- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Ceres Imaging, an Oakland-based start-up, is working closely with UC Cooperative Extension on its aerial imaging of farm fields, a fact that is helping the company gain trust by association, reported Emma Foehringer Merchant on Grist.org.
Ceres puts equipment on low-flying airplanes to take pictures that will help farmers optimize water and fertilizer application. According to field tests, the imagery works. Since 2014, Ceres has teamed up with UC Cooperative Extension to conduct field trials, including one for the Almond Board that measured the response of nuts to different rates of...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
The myriad concerns related to California's fourth year of drought were raised during a California State University, Northridge, student talk show that featured a UC Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR) farming expert.
UC ANR Cooperative Extension advisor Blake Sanden was joined on the show, titled On Point, by CSUN sustainability professor Helen Cox and geography professor Amalie Orme. Sanden spoke to the issues related to the agriculture industry. He noted that well-known San Joaquin Valley farmer and rancher John Harris, who manages 7,000 acres of land, is fallowing...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Chevron recycles 21 million gallons of water every day and sells it to farmers to irrigate 45,000 acres of crops in Kern County, reported Julie Cart in the Los Angeles Times. The program is praised for helping farmers cope with the drought, however, the food being produced hasn't been tested for the presence of toxic oil production chemicals.
"Everyone smells the petrochemicals in the irrigation water," said Blake Sanden, UC Agriculture and Natural Resources Cooperative Extension advisor in Kern County. "When I talk to growers, and they smell the...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Due to the lingering drought, farms in the San Joaquin Valley are being found with an unwelcome white dusting of "snow" on the soil surface. It isn't the snow so desperately needed in California's high country; rather it is salt and other toxins that have precipitated out of the soil because of sparse winter rains, reported Dennis Pollock in Western Farm Press.
At the recent California Plant and Soil Conference in Fresno, multiple speakers showed pictures of what they labeled "California snow," the article said.
Plant toxins like selenium, boron and salt leach out with water, but water is in short supply this year. "That's why a lot...
