Posts Tagged: cattle
Wildlife, wetlands, water to be discussed at rangelands summit Jan. 21-22
The Fogarty family has been in the cattle ranching business in Stanislaus County since the 1870s. In recent years, they’ve seen rangeland around them converted to housing and orchards. “With the conversion around us, we are affected with a declining water table, increased traffic and rural crime associated with high production agriculture,” said Bill Fogarty.
Ranchers, researchers, managers, agency representatives and conservationists will gather in January to discuss challenges and opportunities in maintaining rangelands.
Keeping rangelands and ranches viable for wildlife, wetlands and water will be discussed at the 9th annual California Rangeland Conservation Coalition Summit set for Jan. 21-22 at the Gene Bianchi Community Center in Oakdale, 16 miles northeast of Modesto. The summit is sponsored by the California Rangeland Conservation Coalition and the University of California Cooperative Extension.
“This event is a time for ranchers to showcase their positive role in stewarding California’s wide open spaces and their contributions to the state’s economy,” said Tim Koopmann, president of the California Cattlemen’s Association. “Ranchers who attend the annual event learn valuable information on the latest research outcomes about best management practices for their land that simultaneously improve the natural resources and economic profitability.”
At risk is the future of California’s ranching industry and the ecosystem services that ranches provide: diverse wildlife, unique wetlands and healthy watersheds. At the rangeland summit, ranchers, researchers, land managers, agency representatives and conservationists will focus on rangeland science, land management, land-use policy and livestock production.
The event will feature presentations on the challenges ranchers face, impacts of rangeland conversion to natural resources and opportunities to support working ranches and rancher stewardship. Ranchers from Colorado and Montana will share new opportunities they are finding to keep ranching viable through conservation efforts.
The first day of the two-day summit will feature presentations and a ranch tour on the second day.
“University of California Cooperative Extension is pleased to be a partner in bringing together a diverse group of people interested in rangelands to discuss the opportunities and challenges for keeping California’s ranches working to support communities and habitat,” said Theresa Becchetti, UC Cooperative Extension advisor in San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties. “We are particularly fortunate to be able to hold this meeting and engage in a constructive dialogue with stakeholders in Oakdale, where rangelands and associated resources are at risk.”
This event is sponsored by University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, Environmental Defense, Audubon California, California Association of Resource Conservation Districts, California Cattlemen’s Association, California Native Plant Society, California Rangeland Trust, Santa Clara County Open Space Authority, Center for Natural Lands Management, Defenders of Wildlife, Cal-Pac Chapter Society for Range Management, East Bay Regional Park District, Grazing Lands Conservation Initiative - California, Natural Resources Conservation Service, US Fish and Wildlife – Partners Program, Mid-Peninsula Open Space District, Point Blue Conservation, Sierra Business Council, Sierra Nevada Conservancy, Sustainable Conservation, InterWest Insurance Services, Inc., The Nature Conservancy, Koopmann Rangeland Consulting, and Westervelt Ecological Services. In addition, Oakdale Cowboy Museum and numerous private ranchers are sponsors, hosts and speakers.
The event is open to ranchers, researchers, land managers, agency representatives, conservationists and others interested in California’s rangelands. Journalists are encouraged to attend the event. For more information, visit http://www.carangeland.org/calendarevents/2014summit.html or call Pelayo Alvarez at (916) 313-5800, ext. 107.
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The California Rangeland Conservation Coalition is a group of over 125 agricultural groups, nonprofit organizations, researchers and government agencies representing a broad cross-section of California’s ranching and environmental communities. The disparate groups are united by their recognition of the importance of California’s working rangelands for natural resources, plant and wildlife species, cultural values and economics. The Rangeland Coalition began in 2005 with a small group of organizations committed to protecting rangelands within California’s Central Valley and Interior Coast ranges. www.carangeland.org
Is livestock’s contribution to climate change still being overestimated?
It is easy to see how Mitloehner was inspired to study ways that California can take advantage of its plentiful supplies of animal methane. In eight bovine bio-bubbles that function as airtight barns, he captures and measures every emission from his resident livestock in order to understand how methane emissions vary with feed and herd management.
At Davis, a commercialized version of a similar methane bio-reactor has been patented and licensed by Ruihong Zhang, professor in the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering at UC Davis. It has been constructed at the local landfill and will be used to demonstrate a sustainable village on the UC Davis campus.
Mitloehner recently hosted a seminar for the Western Center for Agricultural Health and Safety at Davis. Since the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) committee released their 2006 report entitled, “Livestock’s Long Shadow,” he has challenged two key misleading sentences in their report. The phrase compared the contribution of livestock emissions to that of transportation. By saying the contributions to climate change were similar, the report led many environmental advocates to the conclusion that eating less meat was the equivalent of taking cars off the road, setting up a meat vs. miles tradeoff that exaggerated the methane contributions of livestock everywhere.
Mitloehner’s response was the publication Clearing the Air, Livestock’s Contribution to Climate Change. After his paper was released, BBC, CNN and other media published his science-based estimate that the livestock contribution in the U.S. is 3.4 percent of U.S. emissions. Globally, 18 percent of warming was estimated to be livestock related. This estimate included livestock in the broadest sense - changes in land use, deforestation and desertification in developing countries.
Nonetheless, Mitloehner showed that U.S. methane emissions remain flat, while developing countries are increasing animal production to meet the demand for eggs, meat and dairy, especially Asia. But why is the U.S. so low?
Mitloehner shared a few facts that help explain the phenomena:
- The U.S. has fewer dairy cows. Today’s 9 million dairy cows supply 60 percent more milk than the 16 million cows in production in 1950. That means there is increased efficiency per cow for the same methane produced.
- Thirty percent of the methane in dairy production is from manure in ponds. There is the potential for recovery on the approximately 1,500 California farms, where the average herd size is 1,100 head.
- Methane has 20 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide, but when burned to heat water or to generate power, its warming potential is reduced by a factor of 20.
- The more fiber in the feed, the more methane is released by the rumen of the animal. One dairy cow in the U.S. produces an average of 20,000 lbs of milk per cow annually, the same amount of milk as five cows in Mexico, or up to 100 cows in India for the same, or less methane per cow. Reasons: low fiber diet, less parasites and less disease result in large differences in production per cow.
Mitloehner occupies that middle space between the economically driven farmers who survived years of falling milk prices and the sustainable advocates that want dairy to either disappear entirely or retreat into historical practices. When he is not serving on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) or the National Academies Institute of Medicine, he keeps company with local farmers and students and answers to science.
Dairy addicts like myself, whose ancestors have evolved on milk for over 10,000 years, are likely to continue to frequent the organic dairy cases, hopeful that there are mutual benefits to paying higher prices for local labels in returnable glass bottles as a way to sustain the farms.
In reality, California has been exporting surplus dairy products to growing populations since the 1890s and that won’t change soon. Those markets do more to keep dairies profitable than my weekly milk and yogurt purchase. Lactose for pharmaceuticals and whey proteins for infant formulas are shipped internationally from several of California’s mammoth cheese factories, sometimes worth more the cheese itself.
Mitloehner believes that “sustainable intensification” is the solution to keeping local dairies viable. He believes that science will provide the path to better regulation. The dairy nations that seem determined to get at the truth - New Zealand, France, Ireland and the Netherlands - have formed an international partnership at FAO entitled LEAP to address the issues. Mitloehner's leadership a chair of the partnership will keep methane bioreactors on the agenda.
More information:
Mitloehner tells the story of how he neutralized errors in the FAO report “Livestock’s Long Shadow” (YOUtube).
LEAP site at the FAO. NGOs include World Wildlife Federation and Greenpeace. Mitloehner said that Greenpeace is also a partner although not listed on the site. Workshop materials available for download.
July 2012 opinion post by Robert Goodland at New York Times food blog. This is an example of criticism of Mitloehner’s role as head of the FAO partnership LEAP (Livestock Environmental Assessment and Performance).
Cattle grazing and clean water not mutually exclusive
Cattle grazing and clean water can coexist on national forest lands, according to research by the University of California, Davis.
The study, published June 27 in the journal PLOS ONE, is the most comprehensive examination of water quality on National Forest public grazing lands to date.
“There’s been a lot of concern about public lands and water quality, especially with cattle grazing,” said lead author Leslie Roche, a postdoctoral scholar in the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences. “We’re able to show that livestock grazing, public recreation and the provisioning of clean water can be compatible goals.”
Roughly 1.8 million livestock graze on national forest lands in the western United States each year, the study said. In California, 500 active grazing allotments support 97,000 livestock across 8 million acres on 17 national forests.
“With an annual recreating population of over 26 million, California’s national forests are at the crossroad of a growing debate about the compatibility of livestock grazing with other activities dependent upon clean, safe water,” the study’s authors write.
“We often hear that livestock production isn’t compatible with environmental goals,” said principal investigator Kenneth Tate, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Plant Sciences at UC Davis. “This helps to show that’s not absolutely true. There is no real evidence that we’re creating hot spots of human health risk with livestock grazing in these areas.”
The study was conducted in 2011, during the grazing and recreation season of June through November. Nearly 40 UC Davis researchers, ranchers, U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service staff and environmental stakeholders went out by foot and on horseback, hiking across meadows, along campsites, and down ravines to collect 743 water samples from 155 sites across five national forests in northern California.
These areas stretched from Klamath National Forest to Plumas, Tahoe, Stanislaus and Shasta-Trinity national forests. They included key cattle grazing areas, recreational lands and places where neither cattle nor humans tend to wander.
UC Davis researchers analyzed the water samples for microbial and nutrient pollution, including fecal indicator bacteria, fecal coliform, E. coli, nitrogen and phosphorous.
The scientists found that recreation sites were the cleanest, with the lowest levels of fecal indicator bacteria. They found no significant differences in fecal indicator bacteria between grazing lands and areas without recreation or grazing. Overall, 83 percent of all sample sites and 95 percent of all water samples collected were below U.S. Environmental Protection Agency benchmarks for human health.
The study noted that several regional regulatory programs use different water quality standards for fecal bacteria. For instance, most of the study’s sample sites would exceed levels set by a more restrictive standard based on fecal coliform concentrations. However, the U.S. EPA states that E. coli are better indicators of fecal contamination and provide the most accurate assessment of water quality conditions and human health risks.
The study also found that all nutrient concentrations were at or below background levels, and no samples exceeded concentrations of ecological or human health concern.
The study was funded by the USDA Forest Service, Region 5.
The study has been covered by Bloomberg, Cattle Network, Progressive Cattle, Science Daily and AgWeb.
Rustici endowment funds UC projects for rangelands, cattle
The projects address water quality, reproduction, animal welfare, greenhouse gases, weed control, and extending knowledge. The endowment is administered through the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (CA&ES). Priorities are established by an advisory committee comprised of range cattle industry representatives and UC academics.
“The goal of this program is to promote collaboration and strengthen the continuum between range cattle producers, Cooperative Extension specialists and other research faculty, and county-based Cooperative Extension advisors,” said DeeDee Kitterman, CA&ES executive director of research and outreach. “Ultimately, this helps provide practical answers to critical issues and challenges facing the industry.”
Funding has been made available for this problem-solving research and outreach by endowment earnings from a gift to the university from the estate of Russell Rustici, a Lake County cattle rancher who passed away in 2008.
“Mr. Rustici worked closely with our scientists for many years,” said Neal Van Alfen, CA&ES dean. “His legacy is an enduring commitment to university research that will help us address issues of concern to the California cattle industry for a long time to come.”
This is the first year grant awards are being conferred to UC researchers through an annual competitive process. Grants for this year’s projects totaled more than $339,400. Three of the projects may receive second-year funding totaling nearly $105,000. Projects and lead researchers include:
- Statewide coordination of scientific research information regarding livestock grazing and microbial water quality (Edward R. Atwill, UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine)
- Effects of road transport on physiological stress and pathogen shedding in adult beef cows (Xunde Li, Western Institute for Food Safety and Security, UC Davis)
- Development and testing of a recombinant heat shock protein vaccine for epizootic bovine abortion, commonly known as “foothill abortion” (Jeffrey Stott, UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine)
- A new producer-friendly tool to diagnose bovine respiratory disease virus infections (Beate Crossley, California Animal Health and Food Safety Laboratory System, UC Davis)
- Coordinated electronic extension of research-based information to cattlemen (Glenn Nader, UC Cooperative Extension, Yuba/Sutter/Butte counties)
- Testing of new management tools for controlling medusahead (a rangeland weed) in California (Josh Davy, UC Cooperative Extension, Tehama/Glenn/Colusa counties)
- Evaluation and validation of a PCR assay to detect Tritrichomonas foetus (trichomoniasis pathogen) in modified media (Kristin Clothier, California Animal Health and Food Safety Laboratory System, UC Davis)
- Beef cattle welfare: assessment of pain relief and healing after hot-iron branding and castration (Cassandra Tucker, UC Davis Department of Animal Science)
For additional information about these research projects, please contact DeeDee Kitterman, (530) 752-9484, dmkitterman@ucdavis.edu.
Media Contacts
- DeeDee Kitterman, UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, (530) 752-9484, dmkitterman@ucdavis.edu
- John Stumbos, UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, (530) 754-4979, jdstumbos@ucdavis.edu
Cooling cattle; European pepper moth examined
For an article "Should Wyoming livestock and ag adjust to climate?" in the Billings Gazette, reporter Paul Murray sought information about livestock animals' response to warmer temperatures from Frank Mitloehner, UC Cooperative Extension Specialist in the Department of Animal Science at UC Davis. Mitloehner talked about ways animals can cool down and discussed shade, fans, sprinklers and even alternative cattle breeds. "We're seeing more and more extreme weather. That is a tendency we're seeing more and more often. That can stress animals. Similar to animals in the wild, that can impact animals' reproductive ability and their performance," he told the reporter.
European pepper moth widespread in California
Surendra Dara for Western Farm Press
Western Farm Press published this article about European pepper moth by Surendra Dara, UC Cooperative Extension farm advisor in Santa Barbara County. Dara explains that the European pepper moth has been reported in several central and southern California counties. The pest prefers to feed at the plant base of crops such as corn, peppers, tomatoes, squash, strawberries and some ornamental plants. Dara has been appointed to the national Technical Working Group for European pepper moth, along with UC Cooperative Extension colleagues James Bethke and Steve Tjosvold.
Dara also wrote about this pest and shared photos of it on the UC Strawberries and Vegetables blog.