UC Blog
Author holds UCCE up as a technology transfer example
A blog titled "The World's Fair: All Manner of Human Creativity on Display" posted a question-and-answer session with Keith Warner, the author of Agroecology in Action - Extending Alternative Agriculture Through Social Networks. Warner, who studied at UC Santa Cruz, is a Franciscan Friar and a lecturer at Santa Clara University.
The social networks Warner refers to in his book are the precursors to what is now generally thought of as social networking, Web sites like Facebook and My Space.
Warner believes networks of farmers, scientists, and other stakeholders must work together and share knowledge among themselves. This sort of partnership, he says, is the primary strategy for finding alternatives to conventional agrochemical use.
Warner's blog comments, which read like a college textbook, touch on the part of his new publication in which he reviews the land grant university research-extension technology transfer system. The blog post even includes a technology transfer graph from a UC Cooperative Extension training manual.
His take on land grant technology transfer isn't wholly complimentary. For example, he wrote:
"I discovered that underneath the discourses of omniscience on the part land grant universities and the farm bureau, a significant portion of the farming community questioned the inevitability of contemporary, polluting practices." (Omniscience is college textbook way to say "know-it-all.")
It appears to me that Warner's book most certainly has interesting ideas and advice for UC Cooperative Extension, but judging from the writing style on the blog, it might be a challenge to read. Warner said he wrote the book hoping it would "mobilize the public to pressure decision-makers to create an agricultural science system that serves the common good." I wonder how many members of the public would be willing to slog through this book.
UC fisher study appears in Madera Tribune
The Madera Tribune has picked up a UC ANR press release on Pacific fishers, small carnivores being tracked in the Sierra Nevada by UC wildlife biologist Rick Sweitzer. The Tribune posted a four-paragraph "teaser" on its Web site. Unlike most news media, the full story is only available by paid subscription. (The online subscription cost ranges from $12.95 for one month to $66.95 for a year.)
Also unusual, Tribune reporter Ramona Frances edited out the connection to UC. Sweitzer is named a "biologist assigned to Madera County" in the teaser. Attribution to UC may be included in the long, published version, which I am awaiting via postal mail.
This media pick up has piqued my curiosity about pay-per-view news articles. It seems the larger publications have abandoned paid subscriptions. An example is the New York Times, which dropped online paid subscriptions a year ago September because readers were arriving from search engines, rather than starting at the Times' main page, and then were frustrated by being blocked from reading the whole story. However, according to a story on Circman.com, smaller, hometown newspapers like the Tribune are still asking their readers to pay cash for content. Local content isn't readily available from competitors, so local papers have an exclusive commodity that still commands a price.
A fisher perches in a pine tree.
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 . . .
-
would crack the state's egg industry
-
lays an egg for state producers
-
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.