- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
It doesn't seem to have made a big media splash, but officials found a light brown apple moth in the northest area of Los Angeles County, the first such discovery in Southern California, according to a California Department of Food and Agriculture press release. The story was picked up in Capital Press, a weekly agriculture trade newspaper, but not by the Los Angeles Time. In terms of the L.A. discovery, a Google news search comes up empty.
According to the Capital Press story, a single moth was found in a trap June 28...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
If you search the Internet today for stories on obesity, you'll find several stories from the U.K. about recent research that found a link between obesity and asthma, like this one in the Daily Mail. Coincidentally, one of the stories in the July-September 2007 issue of UC ANR's California Agriculture journal also addresses the link.
The U.K. researchers examined immune system cells known to be responsible for the lung inflammation behind many of the symptoms of asthma, according to the Daily Mail. The study showed that these cells...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
In yesterday's Fresno Bee, reporter Dennis Pollock opened a story about aging farmers with a vignette of Shigeo Yokota, who at 89 years old and suffering from arthritis still climbs on a tractor to till orchards and vineyards around his home. Yokota's son, Glenn Yokota, is a staff research associate in Kent Daane's lab at the UC Kearney Agricultural Center.
The article says that a fourth of American farmers are 65 or older. Half are 55 or older. The average age of California farmers went from 53.2 years old in 1974 to 56.8 in 2002, the last year the federal government conducted an agricultural census, according to the story.
For his story, Pollack...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
More humid weather and slightly cooler temperatures are helping firefighters get a handle on California fires, according to media reports like this AP story which appeared in yesterday's Los Angeles Times. But concerns about fire prevention, suppression and associated costs won't die out soon.
A recent article in the Trukee Times said Tahoe residents were forewarned about fire danger. The Tahoe blaze was the most damaging in the state so far this year, with about 250 homes destroyed.
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
The Amador Ledger Dispatch reported yesterday on a recent meeting in Martell in which the sponsor, the Amador Resource Conservation District, provided grass-fed and conventional beef at lunch for a taste comparison.
The article, by Jennifer Gee, quotes Steve Cannon, director of the Amador Resource Conservation District.
"Some people have this view that grass-fed livestock meat is yellow and the meat isn't tender," Cannon is quoted. "We want to try and dispel some of this."
The article didn't say whether the participants could tell the difference, however, a
