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This year’s Lodi Grape Day was held on Tuesday, February 2nd, and the University of California Cooperative Extension (UCCE) and The Lodi Chamber of Commerce’s Agribusiness Committee hosted this event for the first time virtually.
A video recording of all presentations is now available along with closed captioning. To turn on closed captioning: once the video is open, you will see at the bottom of the video on the right-hand side that there are tools you can select. Select the second icon that says CC. To watch the video, click below:
The day was wonderful with a packed agenda and a fantastic lineup of speakers. The agenda included a nice mix of viticulture and enology topics, as follows:
Almond hulls a top choice in California
Dairy cattle are great upcyclers, making valuable milk and meat from feedstuffs that would often otherwise be wasted. To take advantage of this asset, dairy farmers are able to feed their animals by-products from a variety of sources, including other areas of agriculture and even human food waste.
That was evidenced clearly by the 58 unique by-product feeds California dairy producers reported using in a recent survey organized by University of California Cooperative Extension specialists. In that survey, 138 of the 156 responding farms were feeding some by-product in their ration, reported Jennifer Heguy during the Golden State Dairy Management Conference.
Todd Fitchette
From left, Erik, Phil, and Nis Hansen. The family has sustainably farmed cotton and other crops in the same lake bottom region that patriarch Nis Hansen first tilled in the late 19th Century.
As a sixth generation of Hansens waits in the wings, history suggests that combined, the five generations of family before them created a farming legacy. They did so by successfully and sustainably farming cotton and other crops in the same lake bottom region of the San Joaquin Valley that Hansen Ranches patriarch Nis Hansen first tilled in the late 19th Century.
Brothers Phil and Erik, and their cousin, Nis Hansen, oversee the day-to-day operations of a diverse farming operation that includes upwards of 10,000 acres of high-quality, extra-long-staple Pima cotton known for its strength and ability to mill fine clothing and linens. It is their dedication to sustainable farming practices, a strong business acumen that continues to focus on environmental
California’s insurance crisis has been deepening as the wildfire-wary industry continues to drop households, businesses, farms and even wineries.
Embers fly from a tree as the Kincade Fire burns near Geyserville, Calif., on Oct. 24, 2019. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (CN) It’s a scene that’s played out far too often over the last decade in California: entire neighborhoods, rural towns and even cities emptied in minutes due to a hard-charging wildfire.
Living under the constant threat of waking up to flames has become the harsh reality for millions, a sort of prerequisite for living in a state with what is now a year-round wildfire season. During a record-breaking 2020 season in which 4.2 million acres 4% of the state’s total acreage burned, several major blazes ignited in December in counties like San Diego, Orange and Ventura. Not to be outdone, 2021 kicked off with a spate of wildfires in the north part of the state.
Use Organic Fertilizers for the Right Reasons
There is a very good reason organic growers have been using compost for centuries it works. Seeking to give their crops a boost, many growers additionally employ high-nitrogen organic fertilizers, such as chicken manure, which makes perfect sense as long as they understand the long-term effects.
That is one of the initial conclusions made by Cole Smith, Staff Research Associate, University of California Cooperative Extension, Santa Clara and Monterey Counties, who is in the third year of a project, “Evaluation of Certified Organic Fertilizers for Long-term Nutrient Planning.”
“If you’re using high-N organic fertilizers, it’s not default they are beneficial to soil health,” he says. “We don’t recommend they replace compost, manures, or cover crops. Just because you’re using blood meal or guano doesn’t mean you’re increasing soil health.”