UC Blog
Hansen Trust board advises UC to sell the farm
The Hansen Trust advisory board has recommended that UC sell the historic Faulkner Farm in Santa Paula because it has become too expensive to maintain, according to a article in today's Ventura County Star.The farm now houses the UC Hansen Agricultural Center, named for Ms. Thelma Hansen. She left almost all of her family's estate -- nearly $12 million -- to the University of California when she passed away in 1993 to benefit and sustain local agriculture through research and education. In 1997, funds from the trust were used to purchase the 27-acre Faulkner Farm.
The stately Faulkner House, built in 1894 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is the facility's centerpiece. Designed in the Queen Ann style, the house has a basement, two main living floors and a finished room in the tower. A large red barn on the Faulkner property was built in 1886.
John Krist, a member of the Hansen Trust advisory board and chief executive officer of the Ventura County Farm Bureau, said the trust has not been able to carry out its mission with Faulkner Farm, according to the article. Only 10 percent of the trust’s $1 million annual budget now directly supports education and research, he said.
An aerial view of the Faulkner Farm.
Healthy eating begins in preschool
Two early childhood healthy eating education programs offered by UC Cooperative Extension in Placer and Nevada counties are featured in a San Francisco Examiner blog post about the 25 healthiest foods.Written by Anne Hart, who bills herself as the "Sacramento Nutrition Examiner," the story detailed "Growing Healthy Food, Minds & Bodies," a UCCE hands-on preschool nutrition program.
The program helps young children make the connection between growing and eating healthy food by, for example, studying grasses we eat and then sprouting them. The children learn about edible seeds and how to plant and grow them.
The second nutrition program featured in the post is "Let's Eat Healthy," which is available for qualifying Placer and Nevada county schools, preschools and other youth organizations and groups. (Schools with at least 50 percent of the students receiving free or reduced-price lunch qualify for this program.) Let's Eat Healthy offers teachers a variety of curricula choices:
- Go Glow Grow-Preschool
- Happy Healthy Me...Moving, Munching & Reading Through MyPyramid for 4 to 6 Year Olds
- Eating Healthy from Farm to Fork . . . Promoting School Wellness, Kindergarten Curriculum
- Eating Healthy from Farm to Fork . . . Promoting School Wellness, First Grade Curriculum
- Eating Healthy from Farm to Fork . . . Promoting School Wellness, Second Grade Curriculum
- Reading Across MyPyramid-Elementary School
- Nutrition To Grow On-Upper Elementary
- Eatfit-Middle School
- Jump Start-High School
Teaching USDA's "My Pyramid."
Private eye for peach pie
The Fresno Bee profiled a local business over the weekend that pursues confidential research projects to help clients - such as fruit breeders, growers and sellers - identify fruit varieties that look great, taste delicious, grow easily and store well.
Fruit Dynamics monitors 10 stone-fruit breeding programs, evaluating 400 to 600 unreleased cultivars each year for the fresh and processing fruit markets.Tree fruit growers are looking to the company to boost their industry, in which profits have dipped due to high production and competition from a greater diversity of fruit choices, such as relatively new California blueberries.
Fruit Dynamics owner Eric Gaarde has been collecting fruit variety characteristics since the 1990s, the article said."Their database is, without a doubt, the most unique fruit database in the world," UC Cooperative Extension tree fruit farm advisor Kevin Day told reporter Joan Obra.
"What they've done across geographic breeding lines is absolutely unparalleled," Day was quoted in the story. "It's staggering, the data they have."
Day offers information on tree fruit fresh-shipping, production practices, fruit growth and development, pruning and training systems on the Tulare County UC Cooperative Extension website.
Fruit Dynamics maintains an extensive tree fruit database.
Strategic Vision: 2025 and the Strategic Initiatives – What do they mean for me?
A little more than a year ago, the Division finalized the Strategic Vision: 2025. The document was the first step in a strategic planning process to address the challenges we face and provide the scientific and technological breakthroughs California needs to compete in a global economy, ensure a safe nutritious food supply, conserve natural resources, and keep Californians healthy. Nine multidisciplinary, integrated initiatives were presented, which represent the best opportunities for ANR’s considerable infrastructure and talent to seek new resources and new ways of partnering within and outside UC to find solutions for California.
Four of these initiatives were selected as the first opportunities to focus ANR’s limited internal resources on issues where we can have significant, documented, policy-relevant results over the next five years. Resources being considered for these efforts include funds previously used for ANR’s competitive grants programs, which functioned across a wide array of fields and general endowment fund payout. The intent is to focus these resources on meaningful research and outreach efforts for a few well-defined critical issues where ANR can have a meaningful impact in this five-year timeframe.
Selection of the four strategic initiatives does not infer that the other five initiatives are not critically important. Rather, ANR does not currently have internal resources significant enough to be able to make additional investments in all nine at one time. It is understood that for ANR to be a successful and relevant organization there must be significant research and outreach programs addressing all of these strategic initiative areas.
Some of you have asked, “What if my project/program doesn’t fit into the four strategic initiatives?”
We recognize that not all ANR projects will fit in the first four initiatives. The goal of the Strategic Vision is to focus ANR’s efforts as we move forward and we encourage you to see yourselves, your programs and your projects in that broader vision. The nine initiatives described in the Vision are intended to be guidance in shaping our research and outreach programs and to provide compelling evidence of our ability to make a difference to California.
The four initiatives where panels are working to define focused areas of inquiry and needed areas of outreach will identify where ANR’s limited additional internal resources will be focused for five years. These resources may be employed in competitive grants programs, serve as matching funds for research and outreach projects, fund short-term positions, fund targeted efforts, etc. These decisions have not been made at this point, and all possible uses of these funds are under consideration as the Strategic Initiative plans are taking form.
All nine initiatives play a vital role in focusing ANR’s efforts to solve critical problems facing California. They represent the scope of the efforts that ANR personnel will be concentrating on to continue to make a difference. Success for the Division will be measured by the impacts that occur across all nine initiative areas.
Barbara Allen-Diaz
Associate Vice President, Academic Programs and Strategic Initiatives
Bill Frost
Associate Director, Research & Extension Centers
View or leave comments for the Executive Working Group
This announcement is also posted and archived on the ANR Update pages.
Water archive finds a new home in SoCal
The UC Water Resources Center Archives will be moved from UC Berkeley to a new home at UC Riverside and California State University, San Bernardino, the Contra Costa Times reported yesterday.
The archive - which contains technical reports, speeches, photographs and other historical materials - is considered the West's premier collection of historical materials about water development. As a way to reduce expenses, the UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources sought proposals to relocate the collection.
Transfer of the materials will begin in the fall, said the article, written by Mike Taugher.
"We have a strong interest in preserving and digitizing the collection for the future . . . to ensure the widest research access to all of the archive's contents," the story quoted UC Riverside librarian Ruth Jackson.
Taugher also sought comment from Linda Vida, who has served as the archive librarian and director for more than 17 years.
"I think it's sad that we're going to be leaving Berkeley after 51 years, but I look forward to the water archive continuing to serve UC and the California water community from the Riverside campus," Vida was quoted.
A UC Riverside news release said both UCR and CSUSB have strong water-resource centers already in place. UCR is home to the Water Science and Policy Center and CSUSB houses the Water Resources Institute.
“Water is the lifeblood of this state, and it’s vital that all students of water issues and decisionmakers have access to this material,” UCR chancellor Timothy P. White was quoted in the release.
"This collaboration between UCR and CSUSB will serve all campuses of our two systems, as well as the public,” the release quoted Albert Karnig, president of CSUSB.
UC ANR vice president Dan Dooley praised the collaborative effort with the California State University system reflected in the relocation proposal.
“This is an outstanding proposal and the review committee and I strongly support UCR as the new home for the archives," Dooley said in an announcement.
Links to the three proposals that were submitted for the water archive are available online.
Also, the Riverside Press-Enterprise and Water Tech Online published brief announcements about the archive's move.
A historic flood photo from the collection.