- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
If anyone can be lucky during a drought, that would be Butte County nut growers, reported Heather Hacking in the Chico Enterprise Record.
Many of these farmers use groundwater to irrigate their orchards, and groundwater in the Sacramento Valley is in pretty good shape, said Joe Connell, UC Cooperative Extension advisor and county director in Butte County.
If groundwater levels drop, growers will be pumping from farther down. So far, things look like they will be OK for...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Despite light rain earlier this week, it appears the Butte and Glenn county rice industry is getting seeds in the ground during the ideal planting window, reported the Chico Enterprise Record.
The ideal time for planting rice is May 1-15, said Randall "Cass" Mutters, UC Cooperative Extension advisor in Butte County. As the date gets later, farmers will end up with a later harvest. Fall weather is more unpredictable and farmers could end up harvesting in the mud. Last year, farmers were still planting rice at the end of May.
"I would say overall (this year) we're...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
California rice grower Tom Butler is dry seeding his crop to reduce irrigation and draining the fields earlier than before when preparing for harvest. These new practices conserve water and may help the environment by reducing greenhouse gas emissions from his farm, according to an article by UC Davis science writer Brad Hooker. The story was picked up by Western Farm Press.
Butler is participating in a pilot program funded by the Environmental Defense Fund. Though it’s too early to measure, he has seen promising signs from the project.
“We’ve had good results with yield and water conservation, which...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
The California water news blog Aquafornia posted a video on YouTube today featuring Cass Mutters, the UC Cooperative Extension advisor in Butte County who specializes in rice, winter cereals and turf.
In the video, Mutters explains that UCCE has for years been engaged in reducing the amount of water needed to grow rice in the Central Valley. He gave two examples:
Variety development. A generation ago, it required 160 days to grow a variety from seed to maturity. New varieties require 140 days. This has resulted in a 15 percent reduction in water use.
Precision leveling of land. Laser...
- Author: Brenda Dawson
Reporter Amina Khan with the LA Times profiled husband-and-wife entomologist team Christina and Mark Hoddle of UC Riverside (Mark is also a UC Cooperative Extension entomology specialist). The pair travel the world seeking parasitoids that can serve as biological control to invasive California pests and then test the results at the Center for Invasive Species Research at UC Riverside. "Bugs don't take weekends," Christina Hoddle told the reporter, "so neither do we."