- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
Long's research on crops, pollination and pest control guided farming practices in Yolo, Solano and Sacramento counties
Rachael Freeman Long grew up in Berkeley but was fascinated by farming. The UC Cooperative Extension farm advisor has spent the past 37 years doing research on crop production, pollination and pest control and collaborating with farmers.
Long worked with UCCE in Sonoma and San Joaquin counties as well as at UC Berkeley, before settling in Yolo County as a farm advisor in 1992. She has focused on field crops including alfalfa hay and other forages, dry beans, and hybrid seed crops such as sunflowers, melons and onions.
She...
/h4>- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
Bees do it. Birds do it. Even bats do it. They all help plants reproduce by carrying pollen from one flower to another. Beetles, butterflies, wasps, flies and moths are also pollinators.
About 35 percent of the food we eat depends on the assistance of bees to pollinate plants and trees so they will produce fruit, nuts or vegetables. It takes 1.6 million colonies of honey bees to pollinate California's 800,000 acres of almond trees.
Our food choices would be dramatically reduced if bees weren't around to pollinate. To illustrate what the produce section of a grocery store would look like in a world without bees, Whole Foods Market removed the products that depend on pollination from one of its stores and took a photo. See...