- Author: Jeannette Warnert
Reposted from the UCANR news
California is searching for solutions to the wildfire crisis. Livestock ranchers believe they can help.
At the 14th Annual Rangeland Summit in Stockton in January, more than 150 ranchers, public land managers and representatives of non-profit organizations that work on land conservation gathered to share research and experiences that outline the value of cattle and sheep grazing on rangeland.
Since California was settled by Europeans, cattle and sheep have been an integral part of the state's history.
“Cattle can control brush,” said Lynn Huntsinger, UC Cooperative Extension specialist at UC Berkeley in a presentation on brush management. She discussed research she conducted in the early 1980s to understand the role of cattle in Sierra Nevada brush control.
“We need to make livestock into firefighters,” she said. “Constant, deliberate, targeted grazing is needed for fire management.”
However, thick, overgrown brush requires intensive treatment that cattle can't handle on their own.
“You have to start from a good place,” Huntsinger said. “Start early, such as post fire. Plan when you have a blank slate for the forest you want.”
The tragic loss of homes and lives to wildfire in the last few years has increased the public demand for answers and action. However, the reasons for greater frequency and intensity of wildfire are not well understood.
“Is it climate change? Past decisions? Land use? What can we do about it?” asked UC Cooperative Extension specialist Van Butsic. “Research.”
At the summit, Butsic presented the results of his recent research to determine whether ownership has an impact upon whether land will burn. He and his colleagues studied the burn histories of forest and rangeland areas that were matched with the same characteristics, except in ownership.
“We controlled for all factors – slope, elevation, the likelihood of ignition,” he said. “We found that on forest and rangeland, federal ownership led to .3 percent higher fire probability. Ownership is dwarfing the impact of climate change.”
There is still much more research to be done.
“We can't say the impact of grazed vs. ungrazed land,” Butsic said. “We also need to look at fire severity as well as fire frequency.”
The UC Cooperative Extension advisor in Modoc County, Laura Snell, shared preliminary results at the rangeland summit that provide information for landowners making decisions about returning livestock to burned areas.
She and a team of colleagues studied the fire history of U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management rangeland in Lassen and Modoc counties where fires had burned through 5, 10 and 15 years before. The dataset included information about whether the land was “rested” for two years after the fire, or whether livestock were returned to graze soon after the blaze.
The scientists set out to determine whether fire intensity and climate at the site (measured by soil temperature and moisture) had an impact on the future diversity of plant species and growth of cheat grass, an invasive species that animals don't like.
“No matter what we did, graze or not graze, after 15 years, the species richness stayed the same,” Snell said. “Grazing was not the driving factor.”
The results are also important in terms of fuels accumulation and the prevention of future wildfires.
“Federal land managers have typically used a policy to rest the land for two years after a fire. During the interval, the fuels sometimes burn again and livestock producers have to wait another two years,” Snell said. “Our research showed you don't necessarily need to rest the land after the fire.”
Two ranchers who were recently impacted by wildfire presented their experiences and perspectives during the rangeland summit.
Mike Williams of Diamond W Cattle Company had livestock on 6,500 acres of leased land in Ventura County when the Thomas Fire ignited on Dec. 4, 2017. Over more than a month, the fire burned 281,893 acres and consumed 1,000 structures.
Williams had stockpiled feed on certain pastures by limiting grazing, which during the fire turned into hazardous fuel.
Adam Cline, rangeland manager for the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation Preserve in the Capay Valley, had a similar experience when the County Fire burned more than 90,000 acres in western Yolo and eastern Napa counties in June and July 2018. To reserve feed for later, Cline had left 2,500 pounds per acre of residual dry matter on grazing land as a drought mitigation strategy. He said he plans to reconsider this grazing plan.
“Now, cattle feed looks like a lot of fuel,” he said.
- Author: Marissa Palin
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
The cost of fuel is only a small percentage of the cost of farming and getting a product to store shelves, said Daniel Sumner, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at UC Davis. Food prices will go up only by a few pennies on the dollar at most.
The small increase in cost, however, won't trickle down to growers.
"We farmers don't have any way to recoup the higher gas costs or pass them on to consumers, so we have to swallow them," said Fresno County farmer Keith Nilmeier, who grows apricots, peaches, nectarines, grapes and oranges.
- Author: Gareth J Mayhead
Background:
This workshop is a follow-up to the Woody Biomass to Energy workshop held in Eureka in March 2010 (presentations from that workshop are online at http://ucanr.org/EurekaMar10_Energy).
Details:
The aim is to help the audience to understand the products in the densified wood fuels family and the opportunity for project development in Northern California. Presentations will look at the manufacturing principles, suitable feedstocks, markets and challenges.
Products discussed will include:
- Pellets
- Fuel logs
- Bricks
We will also look at five examples of project approaches in California to see how businesses have attempted to enter the densified fuels market. There will be opportunities for questions and discussion. The presenter will be Gareth Mayhead from UC Berkeley. Valerie Weyna and Ernie Schutlze of Red Rooster Heating Products, one of the few pellet mills in California, will also be talking about their experiences with manufacturing densified wood fuel products on the North Coast.
Location:
University of California Cooperative Extension Office,
5630 S. Broadway Eureka, CA
Time: 12:30pm-3pm
Logistics:
There is no cost to register if you sign-up online in advance
Registration and refreshments will be available at 12.30pm and the workshop will start at 1.00pm.
Presented by:
University of California Berkeley, Center for Forestry
University of California Cooperative Extension
USDA Forest Service, Region 5
Updates at:
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Fuel prices have settled down a little bit since their record highs in the middle of last summer, but farmers are just now tallying up the damage. The first half of a Stockton Record story about the impact of the fuel price surge focused on producers of processing tomatoes. Tomato farmers typically negotiate a fixed price for their crop in late winter to help them secure loans and make planting plans, according to the Record's story. Tomato farmers won a record cannery price of $70 a ton in January, up $7 a ton from the year before.
"When the contract price was negotiated, everybody felt pretty good about it," the story quoted UC Cooperative Extension farm advisor Brenna Aegerter. "It seems like ... in retrospect, they probably should have held out for more."
The article said that UCCE cost studies found that total cash costs for producing an acre of processing tomatoes rose to $2,440 this year, an increase of more than $300 from 2007 mostly due to higher fertilizer and fuel costs.
The increasing fuel costs pushed up the price of all inputs related to petroleum, such as diesel, tractor tires, oil and fertilizer. The story said farmer Joe Ratto was satisfied when the $70 a ton contract price was settled, but the rising costs slice deep into that return.
"If we don't get a real decent yield, ... we're going to lose money," Ratto was quoted.
The Stockton Record story also appeared on Macro World Investor.