- Author: Wendy Powers
Last week I visited the last of the counties, at least for my ‘initial' visit. It took a bit longer than I had hoped but California is a big state and things always seem to crop up on my calendar. Then there's a list of ‘standing meetings' like Program Council, VP Council, REC calls, CD calls, Executive Council not to mention staff meetings in 2 offices, Core Leadership, Senior Leadership, Ethics and Compliance meetings. So when I realized this morning that I have no open days in November and very few in December I really shouldn't be surprised. Even some of the UCOP holidays seem to get booked over (Veterans Day, for example).
Also of no surprise is the comment I've heard all around the state that our visits are a rare opportunity for all of the county team to come together and learn about the programs and accomplishments of their peers. I suspect that was the case for the Yolo, Solano, Sacramento group we met with last Thursday as well as the Placer-Nevada team that we saw on Friday. I heard from many that peer networking was one of the highlights of the 2018 statewide conference as well; an opportunity to see each other in an environment that had both structured and unstructured time. Time, maybe more so than funds, is what prevents all of us from connecting more. Everyone is running in many different directions in order to contribute to the greatest extent possible.
Contribution by UC ANR has also been a regular theme of my conversations around the state. In Placer-Nevada I learned that, in part due to the work of the team:
- 86% of orchard growers now mulch their orchards (up from 18% in 2005)
- 90% of orchard growers now prune
- 90% of the repeat business training participants are profitable compared to only 24.8% of respondents to the 2012 Ag Census,
- UCCE has an economic multiplier effect of 1.86 and helps contribute to the 29.2 jobs produced for every $1 mill in ag production
The first two bullet points, above, contribute to the change in conditions that are conveyed in the last two bullet points. So how does one gather the information to document change in practices/behaviors? These questions came up during our visit to the Capitol Corridor team as well as during visits with other areas of the state. Cindy can share how she collected the data, above. For similar programs, periodic survey data to growers or grower groups, or even observation by a CE Advisor may work when the grower group is small. Gathering data from CCAs, PCAs or a commodity organization are another means of gathering data. Note that the change in behaviors for mulching reflect a 13-year timespan, suggesting that one doesn't want to collect data monthly or even quarterly. In this case, there was likely research that took place over years to document effectiveness followed by communication (meetings, newsletters, blogs, one-on-one consultations) to promote adoption. That all, collectively, and with likely additional influences (price of mulch, availability of mulch, testimonials from grower colleagues, etc.) has resulted in behavior change. Likely, the science supports use of mulch as a strategy to reduce input costs, improving overall profitability. If the grower also participates in the business training classes, they are even more likely to be profitable (class surveys compared to Ag Census data) and result in more jobs to stimulate the local economy.
As we discussed in Woodland, I think there would be real value to having a chance to have unstructured time to brainstorm how we document our contribution to improved conditions. And then there's the added benefit of that chance to just network.
- Author: Wendy Powers
Tuesday afternoon I headed to Des Moines to participate in the Borlaug Dialogue and World Food Prize events. After my customary travel delays, I rose early yesterday, with only a couple hours of sleep, to attend a breakfast meeting/discussion with the 2018 Borlaug Laureates on the topic of agriculture and nutrition. The statistics presented were alarming, in both positive and negative ways:
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A $1 USD investment in nutrition leads to an economic return of $8 to $138 due to improved health outcomes
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According to the director of nutrition at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a person in Nigeria in the 4th income quintile, would spend 44% of their income to purchase an egg every day, and
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For the third consecutive year, global hunger has not declined. In fact, it has increased the last 2 years.
If you're not familiar with the Borlaug Dialogue International Symposium, it is an annual meeting to honor Norm Borlaug, father of the Green Revolution' and his work to end world hunger. I've attended regularly since my days at Iowa State. A couple of things have always surprised me. One is the small number of scientists that I have recognized over the years. The other is the lack of presence from California. These are changing, a bit. The Feed the Future Innovation Labs meet at this event now, increasing the presence of scientists. And this year, the California presence was a bit stronger. Beth Mitcham was present, perhaps due to her connection with an Innovation Lab. Also, Helene Dillard is a panelist tomorrow, talking about women leading food and agriculture research. A.G. Kawamura is here as well and was a panelist during yesterday's morning session.
I really enjoyed A.G.'s comments. He talked about his farming operation, pointing out that he is in his 40th year this year and referencing Howard Buffet's book, which I would highly recommend even for non-readers like myself. A.G.'s comments were really focused on the feasibility of farming small parcels of land owned by airports, churches, cities, etc., pointing out efforts in the area of built environments. A.G. also talked about opportunities to farm specifically for food banks, in his case working with an FFA chapter. I noticed he attended one of the side events this morning. The topic was vertical agriculture and the speaker was the owner of Skyscraper Farm. The speaker shared the company's work with Virginia Tech on an NSF INFEWS project. The company holds 2 utility patents on the building design, focused on getting light in. They envision as tall as a 52 story building (200' x 200') with 5 floors of condos, 5 floors of commercial space, a ground floor farmers market and 41 floors of growing space. An interesting concept and clearly vertical, compared to other indoor agriculture units that still have a large footprint because they don't build up.
What interested me most in the conversation was the concept of ‘speed breeding' to achieve desirable traits much faster than traditional breeding allows and even further acceleration in indoor growing environments. I need to read up on this a bit but definitely something where CA should be at the forefront.
Still more to learn before I head back.
- Author: Wendy Powers
I noticed the Davis skeleton was welcoming visitors to the building again this morning, after having spent some time in the elevator and on the exercise bike. The skeleton appears to now be waiting for a meeting to begin. I am a bit fearful that the skeleton is a past employee who suffered the effects of too many meetings. I feel that way myself at times. While the meetings themselves are important, the tradeoff is that while I am giving my full attention to the meeting topic, I'm not answering emails or getting projects completed, leaving those items to early morning, noon time, evening, and/or weekend hours. Fortunately, it is a small price to pay to be part of UC ANR and a part of the important brainstormings, discussions, and celebrations of the great work across the state.
Yesterday I was in Napa for their annual luncheon with the county. I really liked how that brief, <2 hr meeting is used to share with the county Board of Supervisors, CEO, and department heads the highlights of the work in an informal way. It's a great opportunity to thank the county for their partnership in UCCE and arm the county with good information about how the county's investment is translating to important outcomes for county residents. David referred to it as their way of providing a live annual report.
Today is a rare day when I have just a couple of meetings, allowing time to catch up on yesterday's email and the ‘to do' list as well as rest up for a full day of meetings on Friday. It's odd that the week seems a bit slow Tues-Thurs but back-to-back with things all day each of Monday and Friday.
Saturday is the Orange County Farm Bureau/UC ANR steak fry. I like the idea of attending for the third consecutive year because I have a chance to reconnect with partners, supporters, volunteers, and clientele that I don't normally see when I am at South Coast. In addition, I have a chance to say hi to the South Coast team. It makes for a quick trip, but long enough that I can get out of yard work for the weekend.
- Author: Wendy Powers
To clarify, it was not that I did not have anything to do last week; I just didn't have many meetings scheduled. The week of few meetings is clearly over. It was actually over by Friday when the day was very much focused on doing things differently in order to gain better position going forward.
One of the remarks I heard on Friday was “if you only aim for the moon, you'll never get out of the atmosphere”. Normally, I consider myself as one who is open to change and able to think big. But I had sat with a group of entrepreneurs the evening before who had me wondering if I might be stuck a bit and with limited imagination. The individual immediately next to me talked about some of his plans for development in his home country of Grenada and he clearly aimed well past the moon. During his week in CA alone, he was beginning to think about how to develop a university-based Extension system in Grenada, convincing the government to redirect the funds from federal agencies to the university.
When I was in Des Moines a couple of weeks ago Chavondra Jacobs-Young, Administrator of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service, talked about the need to move beyond incremental change in productivity research in order to meet the food needs of a growing population. This reminded me of the TedTalk by Guy Kawasaki I listened to not long ago. I suspect Dr. Jacobs-Young had many of the technologies identified by Standford Business in mind (thanks to Andrea Ambrose for sharing the article). I suppose that if you don't dream it, you'll surely never live it. Admittedly, I'm not quite sure how one really gets to a place where they can imagine what, to most, seems impossible. We need to get to that place with food production and even in how we think about delivering our programs and services in UC ANR. We need to make that jump from thinking about building a better horse for transport to building a car.
Mark Twain is credited with stating that “you can't trust your judgement if your imagination is out of focus”. Perhaps that's where the challenges lie. Our imagination isn't focused on transformational change but rather on the incremental change that won't push us far enough, fast enough.
It is interesting that all of these things came up just in the last week or so, alone, for me irrespective of the actual topic of conversation. Perhaps this suggests that the need to that next ‘car' is more urgent that I had previously thought. If you have any ideas, I'd love to hear them.
Looks like I have homework tonight; I didn't cross enough things off my list today. VP Council meets later this week and I need to get some things pulled together. Then I need to line up some things for the upcoming Ideation workshop and make sure I am caught up on my commitments to the new agreement with CDFA. No doubt I've forgotten an item or two. Who knows, maybe one of these items will lead to something bigger than an incremental change.
- Author: Wendy Powers
How did you use your extra hour this weekend? I pretty much slept through mine. My goal was to get through a bit of a cold and laryngitis. I'm not sure how much it helped. I did also get out to see the sandhill cranes in Woodbridge, as did others that arrived by the bus load. It must have been Lodi's festival this weekend; I probably should have checked first. Fortunately, the cranes got the message and were present in what must have been thousands of birds well before the sunset fly in. If you haven't visited the Woodbridge Reserve, it's worth a stop though it is admittedly difficult to predict where the cranes will land each evening. Fortunately there is no shortage of other bird species to watch. One of this year's World Food Prize laureates, Lawrence Hadad, stated that “In an unreliable world, diversity is the most reliable currency”. I believe that applies here.
Dr. Emmanuel Okello started November 1 as a CE Specialist at UCD in the School of Vet Med, specializing in Antimicrobial Stewardship. And today marks the start date for Daniela Bruno, a Dairy Advisor, based in Fresno, with programmatic responsibilities in Fresno and Madera Counties. Please take a few minutes to welcome Emmanuel and Daniela to UC and UC ANR.
This week is a Strategic Initiatives leader meeting followed by a Zoom meeting of Program Council. Early this week I need to finish identifying commodity group liaisons for those boards that have research committee. My plan is to start meeting with the liaisons periodically, by Zoom, just to stay in touch and provide an opportunity to share relevant information (2-way communication). That's scheduled to start in early 2019. I'm also establishing a REC Users Committee that will begin meeting in early 2019, again by Zoom. The goal with this committee, at least initially, is to share information and hopefully improve understanding. Despite already having more than enough standing meetings, I don't think we can over-communicate. And, even if we don't like the message, communication is better than silence and leaving one to create their own story.
It appears that it is also time for those of us based out of Oakland to complete our mid-year goal update. Considering I can't remember even entering goals for the year, this promises to be interesting. Actually, it offers a good opportunity to focus my efforts, and time, towards my intended outcomes and condition changes, allowing me a chance to redirect time away from those things that don't necessarily lead to the desired change in condition. Later this week I have a meeting to review metrics for the goals that I ‘own' from our strategic plan. It is shaping up to be a goal-oriented week.
