- Author: Brent Hales
It has been a while since I posted and much has happened in that time. UC ANR has begun to wrap up the Vision 2040 process. We have successfully navigated a call for positions and will soon be announcing some of the approved positions. We have engaged in budget planning as an organization. The merit and performance cycle is drawing to a close. Spring is halfway through and summer is on the horizon. We have endured challenges and seen opportunities for growth emerge as a result. Change is ever present and so it is sometimes the greatest challenges that bring the greatest opportunities.
Authors across the globe have for centuries posited on the notion that inherent in challenges lie the seeds of opportunity. Our challenge individually and organizationally is to see possibilities in our challenges and then turn those possibilities into reality. We are seeing this come to fruition with the reorganization of SAREP, with past and impending retirements of key personnel, and with the budget challenges that we face as Californians.
We also experience personal challenges. Three weeks ago, I received word that my father who has terminal pancreatic cancer was going to need round the clock care as he prepares for his self-described, "graduation from mortality." My wife and I loaded our vehicle and immediate came to Utah to assist my mother and siblings in providing this care. I have spent the last three weeks taking shifts providing this care while simultaneously trying to navigate the challenges of remotely working. I have also experienced three weeks of unbridled gratitude for the home health and hospice workers that have worked with us to provide my father with his end of life care.
To be honest, I didn't foresee me still being here in Southcentral Utah. My dad has suffered these last three weeks and multiple times we thought that we were at the end of the road. However, he has rallied each time. Each high he experiences is not quite as high and his inevitable lows continue to get lower. This is the natural progression that accompanies a diagnosis of this magnitude. He has indicated on numerous occasions that he is ready to make the inevitable transition. However, his body seems to be approaching this transition in the same stubborn way that my father has taken on life. As a farmer, coal miner, and one of the hardest working men I have ever met, he has taken challenges on like many of the bulls he raised. He simply drives forward and keeps his face to the wind.
I have seen opportunities to learn throughout this journey. I have watched a humble man accept assistance that I could not have ever foreseen him take. I have watched his sincere gratitude well up and spill over into tears of gratitude and love for all of us. I have watched my siblings and my mother take on the day-to-day care with love and with grace. In all, I have been grateful to be part of this process. While not an opportunity that I have sought, it is one that I would never pass up. To be able to provide this care has brought me closer to my family and enabled me to share my love with my dad in nearly every interaction.
I want to express my sincere gratitude to Glenda, to the entire ANR leadership team and to the Second Street staff that have worked with me to be able to provide this care for my father. I sincerely appreciate the flexibility that everyone has shown to accommodate my remote working arrangement. I look forward to being back in the office and getting back out on the road to the county offices, RECs and UC campuses. Until that time, I express my sincere gratitude to everyone in the ANR family for what you do and how you do it. You are the reason that we are able to take on challenges and turn them into opportunities. You are the reason that ANR is and will remain strong, in spite of the challenges that come our way.
- Author: Brent Hales
- Author: Brent Hales
Saturday was truly a great night at the Orange County Farm Bureau Steak Fry. The Steak Fry was held on Nov. 4 at Tanaka Farms in Irvine to raise funds for 4-H, FFA and various local colleges' ag education programs. That includes South Coast REC's GROW program, which is designed to make agricultural experiences accessible to more young people across the region and introduce them to careers opportunities in agriculture. Orange County Farm Bureau also provided a small donation to the UCCE Master Food Preserver program in Orange County.
It was great to spend an evening with my UC ANR colleagues. I saw Research & Extension Center director Darren Haver, Rita Jakel, 4-H community education specialist; Colleen Clemens, UC Master Food Preserver Program coordinator; and Araceli Hernandez, 4-H region 11 program supervisor.
I felt so proud sitting with the other people attending the Orange County Farm Bureau Steak Fry listening to the four young women from Orange County share examples of how they improved their lives by participating in 4-H club activities, public speaking, leadership events, etc. They were amazing.
The following day, I had the pleasure of attending the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new USDA Research Center in Salinas.
It was an honor to participate in the ribbon cutting for the Sam Farr United States Crop Improvement and Protection Research Center. The research center is dedicated to retired Congressman Sam Farr, who represented California's Central Coast in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1993 to 2017.
USDA Chief Scientist and Under Secretary for Research, Education and Economics Chavonda Jacobs-Young, former U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta as well as Farr spoke.
"This new center is going to ensure that our farmers, our ag workers, our ag leaders, that they benefit from the latest knowledge in cutting edge technology in agriculture," said Robert Rivas, California Assembly speaker.
The new research center features state-of-the-art laboratories, greenhouses and the capacity to accommodate additional scientists. It expands on the current ARS Crop Improvement and Protection Research Laboratory, which houses many of our USDA-Agricultural Research Station partners such as Daniel Hasegawa, who has worked closely with Richard Smith, emeritus UCCE vegetable crops advisor, on impatiens necrotic spot virus, a disease that infects lettuce. Our own UC Cooperative Extension weed specialist Steve Fennimore, who is affiliated with UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences, has an office in the ARS building.
As a congressman, Farr served on the U.S. House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies and has been an advocate for agriculture. He is also a longtime supporter of UC Cooperative Extension.
- Author: Brent Hales
Recently I had the pleasure of visiting San Diego with Lynn Schmitt-McQuitty. While in town, I met with members of San Diego County Farm Bureau, San Diego County supervisors and county administrators to learn about their concerns and to find out how UC ANR can be a better partner. I had the pleasure of hanging out with our colleagues in the UC Cooperative Extension office in San Diego on Friday, Oct. 20. It's exciting and inspiring to hear what they are working on.
My plan is to visit each of the 58 counties and meet with their county supervisors, county administrators and local Farm Bureau members to better understand their needs. I want to hear and learn from our local partners.
- Author: Brent Hales
Recently I visited with our colleagues at UC Merced and UC Santa Cruz – UC's newest Agricultural Experiment Station campuses.
At UC Merced, we met with administrators, faculty and staff for a tour of campus. There, we were shown some of the vast rangelands that encompass the UC Natural Reserve System sites managed by UC Merced and the site for the new agricultural research park. The plans feature teaching spaces, research plots, public engagement opportunities, and sites for collaboration with industry leaders.
The visit to the UC Santa Cruz campus and community gardens were very different from our visit to Merced. UC Santa Cruz features a fully functional farm that provides high-quality produce to students and community members at little or no cost. We also toured their aquaculture facility wherein rainbow trout are grown for both research and consumption.
You can read more about our visit to UCSC at https://news.ucsc.edu/2023/10/aes-designation-planning-campus-visit.html.
We are excited to engage with both campuses as they become fully integrated into our Agricultural Experiment Station network.