This week Ventura County UCCE’s director, Rose Hayden-Smith travels to Washington DC! Rose is a W.K. Kellogg/IATP Food & Society Fellow and is in Washington this week to attend meetings on National Food and Ag Policy. She will be sharing with us on this important topic throughout the week.

This morning found me at the National Food Policy Conference.  The keynote speaker was Kathleen Sebelius, former governor of Kansas, and now serving in the Obama administration as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS).

In her brief tenure, Sebelius has been busy framing a response to H1N1 influenza, and dealing with a host of food system issues for the new administration, an administration that is focusing seriously on food safety.

She got right to the point about childhood obesity.  Sharing government statistics that medical treatment for all cancers in the U.S. tops $93 billion each year, she pointed out that the medical costs associated with treating obesity DOUBLE that, exceeding $186 billion per year.   She indicated that chronic diseases cause 70% of deaths in America, and that their treatment represents 75% of all health care costs. She attributed much of America’s battle with obesity to poor childhood nutrition.  Her conclusion?  There will be huge benefits to both human health and the economy by addressing both childhood obesity and food safety.

Sebelius promised to “focus relentlessly on prevention,” viewing it as a “great investment.”  There will be a national initiative, and American Recovery and Investment funds to support prevention efforts.

Sebelius is working closely on this effort with USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack.  They served as governors together (Sebelius in Kansas, Vilsack in Iowa).  The idea that DHHS and USDA will be working closely together – along with the Department of Education – is somewhat novel.  This administration is emphasizing inter- and intra-agency cooperation to a degree seldom seen previously.

Food safety is a major area of focus for Sebelius.  The national food safety workgroup she sits on has identified three core principles:

• Prioritizing food safety, not in response to specific crises, but to anticipate and prevent crises from occurring;
• Building partnerships and casting a wider net, sharing best practices across the nation, and building partnerships across agencies.  Specifically, Secretary Sebelius spoke of the DHHS partnering with USDA on food safety, and with the Department of Education playing a role in childhood nutrition education.
• Being proactive.

Secretary Sebelius stated that along with the USDA, the DHHS strongly supports the pending WIC and Childhood Nutrition Reauthorization and the pending Senate food safety bill.

Like yesterday, imports were referenced in terms of food safety. Per Sebelius, 20% of food is imported, and more than 1/3 of produce and ¾ of seafood are imported.  She spoke of the need to develop a 21^st century food policy that emphasizes safety.

The morning’s big announcement was the launching of www.foodsafety.gov This website represents a significant effort to better serve American consumers by serving as a clearinghouse for all food safety issues.  Recall and safety information is provided here, and you may sign up for email updates and feeds.  There is a widget that enables individuals and agencies to link the website to their own sites.  Mobile phone alerts regarding important food safety information will soon be available.

I visited the site today, and noted something interesting: the collaboration. This site is a joint effort between the White House, the USDA, the Centers for Disease Control, the FDA, DHHS, National Institutes of Health, and the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Services Division.  This site is truly a valuable resource, and I urge you to visit it.

Sebelius noted that the “highest mission of any government is keeping its citizens safe.”  The government’s new food safety website will help accomplish this.

Around lunchtime, I went with four colleagues over to the USDA for a meeting about the People’s Garden Initiative.   While walking by the garden – which looks very different from when I saw it in March, a scant five weeks after it was planted – I saw Bob Snieckus.  Bob is a landscape designer with the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), which is one of seventeen USDA agencies.  I met Bob last March at the People’s Garden Partnership Forum, when he shared design plans.  Today, Bob was working in the garden on his lunch hour, doing some volunteer work to perfect what already looked wonderful in preparation for the USDA’s Harvest BBQ, an event for members of Congress that was being held tonight, before the President’s address on health care.

Our group of gardening advocates had a wonderful and productive meeting with USDA staff about national gardening efforts and the USDA’s work in this area.  I’ll post tomorrow what I learned about the green and sustainable efforts being undertaken by the USDA.  The great work being done there deserves its own blog posting!

Thursday’s schedule:

• Breakfast meeting with the Executive Director of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition to learn more about federal ag policy and legislation, including the Farm Bill.
• Meeting with Kathleen Merrigan, Deputy Secretary of the USDA (gardening is one of three agenda items).
• Visit to the White House Garden.  We have learned we will also be given a tour of the kitchen.  New restrictions prevent us from taking any bags or cameras, but we believe that the White House staff will provide us with some pictures of our visit.
• Evening reception to present policy ideas to press and policy makers.  Bet you can guess what my policy idea is….yes, a national gardening initiative like the WWI and WWII Victory Garden campaigns!

Random observations: High seventies today, scattered sprinkles.  Warm and humid, but absolutely lovely this evening.   We are staying at an historic hotel off of DuPont Circle, with a tiny lobby. As we crowded into the lobby this evening, preparing to walk to dinner, Madeline Albright and Tom Daschle came through the door, and headed up the flight of narrow stairs for a meeting.   We ate dinner tonight at a restaurant called Founding Farmers.  Founding Farmers is an unusual restaurant: it is owned by a collective of family farmers who are committed to serving sustainable food in a sustainable environment (the restaurant is LEEDS certified). The food was excellent, reflecting seasonal availability and a perfect mix of classic American dishes (cornbread and fried green tomatoes were appetizers we shared) and more eclectic offerings.  The food is reasonably priced.  I had a wonderful grilled cheese sandwich, tomato soup, and coffee.   Six of us shared an enormous slice of red velvet cake and a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

My tablemates were Jim and Rebecca Goodman, Wisconsin dairy farmers; Lisa Kivirist, organic farmer/eco-preneur/writer/innkeeper from Wisconsin; Abigail Rogosheske, Institute of Ag and Trade Policy, Minnesota; Zoe Bradbury, young farmer/writer from Langlois, Oregon (and her husband, Danny, who is from Ventura!); and Roger Doiron, gardening hero and founder of Kitchen Gardeners International.  Roger’s influence has made the White House visit

Ventura County UCCE Farm Advisor, Ben Faber shares his knowledge of avocados. Today’s topic:

The most important thing you can do before planting is assess the pH of the soil before planting.  Avocados are very sensitive to soil pH greater than 7.  Their uptake of iron and zinc can be terribly compromised and they will suffer.  Correcting the soil pH prior to planting is the easiest way to approach the problem, rather than trying to correct it later when the tree is in the ground.  Otherwise, it becomes expensive and takes a long time to correct the problem without killing the tree.  Elemental sulfur (not popcorn sulfur) in pellets is the easiest way to accomplish this.  Watering and waiting for the sulfur to make the change and then checking to make sure the pH is really down takes about 6 months.

As for nutrients, though, the most commonly required ones are nitrogen and potassium.  These can be applied as either organic (fish, soybean, manure, etc.) or synthetic forms (urea, ammonium sulfate, potassium sulfate, etc.) or a combination.  The thing to remember is that the tree likes small, frequent amounts of nutrients because of its shallow root system.  And because it is a subtropical plant, it goes quiescent in the winter and when the soil is cold.  So nutrient applications like nitrogen are best applied when soils are warm, from spring though fall.

Newly-planted trees do not need supplemental nutrients, they are loaded up from the nursery and the young root system can easily burn until it gets established.  In the first year, use the equivalent of 1 ounce per tree of nitrogen in 4- 5 applications over the spring/fall.  The following year double that amount and do so for each succeeding year for the next 5 years.  The more small applications you make the less total nitrogen fertilizer you will use. Use the equivalent amount of nitrogen whether it is a synthetic source or an organic source.  Once the tree has started to develop a thick leaf mulch, it is possible to back off on nitrogen applications because now the mulch is contributing some of the nutrients.  In many garden situations where mulch is maintained, by year 10 the nutrient status is self-sustaining and nitrogen fertilizer may not be needed at all.  Just keep an eye on the leaf color to make sure it stays green, indicating adequate nitrogen.

When the avocado starts bearing fruit about year three, it may need potassium.  This is not necessary in all situations throughout the state, but the harvested avocado fruit contains twice as much potassium as nitrogen and when the fruit is removed the tree can start showing potassium deficiency symptoms.  This can be analyzed at a lab, but probably the best thing to do is just apply potassium sulfate at an equivalent rate to nitrogen or to use triple 15 fertilizer to meet both the nitrogen and potassium needs.  Organic growers can use organic potassium sulfate or kelp.  Although phosphorus is used by avocados, there are no documented cases in California where supplemental phosphorus needs to be applied.

The RESTOR Project - Research for Students and Teachers about the Ormond Beach Wetland Restoration Project - will begin this year in October (exact date to be announced shortly).  We are looking for a few more interested 6-8th grade science teachers to participate. Teachers serving primarily multicultural populations have first priority. The project is fully funded by the National Marine Sanctuary BWET Program and will include:

*Teacher workshops with classroom and field instruction by a variety of local experts about the Ormond Beach Wetland Restoration, watersheds and water quality

*Standards-based curricula from the California Coastal Commission and National Marine Sanctuary

*A classroom visit and water quality instruction by a Channelkeeper scientist

*A fully funded field trip to Ormond Beach with water quality monitoring and wetland restoration activities

*A fully funded field trip to Anacapa Island

This project is in partnership with Cathy Reznicek at the Ventura County Office of Education, Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary, Santa Barbara Channelkeeper, Nature Conservancy and the Ormond Point Native Plant Nursery.

Interested teachers, please contact Valerie Borel, RESTOR Project Program Representative, as soon as possible: email: vtborel@ucdavis.edu,  phone: 323-260-3851.

This week Ventura County UCCE’s director, Rose Hayden-Smith travels to Washington DC! Rose is a W.K. Kellogg/IATP Food & Society Fellow and is in Washington this week to attend meetings on National Food and Ag Policy. She will be sharing with us on this important topic throughout the week.

(Please note: This post in a special bonus. Another article was posted earlier today.)

I have not posted since July on my Victory Grower blog.  It’s been – at times - a difficult and disheartening summer.  Like many Californians, I will remember this period as the “summer of our discontent” here, a period when we struggled with the realities of limitations.   Limitations imposed by a crushing state budget deficit, a dysfunctional system of state governance, double digit unemployment, furloughs, and a lack of water to support California agriculture and residents.  It’s been a surreal period when we’ve seen further erosion in public funding to things Californians have taken as a birthright, including one of the best systems of higher education in the world.  It’s been a summer of strange weather, of wildfires, a period when the Golden State has seemed dusty, limp, directionless.  Even some of the most optimistic people I know (myself included) have seemed tired, a bit jaded, and wondering where we will go from here.  The budget die are cast: the game will be played out with new rules, new expectations, new outcomes.

For me, the shoot of green poking through a parched landscape of uncertainty has been the amazing degree of interest in gardening.  My phone is ringing off the hook, and my email inbox has been jammed with requests for support for home and community garden efforts.  The UC Master Gardener helpline is reporting a high volume of calls from home gardeners and others seeking support for gardening projects.  As Californians face hard times, they are responding creatively and innovatively.

What is remarkable to me is the nature of these gardening projects requesting support and assistance from UC.  It has ranged from homeowners determined to rip out lawns and put in edible landscape to major public agencies.   From a young graduate student sitting in my office seeking ideas on how to garden with schoolchildren in Ecuador (you'll be great, Megan!) to hearing Mayor Weir of Ventura share her vision for a gardening community.  It has been a top-down and bottom-up movement, simultaneously.   The world as Californians know it may be falling apart and changing, but many believe these gardening and civic agriculture projects will redeem the situation, will improve our communities, our world, our lives.

Here’s a short list of recent activity.  The County Public Health Department requested a meeting to discuss a collaborative project with UCCE in Ventura County.  This public agency views gardening as a tool, a vital component even, in chronic disease prevention, the fight against obesity, improving nutrition and other Public Health efforts. Could our Master Gardeners develop and deliver a gardening training for those engaged in community outreach?  The county’s food bank, Food Share has also met with us.  Food Share has started a Garden Share program, encouraging home gardeners to share excess produce with the county’s hungry, now estimated at 1 in 6 residents (this in one of the more affluent counties in California).  Food Share is also encouraging backyard gleaning projects, and is working with the County Agency on Aging to promote a garden to supplement senior nutrition efforts; we’ve been asked to provide support there, as well.

A new community garden has started in Camarillo; this effort was led by citizens, one a Master Gardener.  The Community Roots Garden, based at the North Oxnard  United Methodist Church in – a full acre – is bringing farm workers into community with volunteers who are supporting the effort.  Everyone is learning together.  Another agency has recently contacted us to see about revitalizing an abandoned orchard to use it as a source of food for the hungry.   A local group of volunteers, the Grow Food Party Crew, has provided free labor and expertise to plant numerous home gardens, home gardens that demonstrate organic gardening practices.  The Ventura City Corps youth group, some trained by UC staff and Master Gardeners, has put a garden in the front of their building, where it can be easily viewed from City Hall.  And at Ventura City Hall last Friday, the day before Labor Day weekend, about fifty people gathered and took the first steps to create a Ventura City chapter of a A LEAN VC.  This will create a broad-based community coalition to support health and wellness in the city of Ventura, and one of the four pillars of activity will center on local food systems and gardening. To cap off last week, a terrific article in the Star, written by Lisa McKinnon talked about the growing CSA movement in the county.

Ventura is just one county in California, which is just one state in the Union. There are thousands of these efforts occurring across the United States, as a passion for gardening grips the nation.   Much of this interest can be attributed to the White House vegetable garden planted by First Lady Michelle Obama, and the USDA’s People Garden, sited on the National Mall.

I’ve been invited to visit both of those gardens this week, and will be blogging daily from Washington, DC.  (I’ve even brought plastic bags, hoping to snag some compost from the First Pile and also some of the compost at the USDA’s People’s Garden, which came from Rodale Farm in Pennsylvania, which has been so center in the modern sustainable farming and organic movement).

Whatever the problems facing residents of Ventura, Portland, Peoria, Lansing, or even Washington, DC, gardening certainly provides part of the solution.

More tomorrow.  On Tuesday, I’ll be attending the National Food Policy Council Conference and also visiting the Congressional Hunger Center.  There, I’ll have a chance to learn more about hunger and food policy in America from leading advocates, including one of my personal heroes, Ed Cooney, whom I met on a previous trip to Washington.  Ed is an expert on food stamp and nutrition policy, and these are policies that have more impact on our children and communities than you can imagine.  (BTW, Congress is currently discussing the Childhood Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act of 2004.  This act encompasses all of the federal child nutrition programs, including the School Breakfast and the National School Lunch Programs, the Summer Food Service Program, the Child and Adult Care Food Program and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children.  This is American food and public policy, writ at its largest).

We’ll undoubtedly be talking some about how community gardening and urban agriculture efforts can help address food security issues, childhood nutrition and poverty.

See you tomorrow.

 

Ventura County UCCE Farm Advisor, Ben Faber shares his knowledge of avocados. Today’s topic:

There are over 900 named varieties of avocado…how do you pick one?  Well, first, the selection at retail nurseries is somewhat limited, compared to what is offered by nurseries that supply commercial avocado growers.  But you do have options.  In general, avocado trees are big and need room.  ‘Hass’ has an umbrella-shaped canopy, but ‘Reed’ is more columnar and needs less room.  ‘Holiday’ is a much smaller tree than ‘Hass’ and “Littlecado’ is a somewhat smaller tree.  You can also choose on the basis of when you want to pick your fruit.  For example, ‘Fuerte’ is a winter fruit and ‘Reed’ is a summer fruit.  That means they taste best in those periods, but they will hold on the tree for a much longer period of time.  You can also choose on the basis of taste.  Of course, this is very subjective, but ‘Zutano’, ‘Bacon’ and ‘Stewart’ have a lower oil content than ‘Hass’, ‘Pinkerton’ and ‘Reed’.  Many consider ‘Nabal’ the best tasting fruit.  It’s a summer variety and hard to find in retail nurseries, but sometimes you can order them for delivery later.

You can read more about varieties at this website: http://ucavo.ucr.edu/AvocadoVarieties/VarietyFrame.html#Anchor-47857.  But remember, most of these are not available at retail nurseries.