The story is based on an announcement from the non-profit organization "Sustainable Conservation," based in San Francisco. Sustainable Conservation is providing funding to implement two new "Best Management Practices Challenges" to California farmers.
One is aimed at helping farmers try conservation tillage practices on their farms. The other will help dairy operators accurately manage nutrients being applied to their feed crops. In short, Sustainable Conservation will absorb the financial risk to farmers who are willing to try new, environmentally friendly practices.
Reporter John Holland interviewed UC Cooperative Extension farm advisor Marsha Campbell-Mathews for the story. Campbell-Mathews is one of the scientists involved in the technical aspects of the dairy nutrient management initiative.
"If people are going to try it, to have the risk taken away is huge," Mathews is quoted in the Bee story.
Campbell-Mathews told me this morning the program couldn't be a better fit for Central Valley dairy operators. In 2012, dairies will be required by the Regional Water Quality Control Board to limit nutrient inputs (manure, lagoon water, etc.) onto their crops to 1.4 times the amount removed in the crop. She said she knows of only two ways to do that: install an expensive sprinkler system on fields to control nutrient leaching or use a brand new, but as yet untested, computer modeling software program developed by Campbell-Mathews and UC Riverside environmental science professor David Crohn.
The Sustainable Conservation support means farmers who try the new software program will be reimbursed if they suffer financial losses by following the practices indicated by the computer model.
Campbell-Mathews said the software program could be a "silver bullet" for dairies overwhelmed with a seemingly impossible task of complying with the new regulation.
"Is the dairy industry sustainable? If this works, then yes," Campbell-Mathews said. "The Nutrient Management Challenge lets dairies try it with no risk."
For more information on Campbell-Mathews' work helping dairy operators address new environmental regulations, see Dairy farmers save money, prepare for regulations using manure as fertilizer.
Farmers who enroll in the Challenge for Reduced Tillage will implement conservation tillage practices on their farms with the financial safety net.
Conservation tillage involves planting a new crop in a previous crop's residue to minimize soil disturbance. CT reduces the number of tractor passes required to prepare a field for planting, reducing dust and diesel emissions, and fuel, maintenance and labor costs.
More on UC's conservation tillage program can be found here: California farmers see conservation tillage success stories
Marsha Campbell Mathews on a dairy farm.
Add to that the dismal economics of milk production, and you have a recipe for dispair.
Those are the feelings of Marc Duivenvoorden, who was recently profiled in the Redding Record-Searchlight. He owns a dairy on the border of Tehama and Shasta counties with 25 producing Jersey and Holstein cows.
Processors are required to pay farmers for milk using formulas set by state regulators and based off commodity prices on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. California processors are currently buying milk for $11 to $15 per hundredweight. With feed and overhead costs, Duivenvoorden spends at least $18 to produce a hundredweight, the story said.
Reporter Ryan Sabalow wrote in his article about the additional burden of managing dairy waste. He wrote that UC Cooperative Extension informed him that dairy farmers are required to have a waste-management plan to control dry manure and wastewater, and must complete an annual plan to safely contain nitrate- and ammonia-rich dairy waste byproducts.
Meanwhile, one of the UC programs that supports small scale farmers - the Small Farm Program - is slated for closure on Dec. 31. Over the weekend, the former director of the program, Desmond Jolly, wrote an essay for the Davis Enterprise suggesting that the decision is ill-advised.
The article, which is only available online to Enterprise subscribers, said the UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources "took a giant step backwards" with the decision.
In a letter distributed Oct. 22, UC ANR vice president Dan Dooley noted that all advisors and specialists affiliated with the program have retained their positions and are "expected to continue their excellent work." Coordination of program functions will continue through workgroups, continuing conferences, and collaborations among individual advisors, specialists and faculty on research and outreach contracts and grants.
A long excerpt from a recent UC online seminar for dairy operators on suicide prevention was used in a lengthy segment about the plight of California dairies on the California Report this morning. The story, by Fresno NPR reporter Sasha Khokha, noted that the Los Angeles Times reported in May that two dairymen have committed suicide as dairy industry profits crash. Currently, dairy operators earn about half what it costs them to produce milk.
Much of Khokha's story was pulled from an emotional interview with Point Reyes dairy operator Joey Mendoza, whose immigrant grandfather started the dairy nearly 100 years ago.
"It's sad, but it's something you have to do," Mendoza told the reporter, his voice cracking with despair. "There are guilt pains because of the heritage. Everybody worked so hard to build this thing and you're the one that has to terminate it and let it go. It's humiliating and you're not very proud of yourself to do something like this."
Mendoza has decided to participate in a herd retirement program that requires dairies to sell the entire herd for slaughter and stop milking cows for at least a year. The program is expected to take about 100,000 cows out of the national milking herd of 9 million, Khokha reported. Mendoza said he may try to open the dairy again one day as an organic operation.
The dire economic straits in which many California dairy operators find themselves have prompted UC Cooperative Extension to collaborate with other agencies to provide a suicide prevention online seminar, according to an article in Dairy Herd Management.
The webinar, held this morning, covered farmer stress, depression and suicide prevention. According to an article published in the Los Angeles Times late last month, two dairy operators have recently committed suicide. Low milk prices that have dairy farmers selling cows for hamburger meat and threatening to dump milk into sewers may be partly to blame.
Current milk prices are about half of what it costs California producers to feed and milk their herds, the Times article said. Every gallon sold in the supermarket represents a loss on the farm. The pain is being felt throughout the U.S., but it's especially severe in California, where1,800 dairies produce $7 billion worth of milk annually, more than one-fifth of the nation's supply.
The Dairy Herd Management article ends with links to additional resources, including a story in the May issue of the magazine, Recognize the Signs of Stress and Depression and a link to its Crisis Management Resource Center.
Reports about climate change in the current issue of California Agriculture journal are taken with a brave face by Kings County farmers and officials, according to a story published in the Hanford Sentinel. Reporter Sean Nidever provided highlights in the newspaper of the research presented in the UC ANR's 50-page publication titled "'Unequivocal' How climate change will transform California."
Despite the fact that Nidever reported that the county's agricultural industry could face "tough times," Kings County farmers and agricultural officials "declined to panic," the story said.
"Really all that we can say is that farmers would have to adapt, like with any other issue," the article quoted Diana Peck, Kings County Farm Bureau executive director.
One result of climate change predicted in the journal is that more precipitation will fall in California as rain, overwhelming reservoirs and forcing water to be released at times when agriculture can't use it. At least two local growers said that makes a good case for building more reservoir capacity.
"If their projections are correct and the climate is indeed warming, then this report makes the best argument I know of in favor of building water storage, reducing regulatory barriers on agriculture and investing in genetic technology," dairy operator Dino Giacomazzi told the reporter.
Nidever also wrote a separate article, published yesterday, that touched on another issue raised in the journal, dairy greenhouse-gas emissions. The reporter apparently spoke to the journal article's author, UC Davis Cooperative Extension livestock air quality specialist Frank Mitloehner, who told him dairies will soon face regulation for greenhouse gases under California's landmark greenhouse gas reduction law passed in 2006.
Possible solutions to the dairy air emission problem presented in the Sentinel article are the development of specially engineered food and probiotics that will reduce the amount of methane cows belch and capturing dairy cow emissions to generate energy.
