- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
The San Joaquin Valley is bracing for a hard freeze predicted to strike tonight and tomorrow morning, putting the Valley's $1.3 billion citrus industry on high alert. Whether farmers will have to spring into action depends on a lot of things, such as cloud cover, according to Joel Nelson of California Citrus Mutual, who was quoted in today's San Francisco Chronicle.
"But we will have the wind machines primed and many of them on from 8 p.m. to 7 a.m.," Nelson is quoted.
The Bakersfield Californian turned to UC Cooperative Extension farm advisor...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Yesterday I wrote a post to this blog about a 4-H article in Mechanical Engineering, the publication of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Alas, I learned later that our Web Action Team was performing an upgrade to the blog system which required some database upgrades. My post was lost.
I did want to link the story again because it illustrates the breadth of 4-H programs. According to the article, the perception that 4-H programs are limited to agriculture, nutrition and citizenship is wrong. In fact, in the 1940s, 4-H programs in electrical engineering brought awareness of circuitry and control systems to youth in...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Alternative crops always make interesting copy. In the past, I have had the opportunity to write about the potential for growing tea tree in the San Joaquin Valley, dryland switch grass for biofuel, dragon fruit, jujube, capers, tropical papaya and, when it was still an "alternative crop" in California, blueberries. Western Farm Press published a story in the current issue about a UC Davis study, being conducted at the UC Desert Research and Extension Center in Holtville, of jatropha, a potential oil crop.
Jatropha is a tropical, drought tolerant, perennial plant grown as a tree or shrub up to 13 feet in height, the article said. The...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
The California Farm Bureau Federation is marking its 90th anniversary next year with an article in the current issue of AgAlert that traces the organization's origins and provides historical anecdotes. In the article, UC Cooperative Extension gets credit for being the "midwife" when the statewide organization was born in 1919.
Extension was created by the federal government in 1914. Before academic staff would be assigned to a county, the service was required to establish a farm organization to channel information from advisors and specialists to farmers and their families.
A...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Tomorrow at twilight, vintners will converge on campus to weigh in on winemaking on a warming planet, says a spot on the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat's wineabout blog. (I love alliteration.)
Among the speakers at the 6 to 9 p.m. UC Berkeley event are Miguel Altieri, UC Berkeley professor of agroecology, and Kent Daane, UC Berkeley Cooperative Extension specialist in biological control.
They will be joined by leaders of two California wineries in a discussion about current practices in and research on traditional, organic and biodynamic winegrape production, according to the blog post. The panel will also assess...
