- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
California has legalized marijuana, but commercial cannabis growers have been slow to obtain the required state and local permits. To find out what deters them from complying with new laws, University of California scientists are asking cannabis growers to participate in a survey about their experiences with the regulated market.
“The majority of cannabis farmers are not joining the legal market and we want to know why,” said Van Butsic, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy & Management at UC Berkeley. “The objective is to identify barriers to joining the legal market.”
The researchers plan...
- Author: Mackenzie Smith
Two UCANR Cooperative Extension specialists have recently launched CalLands, a powerful online tool that can help users understand how land ownership impacts California's croplands.
To build the CalLands' interactive website, Luke Macaulay and Van Butsic — both assistant UC Cooperative Extension specialists based in UC Berkeley's Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management — combined satellite-generated maps of land cover created by the U.S. Department of Agriculture with publicly...
- Author: Kara Manke
Cannabis is unlike any other agricultural crop. Because of its circuitous history — once illegal to grow, and now legal but heavily regulated — cannabis has cast a unique footprint on the environment and the communities of farmers who grow it.
UC Berkeley's new Cannabis Research Center, announced today by a...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
California is searching for solutions to the wildfire crisis. Livestock ranchers believe they can help.
At the 14th Annual Rangeland Summit in Stockton in January, more than 150 ranchers, public land managers and representatives of non-profit organizations that work on land conservation gathered to share research and experiences that outline the value of cattle and sheep grazing on rangeland.
Since California was settled by Europeans, cattle and sheep have been an integral part of the state's history.
“Cattle can control brush,” said Lynn Huntsinger, UC Cooperative Extension specialist at UC Berkeley in a presentation on brush management. She...
- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
Planting cannabis for commercial production in remote locations is creating forest fragmentation, stream modification, soil erosion and landslides. Without land-use policies to limit its environmental footprint, the impacts of cannabis farming could get worse, according to a new study published in the November issue of Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.
“Despite its small current footprint, the boom in cannabis agriculture poses a significant threat to our environment,” said co-author Van Butsic, a UC Cooperative Extension specialist in UC Agriculture and Natural Resources and...
