UC Blog
ANR town hall reminder and support for AFRI grants
Reminder: ANR town hall set for 9:30 am May 25
Please join VP Dooley for a 60-minute ANR town hall meeting on Adobe Connect on Tuesday, May 25, at 9:30 a.m. PDT.
Dooley will discuss the governor's "May Revise" and implications for UC and ANR's budget, and thoughts on progress towards our Strategic Vision.
The town hall link will be https://admin.na4.acrobat.com/anrtownhall. Enter as a guest and type your name.
If you have trouble connecting to the town hall during the event, contact Mike Poe at (530) 902-2058 or mlpoe@ucdavis.edu.
ANR support for AFRI grants
The Program Support Unit (PSU) and ANR Contracts and Grants have developed a support process for Principal Investigators (PI) applying for AFRI grants.
The PSU website has a page devoted to ANR AFRI support and also includes video tutorials for locating and navigating an AFRI federal funding opportunity, completing an AFRI Grants.gov grant application and submitting the application.
The process begins with the principal investigator contacting the Strategic Initiative leader in the appropriate subject area to assess the proposal’s merit and fit within ANR guidelines.
The Initiative leaders should contact Joni Rippee when a proposal is approved. PSU staff will be assigned to handle proposals for each specific request for application. Contracts and Grants staff will match up to each PSU staff member to ensure continuity through the entire process.
A communication plan, including a Collaborative Tools group and training for Contracts and Grants and the PSU staff, will be implemented to keep the PI, initiative leaders, and PSU and Contracts and Grants staff updated.
View or leave comments for the Executive Working Group
This announcement is also posted and archived on the ANR Update pages.
Cool weather is slowing down agricultural crops
California's cool, wet spring is putting a damper on the state's agricultural industry, the Sacramento Bee reported today. Watermelon may not be ready for the Fourth of July, and tomato harvests likely will be delayed.
The problem for tomato growers has been persistently wet fields, UC Cooperative Extension farm advisor Gene Miyao told the newspaper.
"Under wet conditions, (planting) causes soil compactions. That affects root growth. Irrigation (water) doesn't infiltrate as well," Miyao was quoted. "I think it certainly is a concern."
Waiting for soil to dry means risking that rain will fall again before planting. Greenhouse growers can't move young-plant inventory to fields on schedule. And at harvest time, some growers must wait for processor capacity. Tomatoes may rot in the field or face exposure to insects while waiting, Miyao said.
Weekend temperatures were among the coldest in more than a half-century from Redding to Stockton, the Bee reported.
In addition, Bakersfield set a record Sunday when the mercury reached just 67 degrees, and wind advisories were in place over the weekend in the coastal areas of Los Angeles County and in the Antelope Valley, according to the National Weather Service. (As reported by the Bakersfield Californian and Los Angeles Times.)
Farmers can expect no relief in the next few days. The National Weather Service has issued winter storm watches for the Sierra Nevada and predicts rain throughout California tomorrow.
County-based members appointed to Program Council
Dear Colleagues,
I am pleased to announce that we have appointed two new members to serve on Program Council: Rose Hayden-Smith and Steve Orloff. The Program Council coordinates divisionwide planning and delivery of programs and provides recommendations for allocation of resources. The new members will continue providing a county-based perspective to Program Council once the Regional Directors end their duties on June 30. Orloff and Hayden-Smith will join Program Council in July 2010 on two- and three-year staggered terms respectively, to ensure continuity of county-based input.
Using an online survey tool, we solicited nominations of county-based Cooperative Extension academics from specialists and county-based personnel. Program Council evaluated the nominations and made recommendations to the Executive Working Group.
Rose Hayden-Smith is Ventura County Director and a Kellogg Food and Society Policy Fellow. Hayden-Smith develops programs for youth and adult extenders in agricultural literacy, garden-based learning, and youth and community gardening. Her national advocacy work focuses on encouraging national efforts to promote school, home and community efforts; and public policy related to food systems, gardening, education and urban agriculture.
Steve Orloff is Siskiyou County Director and a Farm Advisor. Orloff conducts research and educational programs on alfalfa, small grains, irrigated pasture and non-crop weed control; with emphasis on variety adaptation, pest management, irrigation and general production practices.
I want to thank those of you who provided such thoughtful recommendations; your feedback is always an essential part of our Division's work.
Sincerely,
Daniel M. Dooley,
Vice President
View or leave comments for the Executive Working Group
This announcement is also posted and archived on the ANR Update pages.
Be kind to honey bees
A national roundup of honey bee happenings on the website Tonic.com touched on the UC Davis Honey Bee Haven, a bee-friendly garden set to open to the public Sept. 11.
Tonic reports on good things that happen, dwelling on stories that "inspire, bring hope or simply put a smile on your face." And what could be more inspirational than a lovely flowering garden made possible by a generous donor that daily brings delight and joy to the world, Häagen Dazs ice cream?The Honey Bee Haven is designed to encourage public awareness of the modern-day plight of the honey bee, which Tonic reporter Liz Corcoran described even though it is perplexing and sad. In recent years, bees have been subject to a mysterious decline called Colony Collapse Disorder. Factors that scientists suspect cause CCD include pests, pesticides, malnutrition and stress from transport.
Häagen Dazs - recognizing that fruit, nut and honey ice cream ingredients are dependent on bees - launched the Häagen Dazs Loves Honeybees campaign and donated half a million dollars to Penn State and UC Davis for honeybee research and awareness programs.
Here are some ways to be kind to bees shared in the Tonic story:
- Adopt a beehive, offered by the British Beekeeping Association for about $50 a year
- Support reinstatement of the Boy Scout beekeeping merit badge, which was discontinued in 1995
- Plant sunflowers, hollyhocks, foxgloves and flowering herbs, and if you have room, fruit trees, buddleia and hebe
- Forego the use of herbicides and pesticides.
An artist's rendering of the Honey Bee Haven.
Merced 4-H junk drawer robotics: A great idea goes national
After UC Cooperative Extension 4-H advisor Richard Mahacek’s young son had the opportunity to tinker with robotics, he told his dad, “We need to do this in 4-H.”That was more than a decade ago, but Mahacek never forgot his son’s enthusiasm. After researching and testing ready-made programs and kits, Mahacek decided only a brand new custom program would meet local 4-H needs.
“Some kits were expensive, others were hard to get,” Mahacek said. “Others didn’t challenge kids to innovate and explore, but only to follow instructions.”
Mahacek had a completely new concept in mind. The result was a program Mahacek calls junk drawer robotics, heavy on rubber bands, Popsicle sticks, medicine dispensers and bamboo skewers – the kinds of things people already have around the house. By adding some toy motors and plastic gears, Mahacek says, there is no telling what youngsters can invent. The robotics program develops skills that go beyond science and engineering. The children learn communications, teamwork and critical thinking.
“Junk drawer robotics is hands-on as well as heads-on,” Mahacek said. “We’re getting kids to be innovative, to come up with ideas themselves. When they come up with their own designs, and then build them, they have internalized the concepts much more than if they are just following directions.”
Since 4-H was launched nearly 100 years ago, the program has been about science. 4-H is offered to the community by Cooperative Extension programs across the nation, created by Congress with the Smith-Lever Act of 1914 to channel scientific advances from agricultural colleges to the people who can use them. 4-H is the component of Cooperative Extension that targets youth.
“The idea was, go to youth, have them experiment with new farming ideas, and show their dads and moms that the new ways offered improvements,” Mahacek said.
4-H expanded over the years into many aspects of agricultural science and in recent decades cast its net still wider, providing urban youth opportunities to benefit from 4-H’s “learn by doing” activities.
Many 4-H projects are presented using peer-reviewed curriculum materials published and distributed by the National 4-H Council. As part of its 4-H Science, Engineering and Technology Initiative, the Council put out a call in 2009 offering funding for the development of robotics curriculum. The timing was perfect for Mahacek.
After he spent a few years developing a junk drawer robotics project, Mahacek was promoted to director of UC Cooperative Extension in Merced County. Time limitations pushed junk drawer robotics to the back burner.
The National 4-H Council injected new life into the program by providing funding to complete a comprehensive three-track national 4-H robotics curriculum including coordinated development, pilot testing and evaluation. The lead institution on the overall development is the University of Nebraska, working with 4-H staff from many states including a sub-award to the University of California and Mahacek to develop a national curriculum for Junk Drawer Robotics. In addition to Junk Drawer Robotics, two other robotics curricula are part of the national project. In Virtual Robotics, 4-H members will build virtual robots on computers. The program is currently under cooperative development with the non-profit organization Global Challenge, which aims to provide students the tools and confidence to solve global problems together. The third track, Robotics Platforms, is a more traditional robotics curriculum that uses existing commercial building kits for materials. It is being created by the 4-H programs at the University of Nebraska, University of Idaho and Montana State University.
In Merced County, Junk Drawer Robotics is being pilot tested in after-school programs. Mahacek turned to the UC Merced engineering program to identify youthful engineering students to teach children about robotics concepts during after-school care programs at three elementary schools in Delhi, three middle schools in Merced, and one middle school in Planada.
In both Kern and Santa Cruz counties, Junk Drawer Robotics is being tested in traditional 4-H club settings, with 4-H teen members presenting to their younger peers along with adult coaching. The curriculum will also have Web-based support and resources linked with the other Virtual Robotics and Robotics Platforms tracks.
The complete Junk Drawer Robotics curriculum is expected to be available for distribution in late fall 2010.
http://news.ucanr.org/newsstorymain.cfm?story=1298