Posts Tagged: Sustainable Agriculture Research

Winter season: A time for food safety systems re-evaluation and education for food hubs

The holiday meal season is often a busy time for food hubs – entities that handle the aggregation, distribution and/or marketing of source-identified regional food – as restaurants, retailers and consumers fill their tables and shelves with an abundance of fresh, local products. However, the subsequent winter months can provide a valuable time for reflection and re-evaluation of a food hub's systems and processes. In this spirit, it may be helpful to remind people working at food hubs that University of California Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (UC SAREP)  offers a suite of food-safety resources – in English and in Spanish – on its website. 

Educational resources include: 

• A step-by-step guide for food hubs on how to pursue a third-party food safety audit with guidance on how to navigate buyers' questions.
• Two sample food-safety plans intended as a starting point to be adapted to a food hub's specific operations and practices.
• Example standard operating procedure, or SOP, documents related to 11 common tasks carried out by food hubs.

“We hope these resources can play a role in helping food hubs to adopt best practices and control risks related to food safety,” says Gwenael Engelskirchen, sustainable food and farming coordinator with UC SAREP,  who led the development of these educational tools. 

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately, 1 in 6 Americans (or 48 million people) gets sick and 3,000 die of foodborne diseases annually. In 2011, to help prevent the occurrence of foodborne illness, the federal government enacted the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), designed to outline actions to be taken at various points along the supply chain for both human and animal food. 

UC SAREP's Food Safety Resources for Food Hubs are intended to help food hubs navigate these food-safety regulations and accompanying best practices. Resources are also available in Spanish at Recursos de seguridad alimentaria para los centros de distribución de alimentos. 

Food safety certification guide

Some buyers verify a supplier's food safety program by requiring an audit performed by a third-party certification body or auditing company. This Guide to Food Safety Certification offers key considerations before deciding to pursue a food safety audit and helps users navigate the food safety certification process. 

Food safety plan

Food hubs that meet the criteria for full compliance with FSMA's Preventive Controls for Human Food Rule are required to have a food-safety plan in place. And for all food hubs, having a shared document describing the facility's operations and how potential risks of food contamination are managed is a good idea. Two sample food safety plans, inspired by the operations of food hubs in California, provide a starting point and can be adapted to a hub's own operations. 

Standard operating procedures

Standard operating procedures provide detailed step-by-step instructions for how to carry out operational tasks within a food facility. The standard operating procedure samples cover common topics such as handwashing, facility cleaning and more, and are intended to be adapted to a food hub's specific operations and practices. 

Jacob Weiss from Spork Food Hub in Davis said, “the templates were a great starting place for us to build the framework of our food safety plan. It helped us figure out what we needed to (and didn't) need to include. I think the SOPs are also really useful because they are broad enough to get you started but flexible enough to add the specific practices of your business or hub.”

For additional information, visit UC SAREP's webpages on Food Safety Resources for Food Hubs or Recursos de seguridad alimentaria para los centros de distribución de alimentos. 

These resources and tools were developed in collaboration with various project partners, including Department of Food Science and Technology at UC Davis, Department of Population Health and Reproduction at UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, Center for Precision Medicine and Data Science at UC Davis Health, and Community Alliance with Family Farmers.

UC awards Brodt $2M to advance soil health, climate-smart farming practices

Regional farms will demonstrate practices such as cover cropping, reduced tillage, compost and mulch use, hedgerow planting, optimized irrigation systems

To accelerate adoption of climate-smart farming practices, the University of California Office of the President has awarded nearly $2 million to a team of UC Cooperative Extension scientists and community partners working on a network of farm demonstration sites. The project will be led by Sonja Brodt, coordinator for agriculture and environment at the UC Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education Program. This UC Agriculture and Natural Resources project is one of 38 funded with $83.1 million allocated to UC by the State of California for climate action research and innovation.

Scaling up soil health and other climate-smart agricultural practices to sequester carbon, increase water and nutrient use efficiency, and improve the resilience of farms to climate-related threats like drought and floods is a core pillar identified in California's Natural and Working Lands Climate Smart Strategy. 

Climate-smart agriculture is a systems-based approach that requires localized adaptation across the diverse soils, cropping systems, socioeconomic and cultural contexts throughout California.

“Our project will strengthen the nascent California Farm Demonstration Network for on-the-ground, regionally specific demonstration of a range of climate-smart practices,” said Brodt. “Regional farms will demonstrate practices such as cover cropping, reduced tillage, compost and mulch use, hedgerow planting, irrigation system optimization and more.”

The $1,999,524 project will pilot a participatory partnership extension model that allows farmers to learn from their peers to reduce adoption risks and adapt knowledge to an ever-changing environment, increasing the likelihood of farmer success and accelerating long-term uptake of complex, place-specific practices. 

Building on the capacity of local trusted organizations, project collaborators will be organized in a hub-and-spoke network with three regional Farm Demonstration Hubs (Sacramento Valley, North Coast and Central Coast), a pilot Hmong/Mien Demonstration Hub, and a statewide Organic Demonstration Hub.

Collaborators at each hub will be responsible for identifying and nurturing farm demonstration sites, and conducting demonstration trials and farmer-to-farmer outreach activities. Centralized organization and capacity building will be provided by UC SAREP, UC Organic Agriculture Institute, the California Association of Resource Conservation Districts, the Community Alliance with Family Farmers, and the California Farm Demonstration Network Advisory Panel.

In addition to several UC Cooperative Extension advisors and specialists across the state, partners include the UC Hansen Research and Extension Center and the Rodale Institute California Organic Center, both in Ventura County, and the UC Climate Smart Agriculture Program. Eight Resource Conservation Districts will also be involved in leading Farm Demonstration Hubs.

The project will also conduct soil health assessment activities to inform soil health and resilience monitoring protocols in future research and extension efforts. Since many existing soil health metrics were designed for agroecosystems in the Midwest and Eastern U.S., this project aims to lay the groundwork for research to adapt soil health metrics to the arid and Mediterranean climates of California.  

“By utilizing relationships built between demonstration hub managers and demonstration farms across different cropping systems, we will gather quantitative and qualitative soil health data, information about growers' management practices as well as their own perspectives of what they really need to know about their soils in order to better manage for climate resilience and mitigation,” said Brodt.

Ultimately, the project partners aim to establish an enduring on-farm extension and research system that will help thousands of farmers adopt climate-smart practices tailored to their farms.

Other grant-supported projects focus on water access, conservation

The largest of the Climate Action Matching Grants, an $8.2 million investment, supports the development of planning tools to advance sustainable, inclusive and equitable water distribution for California's 39 million people. The project is led by Ted Grantham, a UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at UC Berkeley. Kristin Dobbin, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at UC Berkeley, and Erik Porse, director of the California Institute for Water Resources are collaborating on the project.

Three other projects involving UC ANR researchers received California Climate Action Seed Grants and Matching Grants subawards:

• Development of a hydrogel that can work as a soil amendment to help small-scale vegetable farms conserve water led by UC San Diego associate professor Shengqiang Cai with Ruth Dahlquist-Willard, UC Cooperative Extension small farms advisor and interim director of UC SAREP; Mallika Nocco, UC Cooperative Extension specialist; and Matthew Gilbert, UC Davis professor of whole plant physiology. $297,979

• Development of a tool for predicting climate-water variation led by UC Irvine professor Isabella Velicogna with Tapan Pathak, UC Cooperative Extension specialist. $199,531

• A study of urban stream corridors led by UC Davis professor Gregory Pasternack with Igor Lacan, UC Cooperative Extension environmental horticulture and urban forestry advisor. $33,824

• A study of how California's housing crisis affects the growth of the wildland urban interface (WUI), where the fringes of development reach into natural areas led by UC Santa Cruz professor Miriam Greenberg, with Barb Satink Wolfson, UCCE fire advisor, Devii Rao, UCCE livestock and natural resources advisor, and the Central Coast Prescribed Burn Association.

Updated 8/31/23 to add the wildland urban interface study.

SAREP, Small Farms and UC Master Food Preservers join forces to strengthen support for sustainable production, local food systems and farmer equity

Dahlquist-Willard named interim SAREP director

The past few years have intensified challenges to sustainability in California agriculture. At the same time, new opportunities for UC ANR programs to meet these challenges have arisen. Large-scale hiring, successfully competing for several multimillion-dollar grants, and expanding our reach to meet the needs of Californians are among UC ANR's recent positive developments. As we look ahead, the challenges to achieve sustainability, food security and economic development present new opportunities for our programs to work together.

UC ANR's Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program is a leader in promoting safe, sustainable farming practices across the state. The recent retirements of SAREP's director and business manager, as well as multiple recent large grant awards for statewide and regional projects, have created an opportunity to integrate key programs under SAREP to meet grant deliverables and provide administrative support efficiencies. Thus, we are integrating the Small Farms Network and UC Master Food Preserver program with SAREP to form a new framework for support and administration.

These three programs have multiple shared areas of focus and activity such as local food production and marketing, diversified farming systems, food safety and enhancing equity. By integrating these units, we will not only accomplish economies of scale but also foster collaboration on shared focus areas to strengthen overall program delivery to clients and communities. The programs will retain their individual names and identities under this new framework.

Due to the substantial changes to the SAREP director position, the search for a new SAREP director is on hold while we consider how best to integrate the three programs. I have appointed Ruth Dahlquist-Willard to serve as interim director of SAREP for three years effective July 1, 2023.

Over the next six to nine months, Ruth will coordinate brainstorming sessions with academics and staff to gather input on how best to leverage shared interests and resources across the units. She will remain based in Fresno during the interim role. Recruitment will begin soon for the UCCE small farms and specialty crops advisor position in Fresno County, and Ruth will be dedicated 100% to the SAREP director position following this transition. 

I am confident that this new structure will strengthen each individual program while also creating new synergies within a powerful statewide unit that can support multiple projects and attract new funding opportunities.

Please join me in congratulating Ruth and lending your support to her in establishing this new framework to accomplish our collective goals.

Glenda Humiston
Vice President

Climate-Change Resources

University of California UC ANR Green Blog (Climate Change and Other Topics) https://ucanr.edu/blogs/Green/index.cfm?tagname=climate%20change (full index)

Examples:

     -  Save Trees First: Tips to Keep Them Alive Under Drought https://ucanr.edu/b/~CdD 

     - Landscaping with Fire Exposure in Mind: https://ucanr.edu/b/~G4D

     - Cities in California Inland Areas Must Make Street Tree Changes to adapt to Future Climate  https://ucanr.edu/b/~oF7

Drought, Climate Change and California Water Management Ted Grantham, UC Cooperative Extension specialist (23 minutes) https://youtu.be/dlimj75Wn9Q

Climate Variability and Change: Trends and Impacts on CA Agriculture Tapan Pathak, UC Cooperative Extension specialist (24 minutes) https://youtu.be/bIHI0yqqQJc

California Institute for Water Resources (links to blogs, talks, podcasts, water experts, etc.) https://ciwr.ucanr.edu/California_Drought_Expertise/

UC ANR Wildfire Resources (publications, videos, etc.) https://ucanr.edu/News/For_the_media/Press_kits/Wildfire/ (main website)

      -UC ANR Fire Resources and Information https://ucanr.edu/sites/fire/ (main website)

            -Preparing Home Landscaping https://ucanr.edu/sites/fire/Prepare/Landscaping/

UC ANR Free Publications https://anrcatalog.ucanr.edu/ (main website)

- Benefits of Plants to Humans and Urban Ecosystems: https://anrcatalog.ucanr.edu/pdf/8726.pdf

 -Keeping Plants Alive Under Drought and Water Restrictions (English version) https://anrcatalog.ucanr.edu/pdf/8553.pdf

  (Spanish version) https://anrcatalog.ucanr.edu/pdf/8628.pdf

-  Use of Graywater in Urban Landscapes https://anrcatalog.ucanr.edu/pdf/8536.pdf

-  Sustainable Landscaping in California https://anrcatalog.ucanr.edu/pdf/8504.pdf

 

Other (Non-UC) Climate Change Resources

Urban Forests and Climate Change. Urban forests play an important role in climate change mitigation and adaptation. Active stewardship of a community's forestry assets can strengthen local resilience to climate change while creating more sustainable and desirable places to live. https://www.fs.usda.gov/ccrc/topics/urban-forests

Examining the Viability of Planting Trees to Mitigate Climate Change (plausible at the forest level) https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2927/examining-the-viability-of-planting-trees-to-help-mitigate-climate-change/

Reports and other information resources coordinated under the auspices of the United Nations and produced through the collaboration of thousands of international scientists to provide a clear and up to date view of the current state of scientific knowledge relevant to climate change. United Nations Climate Action

Scientific reports, programs, action movements and events related to climate change. National Center for Atmospheric Research (National Science Foundation)

Find useful reports, program information and other documents resulting from federally funded research and development into the behavior of the atmosphere and related physical, biological and social systems. Search and find climate data from prehistory through to an hour ago in the world's largest climate data archive. (Formerly the "Climatic Data Center") National Centers for Environmental Information (NOAA)

Think tank providing information, analysis, policy and solution development for addressing climate change and energy issues (formerly known as the: "Pew Center on Global Climate Change"). Center for Climate & Energy Solutions (C2ES)

Mapping Resilience: A Blueprint for Thriving in the Face of Climate Disaster. The Climate Adaptation Knowledge Exchange (CAKE) was launched in July 2010 and is managed by EcoAdapt, a non-profit with a singular mission: to create a robust future in the face of climate change by bringing together diverse players to reshape planning and management in response to rapid climate change. https://www.cakex.org/documents/mapping-resilience-blueprint-thriving-face-climate-disaster

Cal-Adapt provides a way to explore peer-reviewed data that portrays how climate change might affect California at the state and local level. We make this data available through downloads, visualizations, and the Cal-Adapt API for your research, outreach, and adaptation planning needs. Cal-Adapt is a collaboration between state agency funding programs, university and private sector researchers https://cal-adapt.org/

Find reports, maps, data and other resources produced through a confederation of the research arms of 13 Federal departments and agencies that carry out research and develop and maintain capabilities that support the Nation's response to global change. Global Change (U.S. Global Change Research Program)

The Pacific Institute is a global water think tank that combines science-based thought leadership with active outreach to influence local, national, and international efforts to develop sustainable water policies. https://pacinst.org/our-approach/

Making equity real in climate adaptation and community resilience policies and programs: a guidebook. https://greenlining.org/publications/2019/making-equity-real-in-climate-adaption-and-community-resilience-policies-and-programs-a-guidebook/ 

Quarterly CA Climate Updates and CA Drought Monitor Maps (updated each Thursday) https://www.drought.gov/documents/quarterly-climate-impacts-and-outlook-western-region-june-2022

 

 

 

 

Drought focus of Water Resources IMPACT magazine special issue

UC ANR experts address emotional toll of drought

Preparing the American West for prolonged drought is the focus of a double issue of Water Resources IMPACT magazine. The California Water Commission staff are guest editors for this special open-access edition of the magazine, which is published by the American Water Resources Association.   

Faith Kearns, academic coordinator of University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources' California Institute for Water Resources, is among the authors delving into how drought impacts people and the environment and how we can better prepare for the inevitable. 

The first issue, published on Feb. 14, focuses on water scarcity issues confronting California and the ways these issues affect different sectors. 

In “Trauma, Care, and Solidarity: Addressing the Emotional Toll of Chronic Drought,” Kearns highlights the effects of drought on mental health. She points to the spike in suicide hotline calls when wells ran dry in Southeast Asian communities in California's Central Valley.

By listening to Southeast Asian farmers, Ruth Dahlquist-Willard and Michael Yang of UC Cooperative Extension were able to “lighten the load” for them by providing pragmatic support, Kearns writes.

“The scale of some of these highly emotional issues – drought, wildfires, climate change – can make them seem incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to deal with,” Kearns said. “At the same time, they are affecting everyone living in the western U.S. on a daily basis. I wanted to highlight and provide models based on work that people – whether they are researchers, clinical psychologists, or Cooperative Extension advisors – are doing right now to ease the way.”

The authors who contributed to the double issue are a diverse array of Tribal experts, academics, nongovernmental organization thought-leaders, water managers and water policy influencers, each of whom brings their own perspective on the topic of drought. Their expertise and perspectives in climate science, water policy and water management will help inform drought-related decision-making and support policies that better prepare the state to thrive during periods of prolonged water scarcity.

In addition to Kearns, the first issue includes articles contributed by:

• Samantha Stevenson, University of California, Santa Barbara
• Jay Lund, University of California, Davis
• Ron Goode, North Fork Mono Tribe
• Andy Fecko, Placer County Water Agency
• Jeff Mount, Public Policy Institute of California, and Ted Grantham, University of California, Berkeley/UC Cooperative Extension
• Nat Seavy and Karyn Stockdale, National Audubon Society
• Kjia Rivers, Community Water Center
• Cannon Michael, Bowles Farming
• Michelle Reimers, Turlock Irrigation District

The January/February edition of Water Resources IMPACT magazine can be accessed, free of charge, on the American Water Resources Association website at https://www.awra.org under “Publications.”

The second issue, to be published in March, will focus on drought response, considering the options for adaptation. This two-part series complements the Commission's work on strategies to protect communities and fish and wildlife in the event of a long-term drought.

 

 

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