Monthly Archives: August 2014

WASHINGTON, August 18, 2014 – Today, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) released its annual report, Expenditures on Children and Families, also known as the Cost of Raising a Child. The report shows that a middle-income family with a child born in 2013 can expect to spend about $245,340 ($304,480 adjusted for projected inflation*) for food, housing, childcare and education, and …

By Alexandra Witze and Nature Magazine Peter Moyle has seen a lot in five decades of roaming California’s streams and rivers and gathering data on the fish that live in them. But last month he saw something new: tributaries of the Navarro River, which rises in vineyards before snaking through a redwood forest to the Pacific, had dried up completely. …

By Alan Bjerga For more than 70 years, Fred Starrh’s family was among the most prominent cotton growers in California’s San Joaquin Valley. Then shifting global markets and rising water prices told him that wouldn’t work anymore. So he replaced most of the cotton plants on his farm near Shafter, 120 miles northwest of Los Angeles, and planted almonds, which …

  By Don Curlee Counting the ways farming in California differs from farming in the rest of the country might result in some surprises, especially for proud Californians. To begin with, farms in California are about 25 percent smaller on average than those in the rest of the country. The contrast between farming here and farming there is even more …

The Growing California video series, a partnership between CDFA and California Grown produced in association with California State University, Sacramento, has been recognized with three 2014 Telly Awards, a video competition now in its 35th year. Growing California also won three Tellys in 2013. Two of the segments that won, “Blossom Buddies (parts 1 and 2)” and “From Service to …

By Robert Rodriguez Armed with magnifying glasses and bug-sucking aspirators, state agriculture technicians are in Fresno, checking residential citrus trees for any signs of the Asian citrus psyllid and the tree-killing disease it can carry. The psyllid poses one of the greatest threats to California’s nearly $2 billion citrus industry and officials want to keep it from gaining a foothold …

While in Mexico City last week, Governor Brown met with Secretary Navarrete Prida of the Mexican Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare and signed a letter of intent to address labor rights issues for temporary Mexican workers in California – a matter of high importance, of course, for California’s farmers and ranchers. Moving forward from that promising development, we are …

By Jeffrey Mount and Jay Lund, UC Davis, and Emma Freeman, PPIC Water in California is shared across three main sectors. Statewide, average water use is roughly 50% environmental, 40% agricultural, and 10% urban. However, the percentage of water use by sector varies dramatically across regions and between wet and dry years. Some of the water used by each of these …

The latest segment in the Growing California video series, a partnership with California Grown, is “Wine Connections.” This video content is no longer available.

The annual National Farmers Market Week is being observed this week (August 3-9).  It’s a time worth celebrating because of the key role farmers’ markets play in connecting consumers to the people who produce their fresh fruits and vegetables. At a time when there is more interest and questions than ever before about the origins of food, these markets have …