UC Agriculture and Natural Resources made several appearances in the media yesterday. Separate news outlets
- Reported more sightings of European grapevine moth in wine country
- Charted expanding acreage of olives for oil
- Offered blustery vitriol about changes being implemented by ANR to deal with the economic downturn
According to yesterday's Weekly Calistogan, the number of adult European grapevine moths found in Napa County has risen to eight since they were first spotted last month. Agricultural officials have found 29 larval specimens as well.
Reporter Mike Treleven got a description of the pest from UC Cooperative Extension integrated pest management advisor Lucia Varela. She said the moth is about a quarter-inch long and the female is always slightly larger than the male. European grapevine moths' markings are brown, tannish and black; they prefer temperatures in the mid-80s and nighttime temperatures in the low 50s. More details on the moth from the UC IPM program.
Capital Press devoted column-inches to a oil-olive planting boom, which it said is fueled by skyrocketing demand for olive oil among health-conscious consumers, the ability to use lower-cost mechanical harvesting methods and the fact that the trees require less water than other crops.
One of reporter Tim Hearden's expert sources was UC Cooperative Extension farm advisor Bill Kreuger. Even as the table olive industry has struggled, Kreuger said, the acreage of the fruit grown for oil has increased dramatically.
The Berkeley Daily Planet published a reader's commentary by Gray Brechin criticizing ANR vice president Dan Dooley's decision to close the University’s Center for Water Resources and find a new home for the Water Resources Archives in order to save money.
The essay, titled "Vivisecting the University of California," opens with a distasteful analogy involving a cancer patient's dabbing at an open wound when speaking amiably about other topics.
"I wondered how he could so blithely ignore what was obvious to everyone else. I wonder the same about the UC administrators and regents," Brechin wrote.
The Irvine City Council voted on Tuesday to spend $65.5 million over the next three to five years to transform a portion of the old El Toro Marine Corps Air Station into parkland, according to the Los Angeles Times. Orange County's "Great Park" - billed as the first great metropolitan park of the 21st century - is across the street from the UC South Coast Research and Extension Center.
The City of Irvine funds will turn about 225 acres of the base into lawns, exhibition space, sports fields, farmland, citrus groves and a wildlife corridor, among other amenities, the Times story said. Eventually, the Great Park will be the focal point for redevelopment of the former 4,700-acre facility. Expected to be almost twice the size of New York’s Central Park, it will include natural areas and open space in addition to recreational and cultural uses.
The UC Cooperative Extension Orange County Master Gardener program has been actively working with Great Park planners and already offers classes at the Great Park Food and Farm Lab. Classes this fall include “Cool Season Vegetables,” “Gardening in Small Spaces,” “The Busy Gardener,” “Spice up Your Life,” “Grow Your own Herbs,” and “Holiday Crafts from the Garden," said a Great Park news release.
The Orange County Great Park Garden Workshop Series is part of a pilot program designed to introduce community members to the Farm and Food Lab, where they can learn about sustainable home gardening practices for a healthy lifestyle.
The idea was dropped after grower Andy Wilson raised objections to the plan saying the reclaimed water contains trace amounts of boron and sodium, which could accumulate in the soil and eventually kill trees. Instead, the city will sponsor a 10- to 15-year UC Riverside study to learn how boron affects trees and fruit.
According to the article, written by David Danelski, UCR soil chemistry professor Christopher Amrhein said Wilson had good reason to be concerned about the city's plan divert fresh water from the Gage and Riverside canals and replace it with the recycled wastewater from the city's sewage treatment plant.
"We basically told (city officials), 'We can't take your reclaimed water,' " Amrhein was quoted.
The city has used UC Davis agricultural engineering professor Mark Grismer as a consultant to counter arguments by UCR citrus experts that recycled water would harm the trees. The city's recycled water project is still in the works. The reclaimed water will be used to irrigate Martha McLean Anza Narrows Park, Fairmont Park and the future Tequesquite Park, and could also be used to recharge aquifers.
Irrigating citrus.
The Institute provides for the creation of three centers, which were selected in a competitive application process. Those centers are:
- One Health: Water, Animals, Food, and Society, led by UC Riverside and UC Davis
- Migration and Health, led by UC San Diego and UC Davis
- Women’s Health and Empowerment, led by UC San Francisco and UC Los Angeles
One Health partners, UCR and UCD, have strong agricultural roots, including Cooperative Extension and Agricultural Experiment Station faculty, "which will enable the center to address the agriculture-water-health nexus in its action-oriented research program in a way that no other global health school in the country can," the Riverside news release quoted Anil Deolalikar, the associate dean of the UCR College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences and co-director of One Health.
One Health will focus on reducing the rate of disease and death resulting from malnutrition, unsafe water, and animal- and vector-borne diseases with the aim of designing, implementing and evaluating health interventions at the national, regional, community and household levels.
“This has tremendous implications for California,” Deolalikar was quoted. “A lot of global health problems are very relevant to California – food, proximity to animals, water contamination, water scarcity, and how the combination of these factors leads to illnesses. It’s a very California problem, particularly with agriculture being such an important part of the state’s economy.”
The creation of the UC Global Health Institute was announced today in San Francisco at a conference on the importance of global health to California, according to a UC San Francisco news release. The Global Health Institute was already credited with a report on the importance of global health to California.
The report says an estimated $49.8 billion is generated annually by California companies addressing global health needs and an additional $8 billion in tax revenue for the state, or roughly 7 percent of total state taxes.
The study, conducted by UC Riverside researchers, also found that the global health sector supports 350,000 high-quality jobs in California and provides $19.7 billion in wages and salaries, generating two dollars of business activity for every dollar invested by the state into global health.
An article in the agribusiness newspaper Capital Press about how much money is being spent on research around California to develop alternatives to fossil fuels was picked up from a UC ANR news release touting the most recent issue of California Agriculture journal.
Writer Tim Hearden's story, however, refers in the third paragraph to "the study," when in fact the release reported that more than two-thirds of a billion dollars coming from corporate and government sources are funding dozens of studies taking place at five research locations, according to Janet Byron, managing editor of California Agriculture.
"I'm grateful for the Capital Press story, but it's interesting to see how our material was used," Bryon said.
Also somewhat perplexing was Hearden's use of quotes from UC Davis news service public information representative Sylvia Wright. I tried to contact Wright to find out how the interview came about, but she is not available today.
Much of Hearden's material came directly from the release, so his story serves as another avenue for spreading word about UC research efforts to build better biofuels and help California reach its ambitious goal of a 10 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2020.
California farmers, forests and landscapes could produce 30 million tons of renewable biomass for electricity generation, biofuels and industrial processing, the equivalent of 2 billion gallons of gasoline annually, according to Bryan Jenkins, director of the UC Davis Energy Institute.
The Oct.-Dec. 2009 issue of California Agriculture journal
