- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
How they survived: Owners of the few homes left standing around Paradise, Calif., took critical steps to ward off wildfires
(Washington Post) Sarah Kaplan, Frances Stead Sellers, Nov. 30
…Though the United States spends upwards of $2 billion each year on fire suppression and billions more helping communities recover, the current budget for the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Pre-Disaster Mitigation Grant Program is just over $200 million — and it must address hurricanes, earthquakes and a host of other natural hazards as well as fires. Cal Fire provides grants for forest management and tree removal, but not structure modification.
The budget for the University of California...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Two calves whose genes have been edited so they won't grow horns are being raised and will later be bred at UC Davis, reported Edward Ortiz in the Sacramento Bee.
Dairy cows have been bred for optimal dairy production, but the gene mix brought along horns. Angus beef were bred for optimal beef production, and don't have horns. Since the dairy industry doesn't want animals with horns because they can hurt each other or farmworkers, it is common practice to remove them shortly after birth.
Removing the horns involves an uncomfortable procedure called debudding, in which, after being treated with a local anesthetic, the cells on the...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
In two recent broadcast media stories, UC Agriculture and Natural Resources experts were able to provide accurate information about the water use on commodities that have been criticized for water consumption during the drought.
The director of UC ANR's Agricultural Issues Center, Daniel Sumner, was one of three guests on the one-hour talk radio program Your Call, which was broadcast on KALW, Local Public Radio in San Francisco. The topic - How would reducing our intake of meat and dairy affect the drought? - was prompted by off-the-cuff...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Advances in cattle breeding over the past 60-plus years has reduced the carbon footprint of the dairy industry. DNA sequencing suggests still more productive cows and less pollution in the future, reported Lesley McClurg on Capital Public Radio.
McClurg spoke to Alison Van Eenennaam, a UC Agriculture and Natural Resources Cooperative Extension specialist. Van Eenannaam is an animal geneticist based at UC Davis.
"We used to have somewhere roundabouts 25 million dairy cows in the United States, and we're down to nine million...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Dairy farmer Tom Barcellos, a longtime member of the UC Conservation Agriculture Systems Innovation workgroup, was featured in a Los Angeles Times story about the impact of the drought on the dairy industry. Barcellos said he fallowed 300 acres of farmland this summer and is buying feed from contractors in Nevada, Texas and as far away as Australia.
"If we don't get rain or have a good winter, our farmers might leave the state," Barcellos said.
Dairy products - milk, cream, butter and cheese - are by far the largest segment of California agricultural...