CASFS Blog & Forum

And We Bid You Goodnight...

2012-03-17T12:56:00.011-07:00

Greetings Dear Reader,
As you may (or may not) have noticed, this blog has fallen victim to neglect some six years since its inception. At this point, I'd be more than happy to hand the reins over to another member of the CASFS Apprenticeship Community. If anyone's interested, please be in touch. In the meantime, the Friends of the Farm & Garden, along with other generous grantors, have created a new space on the interwebs for Apprenticeship Alumni and community members to gather and connect...

Please visit:
http://GrowAFarmer.org
for up to date news on the work of Apprenticeship Alumni and CASFS Faculty.

There is also an alumni directory, a farmer's forum, job & land postings, an events calendar, a growing library of resources, and much more. The site's crown jewel however is the Alumni Farm Map, which is beginning to fill in from sea to shining sea. Please add your farm today!

Thanks for reading, happy farming and Abounding Harvests!
daniel

The Weight of the Nation

2012-03-15T22:13:00.000-07:00

This 4 part series is a compelling and comprehensive documentary on the state of our Nation's health and food system. Many thanks to HBO for allowing it to remain online and available free to all in its entirety. Please visit the Weight of the Nation website to get started, and please distribute it widely to friends and family.

Congratulations Class Of 2011!

2011-10-24T20:39:00.000-07:00

A UCSC Farm and Garden Apprenticeship video featuring the faces of the 2011 apprentices and staff, music by Martha Scanlan, art by Stephanie Lin, and inspiration via Leon.

Government Austerity Measures Threaten the Country’s Oldest Organic Farming Program

2011-09-13T21:17:00.000-07:00

by Apprenticeship Alum, Jason Dove Mark ('05)

The U.C. Santa Cruz Farm & Garden Apprenticeship changed my life.

In the winter of 2005, I was burning the candle at both ends and burning myself out. I was working too hard, moving too fast, and my doctor had warned me that I was at risk of chronic fatigue. Then, that spring, I found myself living on an organic farm perched above the waters of Monterey Bay. Before I moved to the farm, my to-do list as an environmental campaigner had been packed with conference calls, protest organizing, and press conferences. After arriving at the farm, my biggest priorities became keeping the onions free of weeds, thinning the young fruits on the apple trees, and waking up early to cook for 35 other aspiring farmers.

The switch blew my mind. As I worked in the fields and the orchards I could suddenly see the myriad interconnections that knit together a farming ecosystem; ecology went from an abstraction to a visceral reality. Perhaps more important, living with a few dozen other industrial society dissidents gave me a new appreciation for the ideals of solidarity and the practice of community. The time I spent at the UCSC Farm & Garden deepened my hope that farming, done right, could help heal a battered environment and perhaps even remedy some of the world’s injustices.

So I was horrified when I learned last month that, due in part to state and federal budget cutbacks, the Apprenticeship in Ecological Horticulture (as it’s formally called) may be forced to double its tuition—a move that would put this invaluable program beyond the reach of many people and set back efforts to educate a new generation of organic farmers.

Founded in 1967 by an eccentric British gardener named Alan Chadwick, the Farm & Garden Apprenticeship is the oldest organic farming education program in the United States. It is one of the few organic farming apprenticeships that combines in-the-fields, hand-on instruction with science-based classroom lectures and also one of the few that provides a certificate upon course completion. Demand for this unique curriculum far outstrips what the Apprenticeship can supply: For the 2011 season the apprenticeship received more than 150 applications for 36 openings.

The Apprenticeship is like a greenhouse for the organic farming movement, a place that (if you’ll excuse the extended metaphor) helps germinate crop after crop of passionate farmers and gardeners. Here in Northern California, the names at the farmers market stands and on the menus of farm-to-table restaurants are like a Who’s Who of Apprenticeship alumni: Dirty Girl Produce, Blue Heron Farm, Freewheelin Farm, Dinner Bell Farm, Pie Ranch, Blue House Farm, and the organic nursery Sunnyside Seedlings are all run by alums. And the ripple effect stretches far beyond California.

In New York City, alum Karen Washington is an instructor at the Farm School NYC. In Missoula, Montana, alum Josh Slotnick runs the innovative PEAS Farm, which combines a stellar CSA with agricultural education for University of Montana undergrads. Jones Valley Farm in Birmingham, Alabama is run by an Apprenticehip alum, as is Persephone Farm in Washington and Full Sun Farm outside of Ashville, North Carolina. For my part, I doubt that I would have the confidence to co-manage San Francisco’s three-acre Alemany Farm were it not for the instruction I received at the Farm & Garden.

Now, the austerity measures sweeping the country are jeopardizing the apprenticeship’s ability to continue its important work.

After a while, the budget battles and debt talks in Washington can come to seem like capital clownery. Even a political junkie like me can start to zone out: The details dissolve into abstractions, and from there into absurdities. But with the announcement of the Farm & Garden tuition increase, I saw the government austerity measures threaten something I intimately care about. And now I’m angry.

What’s especially galling about the impending tuition increases is that the Farm & Garden Apprenticeship itself is fiscally solvent and has been for many years. It is suffering now because of how fiscal cutbacks have cascaded down from the federal government, the state government, and the broader University of California system to this one little (but highly effective) program.

The financial details of interlocking institutions are confusing, but here’s the story in brief: The Farm & Garden Apprenticeship is technically housed within the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems (CASFS), a research group within UCSC that was founded in 1997. In the last year, the center has lost more than half of its state funding ($167,000), as well as a $335,000 annual U.S. Department of Agriculture grant. To make up for the shortfall, CASFS staff has had to dip into the Apprenticeship coffers. At the same time, the entire UC system is in belt-tightening mode and looking to reduce costs or increase revenues. Suddenly, the Farm & Garden Apprenticeship is being asked to pay more for some of the services it receives from the main UCSC campus.

The upshot? Tuition for the six-month program is expected to increase from $5,300 this year to $12,800 in 2013. Next summer, the tuition will technically be $8,500, though apprentices will pay $6,000 thanks to an anonymous donor who gave a special $100,000 gift to blunt the tuition increase. When I was an assistant instructor at the Farm & Garden in 2006, the tuition was $3,250. If the tuition does increase to $12,800, the admission price for this unique farming curriculum will have nearly quadrupled in just seven years.

And that, say longtime Apprenticeship staff, would be disastrous for efforts to educate a diverse group of farmers and gardeners. “Most of the people who go through this program are working adults, so typically they are not the highest wage earners out there,” said Christof Bernau, who has been an Apprenticeship instructor since 1999.

Bernau himself was an apprentice in 1994 and he worries that few people will be able to pay $12,000 for a six-month program that prepares one for a career in farming, hardly the most lucrative profession. “They come to gain more training, and go back out into a field or profession that by and large is not the highest paying,” he said. “They are giving up their jobs, and if they have a family they have to find a way to support their family while here.… It’s a leap and a commitment to come here.”

Big deal, I can hear the bean counters saying, why should the government be supporting farmer education in the first place? Well, for starters, because the average age of the American farmer is 57-years-old, and the largest cohort of farmers are 65 and older. Within the next decade this country is going to experience a wave of farmer retirements. We desperately need new growers to fill their places, and the Farm & Garden Apprenticeship has a proven track record of giving people the skills they need to become successful organic farmers.

As Bernau points out, the impending tuition increase is yet another example of how government austerity measures fall hardest on an already struggling middle class. If tuition skyrockets to more than $12,000 a summer, the elite will probably still be able to afford the program, and some half dozen of the poorest applicants will still receive scholarships. But everyone else will be turned off by the high prices, bad news for a sustainable food movement already struggling to shed the image of being the exclusive project of the affluent. “If you keep raising tuition, we are going to be pricing people out,” Bernau told me.

I know I couldn’t have done the program at the $12,000 price. I doubt very much that my buddy Matt McCue, who now runs Shooting Star CSA , could have swung that tuition. McCue had finished a combat tour in Iraq before coming to the Apprenticeship and his Army wages wouldn’t have been enough. Same with Robyn “Rose” Hosey, a working class gal from Pennsylvania who now works at Morning Glory Farm, one of the most successful organic farms in Massachusetts. Thinking about the alternate universe in which Hosey or McCue couldn’t have afforded the Apprenticeship is like imagining the agrarian version of “It’s a Wonderful Life”—only in this case the bastard Mr. Potter triumphs and the world is the worse off for it.

The way Bernau sees it, the tuition increase isn’t just a threat to farming education, but is also an assault on the broader principle of public education. “I believe the cost of education cannot and should not be borne entirely on the students’ backs,” he said. “The cost of educating an apprentice is $13,000 per student per year. So the tuition for 2013 is supposed to be $12,800. Even at elite, private universities, the full costs of education are not borne by the students. And certainly at a public institution there is a public role and a public responsibility to bear some of those costs, because the benefits from that education are accrued by all of society.”

In the case of the Apprenticeship education, the benefit is obvious and tangible: Real food, grown by people with a commitment to environmental stewardship and social justice. For more than 40 years, Apprenticeship alumni have been at the forefront of the movement to create sustainable food systems. Surely that’s a public good, one that deserves to be supported by the public purse.

Click here to make a donation to support the farmer education at UCSC.

Farm-To-Fork Benefit Dinner This Sunday!

2011-09-09T21:52:00.000-07:00

It's not in the water, it's in the soil.

"There are superior powers at work here," Chef Matthew Raiford says of the UCSC Farm & Garden apprenticeship, a full-time program offering enrollees the chance to learn the ins and outs of organic food.

Raiford, along with a team of apprentices, are preparing to unveil the literal fruits and vegetables of their labor at 3 p.m. Sunday in a Farm-To-Fork Benefit Dinner to be held on the grounds of the UCSC Farm. Proceeds from the event will be used to provide scholarships to next year's Apprentices.

Chef Raiford, an Atlanta native who makes his career in the nation's capital, says his family jokes that they've always gone organic.

Last year, the 44-year-old father and former Desert Storm veteran split an inheritance of 25 farmable acres with his sister. The land, which at its zenith amounted to some 476 acres, has been in the family since 1876.

"My great-great-great grandfather Jupiter Gilliard, a farmer and sharecropper in Georgia, bought the land," he recounts. He goes on to mention that the fertile acreage "never had any chemicals put into it, so that's why [they] say that [they've] always been a part of the food revolution." Gilliard was a former slave turned freedman who came upon the coastal property soon after the Civil War. It was passed down six generations, ending with Raiford.

Cooking has always come natural to Raiford. For a guy who says he goes to bed at night dreaming about creating new dishes with things like "wild hog, sturgeon, lemon verbena and honey," the culinary arts were about innate ability. Adding to his hesitancy was his father's opposition. A professional baker himself, the elder Raiford hoped his son would put his intelligence to a different use.

Raiford overcame these obstacles and went on to graduate from New York's Culinary Institute of America. He would later work at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas before landing his current position as executive chef at Haute Catering in Washington D.C., where he's responsible for feeding such governmental institutions as the House of Representatives, the Pentagon Center, the National Archives and the Canadian Embassy.

After he received his inheritance, Raiford decided to combine his love of fresh ingredients with his newfound agricultural goldmine.

Hoping to take the knowledge he's gleaned from his apprenticeship at UCSC, the enterprising chef plans on harvesting his Georgia farm.

The apprenticeship program allows for virtually anyone to gain first-hand experience in the world of small-scale farming and gardening. A day in the life of an apprentice is spent pulling roots, learning irrigation methods, attending lectures and participating in labor-intensive field work. In addition, teams of two apprentices prepare breakfast, lunch, and dinner everyday.

Sunday's dinner will see attendants, elderberry spritzers in hand, treated to a tour of the grounds and given a brief overview and welcoming. The main event is a five-course meal made almost entirely of ingredients on-site, complete with wine pairings and live music.

Like most chefs, Raiford places a premium on fresh ingredients. And he also believes in 'food justice,' or the idea that great, high quality food should be available to all. But he said that he's keenly aware of the fact that, especially in impoverished communities, terms like 'organic' or 'locavore' still have a ways to go before they lose their exoticism.

"If you look at the lineage of great chefs, it was about sitting on your grandmother's lap, and being around cooking," he says. "Well, I was around great ingredients my whole life. And now as a farmer, there's a responsibility to make sure that things are accessible."

Tickets for Sunday's Farm-To-Fork Benefit Dinner are still available. Additional donations to the Scholarship Fund are welcome and encouraged even from those unable to attend the dinner. Checks can be made out to the UCSC Foundation with "Apprenticeship Scholarships" in the memo line. Checks can be mailed to: Amy Bolton, CASFS, UCSC, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95064. Please contact Ann Lindsey with questions or for more information on how to make your gift count where it matters most.

Farmers Press GOP on Hiring

2011-09-06T21:27:00.000-07:00

Recent Republican solidarity on illegal immigration is showing cracks under pressure from agriculture groups, with two GOP congressmen floating programs that would make it easier for foreigners to work legally in U.S. fields and orchards.

Labor researchers say more than 1.4 million people are employed as field workers in the U.S. each year, and the Labor Department estimates more than half of them are here illegally. Grower groups say that number exceeds 75%, and say measures pending in Congress could deprive Americans of homegrown food.

"We need land, water and labor to produce the food that feeds this country," said Tom Deardorff, a fourth-generation farmer in Southern California, who is on the board of Western Growers, a large trade group. "They've been trying to take away our labor."

Rep. Lamar Smith (R., Texas), an immigration hardliner who now heads the House Judiciary Committee, plans to introduce a bill Wednesday that would revise an existing guest-worker program and allow up to half a million foreign farm workers a year to work in the U.S.

Rep. Dan Lungren (R., Calif.), whose district includes almond, rice and grape growers, also is seeking the creation of a new visa category for agricultural workers. He said it would allow "hundreds of thousands" of foreign farm laborers to work in the U.S. for 10 months at a time, the same time frame allotted by Mr. Smith's proposal.

Stepped-up lobbying by farm groups on the issue amounts to a frank admission about their dependence on a foreign-born work force—whether legal or not. Their argument is that most American workers have shunned farm jobs because many are of a seasonal, migratory nature as well as being physically arduous.

But concern is also rising for a wider swath of corporate America about the need for a more business-friendly rationalization of immigration policy. Other sectors like fast food, hotels and construction, which also employ low-skilled workers, have been subjected to federal enforcement actions that have resulted in the loss of employees who are in the country illegally.

In general, Republican White House contenders say it's premature to discuss changing immigration law until the border with Mexico is secure. Requests for comment from the major GOP presidential campaigns went unreturned late Tuesday afternoon.

The two agriculture-related proposals in Congress are an attempt to placate farmers who have been descending on Washington since June to fight a separate bill being pushed by Mr. Smith.

Farm groups claim that bill, known as the E-Verify bill, would lead to a severe labor shortage for a sector that relies on undocumented farm hands.

"If we don't have a fix to this proven labor problem in agriculture, I don't think you can get an E-Verify program passed," said Mr. Lungren in an interview, adding that he was "dealing in reality."

Rep. Doc Hastings (R., Wash.), who said he has been hearing from farmers who rely on immigrants in his state and talking to Mr. Smith about their concerns, says "there is now recognition that agriculture workers have to be treated differently" from other sectors.

Since President Barack Obama took office, the agricultural sector has been hit by federal immigration audits of payrolls that have forced some growers to shed hundreds of workers. Growers say Mr. Smith's "Legal Workforce Act" would devastate their industry. It would require all employers to use an electronic database called E-Verify to check whether their employees are eligible to work in the U.S.

Amid high unemployment, mandatory E-Verify had resonated with many in Congress and appeared to have a solid chance of passing the Republican-controlled House. But farmers, who traditionally back the GOP, are pressuring lawmakers to oppose the bill.

Tension over E-Verify has erupted among Republican leaders, according to people involved in discussions.

Frustrated farmers have orchestrated a campaign called "Save America's Food and Economy" to raise awareness about the risks of E-Verify's passage. The group's website cautions that if Congress passes the bill, "we will find our farm industry collapsing and our nation outsourcing our food supply to nations like China and Mexico."

A House Judiciary staff member noted that while all employers would be required to use E-Verify, it would apply only to future employees. The measure would allow seasonal workers to leave the country and not be covered by E-Verify if their employer remains the same and they are allowed to return.

Meanwhile, farmers in several parts of the U.S. are already suffering from worker shortages thanks to a spate of state laws to quash illegal immigration.

Georgia and Alabama recently passed tough laws that prompted many undocumented workers to leave those states, undermining the harvest of tomatoes, blueberries and other crops.

In Michigan, some apple growers are concerned about a smaller influx of migrant workers, who normally come north from those states in time for the harvest beginning in September.

"We keep hearing we should be hiring the unemployed or prisoners," says Julia Rothwell, past chair of the U.S. Apple Association. But such individuals are either not applying for jobs or quit after a short time, she said, even if wages can reach $15 an hour.

"We are not going to be the ones to magically lower unemployment," said Barry Bedwell, president of the California Grape & Tree Fruit League, which represents growers of grapes, peaches and plums.

Mr. Smith's proposal centers on revising the existing H-2A program to bring farm workers to the U.S, including dairy workers, and would be known as the H-2C. But many agricultural employers deem the H-2A program as being beyond repair. Currently, fewer than 5% of all U.S. farm workers are employed through the program.

Under the H-2A program, employers who anticipate a shortage of domestic farm workers can apply to hire foreigners on a temporary basis. Farmers say they have to apply months in advance, before they can accurately estimate their labor needs for the harvest. They must also advertise for U.S. workers first, which results in people who sign on and don't show up or stay on the job, they say.

About half of H-2A employers are completely dissatisfied or only slightly satisfied with the program, according to a soon-to-be-released survey commissioned by the National Council of Agricultural Employers and conducted by Washington State University. Only about 45,000 farm workers a year come to the U.S. on the program, which involves the Departments of State, Labor and Homeland Security. "Theoretically, the number of visas is unlimited but the actual restraints of the program make it self-limiting," said Frank Gasperini, the council's executive vice president.

Farm-to-Fork Benefit Dinner

2011-08-23T21:05:00.000-07:00

Join us for a gourmet field dinner on the landmark UCSC Farm to help raise scholarship funding for the CASFS Apprenticeship.

Tickets are available online. To reserve seats by mail, send a check for $125 per ticket made payable to UC Regents to: UCSC Farm, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, attn: Benefit Dinner. Please include contact information.

The event will take place on Sunday, the 11th of September, with a tour of the Farm and a silent auction starting at 3 pm. Dinner will start at 4 pm and features a 5-course meal created with organic ingredients from the UCSC Farm & Garden and other local farms and ranches. The entrée portion of the menu will offer a choice of grass-fed Fogline Farm pork or chicken dishes, and all courses will include full vegetarian options. Fine organic wines will accompany the meal.

Tickets for the event are $125 per person. All proceeds will support scholarships for participants in the CASFS Apprenticeship in Ecological Horticulture program.

Prior to the dinner, join members of this year’s apprenticeship class for a tour of the gardens, fields, greenhouses and orchards of the 25-acre UCSC Farm starting at 3 pm. Founded in 1971, the Farm serves students, apprentices, researchers and community members interested in learning about and improving sustainable farming and food systems. The UCSC Farm is located on the University of California Santa Cruz campus; click here for directions to parking. Please allow at least 20 minutes to park and walk or catch a free shuttle to the Farm.

For more information, call 831.459-3240 or email casfs@ucsc.edu. Guests are invited to bring their own plate for the main course.

The 44-year old Apprenticeship program is the premiere organic farmer and gardener training program in the country, with over 1,400 graduates now working across the U.S. and internationally as organic growers, educators, community garden organizers, researchers, and policymakers. The Apprenticeship is based at the UCSC Farm and Alan Chadwick Garden at UC Santa Cruz, and is a program of the Center for Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems.

This special dinner will be prepared and served by students in the Apprenticeship program under the direction of Chef Matthew Raiford, a member of this year’s Apprenticeship class. Chef Raiford is trained in classic French cuisine and has an affinity for Mediterranean flavors. Most recently, Chef Raiford was the Executive Chef for Haute Catering in Washington D.C., the premiere catering company for the U.S. House of Representatives, Canadian Embassy, Pentagon Conference Center and the National Archives.

***

Farm-to-Fork Dinner Menu

First Course: Roasted Red Kabocha Squash with Aged Parmesan

Second Course: Quick Pickled Salad

Entrée: Roasted Pig ~ or ~ Herb Stuffed Smoked Chicken~ or ~Vegetable Strudel with Oaxaca Pepper Sauce, all served with Tongue of Fire Succotash and Garlic Parsnips

Cheese Course: Artisanal Cheeses with Farm Fruit

Dessert: Apple Tarte Tatin with Sweet Corn Ice Cream

Organic & Fair-trade Coffee and Teas

Wine and other beverages included

~Click Here To Reserve Your Seats!~

Oran Hesterman publishes book on sustainable food system for all

2011-08-07T21:25:00.000-07:00

Oran Hesterman believes our food system is broken.

He said he believes that it is in desperate need of redesign. He said he believes many Americans are unaware of their part in this broken food system. The good news? He said he believes we can fix the system.

In his new book, "Fair Food: Growing a Healthy, Sustainable Food System for All," Hesterman details the problems with our system and offers solutions on how to fix what he sees as a problem greater than what we eat. He points out that our problem stems from the way our food is produced, packaged and delivered.

"I wrote the book Fair Food' to help people become engaged citizens in the fair food movement," he said. "I wrote it so people can look beyond the refrigerator to see how much change they can make."

The former Santa Cruz resident is the president and CEO of Fair Food Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing the amount of healthy, fresh and sustainable food system.

Hesterman lives in Michigan, where he served as the food director for the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and taught forage and crops systems management, sustainable agriculture and leadership development at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Mich.

After studying at UC Santa Cruz in the 1970s, he transferred to UC Davis, where he earned his bachelor's degree in plant sciences and master's degree in agronomy.

Yet, it was his time in Santa Cruz that jump-started his career in researching and reporting on agriculture and food systems.

Although Hesterman transferred to UC Davis before getting his diploma in Santa Cruz, his experiences at UCSC shaped his career. "Well as you probably know I have strong roots in Santa Cruz, being a student there in the '70s." Hesterman said. "I helped break ground on some vegetable gardens that are still there today."

Hesterman was one of the first students to be involved with the UCSC vegetable gardens. He broke ground on The Farm in 1970, which has since been renamed the Alan Chadwick Garden. "That [the garden] really propelled me into this career," he said. "Being in harmony with nature and with each other has been the focus throughout my career."

Many Santa Cruz residents are familiar with the term "buying local" as it gained in local popularity far before the economic downturn.

Along with buying local comes farmers markets, organic products and a special connection between the consumer and grower.

Hesterman said he believes that buying local is not enough to change our broken food system.

In his book, he gives instruction on how to make changes in a larger way than by simply buying from a local farmer, which he emphasizes as still being important.

He said he wants readers to see beyond actions such as buying locally and to think about how many inner-city residents don't have access to the fresh vegetables and fruits those in suburbs and rural areas have.

The result, he said, is a inner-city child who is uneducated about healthy eating and only able to access unhealthy food.

Hesterman said he hopes his book guides those looking to help on a larger level by acting in local ways.

"I would love readers to read with an understanding that while our food system is broken in many ways, it is a system we know how to fix," he said. "There are opportunities for people to get involved on many levels, from their own home to communities to the places they worship to policies on the local and national level."

While his book contains facts and details about those living in areas without fresh food, his book offers solutions to the problems he sees. "My book provides dozens of resources if people are interested in engaging in fair food systems," he said.

Big raise scheduled in UCSC's horticulture apprenticeship fee

2011-08-03T22:41:00.001-07:00

The price for one of the flagship programs of UC Santa Cruz, the Apprenticeship in Ecological Horticulture, is set to rise precipitously over the next two years.

The fee for the acclaimed six-month UC extension course will increase from $5,350 this year to $8,500 in 2012, a 58 percent increase. In 2013 it will be $12,800, an almost three-fold increase of the $3,250 apprentices paid in 2006.

The decision was made in July in response to significant drops in funding for the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, the department that houses the apprenticeship.

The center has lost 52 percent of its state funding, $167,000, and a $335,000 annual U.S. Department of Agriculture grant. The total Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems budget for 2010-2011 was $1.3 million.

"We are really concerned about next year, and what deficit CASFS as a whole will run. We are very concerned about January uncertainty and if we'll have a mid-year [state funding] cut," said UCSC Social Sciences Dean Sheldon Kamieniecki, who oversees the center. "Considering the potential deficit CASFS could run in 2013, we had to raise apprenticeship tuition considerably in order to make CASFS whole."

A recent one-time grant of $100,000 will offset the 2012 increase and every apprentice next year will pay $6,000, Kamieniecki said, but that is not a long-term solution.

Apprenticeship staff, current students and former apprentices have all expressed dismay at the steep increase, and said they are worried about the higher fee limiting the diversity and accessibility of the program.

"There is no way I could have done it for $12,800. That shouldn't happen," said Nancy Vail, the co-owner of Pescadero's Pie Ranch and a former apprentice and staff member who called the program "a feather in the cap" of the university.

Wednesday, Kamieniecki is scheduled to meet with the current apprentices, who are asking for a more open budget process and that the tuition hikes be rolled back.

"One of our chief concerns is the stated mission of the program to keep it accessible," current apprentice Jeff Zerger, 40, said. "There is a strong correlation between cost and diversity. Who can take six months off and pay $12,800? That is out of touch with reality."

As a UC extension course the apprentices are not eligible for financial aid and are not earning credits toward a degree. Graduates receive a certificate in ecological horticulture upon completion of the apprenticeship, which is often called "unique" and "invaluable" by staff and participants for its combination of academics and hands-on training in sustainable agriculture.

Many of the apprentices are well over 20 years old and leave jobs to live on the UCSC farm from April to September. Graduates have gone on to start organic farms of their own, educational programs, prison garden projects and other nonprofit food and agriculture-related organizations.

One of the stated goals of the apprenticeship, according to the center's website, is to increase the "number and diversity" of people who have access to the training. This year 36 apprentices were chosen from a pool of approximately 150 applicants.

Apprenticeship staff say they prepared a program budget for the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems and Kamieniecki that set 2012 tuition at $6,000 and met previous criteria for a sustainable program. Kamieniecki said that in light of the overall perilous financial state of the center for 2013 and the ongoing subsidies for the apprenticeship program, tuition had to be raised.

The 36 apprentices live on the farm, and the apprenticeship is subsidized by the university through the free use of land and utilities, among other benefits of the campus infrastructure.

The apprenticeship was informally started in 1967 by the creator of the UCSC garden, Alan Chadwick. In 1980 UCSC started an agroecology program, and in 1997 the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems was formed. Since then, the apprenticeship's finances have become increasingly intertwined with those of the center, current and former staff members said.

Kamieniecki says the apprenticeship fee goes to the center's general fund, but added that the two are "integrated" because of the staff support and other benefits the apprenticeship gets from its umbrella department.

"I would hate to think the financial burden of keeping CASFS going is going to fall on the incoming class of apprentices who are just trying to further careers in food movement and want to be farmers and educators," said Kirstin Yogg, an apprenticeship graduate and the co-owner of Santa Cruz's Freewheelin' Farm.

UCSC estimates that the program's cost per apprentice is between $13,000 and $14,000.

"The tuition does not cover the full cost of the apprenticeship experience," said Christof Bernau, apprenticeship garden manager. "But this may be where there is a little philosophical difference. From my perspective it is untenable to burden young working adults not going into the most high-paying field with the whole cost of education. There is nowhere in the UC system where the full cost is covered by the student."

Tuition for UC undergraduates has nearly doubled since the 2006-2007 school year, from $6,121 to $12,192 for 2011-2012. However, the two groups do not make for a clean comparison. Undergraduates pay separately for housing, while accommodations are included in the apprenticeship fee. Apprentices pay an extra fee for books and tools, and contribute to the revenue for the program, harvesting flowers and vegetables and selling them at the UCSC farm stand.

Both Kamieniecki and Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems Director Patricia Allen have said they plan to aggressively seek more donations and scholarship money. Currently there is funding for four to five scholarships a year, Allen said.

"The Center has historically written grants for particular programs, but now scholarships and general support will be relied upon more heavily," Allen said, adding that the center had to eliminate five graduate student research positions for next year. "This is the shift we are undergoing, and we have to develop new relationships with donors."

Allen also said she is exploring shorter courses that could offer elements of the apprenticeship without the full financial and time commitment.

"Scholarships do not get to the core of the issue of program sustainability" current apprentice Aileen Suzara, 27, said. "Scholarships should be an offset, not a solution."

Garden Cruz: Organic Matters! 75 Hours of Organic Education

2011-07-16T18:35:00.000-07:00

A new intensive organic gardening course will be offered at the UCSC Farm & Alan Chadwick Garden starting Wednesday, September 7. Designed to accommodate busy work-week schedules, this comprehensive course will take place on nine consecutive Saturdays and five Wednesday evenings, with the last class scheduled for Saturday, November 5. This is an ideal course for home gardeners, urban and community garden leaders, and school garden teachers seeking to learn new skills and enhance their gardening and homesteading knowledge.

Taught by staff and graduates of the CASFS Farm & Garden Apprenticeship, along with invited experts, the course combines lectures with hands-on instruction in the gardens, greenhouses, and orchards of the Chadwick Garden and UCSC Farm at UC Santa Cruz. Topics will range from compost preparation, soil analysis, bed preparation and planting, to sexual and asexual propagation, irrigation, pest and disease control, and fruit tree care, and will include workshops on individual crops, backyard chicken and duck raising, bee keeping, and more. Please see the attached flyer for a complete list of classes.

Cost of the 75-hour course is $1,200, with a $100 discount for Friends of the Farm & Garden members (memberships available at sign up). Register by August 10 to receive an additional $50 discount. Support for qualified UCSC undergraduates is available through UCSC’s Measure 43 funding. Class size is limited to ensure a high quality learning experience. A $300 deposit is required to hold your place in the class, with the balance due by August 24. To register or for more information, contact Amy Bolton at 831.459.3240 or by email.

What Chicken Ought to Be!

2011-06-21T20:34:00.000-07:00

From the barn at Dinner Bell Farm, a chorus of peeps hung in the air above three-week-old baby chicks hopping about their brooders.

As soon as they are able, the young chicks will head out onto pasture for good old-fashioned fresh air and grass.

In their second year raising heritage chickens on 30 acres in Chicago Park, Bay Area bred farmers Molly Nakahara, Paul Glowaski and Cooper Funk (all CASFS Apprenticeship Class of 2006) remain devoted to food production that's good not only for the animals raised, but for the people who eat them and the planet. It's work that feels right.

“Farming really feels like quintessential, honorable work. Everyone's got to eat,” Funk said.

After years of learning their trade, the farming trio moved to the Sierra foothills to lease three adjoining parcels of land suited for farming — a mix of open land for pasture and row crops, ponds, orchard and woods, abundant with mountain water.

All in their early 30s, the farmers found each other while students in 2006 at the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems at University of California, Santa Cruz.

Nakahara is an educator and ninth generation Californian who founded the Tennyson High School Farm in Hayward.

Glowaski spent three years as farm director of the Homeless Garden Project in Santa Cruz where he helped train low income and homeless people how to grow food on a two-acre market farm.

Funk worked at Pie Ranch in Pescadero where he helped design and manage a pastured poultry operation. He and Glowaski founded Urban Eggs, a backyard poultry consulting business in the San Francisco Bay Area.

“We love having folks come out to the farm,” Funk said. Already the farm has a strong local following.

Going beyond local, ties to the Bay Area are going equally strong where the farmers journey once a month to make deliveries. The Slanted Door, an upper end Vietnamese restaurant in San Francisco, likes the chickens so much it places orders for 85 birds a week.

Chefs seek out Dinner Bell Farm chickens for their rich flavor. Dinner Bell's heritage varieties — Naked Necks and New Hampshires — are known for tasty thigh meat rich in nutrition.

“It takes twice as long to raise our birds than it would the other,” Funk explained. His birds are harvested at nine to 12 weeks compared to standard harvesting times for commercial Cornish Cross chickens ready in six.

Every four weeks, Dinner Bell Farm receives a shipment of 650 day-old chicks in the mail.

“We don't hatch them here. That's a whole other ball game,” said Funk. Harvesting the birds is also done elsewhere at a USDA facility in Sacramento.

Once out on pasture, the chickens eat a diversified diet of grubs, seeds, grasses, legumes and perennial and annual plants growing between rows of fruit trees.

Every day, the farmers move the birds' shelters to a fresh foraging area, clean of droppings and pathogens, a system that doesn't overtax the land. Chickens are free to take dust baths, nap in the shade of a tree, eat certified organic feed and drink fresh water whenever they please.

“This is truer to what a chicken ought to be,” Funk said, adjusting the birds' watering system as chickens foraged at his feet.

Besides chickens, customers can find an array of produce. There are strawberries, arugula, mixed salad greens, onions, okra, a multitude of hard-to-find varieties of peppers and flowers for weddings and the table all grown at the farm.

It's not uncommon for these farmers to work an 80-hour workweek, toiling in the sun, rain and sleet building infrastructure, driving tractors and building soil. Yet they all look healthy and strong.

“We're fairly certain this is what we want to do with our lives,” Funk said.

Immigration Laws=Fewer Hands in the Fields

2011-06-19T19:45:00.000-07:00

It was a Tuesday afternoon at the height of blackberry season, and the Paulk Family Farm was short 100 pickers. It was Don Pedro's job to find them. (Click Here for Video).

Pedro Guerrero, 54, the smiling, soft-spoken man in black cowboy boots whom everyone calls Don Pedro, was barreling down two-lane roads in a compact Chevy on a hunt for his own people. He was searching amid the trailers and tumbledown rental houses and mercados that have sprung up since the 1990s, when waves of Latinos began arriving in Georgia to harvest food, serve it in restaurants and scrape it from soiled plates.

Don Pedro kept one hand on the wheel. The other sorted paper scraps stuffed in the pocket of his Western shirt. On a flip phone, he punched in numbers for guys named Felipe and Miguel and Sixto, surfing an analog network of cousins and friends of friends and old sources who might know where the hard workers were.

“Si, Miguel, como esta?” he said. How are you? “How many can you get us? Twenty-five? We need all the people you've got, because we're running behind.”

He clapped the phone shut and drove on, hopeful he could find another 75 to join the 155 already in the Paulks' fields. Temperatures have been scorching this spring, and the delicate blackberries have been ripening fast, some withering on the vine.

Don Pedro — like farmers across Georgia — is worried that the state's tough new immigration law, set to take effect July 1, is scaring away an illegal immigrant labor force.

The Georgia Department of Agriculture this month released a survey of farmers who said they needed to fill more than 11,000 positions lasting from one day to a year. Critics of U.S. farming practices have long said Americans would take such jobs if they paid better.

Don Pedro said his job has never been so tough, nor workers so scarce. His boss had told the state Labor Department he needed pickers, but he had received no responses. He wasn't surprised, even though the jobless rate in Irwin County was 13%. Few here believe that native Southerners, white or black, wish to return to the land their ancestors once sharecropped or tended in bondage.

The Paulks, like many of the large landowners in these parts, are white, and have been working their fields since the late 1800s. For years, they grew row crops tended by African American sharecroppers using mule power: cotton, then tobacco, then peanuts.

As that farm work became mechanized, many sharecroppers moved away. But in the 1970s, the Paulks switched to delicate fruits — mostly muscadine grapes, and later blackberries — and needed field hands once again. Latinos like Don Pedro were eager to help.

He arrived in 1988, an illegal immigrant from the Mexican countryside who had spent some time in California. He knew his way around a farm, he spoke some English, and he worked hard. Soon he was working for the Paulks as a crew leader and state-licensed labor contractor.

It was a pinnacle of sorts, and a position of stature. Nearly every Latino around here has been hired by Don Pedro or has a relative who has. He is the godfather to many of their children.

He earned his citizenship and eventually saved enough, with the help of a Wal-Mart job on the side, to buy a little 9-acre ranchito. Gary Paulk, one of the planter family's more gregarious scions, became a friend and benefactor, helping the Guerreros navigate American bureaucracy, and stopping by on special occasions to sample goat-meat birria and blood soup.

The five children Don Pedro and his wife raised in Georgia, ages 14 to 30, all work at the farm, full or part time. Son Jesus has an associate's degree; son Eric, 19, is in college. Daughter Nancy, 18, plans to attend in the fall. The five are as much Georgian as Mexican, gliding between Spanish and a Southern-inflected English: When they are about to do something, they are most likely fixin' to do it. When they yell, they holler.

They are some of the most rooted members of an otherwise rootless population. But they too are worried about what the new law might mean for them. With no laborers, what use is a labor contractor?

Don Pedro did not get where he is by complaining, and in this stressful season, his children have not seen him sweat. In the hunt for workers this Tuesday, equanimity would mask the urgency, a broad smile spreading often under his matinee-idol moustache.

To Don Pedro, leaving a crop in the fields can seem less like a business setback than a moral failing — an act of inexcusable waste, a lost opportunity to feed a consumer's family, and the family of a field hand.

He calls it “trabajo sagrado” — sacred work.

Before his search for new hands, he was among his recruits Tuesday morning, gently directing their slow movement across the blackberry fields. The picking itself is not strenuous. But the 10-hour shifts in the powerful Georgia sun can be grueling, and dangerous.

Don Pedro demands perfection. He tells them, “Only pick the berries you would be proud to give your girlfriend or your boyfriend.”

The pickers, under federal law, must present identifying documents to work. Farmers acknowledge that some IDs must be phony, but as the Paulks' office manager said, “I don't know what a fake one looks like.”

They stood straddling the bushes, working fast and quietly to harvest berries that will be shipped to Sam's Clubs, Costcos and other stores on the East Coast. They were young and old, men and women. Some had pulled tube socks over their arms to protect against the sun. Some wrapped their faces in bandanas. They were almost all Mexican or Guatemalan.

Two workers stood out, both white high school dropouts. Michael Shelton, 17, goateed and crew-cut, had a girlfriend and a young baby to support. He said more native Georgians might head to the fields if the immigrants left.

“They would if they don't have no choice, like me,” he said.

Jesse Vickers, 18, in a Pink Floyd T-shirt, was thrown out of the house at 16.

“They can work better than us, that's for sure,” he said of the Latinos. Native-born Americans, he figured, are on a steep slide to laziness. Take music: Instead of learning guitar, the kids today play “Guitar Hero.”

“That's not even real guitar,” he said.

Many other farmers have turned to Don Pedro this year. He found workers to pick Lynn McKinnon's blueberries, but had to lure them over to the Paulks' farm before the job was done, forcing her to finish the job by machine. Blueberries, unlike blackberries, can be machine-picked, but it is not as efficient as hand-picking.

“That made me lose 30% of my fruit,” she reminded Don Pedro, who had stopped by to pick up some checks she owed his workers.

McKinnon had been passing out fliers in Florida, promising workers free transportation to Georgia, and free motel stays. She had no takers.

Blueberries were not her only concern. Soon the tobacco would need to come in.

“Are you gonna have tobacco people this year?” she asked him.

“I'll give you a call.”

He drove on, past the Tienda La Bonita and Big Dan's Army-Navy store, stopping at the Super Mercado Tarahumara. Alongside fliers calling for chile pickers, he posted fliers advertising the new prices his boss, J.W. Paulk Jr., had just set in hopes of luring workers: $3.50 and $4.50 per box, depending on the size, up a quarter from a week before.

The large boxes hold 96 ounces of berries, and the fastest pickers fill five boxes an hour, earning $22.50 an hour before taxes. Most make considerably less.

Back in the car he made another call and got a lead on a crew of eight. Now he was up to 33 workers, sort of. “They might come tomorrow, and they might not,” he said.

Later, he combed the streets of tiny Nicholls, Ga., looking for an unofficial crew leader named Ricardo and his white van with Florida plates.

He found a Jeep Cherokee parked in front of a house. Maybe Ricardo didn't have a van anymore. “It's a Florida tag — it could be them.”

“Oh, no,” he said seconds later, spying two women and a man on the porch, “cause it's white people.”

He stopped and inquired, with a flourish of politesse, about the white van.

“You could go to the police station,” the man said. “They know everybody there.”

That wasn't going to happen. Don Pedro kept crawling in a low gear until he found the van and Ricardo, who was sitting on a porch with his six-man crew, a ranchera tune bleeding through the screen door.

Ricardo was noncommittal. If his men were going to work, they would need a rental house closer to the Paulk farm. He didn't want to risk running into law enforcement driving 45 minutes each way.

At 7 p.m., Don Pedro was in Douglas at St. Paul Catholic Church, where an activist from the League of United Latin American Citizens was organizing a petition drive to demand that the governor repeal what she called a “racist” law.

The law, like others around the country, will force many employers to check potential employees' legal status using the federal E-Verify database. It will also give police the power to check the immigration status of criminal suspects. On Monday, a federal judge in Atlanta will consider the argument of immigrant rights activists that the law is unconstitutional and should be blocked.

The activist said farm owners had signed on in solidarity against the law. Tonight, J.W. Paulk was the only farmer in attendance.

The Paulks have been talking about moving to less labor-intensive crops, or using a federal guest-worker program, a move they say will cut into their profits. For now, they need pickers.

“A lucky day,” Don Pedro told his boss. “I find some workers.”

“Oh, good,” Paulk said. “Great.”

About 30 Latinos had come to the meeting. Police had already become more aggressive, they said, with more traffic stops and more arrests. We are not rateros, a man said, not criminals. If we go back to Mexico, said a woman who has lived in Georgia for nine years, what will we go back to? We are from here, she said.

During those testimonials, state troopers had caught one of Don Pedro's workers, Heriberto Ceron, at a road block, arresting him for driving without a license. Don Pedro drove to the station at 9:30 p.m. A deputy there told him to return in two hours. At 11:30 p.m., they told him to wait longer still. Sometime about 1 a.m., Pedro, then at home, was roused by the young man's phone call. He drove back a third time to pick Ceron up.

He always picked them up. He felt obliged to. And, after all, it was one more set of hands.

At 7:30 a.m. the next morning, the pickers were assembling at the Paulk loading bay, which is painted with a message: JESUS SAYS I AM THE VINE YE ARE THE BRANCHES.

A worker was pointing the scanner gun they call “El Check-In” at the ID cards of the day's workers: Erika, Valentin, Zenia, Ariana, Guillermo, Karla.

Once again Don Pedro was on the phone, asking about those 25 workers. “Are they coming? When? OK, we'll wait for them.”

But the 25 workers did not come. Neither did the eight. Neither did Ricardo's crew. The two young white men were no-shows, though they would reemerge at the job later in the week, surprising the Guerreros.

Don Pedro rode out to the fields. That afternoon, he said, he might go looking for workers in Tifton. Or in Moultrie.

A week later, another small cohort of blacks and whites would show for work — about 10 of them. Meanwhile, Gov. Nathan Deal would announce that Georgia was considering a new solution to the labor shortage. Perhaps the work could be done by unemployed probationers.

Pesticide Residues: The Dirty Dozen

2011-06-13T21:28:00.000-07:00

The conventional apple industry faces a potential public-relations headache in the wake of federal testing that found pesticide residues in 98% of America's second-most-popular fresh fruit, the highest rate among the produce screened by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in a yearly survey.

In the vast majority of cases, residues of the 48 different pesticides the USDA found in its sampling of apples—the nation's most widely consumed fresh fruit after bananas—were within amounts that federal regulators consider safe to eat.

But the department's study has prompted the Environmental Working Group, a Washington-based consumer-advocacy group, to put conventionally raised apples at the top of its latest "Dirty Dozen" list.

That list, which identifies the fruits and vegetables the group says are the most contaminated with farm chemicals, is slated to be released Monday.

The USDA also found pesticide residue on more than 90% of samples of six other types of produce: grapes, strawberries, cilantro, potatoes, oranges and spinach. Before testing, laboratory workers washed the samples under cold water for 10 seconds to mimic the way consumers were expected to handle the foods at home.

The Environmental Working Group, which says it uses USDA and other government data to compile its lists, isn't advising people to stop eating those foods. "The health benefits of a diet rich in fruits and vegetables outweigh the risks of pesticide exposure," said Sonya Lunder, a senior analyst at the group.

Still, the group's guidance can steer consumers away from crops that rely on insecticides, fungicides and weed killers.

Produce farmers, including apple producers, have long criticized its lists, saying they stir needless doubts about foods that comply with federal standards and whose growers are doing nothing improper.

For shoppers who can't or don't want to pay the premium prices charged for organic produce, the group publishes a list of the conventional crops it says offer the lowest exposure to pesticides. The revised "Clean 15" list, which it is also issuing Monday, is topped by onions, sweet corn, pineapples and avocados.

Congress ordered the USDA to survey the levels of pesticide in food annually following the 1989 Alar controversy involving apples.

Apple sales sank after a broadcast on the CBS news-magazine program "60 Minutes" linked Alar to health risks, and the pesticide was banned from use on food.

In years when the USDA has included apples in its surveys, which began in 1991, pesticide residues have been found in a high percentage of the samples.

Conventional growers use chemicals extensively in their orchards to ward off blemishes that can hurt the appearance, and thus the value, of their crop.

Fungicides, meanwhile, are routinely applied to apples because the fruit is often stored for several months before reaching consumers.

The U.S. Apple Association, which represents the $2.2 billion industry, has long complained about the "Dirty Dozen" list, which ranked apples No. 4 last year and celery as No. 1. This year they posted a reply, which relies entirely on extremely sketchy "safe levels" argument.

"It's a headache. …It implies that something terrible is going on," said Mark Seetin, the trade group's director of regulatory affairs. "But growers are doing nothing illegal. They're just trying to keep their apples fresh and nutritious."

The Environmental Protection Agency uses the USDA survey to help calculate the amount of pesticides in the American diet which, in turn, guides the federal government's decisions about whether and how farmers can use these chemicals. Excessive exposure to pesticides can cause health problems, such as an increased risk of cancer.

The USDA said that just 3% of all of the samples of produce, beef and rice it analyzed in its most recent survey, which was made public in late May and based on samples collected in 2009, contained either unapproved pesticide or an improper amount of pesticide.

"The data we collect confirms that consumers can assume that residues, for the most part, fall within the EPA's tolerance level for safe food," said Deputy Agriculture Secretary Kathleen Merrigan.

The department found five unapproved pesticides in apples, which Mr. Seetin of the U.S. Apple Association said was probably due to chemicals drifting on the wind from orchards growing other kinds of fruit on which those pesticides are approved for use. That's a smaller number of unapproved pesticides than the agency detected in crops such as cucumbers, green onions and spinach.

According to an analysis of the data by the Environmental Working Group, a total of 33 unapproved pesticides were detected on 44% of the cilantro samples.

Much of conventional agricultural is dependent on synthetic chemicals, both to fight off insects and to prevent weeds from taking sunlight, water and fertilizer away from crops. The pesticide trade group CropLife America figures that crop losses would double without these chemicals, raising food costs.

Tracking the prevalence of pesticide residue in the food supply over time is difficult, in part because the USDA changes the crops it screens from year to year. In its latest study, 57.4% of 11,811 samples of 21 different types of food had pesticide residue, the vast majority at levels the government considers safe to consume.

DDT continues to show up in food even though it was banned in the U.S. in 1972. The insecticide persists for a long time in soil, getting into grass eaten by cattle or the bottoms of ponds. Minuscule amounts of one degraded form of DDT was found by the USDA in 65% of the survey's catfish samples and 24% of its samples of beef fat, albeit at levels below those considered unsafe by regulators.

Whole Foods Backs Down on No-GMO

2011-06-09T21:39:00.000-07:00

When a team of activists wearing white hazmat suits showed up at a Chicago grocery store to protest the sale of genetically modified foods, they picked an unlikely target: Whole Foods Market .

Organic foods, by definition, can't knowingly contain genetically modified organisms, known as GMOs. But genetically modified corn, soy and other crops have become such common ingredients in processed foods that even one of the nation's top organic food retailers says it hasn't been able to avoid stocking some products that contain them.

"No one would guess that there are genetically engineered foods right here in Whole Foods," said Alexis Baden-Mayer, political director of the Organic Consumers Association, which organized the protest. The activists dramatically trashed a battery of well-known health food brands outside the store, including Tofutti, Kashi and Boca Burgers.

Though people have been modifying foodstuffs through selective breeding and other methods for centuries, genetically modified crops differ in that the plants grow from seeds in which DNA splicing has been used to place genes from another source into a plant. In this way, the crop can be made to withstand a weed-killing pesticide, for example, or incorporate a bacterial toxin that can repel pests.

Some consumers are concerned that such changes may pose health risks and say manufacturers should be required to prove GMOs are safe for human consumption before putting them on the market. They also say products containing genetically modified ingredients should be identified for the consumer; the U.S. is one of the few industrialized nations that does not require such labeling or testing.

Industry representatives say that GMOs are safe and that labeling them is unnecessary, citing a 1992 statement from the FDA saying the agency had no reason to believe GMOs "differ from other foods in any meaningful or uniform way." No mainstream regulatory organization in the U.S. has opposed the introduction of GMOs.

"FDA has the scientific and nutrition expertise to establish food labeling and to assess food safety," said Ab Basu, the Biotechnology Industry Organization's acting executive vice president for food and agriculture. "You can look at the FDA website and see that if the corn is substantially equivalent to corn produced conventionally, there is no reason to label it as being any different."

Critics of the technology say they are concerned not only about possible health risks but also about soil and plant nutrient losses, contamination of non-GMO crops and increased pesticide use.

With an unprecedented number of genetically modified crops being greenlighted by the Obama administration in recent months amid public debate — including ethanol corn, alfalfa and sugar beets under certain conditions — some advocates say the issues may be reaching the awareness of consumers beyond the health-conscious shoppers who frequent Whole Foods.

They cite polls taken by the Pew Center, Consumers Union and Harris Interactive over the last decade that have consistently found the vast majority of Americans would like to see genetically modified foods better regulated and labeled.

"If companies say genetic engineering is fine, then OK let's label it and let the consumers make their own decisions," said Michael Hansen, a senior scientist at Consumers Union, which produces Consumer Reports. "That's what all the free market supporters say. So let's let the market work properly."

Michael Jacobsen, executive director for Center for Science in the Public Interest, which does not oppose GMOs, says many manufacturers see labeling as too risky. "No food company would use GMOs if they had to label them because there is no benefit to the companies," he said. "The term GMO has become a toxic term, and so if a company figures they will lose maybe 2 percent of their sales why should they? It's all loss for them."

In fact, a 2006 study for the Pew Initiative for Food and Biotechnology found that only 23 percent of women (the primary shopping decision makers) thought genetically modified foods were safe.

But knowledge on this topic also remains low. The same Pew study found that only 26 percent of American consumers believed they'd ever eaten genetically modified food, while a 2010 survey by the International Food Information Council reported that only 28 percent of respondents knew such foods were sold in stores.

Currently 14 states have introduced legislation on GMO labeling but most of it has not moved out of committee, including an Illinois bill introduced in February by Rep. Deborah Mell, D-Chicago. She says she plans to reintroduce it next session. Only Alaska, with its huge wild salmon industry, has passed a biotech seafood labeling law.

On the issue of safety, both sides of the debate come armed with research. This year Spanish researchers published an overview of GMO food safety studies in Environment International, finding that peer-reviewed studies had found health risks and no health risks in roughly equal numbers. The paper notes, however, that many studies finding no risks were sponsored by the biotech industry or associates.

Canadian researchers this year reported that the blood of 93 percent of pregnant women and 80 percent of their umbilical cord blood samples contained a pesticide implanted in GMO corn by the biotech company Monsanto, though digestion is supposed to remove it from the body. "Given the potential toxicity of these environmental pollutants and the fragility of the fetus, more studies are needed," they wrote in Reproductive Toxicology.

As the biggest producer of GMO seeds and the compatible pesticide Roundup, Missouri-based Monsanto is at the heart of the GMO debate. Monsanto would not make a representative available for an interview but did offer a statement on the lack of long-term animal or human safety studies on genetically modified crops.

"Experts in the field of food safety are satisfied that (the current) approach is sufficient and reliable to assure the genetically modified crops are as safe as their conventional counterparts," the statement said. "This expert community does not see a need and thus does not recommend long-term tests in humans or animals in order to establish food safety."

While the Food and Drug Administration has allowed the sale and planting of genetically modified foods for 15 years, it has never required premarket safety evaluations of the foods.

"Ultimately, it is the food producer who is responsible for assuring safety," the FDA wrote in a statement to the Tribune, noting that manufacturers are encouraged to consult with the agency about their products.

Used in an estimated 70 percent of all American processed food, genetically modified crops make up 93 percent of all soy, 86 percent of all corn and 93 percent of all canola seeds planted in the U.S., which makes stocking only non-GMO products difficult, said Joe Dickson, quality standards coordinator for Whole Foods Market.

"Until there's federal government mandated labeling of GMO ingredients, there's no way to tell if packaged products contain GMO ingredients," Dickson said. "Our approach is to work in the spirit of partnership with our suppliers … to encourage them to take active steps to avoid GMO ingredients."

Basu notes that GMO crops have been embraced by farmers in many countries — although not in Japan, Europe or Britain — and cites an International Food Information Council study that found 68 percent of those surveyed believe that FDA's current labeling practices are sufficient.

"If you look at the adoption of biotech by over 24 countries and over 2 billion acres of biotech crops globally that have been grown in the last 15 years of commercialization, consumers are buying these products," he said.

Still, Nielsen announced last year that "non-GMO" was the fastest-growing health and wellness claim on store-brand foods in 2009, up by 67 percent from the previous year and representing $60.2 million in sales.

And 2010 brought a new "Non-GMO Project Verified" seal, offering third-party certification that less than 0.9 percent of the ingredients in the product came from genetically modified organisms. More than 4,000 products — including all Whole Foods store brands — have been enrolled in the program, according to executive director Megan Westgate.

Shoppers at Whole Foods last week were conflicted about whether the store should be selling genetically modified foods. But the majority said they were surprised to find it did.

"It's disappointing and disheartening. I feel like Whole Foods has established itself as a community for people who believe in healthy food and I feel like they embody that. So I would think that they would uphold standards and prevent foods like this from being sold here," said Melissa Hayes, of Chicago.

"But I don't think it's fair to just blame Whole Foods," she added. "I think it's equally important for the consumer to take an active role and find out information on GMOs and Monsanto. Every time you make a purchase it's a vote and people just need to be more conscious and aware."

E. coli outbreak: German farm in Uelzen 'likely source'

2011-06-05T23:02:00.000-07:00

A farm in northern Germany has been identified as the most likely source of many of the infections in the E. coli outbreak that has left 22 people dead.

The farm, producing beansprouts, is located south of Hamburg, the epicentre of the outbreak that has also made more than 2,000 people ill.

German officials were awaiting results of tests on the farm's produce that would offer more conclusive proof.

The farm has been closed and Germans advised to stop eating beansprouts.

The agriculture minister for Lower Saxony, Gert Lindemann, said: "Further evidence has emerged which points to a plant nursery in Uelzen as the source of the EHEC cases, or at least one of the sources," he said.

Definite proof would depend on test results, but "a connection has been found involving all the main outbreaks".

The farm is about 100km (62m) south of Hamburg and supplies restaurants and markets in the city and neighboring German states.

Mr Lindemann said the farm grows a wide variety of beansprouts from seeds imported from different countries.

The beansprouts include adzuki, alfalfa, broccoli, peas, lentils and mung beans, all grown in the nursery for consumption in salads.

Mr Lindemann said the sprouts produced there are grown in temperatures of about 38C, "which is ideal for all bacteria".

The BBC's Stephen Evans in Berlin says the announcement may cause embarrassment to German authorities, who had earlier pointed to Spanish farms as the source of the outbreak.
An employee holds petri dishes with bacterial strains of EHEC bacteria at the University Clinic Eppendorf in Hamburg, 2 June 2011. The E.coli strain is an aggressive hybrid form toxic to humans

More than 2,150 people in Germany have been infected by enterohaemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC) bacteria. Many have developed haemolytic-uraemic syndrome (HUS), which can be fatal.

Cases have been concentrated in Hamburg, with infections in 12 other countries linked to travel in Germany.

Twenty-one of the victims have died in Germany, and one person in Sweden.

Scientists say the new E.coli strain is an aggressive hybrid form toxic to humans and not previously linked to food poisoning.

German Health Minister Daniel Bahr said it was not yet safe to give the all clear.

"We still have to expect more cases of HUS. We continue to recommend that people do not eat raw tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuce in northern Germany," he said.

Mr Bahr said hospitals in northern Germany were overwhelmed by the outbreak, though he said medical workers were doing "everything necessary" to help patients.

Hamburg's senator for health, Cornelia Pruefer-Storcks, said there were indications the outbreak was slackening.

Doctors in the city's hospitals said a large number of patients were showing signs of improvement.

EU health ministers will discuss the outbreak at their meeting in Luxembourg on Monday.

Nell Newman, President and Co-Founder of "Newman's Own Organics"

2011-05-20T19:19:00.000-07:00

Nell is a huge supporter of the CASFS Apprenticeship program. There is great footage of the farm and market cart in this video.

New Organic School Garden Founded By CASFS Alum

2011-05-18T19:52:00.000-07:00

A new organic community garden situated on the land of All Saints’ Episcopal Church is gaining a lot of attention — and donations. Martinelli Children’s Community Garden, a quarter-acre plot that was previously a grassy lot, is now the hub of 30 individual family plots punctuated with budding new vegetables and flowers.

“Plans for this garden got under way in November and once it took hold, it felt like within a week it was bringing the community together,” said program organizer and CASFS Apprenticeship Alum Ana Rasmussen, who heads up nonprofit Mesa Verde Gardens. “After our initial meetings, people were coming forward anxious to get started. They were bringing in plants and getting them in the ground. People were coming in with ideas and it took off.”

The first phase was to plant a cover crop to help enrich the soil.

“We had a meeting in January — people from the area — where we tried to figure out who we were,” Rasmussen said.

A chief goal of the project, Rasmussen said, is to target childhood obesity.

“It makes sense,” she said. “To help people grow organic, nutritious food for themselves will have an impact on obesity with our young children.”

Indeed, sprinkled about the plots were organic starters of carrots, various lettuce plants, peppers, beans, cauliflower, broccoli, tomatoes, onions, strawberries, cilantro and flowers.

“It’s healthy and it helps their budget,” Rasmussen said. “On the weekend, we sometimes have 20 to 30 kids with their families working out here. Everyone really cares and they are excited to take part.”

Margarita Garcia tended her plot last week, planting tomato starters and watering.

“I had some time during spring break to get in a little gardening,” she said. “It’s a great spot; I love it out here. The land gets a lot of sun. Everybody here is really supportive.”

Rasmussen said she previously worked as a social worker for about 20 years but was struck with a need to switch tracks and move into organic gardening.

She helped spearhead 10 community gardens in 2010 at local preschools thanks to a grant from the Pajaro Valley Community Health Trust. Rasmussen said she got a running start in gardening by growing up on a farm in eastern Oregon. She studied organic farming for a summer in Idaho and worked for four months at City Slicker Farms as an intern in Oakland.

She said her direction was ultimately galvanized at a prestigious six-month program at the Center for Agro-Ecology and Sustainable Food Systems at UC Santa Cruz.

“There were people from around the world in the program,” she said. “It was a six-month, live-in, 50-hours-per-week program. It was very intense and tremendously valuable.”

The garden is now outfitted with six spigots. Families are asked to pay $5 per month to help defray water costs. Philanthropist Diane Porter Cooley helped provide a four-foot wire fence to help define the garden and protect it, Rasmussen said. Cooley also helped provide a tractor and operator to prepare the soil for the gardens.

Pacific Firewood & Lumber, Suncrest Nurseries, Upstarts Organic Seedlings and Live Earth Farm came forward with various donations, including mulch, wood chips and plant starters.

Rasmussen said the land is being leased by Mesa Verde Gardens.

The project, under the guidance of Second Harvest Food Bank, is aided by grants from Driscoll’s Berries and the Left Tilt Fund of San Francisco.

“My long-term vision is to create many community gardens,” Rasmussen said. “I feel very strongly that I was called to this work.”

Anyone interested in becoming part of the garden project is encouraged to visit the garden between 8 a.m. and noon Saturday or send an email to Rasmussen at mesaverdegardens@gmail.com.

Please Vote for the Friends of the Farm & Garden

2011-05-13T19:24:00.000-07:00

Please Vote for the Friends of the UCSC Farm & Garden!

Now is the time to help choose which great local organizations will benefit from New Leaf’s Envirotoken Program starting this July.

The Friends of the UCSC Farm & Garden provides vital support for the apprenticeship training program, public gardening workshops and community events at the UCSC Farm and Alan Chadwick Garden. While located at a state university, these programs rely on private contributions for over 80% of their operating budget.

It’s quick and easy! Please click on the address below and then select “Santa Cruz & Capitola” and “Felton & Boulder Creek” to vote for the Friends of the Farm & Garden on each ballot:

_{bit.ly/Vote_Envirotokens}

Thank you for your support! Please help us spread the word before June 1st.

Dust Bowl Survivors Battle a Fiercer Drought

2011-05-04T20:27:00.000-07:00

BOISE CITY, Okla. — While tornadoes and floods have ravaged the South and the Midwest, the remote western edge of the Oklahoma Panhandle is quietly enduring a weather calamity of its own: its longest drought on record, even worse than the Dust Bowl, when incessant winds scooped up the soil into billowing black clouds and rolled it through this town like bowling balls.With a drought continuing to punish much of the Great Plains, this one stands out. Boise (rhymes with voice) City has gone 222 consecutive days through Tuesday with less than a quarter-inch of rainfall in any single day, said Gary McManus, a state climatologist. That is the longest such dry spell here since note-keeping began in 1908.

The Dust Bowl of the 1930s, caused in part by the careless gouging of the earth in an effort to farm it, created an epic environmental disaster. Experts say it is unlikely to be repeated because farming has changed so much. Boise City recovered from the Dust Bowl and has periodically enjoyed bountiful years since.

But this drought is a reminder of just how parched and unyielding life can be along this wind-raked frontier, fittingly called No Man’s Land, and it is not clear how many more ups and downs Boise City can take.

“The community is drying up,” Mark Axtell, the area’s only funeral director, said on a walk through the cemetery, where brown tufts of buffalo grass crunched underfoot.

In the last decade, Boise City lost almost 16 percent of its population, according to the 2010 census. Just 1,312 people live here now — far fewer than the 3,000 who bought the first lots in 1908, only to discover that they had been hoodwinked. The land was inhospitable, and promises of railroads, water and trees (Boise is from the French “le bois,” meaning trees) were a fraud.

Boise City became the county seat for Cimarron County. But now, the county, too, has sagged. In the last decade it lost 21 percent of its population. Its 2,475 residents are spread so thin over such a wide expanse that an average of only 1.3 people occupy each square mile.

The young have little reason to stay. The old are dying or moving away to be closer to their children or to medical facilities, since Boise City’s only nursing home has closed.

“Last year, we did half as many funerals as the year I took over,” said Mr. Axtell, 48, who bought the business 25 years ago. “Last year was my fourth consecutive low year.”

The plunge in funerals prompted him to buy a cafe last year to supplement his income. Called the Rockin’ A, its 12 tables have become the town’s social hub.

But the main street outside is deserted, and many storefronts are shuttered. Most people shop at the Wal-Mart 60 miles away.

Residents blame a lack of jobs — not the drought — for the town’s decline. Dry spells come and go, they say, and coping with them is baked into their psyches. Many who live here are descended from those souls who endured the Dust Bowl and have reaped harvests aplenty since; they are bound to the land and not easily discouraged.

“Your die-hards will stay here,” Rebecca Smoot, 58, whose family homesteaded here in the early 1900s, said during breakfast at the Rockin’ A. She lives in Boise City but works as a corrections officer just over the border in Texas. “They stayed here during the Dirty Thirties when everyone else was moving. That’s the way a lot of the people ended up with a lot of the land.”

Those who stayed then are deemed successful now, though many were too poor at the time to leave with the “Okies.”

Huston Hanes, 87, who lived through the Dust Bowl on a farm in eastern Cimarron County, said he would never forget the wind blowing fine dust particles throughout his house and how quickly the wet cloths he held over his face to protect his lungs would turn black. But he said he was glad his family stayed.

“We have hard times, but any place you go, you’re going to have some adversity,” he said with a shrug. “We don’t have that many tornadoes.”

The drought plays a major role in the town’s self-image and its economy. It has already doomed this year’s crops and is forcing ranchers to sell some of their cattle; without water and grass, cows need more nutrient-rich feed, which is expensive.

On the Sharp Ranch, 15 miles outside town, the cattle were grazing on dirt.

“The protein value is getting down low,” Dan Sharp, 65, said as Dr. Rusty Murdock, the county’s only veterinarian, tested his 22 bulls for their potency. Three were deemed subpar, possibly because of the drought, and Mr. Sharp said he would sell them for slaughter.

“If they can’t reproduce, they aren’t worth keeping,” he said. Over the last 15 years, his herd on his 15,000 acres (roughly the size of Manhattan) has dropped to 450 from 580.

Mr. Sharp’s wife, Carol, 63, said the drought had “made everything a lot harder.”

“You live more day-to-day because you don’t know what tomorrow is going to bring,” she said as wind whipped dust across the range and her daughter donned ski goggles.

But the Sharps are committed to ranching. “The land is like a member of the family,” Ms. Sharp said. “You don’t disown it if things aren’t going right.”

When a community is as dependent on agriculture as this one, the effects of a bad season ripple through the economy. Mr. Axtell, the funeral director, said that with the drop in funerals, all but one flower shop had closed.

Judy Harkins, 63, a beautician, said her customers were scrimping more.

“My little ladies on Social Security, they’ll think of some excuse to come in every other week instead of every week,” Ms. Harkins said.

Many in town dread the day when a construction crew completes a highway bypass around the town. They expect that long-haul truckers, who often stop in town for gas and food, will no longer bother.

John Freeman, a county commissioner, estimated that 3,000 trucks a day passed through now and provided half the county’s sales tax revenues. He hopes the county can make up for that loss, several times over, by harnessing the inexhaustible supply of wind. But the permitting process for wind farms takes years, and transmission power lines are not yet built.

Like many other small towns that survived the Dust Bowl, Boise City now seems on the verge of extinction.

“There’s no economic growth whatsoever,” Mr. Freeman lamented. “It’s going to have to be wind energy or we’ll die.”

View a slideshow of Boise City here and a video here.

Tough New Rules Proposed on Food Advertising for Kids

2011-04-28T20:35:00.000-07:00

The Obama administration is asking food makers to sharply limit any advertising to children and teens of foods high in sodium, saturated fat and added sugars, in an effort to curb obesity.

The proposed standards released Thursday are voluntary, but they're widely expected to reshape how companies like McDonald's Corp., Coca-Cola Inc., General Mills Inc. and Kraft Foods Inc. pitch their products to millions of Americans.

By one estimate, the new standards would affect advertisements on 1,700 television programs. They would ripple across about 20 types of marketing, including radio, print and Internet pitches.

Some food advertisers said the guidelines—which wouldn't take effect until 2016—are too onerous and called for changes.

"We can see right from the outset that this is going to be highly restrictive," said Dan Jaffe, an executive at the Association of National Advertisers, which represents food makers and other advertisers.

Mr. Jaffe said he expected manufacturers would feel heavy pressure to comply because the guidelines come from regulators including the Federal Trade Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

"There's clearly a veiled threat here that if they don't act...someone's going to step further," either through legislation or regulation, Mr. Jaffe said.

Under the guidelines, foods marketed toward children ages 2 to 17 would have to provide a "meaningful contribution" to a healthful diet by containing a certain amount of healthy items, such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean meats or beans.

At the same time, for advertised products, marketers also would have to limit the content of sodium to 210 mg per serving; added sugar to 13 grams "per amount customarily consumed"; and saturated fat to 1 gram or 15% of calories. In addition, any product containing trans fats couldn't be marketed to children under the guidelines.

The proposed regulations could be changed after a period for public comments, which runs through June 13.

In their objections, some food makers singled out the restriction on sodium, saying that it would hit categories like soup, vegetable juice, cereals and apple sauce that are otherwise healthful.

Lobbyists say food makers may consider reformulating products to meet the new standards or changing their marketing plans. But some trade groups stopped short of saying they will adhere to the guidelines.

"We're certainly going to consider them as we review and update the standards we're already applying," said Scott Faber, a vice president at the Grocery Manufacturers Association, the main trade group for packaged food makers.

Nutrition experts said the new guidelines would inhibit products such as Kellogg's Eggo waffles, General Mills' Cocoa Puffs and Pepperidge Farm Goldfish crackers from being pitched to children.

The rule is expected to bleed over into programming viewed by adults. Under the proposal, it would apply to any programming where children ages 2 to 11 make up 30% of the audience or those ages 12 to 17 reach 20% of viewership.

Jim Davidson, a lawyer for food and marketing trade groups, estimates that encompasses about 1,700 programs, including sports and entertainment specials widely viewed by adults.

Thursday's guidelines are the latest in a series of federal efforts to prod food makers to offer healthier products. Advocates have centered their efforts on voluntary guidelines, viewing outright bans on marketing of unhealthy foods as unlikely to win federal approval.

The Obama administration has made childhood obesity a top health initiative, with First Lady Michelle Obama selecting it as her signature cause. One in three children is overweight or obese, which puts them at greater risk of developing diabetes, high blood pressure, asthma and other diseases.

Food makers have already cut back on marketing some of their least healthful products to kids amid pressure from regulators and the threat of lawsuits. The Grocery Manufacturers Association says that in recent years food and beverage manufacturers have changed the recipes of more than 20,000 products to reduce calories, sodium, sugar and fat. The association recently agreed to place nutrition information on the front of packages.

American Wheat in the Middle East

2011-04-26T20:55:00.000-07:00

The political landscape in the Middle East is changing. And the American Wheat industry watching the events closely. Listen to this story from Marketplace here, or view a slideshow here.

Kai Ryssdal: The protests in the Middle East have brought, in some cases, sharp political change. But some of the economic fundamentals have been slower to adapt. Others aren't ever going to change.

Starting with this one: people gotta eat. This week, we're going to look at the role of American businesses in the changing economics of the Middle East, and we're going to start in the farm country of the Pacific Northwest with Marketplace's Jeff Tyler.

Jeff Tyler: The tractor gets a tune-up as Randy Suess gets ready to plant his soft-white wheat. He's a third-generation farmer with about 1,300 acres of rolling hills south of Spokane, Wash. It's a long way from Cairo. But the relationship is closer than you might think.

Randy Suess: When you look at the numbers for this year, Egypt right now is the number one buyer of all U.S. wheat.

Foreign markets are absolutely vital for farmers like Suess.

Suess: In the Pacific Northwest, we have to find a home for 90 percent of it. There's only 10 percent domestic market here.

Egypt is a swing buyer -- they turn to American suppliers when they can't find cheaper wheat elsewhere. But he says another Arab country is a more consistent buyer.

Suess: You wouldn't think that Yemen would end up buying a lot of wheat from us when you look at logistically how far away it is. But they've traditionally been the number four buyer of our soft-white wheat over many years.

Suess has visited Yemen on trade missions. He recently canceled another trip because of the current unrest. But together, Yemen and Egypt buy about 22 percent of the wheat from the Pacific Northwest. Could new governments in those countries hurt business?

Suess: We have some definite fears there.

He remembers what happened after the Iranian revolution.

Suess: Some years, up to 30 percent of our wheat was going into that country. That went from that to zero.

A boycott is considered unlikely in Egypt, something that becomes clear if you visit a government bakery in Cairo. Men put dough in a big machine that looks like a relic from the Industrial Revolution. Government bakeries sell pita bread for about a penny a piece -- far below cost.

It's a dietary staple for most Egyptians, like 30-year-old Amani.

Amani: Every day, every day, every day. We Egyptians can't live without bread.

Dick Prior: The word for bread over here in Egypt, the Arabic word that they use, is 'aish.' And 'aish' in Arabic means 'life.' And that's how important bread is.

Dick Prior is the regional trade representative for U.S. Wheat Associates in Cairo. He says the government bakeries stayed open even during the height of Egypt's revolution.

Prior: They were working 24 hours a day, under a lot of pressure. But they made sure that they had the bread out to the people.

Is there any chance that a new government would end bread subsidies?

Prior: If the government stopped subsidizing wheat, they would have a lot of riots. I mean, it would make Tahrir Square look kind of small.

In the past, there have been riots when the price of bread increased in Egypt. So even if new regimes aren't close allies of the U.S., they need wheat to help secure their own political stability.

Prior: Wheat is so dear to all the whole Middle East, I don't think very much is going to change no matter what kinds of governments come out in all these areas where they've had revolutions. I think we're still going to be able to do business out here.

Instead of shrinking, opportunities appear to be growing for American farmers. Prior says Iran has recently made reforms that re-open a market for U.S. wheat.

California Farms Revive

2011-04-25T07:37:00.000-07:00

California's farm economy is on the rebound after several years of sharp decline, with farmers gearing up to plant thousands of acres of idled fields, rehire laid-off workers and resume buying tractors, trucks and other equipment.

Behind the resurgence: The region's wettest winter since 2006 is allowing water officials to open crucial irrigation spigots after three years of sharply curtailed supplies. Plus, a global uptick in crop prices means the products of California's vast farm region are seeing growing demand.

Although unemployment in the Central Valley region remains among the highest in the state and nation, many farming towns report the early signs of a rebound. The upsurge is likely to help the economic recovery of the nation's most populous state, where seasonally adjusted March unemployment was 12.3% compared with the national average of 8.8%, despite pockets of prosperity such as Silicon Valley.

In Firebaugh, Calif., west of Fresno, sales-tax receipts rose 12% to 15% in the first quarter from the same period a year ago. A local tomato processor ramped up its employee head count to 1,100 from 800 over the same time period, said City Manager Jose Antonio Ramirez. "It's a big trickle down effect going on here," he said. "The restaurants are busy, the auto parts stores are busy, everybody is busy."

Labor economists say the valley's unemployment rate, which normally tops that of most other parts of California ahead of the big spring growing season, is likely to drop significantly in coming months because of the new planting.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that the number of acres in California planted with cotton this year will jump 26% to 385,000 compared with 2010, while acres planted with wheat will rise 18% to 915,000 and acres growing barley will increase 36% to 150,000.

Farm employment already is rebounding throughout the valley. In Tulare and Modesto counties, farm jobs jumped 19.6% and 21.2%, respectively, in March from a year ago, while statewide it rose 2.3%, according to estimates by the state Department of Economic Development. Nonfarm employment dipped slightly in both counties in the same period, and increased 1.4% statewide.

The farm rebound could be short-lived if crop prices decline or drought returns. But the state is currently seeing a turnabout from a three-year drought emergency that Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, officially declared over after March 30 readings by state hydrologists showed mountain snowpack at 165% of normal, the highest in five years. With abundant precipitation across the West this year, water managers in California and other states including Arizona and Colorado also have increased shipments to farmers.

In California, managers of the federal Central Valley Project, which delivers water to the driest southern reaches of the valley, have raised allotments to farmers to 75% of the maximum, up from 45%. The farmers, many in the 600,000-acre Westlands Irrigation District, have been among the hardest hit in the state because their allotments at one point during the drought were cut to zero.

Now most are busy trying to get operations back to normal. Harris Farms along Interstate 5 near Fresno has increased planting this year by 59% to 11,000 acres from 6,900 acres a year ago, while boosting its work force to 542 from 371, said John Harris, chairman and chief executive of the family-owned business.

Mr. Harris said the farm also is upping its spending on equipment like tractors to $2.5 million this year from $500,000 in 2010. He credited his company's rebound to increased water shipments as well as strong prices for commodities such as cotton and wheat. If next winter also is wet, he added, Harris Farms would likely plant all 13,000 of its acres.

Mark Borba said his family's nearby 8,600-acre farm bought five tractors this year, bringing the total to 20, and replaced five of its 25 pickup trucks. "Some had over 350,000 miles on them, so this was due," Mr. Borba said.

That buying has boosted revenue at dealers such as Kern Machinery Inc., whose sales of tractors, harvesters and other equipment are up 15% to 20% so far in the fiscal year begun Nov. 1 compared with the same time a year ago, said Clayton Camp, president of the Bakersfield company.

Work orders so far this year are up by the same amount at Britz-Simplot LLC, a seller of fertilizer and other farm products in Five Points, Calif., which has boosted its hiring to 85 employees from 70 as a result, said Scott Foth, a manager of the company.

"When the farmer makes money," he said, "everybody in the valley makes money."

Interview with Sky DeMuro-Miller: Current 2nd Yr Apprentice (Chadwick Garden)

2011-04-24T18:23:00.000-07:00

GGW: What led you into farming in the first place?

SDM: My parents have a small farm in Massachusetts, and as a kid, it was my favorite place in the world. I grew up feeding pigs, taming kittens, drinking milk fresh from the cow, and being directly involved in the relationships of farming (life, death, give, take, interdependence of different species and weather and natural systems...). I didn’t expect to be working in agriculture, but after a more “normal” six-year career in non-profit development and communications, I yearned for work that was more grounded and directly engaging. Laboring on the land to produce beauty and food that customers appreciate turned out to be the best decision I’ve made for myself yet.

GGW: Where do you work and play?

SDM: I currently work at an educational farm at the University of California at Santa Cruz. I’ve worked on a number of production farms and educational farms over the last few years. My current position at UCSC is amazing. I am an assistant manager in a two-acre hand scale garden that was started by a man named Alan Chadwick in the late ‘60s. (Hand scale means there are no tractors - all cultivation is done by hand, including digging beds, making and turning compost, and all harvesting). This garden on the UCSC campus is part of a program that hosts about 40 people from all over the world who come to study organic farming and gardening for six months and live together in community. So not only am I studying organic gardening under an amazing mentor and honing my horticultural skills, I am also getting to teach and learn with a diverse group of adults, which I find very rewarding.

GGW: In your opinion, what are some of the challenges female farmers face?

SDM: On some level, all small scale farmers face the same issues - a corrupted system that favors agribusiness and unjust production systems, whatever the commodity, and directly hurts or impedes small and alternative businesses.

How specifically female farmers are challenged, that’s a tricky question. I was just speaking with one of my farmer friends yesterday who is also a mom. When she was pregnant with her daughter, she was the primary farmer, up until her 7th month of pregnancy. But then it became physically impossible to farm. When her daughter was an infant, my friend would take a baby monitor into the greenhouse or the fields to cultivate or harvest when the baby was napping. Now she has two babies, and she has had to drastically scale back her involvement on the farm. She has a husband who does most of the farm labor, and she manages more of the “indoor” work of farming, like accounting, marketing, and crop planning. This is a pretty traditional story I think - women farmers who are also mothers end up either needing a very involved co-parent partner, or they must be less involved in the farm. Farming is a lifestyle - you don’t quit at the end of the day. Most farmers I know are always working on some level, whether it’s actually out in the field or at market, or managing a greenhouse, or planning or dealing with cows that get out, or networking with other farmers to share ideas... It’s a lifestyle and a job that requires a lot of time. And mothers particularly have a particular challenge of hours in the day and juggling many needs.

But in general, in my experience, women farmers face the same issues that all women in this culture face - we don’t have a lot of role models that aren’t sexualized. I mean, what woman farmer have you ever seen on TV? Paris Hilton did that series on a farm. In movies and in advertisements, the woman is usually cast as the farmer’s wife or the farmers sexy daughter. Seldom do you see a female business owner or a woman driving a tractor, which is incredibly sexy, in my opinion!

One thing I’ve been dealing with, and talking to other women farmers and aspiring farmers about, is that a lot of women have very little experience with construction and mechanics, which are very important skills in farming. Things always need to be fixed or built and there’s often not enough money or time to hire someone else to do it. But many women I know haven’t had much experience with power tools or even the muscle memory of using hand tools. It seems like so many men and even boys grow up being trained how to fix things. So women grow up and either need to or feel like they need to rely on a man to do something like fix an irrigation line or repair a gate or construct a table. So part of my work is to teach and empower women to use tools and feel productive and capable.

GGW: I just read an article in the NYTimes, by Isolde Rafery, in which she cites the 2007 Census of Agriculture: the average age of farmers is 60 years old, and over half of the farmland in the US is owned by those over 55. What do you think we need to do to shift this towards the younger generation, which tends to be more focused on environmentally sustainable practices in smaller settings?

SDM: A big, imposing issues for new and aspiring farmers is access to affordable land and capital to start up any kind of business. Farming is a land-based endevor and is directly dependent on long range soil management plans. Many people who have a desire to go into farming don’t have the means to purchase land when it is being sold at development rate, but land tenure is key to a thriving, long-term farm.

This is a complex issue, but I think we need to not only train more farmers, like the program at UC Santa Cruz does, and protect precious farmland, but also better support local food systems and small farmers once they get going. There’s only so much individuals can do, like buy food from responsible growers at farmers market or through CSA progrqams; the government needs to stop subsidizing big agribusiness and better support local farmers. We as individuals need to vote for farmers and start making noise about food security and agriculture. There have been some changes made to recent Farm Bills, but more can and needs to be done to support young farmers, organic and sustainable farmers, and small business owners. This means everything from low interest start-up loans to affordable health care to marketing support. Agriculture in America is changing rapidly, and if we are not smart and intentional about it, if we don‘t educate ourselves and take direct action, the direction our food system takes could be either sustainable or devastating.

GGW: Which women in your field inspire you?

SDM: I’m inspired by Wendy Johnson - a gardener, author, Zen practitioner, and a sassy silver-haired mama. I’m inspired by Nancy Vail, who co-founded Pie Ranch, an educational farm where I worked and played for two years. Nancy can drive a tractor, play a mean fiddle, parent her darling kiddos, skip down a dirt road, inspire urban youth to get their expensive jeans dirty, speak Japanese, prune a fruit tree, and look fabulous the whole time. Another of my role models is Rhonda Perry of Missouri, a grassroots organizer, hog farmer, and defender of rural communities. I met Rhonda when I worked at Farm Aid, and hope to be more like her when I grow up. Finally, I have to give a shout out to all my girls at CASFS; I’m so inspired by the aspiring and neophyte women farmers, food activists, and gardeners I’ve met and worked with in Santa Cruz- the ladies of the revolution. !Si, se puede!

GGW: What are some effective ways to get involved?

SDM: I strongly encourage everyone to join a local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) project. It’s a way to get directly involved in their communities by supporting a specific farm and getting a share of whatever food is in season. Members sometimes can pick up their shares on the farm, and some CSAs offer a “pick-you-own” option, or work days, where members can work in the fields. I think that everyone should try to grow food if that appeals to them. It’s an unbelievably magical experience, that little tiny seeds can turn into huge, nutritious, beautiful, thriving plants. For people who want a more in depth experience, many farms offer internships and apprenticeships where people can work for a full season. There’s also an organization called Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF) where people can volunteer on farms all over the world in exchange for helping out in the field or the barn. It’s a great way to see the world and get to know local cultures, food, ecosystems, and customs.

I’d also encourage people to start to be curious about the food they buy. If you shop in a grocery store, look at the packages or ask the grocer - who owns the company? Where was the food grown and how? If you shop at a farmers market, talk to the folks selling the food - sometimes the farmers do the selling, or often the folks who work market have a personal connection to the farmer and the land. Ask what kind of farm it is and what their ethics are. Our food industry is really complicated and intentionally shrouded in mystery; what I mean is, big companies put a lot of money into making everyone believe that all eggs come from happy hens who run around outside, and that all dairy is from these happy cows frolicking on pastures, and every piece of fruit is cared for and hand picked by some salt-of-the-earth man in denim. But that’s usually so far from the truth. So I say, at least start to ask questions and make educated choices, because big agribusiness is intentionally deceiving you and doing some irreparable damage behind your back.

Some good places to start getting educated are websites like The Center for Food Safety, GRACE, the Pesticide Action Network, and Farm Aid, to name a few.

GGW: Why isn't my artichoke plant growing?

SDM: :) Could be a lot of reasons. Probably it’s about the soil, which is the sacred foundation of life. Even backyard home growers should get a soil test. This will not only tell you about nutrients, but also about any harmful heavy metals present, like lead. Check for advice and workshops at local garden centers, community gardens, or ask advice from farmers at your local farmers market. Watch out though, once you get bit by the growing bug, your life will change!

Egg Producers Feel the Pinch as Demand, Prices Fall, Costs Rise

2011-04-23T19:36:00.000-07:00

That Easter egg hunt many are planning this weekend likely won't cost as much as last year.

The average retail price of eggs was $1.73 a dozen in March, down 5% from a year ago, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Meanwhile, the wholesale price of $1.28 a dozen in the week leading into Easter is down seven cents from a year ago and 10 cents from two years ago.

Prices are likely to fall further once the increase in holiday demand ends, analysts said.

Roughly twice the normal consumption of eggs takes place in the week before Easter. While it remains a key period for egg producers, the increase in demand is less pronounced than it used to be, industry observers said. Easter is the third-busiest time of the year for the egg industry, outpaced by Thanksgiving and Christmas.

There isn't any data that track Easter-related egg demand specifically. However, consumption around the holiday appears to be on the decline, said Bill Neuwirth, owner of Aptos Foods, a wholesale egg distributor operating mostly in California.

The prospect of disappointing sales this Easter could portend a tough year for egg producers. Producers have been losing money for three consecutive months, a rarity for this time of year and the first time that has happened since 2005, according to Iowa State University's Egg Industry Center.

"If they are not making money now, I don't see how they are going to make money for the next three or four months," said Maro Ibarburu, an analyst at the center.

Lower Easter sales aren't the only challenge facing egg producers, be they small family-owned farms or sprawling complexes with millions of chickens. Consumption is down broadly from levels early last decade, according to the USDA. The USDA recently projected per-capita egg consumption this year to be 247.7 eggs a person, essentially flat with the prior year.

Egg consumption has declined every year since 2006, according to the USDA.

Meanwhile, prices for most other agricultural commodities are surging, so costs for feed ingredients such as corn are going up. The cost of feed to produce a dozen eggs is up 14 to 18 cents from a year ago, according to Urner Barry, a Toms River, N.J., publication that tracks egg prices.

Some analysts suggest concerns linger over a highly publicized salmonella outbreak at two Iowa egg farms in August.

In addition to higher feed costs, rising energy and transportation costs also are a concern for producers, said Jim Chakeres, executive vice president for the Ohio Poultry Association.

Passing on those costs to the retail level is difficult for egg producers. More so than beef, pork or chicken producers, the egg industry is fragmented, with many companies competing for business.

Egg production was up 1.2% nationally in the first two months, hitting a pace that would see the U.S. produce 7.7 billion dozen eggs this year. Assuming that trend continued in March, that could be weighing on prices, USDA economist David Harvey said.

With little hope that feed costs will substantially weaken this year, Mr. Harvey said the typical cutback in production after Easter could be more pronounced this year, as farmers look to cull their flocks of less productive birds.

Children of Women Exposed to Pesticides Have Lower IQ

2011-04-21T20:16:00.000-07:00

Pesticides on fruits and vegetables may be harmful to a developing fetus. Children whose mothers were exposed to low doses of a specific class of pesticides may have a slightly lower IQ in later childhood, three new studies suggest.

The new research found children had a slightly lower IQ by age 7 if their mothers, mostly low-income and mostly Latina and black, had higher-than-average exposure in pregnancy to organophosphates, pesticides farmers still sometimes spray on fruits and vegetables. But some of the data are not as conclusive as they might seem at first glance.

All three studies, published Thursday in, measured the presence of organophosphates in the mother’s urine or blood during pregnancy. Women could have ingested the pesticides by way of food or breathing the air — the pesticides were once common in households before the EPA banned their use in 2002, but in inner cities, these insecticides were still common in the mid-2000’s to control insect infestations. In the three studies, the children took an IQ test around age 7 that measured working memory and reasoning abilities.

In one study, researchers from Columbia University found that African American and Dominican women in New York City with the highest levels of chlorpyrifos, a type of organophosphate, in their umbilical-cord plasma had children with a slightly lower IQ by age 7 compared with those whose mothers had lower exposure — for every large increase in pesticide exposure, the children had about a 1- to 2-point decrease in IQ and 2- to 4-point decrease in working memory.

In another study, among Latinas and African American women in New York City, researchers from Mount Sinai found women with the highest levels of organophosphates in their urine had children with a slightly lower IQ — for every tenfold increase of a pesticide marker in the mother’s urine, children had a 3-point IQ drop at age 7.

And in a study of Mexican women in the agricultural town of Salinas, UC Berkeley researchers measured pesticide exposure in the urine of pregnant women and found a 7-point IQ discrepancy between children whose mothers had the highest exposure compared with those who had the lowest.

Many of the women were poor, and socioeconomic status is linked to lower IQs, so researchers in some of the studies controlled for variables such as income. Women were compared with other women in the data set, not a national average. And the exposure levels were low in all the studies — in the Columbia study, 43% of the women had levels that were undetectable, and in the Berkeley study, the median exposure was slightly above the national average.

The studies are the first to measure how low levels of pesticides affect children while they are still developing in the womb, said Brenda Eskenazi, a lead author on the Berkeley study, in an interview. Previous research looked at children, not fetuses, exposed to high levels of pesticides.

Organophosphates are known to affect the brain in animal studies, so their effect in children may be more potent while they are still developing, says Rudy Rull, a research scientist at the Cancer Prevention Institute of California in Fremont.

“These studies present compelling evidence of the potential effects on children’s neurodevelopment from exposure to chlorpyrifos and other organophosphate insecticides,” said Rull in an email.

But let’s be cautious—the IQ differences were small, and some only appeared by looking at the data in a certain way.

Women in the Berkeley study, for example, had their urine measured for traces of pesticides twice—once in the first half of pregnancy and once in the second half. The researchers found no correlation between IQ and pesticide markers in the first urine test or in the second urine test. But then when they averaged the two, voila—a correlation.

It’s not the best way to measure how much pesticide exposure the women really had, acknowledges Eskenazi. The chemicals the researchers measured in the urine—called DAP metabolites—disappear within days or hours of exposure.

“My feeling is, we don’t have a super-good measurement of organophosphates during pregnancy, especially when there are lot of different ones they are exposed to,” she said.

That calls into question the 7-point difference in IQ between women with “high” levels of exposure versus those with “low” levels.

“It’s enough to say, there are definitely limitations to the measurement, and I think that’s the reason why given that epidemiology is imperfect, you want to see convergence of findings and consistency among what you see in animals and humans,” says Eskenazi.

She says the take-home message for most pregnant women isn’t that they should stop eating fruits and vegetables, a common source of exposure. They should just wash them carefully, even using a brush to scrub them, she says.

Even Eskenazi says:

“In terms of the bigger picture, we have to weigh the potential negative effects of limiting the use of some pesticides in agriculture against the positive effects of using them if it means more food, and more accessible food, and lower priced food because we want to make sure there are adequate food resources for the whole country.”