Monthly Archives: October 2014

More than 220 California educators and volunteers attended an annual California Agriculture in the Classroom Conference earlier this month to learn about agriculture and connecting Common Core to California crops. The conference, hosted by the California Foundation for Agriculture in the Classroom (CFAITC), was held October 16-18 in Santa Cruz County and provided participants with free resources and valuable avenues …

A quick quiz:  If you could be a student anywhere in the nation during National School Lunch Week, which state would you choose? Easy answer, right? California!  Students across the nation celebrated this annual observance last week, October 12-18, and of course the California kids had the best spread to choose from. But then, we’re allowed to be a bit …

The USDA has launched a Climate Hubs web site. The new site provides a portal for farmers, ranchers, forest landowners, and others to find useful, practical information to help cope with the challenges and stressors caused by a changing climate. The site provides resources related to drought, fire risks, pests and diseases, climate variability, and heat stress, and links users …

By Mark Koba There’s very little in California’s agriculture industry that’s been left untouched by the ongoing drought, and bees are no exception. Besides making honey, bees are crucial to pollinating about one-third of all U.S. crops. But the drought, heading into a fourth year, is threatening honey production and the ability of beekeepers to make a living in a …

By Tim Hearden WILLIAMS, Calif. — As rice growers in California wrap up their harvest of a drought-diminished crop, good yields and more widespread sales of rice straw are helping them to at least partly make up for lost acreage.   The rice harvest was 85 percent complete as of Oct. 19, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service. Leo …

The next segment in the Growing California video series, a partnership with California Grown, is “Acres of Ambition,” a  profile of a program in Salinas training farmworkers to become farmers. This video content is no longer available.

As part of an ongoing commitment to honey bee health, the Almond Board of California released a comprehensive, set of Honey Bee Best Management Practices (BMPs) for California’s almond industry. Developed with a wide array of input from sources including the almond community, beekeepers, researchers, California and U.S. regulators, and chemical registrants, the BMPs represent the Board’s most extensive educational documents to date to ensure that almond …