farm fields as recharge basins during winter months.
Already, a number of water agencies around the state deliberately recharge groundwater supplies by spreading water on open land and allowing it to percolate into aquifers. But dedicated sites for this type of recharge are scarce. So the UC ANR team decided to figure out if some of the California's millions of acres of farms and ranches could be brought into service.
"We wanted to see if we could support a more sustainable groundwater supply," said Anthony O'Geen, a UC ANR Cooperative Extension specialist (UCCE) in the Department of Land, Air and Water Resources at UC Davis and the lead author of a peer-reviewed article on the topic in the current issue of California Agriculture journal.
Integrating data on the physical properties of soil, salinity, topography and the tolerance of crops to standing water, O'Geen and his colleagues developed an index of the suitability for groundwater recharge of land in all agricultural regions in California. One finding: As much as 3.6 million acres of agricultural land statewide has good potential for groundwater recharge.
In dry years, groundwater can account for more than half of the irrigation water used in the state. But few groundwater basins are actively recharged. Instead, they are replenished naturally -- and at an uncertain rate -- by, for instance, percolation of rainwater into soil and seepage from rivers and lakes as well as water supply canals and irrigation ditches.
Deliberately recharging groundwater allows aquifers to be managed more like surface reservoirs, and has the potential to increase the state's water storage capacity by millions of acre-feet. During periods like the current drought, there's little or no extra water available for groundwater recharge. But in wet years, it may be possible to devote substantial volumes to replenishing aquifers.
Just how much extra water might be recharged, and on what kinds of fields, are two questions the UC ANR researchers are pursuing now.
Helen Dahlke, an assistant professor in the Department of Land, Air and Water Resources at UC Davis and a co-author on O'Geen's paper, has been conducting field experiments to evaluate two main variables: How much water can be recharged over a period of several weeks, and whether all that water hurts the crops planted in the field.
So far, the results are very promising.
Over a six-week period in February, March and April, Dahlke oversaw a test in Siskiyou County in which 140 acre-feet of water were applied to 10 acres of alfalfa. That's well over twice the amount of irrigation water the field typically gets in an entire year.
"It was just pouring into the ground," Dahlke said.
The water percolated readily into the earth and the groundwater table in the vicinity of the farm rose quickly. Just as important: by June the alfalfa field that had been watered so heavily was just as healthy as a control plot. Alfalfa is known to "drown" if watered very heavily in summer months, but it appears that the winter dormancy of alfalfa is helping the crop to tolerate saturated soils for some time. Field trials near the UC Davis campus have corroborated the Siskiyou County results, Dahlke said, though additional tests in more soil types and warmer climates (e.g. the southern Central Valley) are needed.
At least two similar tests in almond orchards in the Central Valley are planned for the coming year, as are additional alfalfa trials.
Groundwater recharge on farm fields is still several big steps away from becoming widespread, O'Geen and Dahlke said. In addition to the physical and biological parameters of the practice, UC ANR researchers are also investigating infrastructure, policy and institutional barriers. The first results from that work should be available later this year, Dahlke said.
To read the groundwater study in California Agriculture, visit http://californiaagriculture.ucanr.edu.
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California Agriculture is a peer-reviewed journal of research in agricultural, human and natural resources published by UC ANR. For a free subscription, visit californiaagriculture.ucanr.edu, or write to calag@ucanr.edu.
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
These research results have broad implications for UC Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR), which employs academic professionals in Cooperative Extension offices in all California counties to share science-based agricultural production information with farmers. The study suggests that education strategies that focus on farmers' social learning preferences may result in greater application of new, often more environmentally sound, production methods.
“Agriculture is a knowledge-intensive industry,” said Matthew Hoffman, the lead author of the new study. “But in the UC Cooperative Extension system, a bottleneck in the knowledge sharing network exists because of the limited number of advisors. UC Cooperative Extension is nevertheless in a great position to nurture social learning strategies and alleviate the bottleneck.”
Hoffman, who holds a doctorate from UC Davis in geography, is the grower program coordinator for the Lodi Winegrape Commission, a winegrape marketing, research and grower outreach association in San Joaquin County. Hoffman conducted the research with Mark Lubell, professor in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at UC Davis, and Vicken Hillis, a postdoctoral researcher in Environmental Science and Policy at UC Davis.
The researchers found that the 11 highest-ranked information resources were social and experiential sources. No formal learning resource was on any region's top 10 list.
“Across all regions, respondents reported that observations of their own vineyard was the most useful learning resource,” the article said. “PCAs, vineyard field crew and other winegrape growers (not family) – all social learning resources – were the second, third and fourth most useful learning resources, respectively, across the regions.”
These results indicate that grower learning is grounded largely in personal experience and knowledge-sharing relationships. Hoffman coined the term “network-smart extension” for the extension strategies that take advantage of farmers' social learning preferences. The approach, he said, capitalizes on the social process of knowledge sharing that naturally takes place among a community of growers.
“Folks are going to share information with one another regardless, the trick is knowing how to accelerate this process by leveraging the network so that those with questions can get in touch with those who have solutions,” Hoffman said. “Network-smart extension can also be defined by its underlying principles. For example, one of the principles is that growers must know what others know. Before people can start asking around for advice about a particular agricultural problem they have, it helps to know who has the expertise they are seeking.”
(The California Agriculture journal article contains a detailed description of network-smart extension.)
In collaboration with Rodrigo Gallardo from the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, the UC ANR Cooperative Extension poultry specialist at UC Davis, Maurice Pitesky, recently consulted with Hoffman to use network-smart extension to share poultry health information. Raising backyard chickens has become increasingly popular. Since the birds are susceptible to poultry diseases, such as avian flu, Exotic Newcastle disease and Salmonella, which can threaten the health of people and of commercial poultry, it is imperative they have sources of accurate chicken health information. But with no ANR poultry advisors in California counties and over 100,000 backyard poultry premises in California, the information must be sent through other channels.
“The goal is to create a network of people who have some knowledge of poultry, who can then connect with their social networks and disseminate the latest information about nutrition, food safety, welfare, poultry health and biosecurity,” Piteskysaid.
Pitesky also created a poultry website to help backyard poultry producers find connections.
“There is a flow diagram, so if you have a food safety question, or a question about ectoparasites, you know who to contact,” Pitesky said. “It's hard to find veterinarians who treat backyard poultry. Our site has a list of 12 veterinarians in six California counties that treat poultry. The goal is to list vets in every county who can treat those birds.”
The scope of Pitesky and Gallardo's network-smart extension is much larger than the scope of a typical farm advisor nurturing connections between PCAs, farmers, consultants and allied industries. Hoffman offers some suggestions of how those connections can be encouraged.
One simple practice is regularly providing nametags for participants at extension field days and meetings.
“The principle is that you have to reduce the barriers to social interactions,” Hoffman said. “I'm less inclined to introduce myself if I don't know their name or I'm embarrassed because I talked to them before, but don't remember their name. Nametags grease the skids for social interaction.”
Another approach Hoffman has used in the Lodi Winegrape Commission's blog called the “Coffee Shop.”
“I have been very intentional about introducing the authors in our blog and newsletters in a way that's as personal as possible, including a photo of the author and contact information,” Hoffman said. “Even though it's not a face-to-face interaction, readers will know the name and face of the person and can contact that person if they have questions.”
A third simple approach is providing meeting flyers with a duplicate copy for a neighbor.
UC ANR Cooperative Extension viticulture specialist Matthew Fidelibus uses Facebook and Twitter to enhance the social network. He recently posted a picture of a withered grape cluster at the UC Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center on the San Joaquin Valley Viticulture Facebook page, which has 757 followers.
“Seems like I am seeing more bird damage than normal at Kearney this year,” he commented. “Anyone else noticing this?”
Among the responses, “Starlings and blackbirds will take whole berries. If you see broken berries and skins left, could be finches.”
Fidelibus advertised his upcoming grape field day on his Twitter feed, which has 1,474 followers.
Generally, Hoffman said, engaging in network-smart extension isn't about individual specific practices, but an overriding principle of the program that emphasizes building relationships among practitioners and encourages their engagement within their agricultural community.
“There may be no single or best way to accelerate the natural process of social learning, but extension programs must be adaptive, creative, experimental and flexible in design and execution,” the article said. “Extensionists should be willing to step outside of conventional thinking about how programs can be designed.”