The Governor of California recently issued an Executive Order allowing local water districts to utilize floodwater for groundwater recharge purposes, a record amount of which will take place on California farmland. This is desperately needed and welcomed by farmers and other water users all over the state that have suffered decades of drought conditions. Watch this brief interview with Adam Borchard from the California Fresh Fruit Association for more insight on what the announcement entails.
Please thank this video’s sponsor Ranch Systems for their industry support.
The Hass Avocado Board is now accepting applications for its yearlong Board Leadership Development program. The program includes customized training to help participants prepare to serve on the boards of avocado industry organizations such as HAB and the California Avocado Commission, among others. The deadline to complete the application is January 31. There are currently 12 open seats.
The course includes:
A curriculum that covers topics ranging from finance and fiduciary duties to understanding the roles of nutrition research and marketing
Gaining real-world experience by attending actual board meetings
Participating in on-campus instruction at the University of California Davis.
A potential trip to Washington, D.C. to meet with the U.S. Department of Agriculture
For those interested in leadership opportunities and serving on industry boards, this course provides valuable educational and networking opportunities.
The Fresno Chamber of Commerce, in partnership with the Fresno County Farm Bureau, is proud to announce the winners of the 2022 Ag Awards, a long-standing tradition that honors and celebrates our region’s agricultural industry leaders. The honorees were recognized at the Ag Awards Celebration on November 3rdat PR Farms.
The 2022 Ag Awards Honorees include:
Moss Adams Agribusiness of the Year Award – Triple Delight Blueberries
Agriculturalist of the Year Award – Russel Efird, Owner & President, Double E Farms Inc.; Vice President, Efird Ag Enterprises Inc.
AGvocate of the Year Award – Christine Torosian-Klistoff, Teacher Fairmont Elementary School, Sanger, CA
Agricultural Employee of the Year – Jose Erevia, Director of Safety, Workers Compensation & Regulatory Compliance, Prima Wawona
Lifetime of Service Award for Significant Contributions to Fresno County Agriculture–
Margaret Mims, Fresno County Sheriff, and Dr. Dennis Nef, Dean and Professor Emeritus, Jordan College of Agricultural Sciences & Technology and Department of Agricultural Business, California State University, Fresno
The Moss Adams Agribusiness of the Year Award is presented to Triple Delight Blueberries; a notable leader in the Valley’s ag industry who has established market outlets for valley berries with various wholesale buyers as well as corporate kitchens, specialty grocers and various restaurants. “Triple Delight Blueberries is the absolute perfect business to receive the Moss Adams Agribusiness of the Year Award,” stated Janell Attebery, Partner, Moss Adams. “Moss Adams is proud to partner with the Fresno Chamber of Commerce in awarding Triple Delight Blueberries this year’s award because of their dedication to build their business since 1997, while simultaneously building their industry. They are true examples of pillars of the Central Valley ag community.”
The recipient of the 2022 Agriculturalist of the Year Award is Russel Efird from Double E Farms Inc. Efird is known amongst his peers to be a mentor and teacher, spending much of his personal time educating members of the community and elected officials about agriculture. Today, Russel and his son, Matthew, farm 1,500 acres of almonds, walnuts, raisins, and wine grapes in the Caruthers, Riverdale and Raisin City areas.
Returning this year after a 2021 debut is the AGvocate of the Year Award. This year’s AGvocate of the Year is Christine Torosian-Klistoff, teacher to K-8 students at Fairmont Elementary School in Sanger, CA. Torosian-Klistoff has lead the team within Sanger Unified to develop plans on a 2-acre parcel adjacent to the school to build a state of the art, one of a kind Ag/STEM Educational center, which includes a comprehensive K-8 agriculturally based curriculum and adheres to state-mandated NGSS science standards.
The Agricultural Employee of the Year will be given to Jose Erevia from Prima Wawona. Erevia’s experience working in the various departments and his noticeable work ethic has enabled him to find solutions and improve areas within the department of regulatory compliance & environmental health & safety.
“Each of the awards presented represent an integral facet of Fresno’s agricultural community,” Fresno County Farm Bureau CEO Ryan Jacobsen said. “With the addition in 2021 of the AGvocate and Agricultural Employee of the Year Awards, the Ag Awards Celebration now recognizes an additional set of people who are key to the success of the local industry and the Central Valley itself. Because of these amazing leaders, Fresno County is the agricultural capital of the nation.”
The Lifetime of Service Award for Significant Contributions to Fresno County Agriculture went to Sheriff Margaret Mims and Dr. Dennis Nef. Sheriff Mims began her career in 1983 as the first female police officer in Kerman and continued her career to attain the rank of Lieutenant, Captain, Assistant Sheriff, and elected Sheriff in 2006. Showing her dedication to the agriculture industry, she was awarded the Common Threads Award for the California Agricultural Leadership Foundation in 2018.
For the last 39 years and counting, Dr. Nef has impacted countless students and graduates along with faculty, staff and administrators at Fresno State as well as agriculturalists throughout the Central Valley and beyond. As Dean, the University Agricultural Laboratory became a focus and priority. This 1,000 acre laboratory is home to research, teaching and learning for the nearly 2,000 students studying agriculture at Fresno State. From 2003 to 2019, he served as vice provost, interim provost and associate dean of undergraduate studies, and most recently appointed to lead the Jordan College.
As California farmers prepare for the New Year, there are some labor-related changes to laws and regulations that ag employers need to be aware of. Watch this brief interview with Adam Borchard from the California Fresh Fruit Association as he explains, based on his recent presentation at the Grape, Nut & Tree Fruit Expo.
Please thank this video’s sponsor Suterra for their industry support.
Ken Melban, who joined the California Avocado Commission (CAC) in 2011 as director, issues management, has been promoted to vice president of industry affairs and operations. He has served as CAC’s vice president, industry affairs since 2015. In his new role, he will continue to lead the Commission’s industry affairs programs and take on the financial and administrative operations of the organization.
Prior to starting his career with CAC, Melban worked with California commodity boards and the National Grape & Wine Initiative, as well as manager of the Statewide Spray Safe program. He also served as an adjunct professor at his alma mater, Fresno Pacific University.
During his career with the Commission, Melban has assumed responsibility for industry advocacy activities, issues management, production research and grower communications. As part of his efforts to expand the California avocado export market, he secured market access to China and has secured USDA Market Assessment funding and USDA Market Access program grants to promote avocados in South Korea, Japan and China.
He has played a key role in the development of sustainability initiatives, including the adoption of Good Agricultural Practices for the California avocado industry. After the devastating losses from the Thomas fire in 2017, his efforts led to expedited federal funding for impacted industry members. Melban was appointed by the U.S. Trade Representative and USDA Secretary of Agriculture to the Agricultural Technical Advisory Committee in 2014 and was reappointed in 2019.
Throughout his career he has represented the interests of California avocado growers through his service with the California Department of Food and Agriculture Climate Change Adaptation Consortium and Ventura AG Futures Alliance.
2022 is a year of ugly jerks in input costs. Fuel and fertilizer prices are way up. Higher natural gas and labor costs are pushing up drying costs, further reducing net grower returns in what looked to be a good market year. Mechanical pruning and careful production practices (to name a few steps) may help cut costs in the short term in established orchards. In the long run, cutting drying costs and increasing harvest timing flexibility may help prune growers net returns and stay in business. This long-term picture will require developing and field-testing new prune varieties that market like ‘French’ prune but have much lower dry away ratios (2-2.5) and hang longer on the tree without harming dried fruit quality.
The UC Davis Prune Variety Development program, funded by the CA Prune Board, has developed several French-type prune varieties with low dry away numbers (2-2.5). These varieties “dry on the tree” while retaining good fruit quality. Projected savings for grower could be hundreds of dollars per acre in drying costs (see projected costs in the table below). These new varieties can be harvested over a longer time period giving growers more flexibility in managing harvest. More information on new varieties and contact information for UCD Prune Devo program are available on-line.
Four new, numbered varieties performed well in small trials over several years. These varieties must be field-tested in small plantings (1-2 acres) before a large orchard should be planted. Test trees are available to interested growers. For more information on availability of test trees, contact Sarah Castro (scastro@ucdavis.edu) with UC Davis Prune Variety Devolopment program.
Projected differences in hauling and drying costs for ‘French’ prune (thinned or unthinned) and a new, unreleased ‘French’-type prune variety (J2N-128). These figures are intended as an example of possible production values.
**This variety selected only as an example. There are four ‘French’ type varieties that show promise.— By Franz Niederholzer, UCCE Farm Advisor, Colusa and Sutter/Yuba Counites
Photosynthesis has evolved in plants for millions of years to turn water, carbon dioxide, and the energy from sunlight into plant biomass and the foods we eat. This process, however, is very inefficient, with only about 1% of the energy found in sunlight ending up in the plant. Scientists at UC Riverside and the University of Delaware have found a way to bypass the need for biological photosynthesis altogether and create food independent of sunlight by using artificial photosynthesis.
Plants are growing in complete darkness in an acetate medium that replaces biological photosynthesis. (Marcus Harland-Dunaway/UCR)
The research, published in Nature Food, uses a two-step electrocatalytic process to convert carbon dioxide, electricity, and water into acetate, the form of the main component of vinegar. Food-producing organisms then consume acetate in the dark to grow. Combined with solar panels to generate the electricity to power the electrocatalysis, this hybrid organic-inorganic system could increase the conversion efficiency of sunlight into food, up to 18 times more efficient for some foods.
“With our approach we sought to identify a new way of producing food that could break through the limits normally imposed by biological photosynthesis,” said corresponding author Robert Jinkerson, a UC Riverside assistant professor of chemical and environmental engineering.
In order to integrate all the components of the system together, the output of the electrolyzer was optimized to support the growth of food-producing organisms. Electrolyzers are devices that use electricity to convert raw materials like carbon dioxide into useful molecules and products. The amount of acetate produced was increased while the amount of salt used was decreased, resulting in the highest levels of acetate ever produced in an electrolyzer to date.
Experiments showed that a wide range of food-producing organisms can be grown in the dark directly on the acetate-rich electrolyzer output, including green algae, yeast, and fungal mycelium that produce mushrooms. Producing algae with this technology is approximately fourfold more energy efficient than growing it photosynthetically. Yeast production is about 18-fold more energy efficient than how it is typically cultivated using sugar extracted from corn.
“We were able to grow food-producing organisms without any contributions from biological photosynthesis. Typically, these organisms are cultivated on sugars derived from plants or inputs derived from petroleum—which is a product of biological photosynthesis that took place millions of years ago. This technology is a more efficient method of turning solar energy into food, as compared to food production that relies on biological photosynthesis,” said Elizabeth Hann, a doctoral candidate in the Jinkerson Lab and co-lead author of the study.
The potential for employing this technology to grow crop plants was also investigated. Cowpea, tomato, tobacco, rice, canola, and green pea were all able to utilize carbon from acetate when cultivated in the dark.
By liberating agriculture from complete dependence on the sun, artificial photosynthesis opens the door to countless possibilities for growing food under the increasingly difficult conditions imposed by anthropogenic climate change. Drought, floods, and reduced land availability would be less of a threat to global food security if crops for humans and animals grew in less resource-intensive, controlled environments. Crops could also be grown in cities and other areas currently unsuitable for agriculture, and even provide food for future space explorers.
“Using artificial photosynthesis approaches to produce food could be a paradigm shift for how we feed people. By increasing the efficiency of food production, less land is needed, lessening the impact agriculture has on the environment. And for agriculture in non-traditional environments, like outer space, the increased energy efficiency could help feed more crew members with less inputs,” said Jinkerson. This approach to food production was submitted to NASA’s Deep Space Food Challenge where it was a Phase I winner. — By Holly Ober, UC Riverside
About UC Riverside
The University of California, Riverside is a doctoral research university, a living laboratory for groundbreaking exploration of issues critical to Inland Southern California, the state and communities around the world. Reflecting California’s diverse culture, UCR’s enrollment is more than 26,000 students. The campus opened a medical school in 2013 and has reached the heart of the Coachella Valley by way of the UCR Palm Desert Center. The campus has an annual impact of more than $2.7 billion on the U.S. economy. To learn more, visit www.ucr.edu.
The Olive Oil Commission of California (OOCC) Board of Directors has established a pre-season crop estimate of 1.8 million gallons for the 2022/23 season. The estimate is down significantly from the 2021/22 season when just over 3 million gallons were produced by OOCC members, who represent approximately 90 percent of California’s olive oil production.
The Board also reviewed and adopted a budget for the OOCC’s 2022/23 fiscal year. The assessment rate remains at 16 cents per gallon and is mandatory for producers with 5,000 gallons or more of olive oil per year.
The budget for OOCC expenses was approved at $416,000 with an additional $97,848 set aside in reserves. The OOCC expected expenditures breakdown as follows: $110,000 for the Testing and Sampling Program; $105,000 for Research; $38,000 for Outreach and $160,100 for Administration and Operations.
You can scarcely find a tasty, heirloom tomato in the grocery store. But University of Florida scientists helped discover a way to enhance tomato smell and taste. Breeding efforts over the last half century have emphasized traits that are important to producers – yield, disease resistance, appearance and post-harvest shelf life among them.
While those traits are important, modern commercial varieties tend to fall short of the flavor potential shown in older varieties. But consumers want tomatoes that taste and smell good.
For years, consumers have lamented what they deem as the bland taste of tomatoes. Any flavor you savor when you bite into the fruit comes from a combination of many aroma compounds. Some of those compounds contain nitrogen, and they add fruity, floral and tomato vine profiles to the flavor mix. Working on an international team of scientists, two UF/IFAS researchers helped find a route to several important nitrogen-containing tomato flavor compounds.
In a newly published study, scientists showed that five of the compounds are part of a biochemical pathway for synthesis of these important flavor compounds.
Using a closely related fruit, Solanum pennellii, scientists found a site on a chromosome essential to produce detectable nitrogenous volatiles in tomatoes, said Denise Tieman, a UF/IFAS research assistant professor of horticultural sciences.
That data led scientists to identify a step in the pathway to nitrogen-containing flavor compounds.
“Now that we know how these compounds are made in tomatoes, we can identify varieties that have the heirloom version of the enzyme and high levels of these flavor compounds, and we can breed this trait into modern tomatoes to improve flavor,” Tieman said.
Tomatoes produce many aroma volatiles, including nitrogen-containing volatiles that are relatively rare in other fruits.
Since these volatiles are active at low concentrations, increasing their levels does not impact yield or fruit size.
The new research, published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was led by Harry Klee, a UF/IFAS professor emeritus of horticultural sciences and Charles Goulet, a professor of plant science at Universite Laval in Quebec City, Canada. — By Brad Buck, University of Florida Institute of Food & Agricultural Sciences
Western Growers and S2G Ventures are now accepting applications for the 2022 AgSharks Competition, a unique event where startup companies pitch their innovations in front of a live audience of the world’s largest specialty crop producers to win a $250,000 minimum investment. Impact-driven entrepreneurs and startups developing technologies that promote a more healthy and sustainable food and agriculture system can apply for the AgSharks Competition at 2022agsharksevent.splashthat.com. Applications close on Monday, Sept. 12, 2022.
“With a proven track record of rewarding cutting-edge agtech innovators and enabling them to grow their businesses, we look forward to this year’s competitors engaging in a live, spirited back-and-forth with our members on how best to use technology to solve the most pressing needs of our industry,” said Western Growers President and CEO Dave Puglia. “With its real-world financial stakes for the start-ups and the potential long-term benefits for our members, the AgSharks Competition is one of the highlights of our Annual Meeting.”
Three startups will be selected to pitch their inventions to a panel of growers, shippers, processors and venture capitalists in front of more than 300 fresh produce farmers and industry leaders during the WG Annual Meeting in Las Vegas on Nov. 2-5, 2022. The AgSharks finalists will be the only presenting startups featured on stage. In addition to potential investment capital, the winner(s) will receive international recognition, mentoring from S2G and WG, potential access to farm acreage to pilot their technologies and access to WG’s expansive network of leading fresh produce companies.
“AgSharks leads as the only pitch competition that offers agtech startups an audience with the biggest agricultural companies across the globe,” said Audre Kapacinskas, Principal at S2G Ventures. “The combination of exclusive access to hundreds of industry leaders, plus investment capital to fuel growth, are two elements that are crucial for a startup’s success in this industry.”
AgSharks was first held in 2017, and through the competition, past winners Hazel Technologies and Burro have since brought their products from development to market. Hazel Technologies has raised over $87.8 million in funding over six rounds and is advancing the industry with sachets that extend the shelf life of fresh produce by as much as three times. Burro raised a $10.9 million Series A round in September 2021 led by S2G Ventures and Toyota Ventures and continues to help solve farmers’ labor woes with the expansion of its fleet of autonomous robots to farms across the west.
About Western Growers:
Founded in 1926, Western Growers represents local and regional family farmers growing fresh produce in California, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico. Western Growers’ members and their workers provide over half the nation’s fresh fruits, vegetables and tree nuts, including half of America’s fresh organic produce. Connect and learn more about Western Growers on Twitter and Facebook.
About S2G Ventures:
S2G Ventures, the direct investment team of Builders Vision, partners with entrepreneurs who are working on solutions to some of the world’s greatest challenges across the food, agriculture, oceans, and clean energy markets. We provide capital, mentorship and value-added resources to companies pursuing innovative market-based solutions that generate positive social, environmental and financial returns. We provide our partners with flexible capital solutions that can range from seed and venture funding through growth equity to debt and infrastructure financing. For more information about S2G, visit s2gventures.com, tune-in to our podcast, or connect with us on LinkedIn.
The Fresno Chamber of Commerce, in partnership with the Fresno County Farm Bureau, is proud to announce the winners of the 2022 Ag Awards, a long-standing tradition that honors and celebrates our region’s agricultural industry leaders. The honorees were recognized at the Ag Awards Celebration on November 3rd
The Board also reviewed and adopted a budget for the OOCC’s 2022/23 fiscal year. The assessment rate remains at 16 cents per gallon and is mandatory for producers with 5,000 gallons or more of olive oil per year.