- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
Each analysis is based upon hypothetical farm operations using practices common in the region. Input and reviews were provided by UC Cooperative Extension farm advisors, researchers, growers, farm accountants, pest control advisers, consultants and other agricultural associates.
Each report describes the assumptions used to identify current costs for the individual crops, material inputs, 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 six new cost studies are the following:
- Sample Costs to Produce Organic Walnuts, 2013, North Coast by Rachel B. Elkins, Karen M. Klonsky and Richard L. De Moura.
- Sample Costs to Produce Organic Alfalfa Hay, 2013, California by Rachael F. Long, Steve B. Orloff, Karen M. Klonsky and Richard L. De Moura.
- Sample Costs to Establish and Produce Walnuts, 2013, Northern San Joaquin Valley by Joseph A. Grant, Janet L. Caprile, David A. Doll, Kathleen Kelly Anderson, Karen M. Klonsky and Richard L. De Moura.
- Sample Costs to Establish and Produce Wine Grapes, 2013, Sacramento Valley by Chuck A. Ingels, Karen M. Klonsky and Richard L. De Moura.
- Sample Costs to Produce Blackeye Beans (double-cropped), 2013, Southern San Joaquin Valley and Sample Costs to Produce Blackeye Beans (single-cropped), 2013, Southern San Joaquin Valley by Carol A. Frate, Karen M. Klonsky and Richard L. De Moura.
The cost of production studies for these and other crops are available online at http://coststudies.ucdavis.edu, at UC Cooperative Extension offices or by calling (530) 752-3589.
For additional information about the studies, contact Richard De Moura at rdemoura@ucdavis.edu.
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
UCCE is a cooperative program involving the University of California, county government and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. A cut in the county portion of the budget prompted the move.
“Our new location costs less, but we are also losing our lab and storage space,” said UCCE Fresno County director Shannon Mueller.
Although UCCE now has less space, the location offers myriad benefits. The building has on-site security for night meetings, something that was unavailable at the former location. UCCE has access to the UC Center’s large, state-of-the-art meeting facilities and ample parking.
Along with the move, UC Cooperative Extension is forming a partnership with Madera County.
“Our goal is to reduce the administrative footprint and put more resources into our programs,” Mueller said.
The Madera County UCCE administrative functions will be handled by Mueller in the new Fresno County office, but the Madera County 4-H and Master Gardener programs will remain in the Madera County office at 328 S. Madera Ave., Madera. Many advisor positions cover both counties.
The University of California continues to make an investment in Fresno and Madera county UC Cooperative Extension programs, Mueller said.
Nut crop advisor Gurreet Brar joined the academic staff in February 2013. A new nutrition, family and consumer sciences advisor will be on the job in August. Recruitment will begin in the fall for a new small farms advisor to replace Richard Molinar, who retired in June. Other academic positions are being considered for recruitment over the next two years.
“We’re pleased that we are able to continue to build our academic staff,” Mueller said.
Other academic advisors in Fresno County UC Cooperative Extension are Kurt Hembree, weed management; Dan Munk, cotton production, irrigation and soil quality; and Tom Turini, vegetable crops. In addition to serving as director, Mueller is the advisor for agronomy, alfalfa, honeybee management, dry beans and oil seed crop production.
The Fresno County UCCE office also houses the UC CalFresh and other nutrition education programs, comprised of 25 educators and coordinators; a Master Gardener program manager; a small farms and specialty crops Hmong agricultural assistant; plus laboratory and administrative staff. A newly hired 4-H program representative joins the team at the end of July.
Media contact: Shannon Mueller, (559) 241-7527, scmueller@ucanr.edu.
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
“Oh, the freedom,” Farfan-Ramirez said, remembering her arrival in California following high school graduation.
Farfan-Ramirez became a licensed vocational nurse and worked full time to help support her brothers and sisters, who were also living in the U.S. while their parents stayed behind in Peru. Noting her potential, a doctor colleague suggested she go back to school. Farfan-Ramirezs studied public health, earning a bachelor’s degree at UC Berkeley in 1978 and a master’s degree at California State University, Hayward, in 1983.
For two years she was administrator of Mission Neighborhood Health Center, the largest public community health clinic in San Francisco, managing 160 employees.
“It was a really difficult experience,” Farfan-Ramirez said. “I left thinking I would never do administrative work again.”
In 1983, she accepted a job with UC Cooperative Extension as a nutrition educator to have more opportunity to interact directly with low-income, Spanish-speaking families in Alameda County. However, it wasn’t long before Farfan-Ramirez’ new employer tapped her administrative skills.
“The County of Alameda faced budget difficulties,” Farfan-Ramirez said. “The county director asked if I could help him mobilize clientele and negotiate with department heads and county officials to prevent them from taking Cooperative Extension out of the budget. I did, but I really didn’t want to go back into administration.”
Nevertheless, when the county director position opened up a few years later, the regional director of UCCE at the time, Nikki King, suggested Farfan-Ramirez apply.
“My father taught me to be socially responsible and a role model. I saw how the job would allow me to help Latinos and other immigrants who have problems coping with a new society,” Farfan-Ramirez said. “I learned very early in life about ‘Si se puede.’ Yes, you can do it as long as you have determination and persistence. I think I’m the only person in the system to go from nutrition educator to county director.”
The local Latino community was also pleased to see a Latino woman in the UC Cooperative Extension leadership position.
“I think I was the first Latino woman selected as a director,” Farfan-Ramirez said.
Farfan-Ramirez managed the UCCE office for 25 years and maintained an active role in addressing the nutrition needs of under-served populations in Alameda County and Bay Area. A notable example was creation of the Nutrition Education Training Academy (NETA), a program which links UCCE and early childhood education providers to expose 3- to 5-year-old children and their parents to healthy eating habits.
For 10 years, NETA has trained early childhood professionals serving low-income populations in Alameda County. The concept of early childhood education in school settings expanded to other parts of the Bay Area and the state. It also helped bring attention to the issue of childhood obesity in child care settings.
The program quality and educational materials gained recognition and several Bay Area awards. NETA materials, all written by Farfan-Ramirez, became a model for other institutions. NETA is still the only program in Alameda County offering health and wellness for 3- to 5-year-old old children in a formal school setting.
Farfan-Ramirez was among the first to recognize the impact of impaired food systems on the eating habits of inner-city families.
“I conducted a food assessment in Oakland and discovered there were no supermarkets and no farmers markets, only mom-and-pop stores,” Farfan-Ramirez said. “I realized that nutrition education addressed just one part of the problem and that we should focus on changing the environment and improving access to good food.”
Today, evaluating the food system from farm to table has become a popular pursuit, but two decades ago, it was challenging for Farfan-Ramirez to convince agriculture professionals to pay attention to nutrition and for nutrition educators to look closely at agriculture.
In the late 1990s, UC Cooperative Extension in Alameda County was one of 30 community organizations that sought to create a center for sustainable urban agriculture and food systems at the Gil Tract, about 10 acres of farmland in Albany administered by UC Berkeley. Among the goals of the project was exploring the impact of urban farming activities on the nutrition and food self sufficiency of low-income Bay Area residents. The plan didn’t come to fruition, but it demonstrated the broad-based support necessary plus challenges associated with urban agriculture.
“Berkeley was really ahead of its time,” Farfan-Ramriez said.
Farfan-Ramirez was not deterred. As a member of the organizing committee for the statewide biennial Childhood Obesity Conference, she brought attention to the importance of addressing the complete food system rather than looking at nutrition in isolation. She created a food systems track at the conference and was chair of this series of presentations at three conferences.
Now, she said, UC Cooperative Extension and society as a whole recognize the potential benefits of promoting healthful food systems.
“When that happened, and the university approved positions in this area, I decided it was my time to go,” Farfan-Ramirez said. “It was a struggle. I owe a lot to my early upbringing. I never became the president, but I think I fulfilled my father’s dream.”
Farfan-Ramirez said she is looking forward to the freedom of retirement to explore her creative side, something career demands have preempted over the years.
“I’m hoping to do theater, dancing, poetry,” Farfan-Ramirez said. “I would like to travel in Europe and make connections with Latin American cultures.”
She will also maintain her involvement in promoting the development of healthy food systems in the Bay Area and internationally.
“There is a disconnect between agriculture and food. I want to be part of those pioneers working on improving our food systems, social justice and food sovereignty,” Farfan-Ramirez said. “That might be the secret to solving our biggest public health issue, obesity."
- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
“The best thing about Ellie is that she is inspirational,” said Marin County rancher Sally Gale. “She was the kind of leader that inspired you to try things.”
“If she put on a workshop on diversification, people listened. We did,” said Gale, who farms with her husband Mike raising grass-fed cattle and sheep and organically growing apples, pears and tomatoes. “The ag community loosened up and good things started – apple growing, cheese making, bed and breakfast businesses, U Picks, etc. I think she was an agent of change here for the good.”
The Marin native earned a B.S. in biology from California State University at Chico, then an M.A. in political science from Sonoma State University.
She served as the executive director at a nonprofit in Sonoma and had just completed a multi-year stream restoration project funding by the Coastal Conservancy working with ranchers along the Sonoma coast when she learned of the UCCE opening in Marin County.
“I was familiar with UCCE because I had worked as a 4-H volunteer for the Challenge Sonoma Adventure Ropes Course and had participated in 4-H as a kid,” Rilla said.
Rilla joined the university in 1988 as UC Cooperative Extension advisor and director in Marin County. She worked with farms to prevent water pollution and with the UC Master Gardeners to promote water conservation among homeowners. In 1997, she took a sabbatical to study agritourism and after David Lewis was hired as a UC Cooperative Extension advisor specializing in water issues in 1999, Rilla turned her focus to community development through agritourism. She published the book “Agritourism and Nature Tourism in California,” which sold out and a second edition was published in 2011.
In 2010, she stepped down as UC Cooperative Extension county director to devote her time to community development in the North Bay Area.
“Ellie was very popular here in her job as director because she was sincerely interested in all of us and wanted the ag community to succeed as a whole,” Gale said. “She could see the big picture: our proud history, our struggle with meat and milk prices, our need to specialize and to define our niches, to market, to get into the farmer's markets, to set local organic standards, to communicate who we are and what we do for the environment and food supply.”
Over her career, she brought in 75 grants for various projects totaling $9 million.
“My activities and accomplishments are focused on providing local farmers and ranchers with diversification strategies,” said Rilla. “I hope this strategy will result in greater market and brand recognition for North Bay products in increased profitability, and ultimately, in long-term preservation of local agriculture. Like other agricultural areas operating along the urban-rural fringe, the viability of agriculture is at stake here.”
From 1994 to 1999, Rilla served on the board of Select Sonoma County, the first county-based marketing program in the U.S. and has been active in local branding and marketing programs including the start up of Marin Organic in 2000.
To help local farmers with branding and marketing, Rilla created the Grown in Marin program. Using grant money, she held training workshops and hired an agriculture ombudsman to help farmers promote their products. The Grown in Marin website hosts a complete listing of Marin producers and where to find their goods, current articles and press relating to sustainable agriculture, a regularly updated events calendar, historical profiles of Marin County agriculture, archived "Grown in Marin" newsletters, workshop listings, and a variety of other useful resources.
“She listened to us too,” said Gale, who recalled that after someone opined that cheese was the future, Rilla brought together people who were interested in making cheese. In 2010 she helped develop an artisan cheese certificate program at College of Marin’s Indian Valley campus. In 2011 she coauthored the book “Farmstead and Artisan Cheeses: A Guide to Building a Business.” Rilla was also involved in creating the Sonoma-Marin Cheese Trail map, which was recently featured in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times and has generated worldwide interest in the region’s products.
“I am most proud of that fact that our Cooperative Extension office is seen as a first resource for UC knowledge and information, and that I’ve had the opportunity to act as a creative conduit between UC and my community helping to solve real and pressing problems,” Rilla said.
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Jimenez has a storied California heritage. His grandmother was half Chumash Indian; his father an immigrant from Zacatecas, Mexico. The extended family of farmworkers settled in Exeter, where his grandfather, an early labor organizer, planned a strike in the 1950s, long before Cesar Chavez came on the scene. Subsequent hard feelings forced the family to migrate to other areas for work.
“My family was entrenched in farm labor,” Jimenez said. “I had the good fortune to go to college.”
Completing college wasn’t easy. He married his wife Olga right out of high school, and they immediately started a family. Jimenez worked in the fields and Olga in a packing house while they scrambled to find childcare.
Ultimately Jimenez earned a bachelor’s degree in plant sciences at Fresno State University in 1977. Not long after graduation, he was named senior agronomist for the North American Farmers Cooperative, an organization of 300 small-scale vegetable and fruit producers based in Fresno.
“We were responsible for visiting all the farmers twice annually – 600 farm calls a year,” Jimenez said. “I was overwhelmed very quickly, but learned a lot.”
While working for the cooperative, he met Pedro Ilic, then a UC Cooperative Extension advisor in Fresno County, who encouraged him to apply for a new small farm advisor position in Tulare County.
“I was hired in 1980 and have been here ever since,” Jimenez said.
Jimenez was able to make his first mark on the industry by experimenting with a novel pest control strategy for tomato pin worm on cherry tomatoes, the most valuable crop produced on small-scale farms at the time. Growers were making 15 to 20 pesticide applications per season, and the pest developed resistance to the chemical. The heavy pesticide use also killed beneficial insects that keep leaf miner in check. The result was completely defoliated plants that produced nothing.
Working with UCCE specialists at UC Riverside and UC Davis and other UCCE advisors, Jimenez conducted research proving that dispensing a non-toxic insect pheromone was an effective and economical alternative to chemical treatment.
“This research really paid off because it worked on all tomato types,” Jimenez said.
With this success, Jimenez became established as a valuable resource for the agricultural industry and had opportunities to share the research in statewide and international presentations. His primary goal, however, was sharing agricultural advancements with the small-scale growers in Tulare County. He surveyed the clientele, most of whom were Latino, and found they were unlikely to read newsletters or magazine articles to learn about agricultural technology. But they did listen to the radio.
Jimenez established a relationship with Fresno-based KGST “La Mexicana,” one of the oldest radio stations in California, and developed an agriculturally themed morning radio program in Spanish. Later he regularly appeared on a question and answer program, Entrevistas y comentarios, with host Estela Romo. The collaboration lasted 30 years, until Romo retired.
“It was a great way to reach small growers,” Jimenez said. “On the morning show, we gave them market news every week, and then we went into education on agricultural issues we felt were important – food safety, fertility, pest management.”
A difficult time in his career came during the recession of the 1980s when many small-scale producers lost their farms. The number of small farms in Tulare County dropped from 400 to 70.
“It was heart wrenching,” Jimenez said. “Small growers were so deeply in debt, when the tomato industry crashed, they lost their livelihood and way of life.”
Jimenez came to realize that market forces, more than anything else, influenced the success or failure of small farms. He began to look at new market opportunities for profitable small-scale production, and saw blueberries. New Southern highbush varieties were becoming available, and, with technology to acidify the valley’s alkaline soil, he expected it to be fairly easy to grow the healthful and valuable fruit.
In 1998, Jimenez established variety trials at the UC Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center. Each year, the planting attracts hundreds of people to the field station for the annual Blueberry Day. New varieties have been added over the years and new production practices researched. In 2012, Jimenez grafted the most common commercial blueberry varieties on the roots of farkleberry plants (Vaccinium arboreum). Farkelberry is a small, stiff-branched evergreen bush that is more tolerant of alkaline soils than blueberries.
The plants are growing well, Jimenez said. The coming years will reveal whether using this technique will improve the economic viability of California blueberry production.
Jimenez’ service to the people in his community is not limited to his work on the job. In 1993, Jimenez and his wife Olga founded Woodlake Pride, a volunteer organization that puts youth to work in innovative beautification projects throughout the community. The program aims to channel the young people’s time and energy into constructive endeavors and keep them out of trouble and street gangs. In time, Woodlake Pride created the 14-acre Bravo Lake Botanical Garden, the first agricultural botanical garden in California.
Jimenez is now working with the City of Woodlake to secure a grant to improve the safety, infrastructure and esthetics of the garden. If the $1 million grant is approved, new restrooms, drinking fountains, and fences will be added to the community park.
For his work both on the job and in Woodlake, Jimenez has received numerous awards. Among them was the first-ever Tom Haller award at the California Farm Conference in 2008. Jimenez was named the 2000 Citizen of the Year in Woodlake. He was one of three recipients of the California Peace Prize in 2011.
After working continuously since he was a youngster, Jimenez said is looking forward to traveling around the state of California when he retires.
“I was born here, but I haven’t seen a lot of it. I’ve been too busy working,” Jimenez said.
However, he won’t shirk either his professional or volunteer service. Jimenez plans to work with potential blueberry research successors to maintain the research plot at Kearney, and he is considering invitations from overseas’ companies to share his agronomic and community building expertise to a still wider audience.