- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
California's successful almond industry was featured in a Los Angeles Times article over the weekend, which noted the sector's collaboration with UC on managing almond irrigation.
California produces 82 percent of the world's almonds on 800,000 acres in the Great Central Valley. About 70 percent of the almonds are sold overseas, wrote LA Times reporter David Pierson. The Almond Board of California forecasts that the state will harvest its third-largest crop in 2014 at 1.85 billion pounds - more than three times what the state was producing in the late 1990s.
Pierson spoke to
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
The warm, dry late winter weather in California has been good news for almond farmers who were concerned about a bee shortage during bloom, reported Capital Press.
"It looks good right now," said Rich Buchner, UC Cooperative Extension advisor in Tehama County. "The bees are out working like crazy. It's going to be warm and dry over the next 10 days, so it should be about perfect for almond set."
Almond growers are enjoying a vibrant blossom season even though California only had about 500,000 bee colonies available as of mid-February to pollinate this year's crop of 800,000 acres,...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Re-washing bagged greens may be making salads dirtier, according to a bevy of food safety experts, reported Deborah Schoch in the Los Angeles Times.
Even the cleanest kitchens can teem with harmful pathogens - on cutting boards and in salad spinners, on knives that just sliced raw chicken, on damp, well-used cloth towels.
"In brief, consumers don't wash up very well and may contaminate produce due to dirty hands and dirty sink," emailed Christine M. Bruhn, director of the Center for Consumer Research at UC Davis. That's especially a problem with salad greens, since they never get...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
The almond industry's dream of hitting the two billion-pound mark has come true, according to an article by Cary Blake in Western Farm Press.
“We once believed achieving a 2-billion-pound California almond crop was a distant dream but now it’s a reality,” said Bob Curtis of the Almond Board of California at the 2011 Almond Industry Conference.
The conference included presentations by John Edstrom, UC Cooperative Extension emeritus farm advisor, Colusa County; Mario Viveros, UCCE emeritus farm advisor, Kern County;...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
According to federal government projections, California farmers produced 1.95 billion pounds of almonds this year, doubling annual production in the last six years, reported Reid Fujii in the Stockton Record.
"It's remarkable," said Daniel Sumner, director of the UC Agricultural Issues Center.
"There are two things going on," he said. "We have improved the nature of the orchards, both in the way that we plant them and the varieties and the like. And there's a lot more acres."
In the last decade, low cotton prices prompted many farmers in the southern San Joaquin...