- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
By hiring 68 new UC Cooperative Extension advisors and specialists since 2010 - and with 23 positions being actively recruited plus more planned - UC leaders are reversing a downward trend in the number of UCCE academic staff, reported Ching Lee in AgAlert.
Barbara Allen-Diaz, vice president of UC Agriculture and Natural Resources, noted in the story that 2013 was the first time in recent years that UC hired more Cooperative Extension faculty than had retired. In December, she approved hiring of another 29 advisors and 16 specialists for the 2015-16 cycle.
"So we turned the corner for the first time in this long downward...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
When new UC Cooperative Extension advisors come on the job, they aren't starting their programs from scratch. "We are a science-based organization," said Jim Sullins, county director for Tulare UCCE. Academic advisors document their work in reports and papers. "The next advisor can build on their (predecessors') experience, their results and observations."
Sullins was quoted in an article by Luiz Hernandez in the Visalia Time-Delta that focused on the retirements of two long-time Tulare County farm advisors,...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
The Tulare County Board of Supervisors voted to support a bill introduced by Congressman Devin Nunes, R-Tulare, allowing businesses that rent pack mules and horses to operate in Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks while a new wilderness plan is implemented, according to the Visalia Times-Delta.
In 2009 a High Sierra Hikers Association sued the National Park Service for failing to conduct an adequate environmental impact analysis of its wilderness plan. As a result of the suit, a judge ruled that the service no longer has the authority to issue permits to the companies that rent pack...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
The case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy discovered in Fresno County is an atypcial varient that happens in cattle similar to sporadic Cruetzfeldt-Jakob, accoring to a report in the Fresno Bee.
Jim Sullins, University of California Cooperative Extension advisor and county director in Tulare and Kings counties, told the Bee classical mad cow disease such as the kind found in England in the 1990s causes cattle to stagger and act erratically. By contrast, cattle affected with the atypical form show no outward signs of being affected but their brain tissues shows deterioration, he...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
The Colorado farm linked to a deadly listeria outbreak last fall is 1,300 miles away, but the tragedy changed a way of life in Mendota, Calif., the Central Valley farm town that proudly calls itself the Cantaloupe Center of the World, said an article in the Los Angeles Times by Diana Marcum.
This would normally be the season when farmers plan the summer crop that in good years is valued at nearly $200 million, according to the California Cantaloupe Advisory Board. Instead, they are cutting acreage and scrambling for ways to reassure a nervous public that cantaloupes are safe to eat.
This month the
