UC Blog
California Heartland profiles Master Food Preservers
The half-hour public television program California Heartland, produced by KVIE in Sacramento, included a brief segment on the UC Cooperative Extension El Dorado County Master Food Preserver program in its most recent episode.
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to view the segment online. I have a pretty powerful computer with up-to-date software, but the KVIE video segments played for a few seconds, buffered slowly, then quit. (If you have better luck with the video, please post a comment.)
California Heartland also provides a transcript of each segment, so I know that the show featured Master Food Preserver Jane Alexander teaching a class on marmalades, conserves and butters.
"Oh we have fun and we get to make some wonderful different kind of preserves and we do jerky, we do olives, we dry things, we freeze things - we cover the whole way that you can store food at home," Alexander is quoted in the transcript.
Host Chris Burrows noted that the Master Food Preservers offer a monthly canning class, which allows local residents to help preserve a lost art, gain awareness of salt and additives in commercially preserved products, learn how to preserve food safety and create homemade gifts from the kitchen.
California Heartland
Plant genetics researcher responds to global warming article
UC Davis genetic resources analyst Adi Damania responded in a letter to the Woodland Daily Democrat to an article on global warming published in the same newspaper by another UC Davis researcher.
The original article, summarized in this blog entry, provided details of a new report about the projected impact of global warming on Yolo County agriculture.
Damania made the point that plant genetics may be the ticket to maintaining a viable agriculture industry in a warmer climate with less rain. Adapting to global warming, he wrote, "will require a change in (plants') genetic composition."
". . . we may have to once more turn to the wild germplasm gene pool in order to overcome stress to our current crops from climate change," according to the letter.
The second half of the letter lamented the fact that, due to recent financial cuts in California state funding, the ANR Genetic Resources Conservation Program was "ordered to be shut down," threatening farmers' and scientists' ability to overcome the probable agricultural complications posed by climate change.
"The closure will make it all the more difficult for California to face the challenges that lie ahead in the near future as regards its agricultural production," Damania wrote.
Adi Damania.
Media continue to crack egg puns
In the media coverage of Proposition 2's campaign and passage, reporters have made liberal use of puns. Here are a few examples:
Prop 2 . . .
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would crack the state's egg industry
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lays an egg for state producers
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is a study in cage fighting
There were many more, but Jim Downing of the Sacramento Bee came up with what I think is the best pun. In a story published last Saturday, he wrote:
"To a huge majority of California voters, it seems, the chicken does come before the egg."
For the story, Downing spoke to animal welfare expert Joy Mench, an animal science professor at UC Davis. She told the reporter it is unclear whether the risk of salmonella contamination is higher in caged or cage-free systems. Downing also sought comment from Dan Summer, the director of the UC Agricutlural Issues Center. Even if the cage-free movement spreads to other states (as proponents of the initiative intend), he said the California egg industry is facing steep transition costs and some farms will likely go out of business.
Backyard chickens need same level of care as other pets
The latter third of a 1,100-word article on backyard chickens published today in the Christian Science Monitor was based on information from UC Davis Cooperative Extension specialist Francine Bradley.
The article was a trend piece on growing interest in keeping chickens in urban or suburban settings to supply families with fresh eggs, organic fertilizer and pest control.
Bradley told reporter Maryann Mott that the responsibility taken on when adopting chickens is no different from that for more traditional pets, like dogs and cats.
"If you're going to be the steward of an animal, you should know how to take care of it before you purchase one," Bradley was quoted.
She told the reporter that information on rearing healthful chickens is available from Cooperative Extension offices in nearly every U.S. county.
"We know more about the nutrition for chickens than any other living animal, including humans," she says, "so there's no excuse for not feeding a bird well."
Luke Shapiro with backyard chicken.
North Coast olive oil production a labor of love
The Santa Rosa Press Democrat ran a story today marking harvest time for North Coast artisan olive oil producers. Though the area's high-end olive oil producers are "making money," reporter Robert Digitale wrote that the high labor cost associated with harvest makes olive oil production a "labor of love."
With information from UC Cooperative Extension farm advisor Paul Vossen, the article compared the small-scale, specialty olive oil production of the North Coast with large-scale olive operations in California's Central Valley.
The growth of the industry in the valley is due to “super-high-density” orchards and mechanical harvesters that greatly reduce labor costs. Valley growers plant 650 to 900 trees per acre, compared to no more than 300 per acre at the North Coast. Artisan olive oil producers on the North Coast mostly “are doing it for the love of it," Vossen was quoted.
Digitale spoke to Colleen McGlynn, whose husband Ridgely Evers founded the online small-business management program NetBooks, about their olive farm's bottom line. In olive oil, she told the reporter, you have to take the long view.
“You plant grapes for your kids and olives for your grandkids," she was quoted.