Monthly Archives: April 2015

New data released by the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) show that millions of Americans still struggle to afford enough food for their households. How Hungry is America?, FRAC’s latest look at food hardship, finds that one in six Americans (17.2 percent) said in 2014 that there had been times over the past 12 months that they didn’t have enough …

By Andy Nelson Note – the USDA has declared April as Invasive Plant Pest and Disease Awareness Month  California officials have created an education program for nurseries to control the spread of Asian citrus psyllid. The Sacramento-based Citrus Pest & Disease Prevention Program (a partnership including CDFA), in conjunction with the University of California Cooperative Extension and the Department of …

  California’s farms face growing water management challenges California is an agricultural powerhouse—the nation’s largest farm state and a world market leader, with 2012 sales of $48 billion (Note – the California Agricultural Statistics Service reports $46.4 billion in farm receipts in 2013). California’s dry summers make irrigation essential. To irrigate more than nine million acres of crops, farmers use …

By Vito Chisea   As a second-generation Stanislaus County walnut grower, I can tell you that there are a few things I can count on and a whole lot of things I can’t. For example, I can count on the sun shining about 260 days a year here in the Central Valley. And I can still count on my 83-year-old …

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has announced that USDA has awarded $31.5 million in funding to local, state, and national organizations to support programs that help participants in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) increase their purchase of fruits and vegetables, including more than $4 million for California. Recognizing that all Americans fall well short of the servings of fruits and …

Following the lowest snow pack ever recorded and with no end to the drought in sight, Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. today announced actions that will save water, increase enforcement to prevent wasteful water use, streamline the state’s drought response and invest in new technologies that will make California more drought resilient. “Today we are standing on dry grass where …