Safe, healthy and happy Thanksgiving
UC's Dan Sumner boils down 2009 ag outlook
Last year, agribusiness and most business sectors road an economic roller coaster. The 2009 outlook is tough to forecast, according to a Sacramento Business Journal article that used the director of the UC Agriculture Issues Center Dan Sumner as its primary source.
The bulk of the article is blocked on the Business Journal's Web site, accessible, it says, only to paid subscribers. But the Internet makes it available elsewhere, such as on the Wichita Business Journal's Web site (an example of the media's own economic conumdrum).
In the article, written by Celia Lamb, Sumner commented on tree nuts and wine, which he said could be vulnerable if consumers decide to cut back on luxuries, and grain markets. Corn, he noted, was priced at $3.98 per bushel in January 2008, and rose to $5.47 in June. By November, it fell to $3.94 per bushel.
“Feed prices look like they’re going to be much more moderate (in 2009) than we would have thought,” Sumner was quoted. “That is good news for California, (because) we’re big in the dairy market and we’re not as big in the grain market.”
Sumner offered some good news to the agriculture industry in general.
“I’m thinking net farm income will hold up in agriculture better than the rest of the economy,” he was quoted.
Opening 2009 with significant UC press hits
Happy New Year! UC ANR experts are off to a running start in the New Year, with appearances in a number of well-read publications.
The Associated Press moved a story on the wire about the use of lasers for irrigation. The article was picked up widely in the news media over the holiday weekend, including the Los Angeles Times. The article, written by John Rogers, said a UC San Diego professor of environmental engineering is pointing a laser beam across an alfalfa crop in Southern California's Imperial Valley, looking for a better way to conserve the millions of gallons of water sprayed each year on thirsty crops. The objective is to give farmers a more accurate, up-to-date reading of how efficiently their crops are using water than current technology allows.
UC Cooperative Extension irrigation expert Khaled Bali said water shortages are prompting researchers to come up with new ways to determine when to irrigate and how much water to use. "There's not enough water to go around," he was quoted in the story.
UC Cooperative Extension's Rose Hayden-Smith authored an essay that was posted recently in the Huffington Post. Her article offered advice to Tom Vilsack, the former governor of Iowa who was nominated by President-elect Obama to be his administration's Secretary of Agriculture. Vilsack's nomination has been met with some criticism, Hayden-Smith wrote.
"He has been criticized for his ties to agribusiness and his support of biofuels and biotechnology. To many, Vilsack represents 'agribusiness as usual.' But Vilsack also has a reputation for being a good listener and being able to work successfully with those who hold differing viewpoints. Those are reasons to be hopeful," the article says.
Hayden-Smith invoked the ideas and idealism of Henry Agard Wallace, the agriculture secretary from 1921 to 1924, in advising the nominee. Wallace's tenure was imperfect, she said, but he had vision and understood agriculture.
"My advice to the incoming Ag Secretary: Channel another son of Iowa, Henry Agard Wallace. Read everything he wrote. Focus on Wallace's visionary nature and the size of his ideas," Hayden-Smith said in her essay.
What is sustainable agriculture?
Like other famously difficult to define terms, capturing the meaning of "sustainable agriculture" often comes down to just knowing it when you see it. Even though, the California Farm Bureau Federation took another shot at figuring out just how to define what is an increasingly appealing agricultural concept, according to an article in the today's issue of AgAlert.
According to the story, delegates at the Farm Bureau's annual meeting discussed the meaning of sustainable agriculture. Here are some of their thoughts:
- "Sustainability is a new term for things we in agriculture have been doing forever." - San Joaquin County winegrape grower Brad Goehring
- "From a farmer's point of view, economics is most important because if you are not economically sustainable, you can't do anything at all." - Lodi winegrape grower Bruce Fry
- "We have evolved toward a point in time where people are recognizing that you can't do things that are 'better for the planet' if firms are not economically viable in doing so, but the broader impacts also are increasingly being considered." - UC Davis Cooperative Extension agricultural economist Roberta Cook
- "All of the mainstream market leaders have sustainability programs from Wal-Mart, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Starbucks, Red Lobster and Sysco. This is about Wall Street as much as Main Street." - Jeff Dlott, president of SureHarvest, a company that creates sustainability tools and professional services (And formerly a UC Berkeley biological control scientist)
- "Sustainability does resonate and it is going to be a huge thing in the marketplace going forward." - Aaron Lange of Lange Twins Winery in San Joaquin County
Early career award goes to UC scientist
Congratulations to Valerie Eviner, assistant professor in the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences. She received the 2007 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers last Friday. Her research was funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service, according to a USDA news release
USDA nominated Eviner for her research in developing a creative method to manage rangeland and quantify its productivity. Eviner involved students, ranchers, research and extension centers, and environmental organizations to provide students with practical experience in using scientific research to answer to relevant management problems, the release said.
Commissioned by President Clinton in 1996, the Presidential Award honors and supports the achievements of young professionals at the outset of their independent research careers, according to the National Institutes of Health Web site. The Presidential Award is the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on outstanding scientists and engineers beginning their independent careers.
Great Christmas gift ideas
If you're out of ideas but still have names on your giving list, a Fresno Bee story reprinted this week in the Denver Post is a reminder that with good tools, you can never go wrong. For the woodworker, cook, seamstress, photographer, computer geek and backpacker, the latest top-quality tools are always appreciated. The same goes for gardeners - whether they do little more than mandatory weed clearing or strive to grow all their own food.
For the article, UC Cooperative Extension horticulture advisor Michelle LeStrange shared with reporter Nzong Ziong her personal top garden tool picks. In no particular order, she listed a Hula-ho, hand-held pruners, a shovel, gloves and a five-gallon bucket.
The reporter also spoke to a nurseryowner about his most-essential gardening tools. In addition to gloves and pruners, he suggests a bulb planter and six-inch-wide rake.
I'm with LeStrange on the Hula-ho, which is my favorite gardening tool. It is great at pulling out weeds quickly and easily, so you can leave the herbicides on the store shelves, and (a little known fact) if you turn it upside down, it works great for spreading and smoothing soil and mulch.
The Hula-ho blade.