" I heard it through the AgLine"

February 9, 2009

 

 

·        Not all California growers struggle with drought

·        Trend reversal shows number of US farms rising

·        Human safe alternative to organophosphates eyed

·        So why hasn’t food irradiation become the norm?

·        Check out the World Ag Expo live on its web cam

 

 

 

Not all California growers struggle with drought

 

(MercuryNews.com) GUSTINE — Farmer Lax Iyer is standing on the side of a country road that splits his almond orchard into two different worlds — one abloom, the other in danger of choking in a cloud of dust.

 

The trees on his left appear sickly because they depend on water from the Central Valley Project — increasingly scarce "federal water" that comes from hundreds of miles away. The trees on his right are healthy trees that get all the water they need, because they rely on an irrigation district that enjoys water rights stemming from when Franklin D. Roosevelt was president.

 

Within months, the trees that rely on the federal water — an investment of more than a million dollars — could be dead.

 

Never since the Central Valley Project was authorized in 1935 have California's farmers been so worried about the lack of water. Three years of too little rain combined with pumping restrictions in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta have created a nightmare scenario: The federal government might soon cut off the state's largest supply of agricultural water — for the first time in California history.

 

"I really don't know what I'm going to do," said Iyer, 50, an Indian immigrant who fears his cherished 13-year-old business — his American dream — could collapse.

 

But as Iyer's patchwork of water sources so dramatically illustrates, when it comes to water and farming in California, even in the midst of a drought there are haves and have-nots. Some farmers draw their water from abundant wells. Some get their water from the huge state and federal water plumbing projects that decades ago irrigated dry valley land and built California's agricultural industry. Some of the luckiest have long-term water rights obtained in the '30s and '40s. Others are hooked into more environmentally progressive water distribution systems, like the one in the Salinas Valley.

 

The drama sure to play out in the next few months will demonstrate which parts of the state's water network are fragile and which are secure — and may lay the course for California's water future.

 

Low snowpack

 

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation won't announce this year's water allocation until Feb. 20. But late last month, state water officials announced that California's snowpack — which feeds the state's elaborate systems of reservoirs and canals — was only 61 percent of normal. The drought, officials warned, could become the worst in modern California history.

 

Water shortages are a severe threat to the state's agricultural industry, which uses 80 percent of the water consumed by Californians to produce more than half of the country's vegetables, nuts and fruits. The industry, the state's largest, generates more than $36 billion annually in sales. It provides 1.1 million jobs in a state with one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation — 9.3 percent.

 

Already many farmers are letting their fields lie fallow. Fresno County's farmers plan to grow about half the lettuce they did last year. Other farmers are panicking and spending millions of dollars to dig expensive wells that mostly yield poor-quality water.

 

A new University of California-Davis study estimates that $1.6 billion in agriculture-related wages — and as many as 60,000 jobs across the Central Valley — will be lost in the coming months because of the drought.

 

In the hard-hit west side of the valley near Fresno, the drought's epicenter, the farming economy is already crumbling. The unemployment rate in Mendota, the self-styled Cantaloupe Capital of the World, now stands at 35 percent.

 

Businesses in Mendota that sell chemicals and irrigation equipment are reeling. Feed, fertilizer and small trucking companies are seeing their business dry up. "And, of course, it all trickles down to hairdressing shops, restaurants and other small businesses in town," said Sarah Woolf of the ?Westlands Water District, which provides water to more than 600 family-owned farms in western Fresno and Kings ?counties.

 

The district, like 3 million agricultural acres around California, depends on the federal Central Valley Project. The project, which mostly provides water to farmers, is complemented by the nearly half-century-old State Water Project, a similar system that irrigates 755,000 acres of farmland and provides water to 23 million Californians. State water officials in October said they expected farmers' water allocation to be about 15 percent of their contracted amount, but it could be less. Many farmers expect the federal allocation to be "zero percent."

 

The delta is the switching yard for California water, the place where the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers come together.

 

A finger-size fish called the delta smelt is on the verge of extinction, so a federal judge has restricted pumping that kills the fish, reducing the amount of water that flows south to farmers in canals.

 

"We're only in the third year of a drought and really starting to feel its impacts," said Westlands' Woolf. "Normally that doesn't happen until the fourth or fifth year."

 

The environmental restrictions have angered farmers.

 

"It does hurt," said Iyer, the almond farmer. "You would hope that people are more important than fish."

 

Doug Obegi, a staff attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council in San Francisco, said environmentalists aren't insensitive to the plight of farmers: "It's just that we've created a water policy that doesn't work for fish or people."

 

Dams, conservation

 

So what's going to happen?

 

Farmers, of course, are praying that more rain in the next several weeks will allow federal and state water officials to increase allocations — at least enough to let them save orchards, if not this year's crops.

 

Farmers and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger are also pushing to build new dams and reservoirs. And a strong movement has revived the idea to construct a Peripheral Canal to redirect water flowing from the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers directly to man-made aqueducts headed south. But environmental groups have vowed to fight the proposals.

 

Newman almond farmer Jim Jasper, 63, sighed: "Mark Twain once said that in California 'whiskey is for drinking. Water is for fighting over.' "

 

But sometimes, Obegi said, a crisis can get warring sides to focus on solutions everyone can agree on. The Natural Resources Defense Council, he said, is advocating the concept of the "virtual river" — a combination of water-use efficiency, water recycling, improved groundwater management and the capture of storm water that normally runs into the ocean.

 

Amid the debate, the fertile Salinas Valley — which didn't participate in either the state or federal water projects — is a model of water management that is good for the environment and good for farmers. The water in Monterey County's reservoirs is low but should be adequate to get farmers through the year.

 

"I think our ancestors had the foresight to put in a system that constantly recharges our aquifers," said fourth-generation farmer Dirk Giannini, 36.

 

It was a crisis in the Salinas Valley that led to a solution that has won plaudits from both environmentalists and farmers.

 

The problem was saltwater intrusion, where seawater gradually replaces freshwater pumped from wells near coastal land. The solution was to send Monterey County's wastewater through advanced treatment — yes, that includes toilet water — to irrigate farmland in the northern part of the Salinas Valley around Castroville.

 

By next year, the availability of water to farmers will be even greater after a rubber dam is completed on the Salinas River. The dam, which will be able to go up and down to address environmental concerns, will inject even more water into the sophisticated recycling system, in addition to recharging aquifers.

 

But the farmers in Steinbeck Country aren't gloating.

 

"We really feel for those guys in the Central Valley," said Chris Drew, 33, production manager for Sea Mist Farms in Castroville. "We are eternally grateful for the people who planned for us to have this water."

 

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Trend reversal shows number of US farms rising

 

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- The number of U.S. farms and ranches, which has been declining since World War II, increased by 4 percent to 2.2 million since 2002.

"We are no longer just losing farms steadily, but we actually may have hit bottom and are increasing slightly," said Greg Preston, director of U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Ag Statistics Service office in Indiana.

The 2007 Census of Agriculture numbers, released on Wednesday, Feb. 4, showed the number of farms and ranches in Indiana followed the nation and increased by 1 percent to 60,938. Even with the number of farms increasing, the overall amount of farmland decreased by 2 percent and the average size of the Indiana farm decreased by 3 percent.

According to the census, the average size of the Indiana farm is 242 acres and the state has 14.8 million acres of farmland. The United States has 922.1 million acres of land in farms, down from the 2002 number of 938.3 million acres.

Crop sales in Indiana had a market value of more than $5 billion, while state livestock sales had a market value of around $2.9 billion. Indiana's total market value of agricultural products for 2007 was more than $8 billion, a 73 percent increase from the 2002 census. The nation's total market value of agricultural products was $297 billion, up 48 percent from 2002.

The top three corn-producing counties in Indiana include Jasper, White and Knox. The top three soybean-producing counties in Indiana are Knox, Montgomery and Benton. Posey, Knox and Gibson counties are the three Indiana counties that grow the most wheat.

A few of the many things the 2007 Census of Agriculture shows is a decrease in mid-sized farms, an increase in organic production, an increase in small farms and an increase in the average age of the farmer.

"The category of farms that have 2,000 acres or more actually increased by 30 percent from the previous census, whereas farms that are less than 50 acres or more - specifically farms that have one to nine acres - have actually gone up 79 percent," Preston said. "We think that's not only a reversal of trend but maybe a transition as we see more and more farms in the smaller categories across the state."

Preston said the number of farms that had 50 acres to 1,999 acres declined.

To boost income, the owner of a middle-sized farm has to decide whether to increase farm size, find off-farm supplemental employment or decrease the size of their farm and try a different kind of farming, such as specialty crops and direct marketing, Preston said.

There are 287 Indiana farms comprising 14,143 acres that grow certified organic crops. LaGrange County ranks first in organic production in Indiana with 34 farms and 1,457 acres.

A follow-up survey will be sent out to organic producers in the next few months to gather more information.

The average age of U.S. farm operators increased from 55.3 years old in 2002 to 57.1 years old in 2007. The number of operators 75 years and older grew by 20 percent from 2002, while the number of operators under 25 years old decreased by 30 percent.

Preston said the ever-increasing average age of the farmer might soon turn into a crisis because the knowledge and skills gained through the course of their careers may soon be lost.

Not only might a skill set be lost, but also land.

"Because of the increasing age of farmers, we can expect to see more land transitions made in the future, whether it's from one farmer to another, divided into small acres and sold or used for development," said Kevin McNamara, a Purdue professor of agricultural economics who specializes in farmland price analysis and Indiana and regional growth trends.

The percentage of farm operations with Internet access has increased over the past five years, from 50 percent in 2002 to 57 percent in 2007. The census examined high-speed Internet access, an important measure of farmers' ability to use the Internet effectively. Of the U.S. farms with Internet access, 58 percent reported having a high-speed connection. The 2007 census shows both Internet access and high-speed Internet access at the county level for the first time.

In addition Internet information, farmers also were asked about on-farm energy production, such as windmills and anaerobic digesters.

USDA-NASS mailed out 3.1 million surveys and had an 85.2 percent response rate.

 

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Human safe alternative to organophosphates

 

(CropBiotech Update) – Researchers at the University of Minnesota and Mayo Clinic have been collaborating for more than five years as a part of a special project on biotechnology and medical genomics. But now they have turned their attention from patients to pests. The scientists have successfully developed a human-safe pesticide that specifically targets aphids, a bug that has been ravaging crops worldwide.

 

Aphids are normally controlled by organophosphate insecticides that block the activity of acetylcholinesterase (AChE), an enzyme vital for regulating the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. Organophosphates target a catalytic serine residue in AchE. Because these agents also affect vertebrate AChE, they are toxic to non-target species including humans and birds. Several studies have shown that organophosphate insecticides can enter the brain of young children and damage developing nervous system.

 

The team developed a small molecule that blocks nearly all AChE activity in greenbug and soybean aphid without inhibiting AChE in humans. Instead of targeting serine, the molecule the scientists developed blocks a cysteine residue in the AChE active site to which aphids and other insects cannot develop a resistance.

 

The open-access paper published by PLoS ONE is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0004349

 

Visit  http://newsblog.mayoclinic.org/2009/01/27/patients-to-pests/ for more information, including video and audio clips on the importance of the research.

 

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So why hasn’t food irradiation become the norm?

 

(The New York Times) – Before the recent revelation that peanut butter could kill people, even before the spinach scare of three summers ago, the nation's food industry made a proposal. It asked the government for permission to destroy germs in many processed foods by zapping them with radiation.

 

That was about nine years ago, in the twilight of the Clinton administration. The government has taken limited action since.

 

After spinach tainted with a strain of E. coli killed three people and sickened more than 200 others in 2006, the Food and Drug Administration gave permission for irradiation of spinach and iceberg lettuce. It has yet to begin. Meat irradiation is permitted but rarely used. Among common items on the grocery shelf, only spices and some imported products, like mangoes from India, are routinely treated with radiation.

 

The technology to irradiate food has been around for the better part of a century. The federal government says that it is safe, and many experts believe that it could reduce or even eliminate the food scares that periodically sweep through American society.

 

It might even have killed the salmonella that reached grocery shelves in recent weeks after a factory in Georgia shipped tainted peanut butter and peanut paste, which wound up in products as diverse as cookies and dog treats.

 

But irradiation has not been widely embraced in this country.

 

Food manufacturers worry that the apparent benefits do not justify the cost or the potential consumer backlash. Some consumer groups complain that widespread irradiation of food after processing would simply cover up the food industry's hygiene problems. And some advocacy groups question the long-term safety of irradiation.

 

Amid all these doubts, one thing is certain -- food poisoning continues. The cases that rise to public attention are only the tip of the iceberg. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that there are 76 million cases of food-borne illness each year in the United States. The vast majority are mild, but the agency estimates there are 5,000 deaths from food-borne disease and 325,000 hospitalizations each year.

 

All of this drives advocates of irradiation crazy.

 

"Our society is running around with our head in the sand because we have ways to prevent illness and death that aren't being used," said Christine Bruhn, director of the Center for Consumer Research at the University of California, Davis. "The rules are so tight on irradiation that you can't pull it out and use it when a new problem arises, and that's to the detriment of the American public."

 

Suresh Pillai, director of the National Center for Electron Beam Research at Texas A&M University, likened fears of irradiation to early phobias about the pasteurization of milk.

 

"It's unnecessary for people to be getting sick today with pathogens in spinach or pathogens in peanut butter," said Pillai, who described the potential for irradiation of food as "humongous." "We have the technologies to prevent this kind of illness."

 

Food is irradiated by brief exposure to X-rays, gamma rays or an electron beam. The process is intended to reduce or eliminate harmful bacteria, insects and parasites, and it also can also extend the life of some products.

 

Advocates say it is particularly effective at killing pathogens in items like ground beef and lettuce, where they might be mixed into the middle of the product or hiding in a crevice that is hard to clean by traditional means.

 

The United States is dotted with irradiation centers, but they are generally used to sterilize medical supplies like bandages and implants, not food.

 

Food and Water Watch, an advocacy group, has long maintained that irradiation would be too expensive, impractical and sometimes ineffective because it might hide filthy conditions at food processing plants. Patty Lovera, the group's assistant director, said irradiation not only kills bacteria but can also destroy nutrients in food.

 

"There's a whole impact on the food product, which we think is an unacceptable cost," Lovera said.

 

She pointed out that irradiated beef was offered at many grocery stores nationwide at the beginning of the decade but it did not last long. Customers were turned off by the higher price and by the extended shelf life of irradiated beef.

 

"People that did the shopping, they would look at the date and be freaked out at how long it would be good for," she said.

 

Food industry officials, meanwhile, remain wary of irradiation because of the upfront costs and the potential public reaction to any technique with the word "radiation" in it. (Irradiation leaves no traces of radioactive material in food.)

 

One potential test of public acceptance could come with the marketing of irradiated spinach and lettuce. After the E. coli outbreak in 2006, the spinach industry lost 30 percent of its business. The FDA approved irradiation for spinach and iceberg lettuce in August.

 

"There's no shortage of people who are looking at it," said Hank Giclas, vice president for strategic planning, science and technology for the Western Growers Association. "I don't know of anyone who is moving forward with it at this time."

 

Officials at irradiation companies say business for food is growing slightly.

 

"It's changed a little bit, but not a whole lot," said Harlan Clemmons of Sadex, which operates an irradiation plant in Iowa. He said he does twice as much business irradiating pet treats and livestock feed as human food. "There are so many products that could be made safe by using irradiation."

 

It remains an open question if peanut butter or products with peanut paste would be likely candidates for the technique.

 

Irradiation typically does not work so well on products with high amounts of fat or oil like peanut butter because they can turn rancid during the process. A spokesman for the American Peanut Council said irradiation was tested but found unacceptable because it degraded the taste of the nut.

 

Nonetheless, Pillai said a low dose of radiation might be effective in killing traces of salmonella in peanut butter -- or manufactured products with peanut paste -- without ruining the taste. He said it would not work as a substitute for basic hygiene and food safety measures.

 

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Check out the World Ag Expo live on its web cam

 

TULARE, Calif. (GreenNewswire)  — The entire world can now get a live look at the 42^nd annual World Ag Expo via the Internet and World Ag Expo’s newly redesigned website.

Two cameras have been installed on Median Street, the main thoroughfare of World Ag Expo, to give people a 24-hour look at the flurry of activity that is the world’s largest annual agricultural exposition.

The Axis Communications wireless cameras were installed by Tulare-based Valley Agricultural Software and offer viewers a complete look at Median Street from one end of the grounds to the other.

 

Valley Agricultural Software partnered with UnWired Broadband who provided the bandwidth needed to make the Internet broadcast live. An Axis camera was also installed inside the Farm Credit Center home of more than 200 exhibitors during the expo. To view Median Street and Farm Credit Dairy Center cameras, visit worldagexpo.com. and click on the “Live Web Camera” link in the general info section.

The World Ag Expo Live cameras will be up and running from Feb. 6 – 13, to catch all the action at World Ag Expo.

World Ag Expo is scheduled to take place Feb. 10-12, drawing an estimated 100,000 attendees and 1,600 exhibitors to the International Agri-Center’s 2.6 million square feet show grounds.

World Ag Expo hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Feb. 10 and 11; 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Feb. 12.

Tickets are $10 online before Feb. 9 or $12 at the gate. Three-day badges are $27 online before Feb. 9 or $30 at the gate.

 

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