G raduation means accomplishment and perhaps additional skill attainment. In June we take a look at the changing world of agriculture and careers that are possible in feeding the world. Sustainability underlies Limoneira's Mission and an important part of sustainability is taking care of the communities in which we operate. Limoneira supports education efforts and brings students of all ages to our main ranch to provide lessons in solar energy, water management, green waste recycling, and Integrated pest management. Our growing, packing, harvesting, food safety and sales and marketing team share knowledge on the intricacies of getting lemons to consumers around the globe. 

Harold Edwards - First 5 "Celebrity" Reader

About First Five Ventura County

Teachers and school administrators, along with First 5 Ventura County and the Ventura County Regional P-16 Council, know that too many children enter Kindergarten ill-prepared to succeed. Claudia Harrison, the Executive Director of First 5 Ventura County and a proud member of the Ventura County Regional P-16 Council says "Our K-12 system is then hard-pressed to overcome a costly achievement gap that began as a school readiness gap. It's a problem that impacts all of us".

Harrison says that we cannot afford to invest in pre-school and provides three compelling reasons for doing so:

Reason 1. Far too many children enter Kindergarten unprepared. High-quality preschool programs give children the social, academic and physical skills they need to be successful learners in Kindergarten and far beyond. Although significant progress has been made with more than 1,400 new preschool spaces created under the leadership of First 5 Ventura County, there are still too few children who have access to a high-quality early education program. Children who are most likely to benefit, such as low income and minority children, are least likely to attend. Countywide, approximately 50% of our children don't attend preschool; often the same children who are less likely to graduate high school and college.

Reason 2. Children who start behind tend to stay behind. 85% of a child's brain is developed by age 5. But researchers have found that developmental disparities between lower-and higher-income children are evident early on. By age 3, a child from a lower-income family likely will have about 1/3 the vocabulary of middle to higher income children. This is especially troubling because early literacy skills are a predictor for later school success or failure; a recent study found that out of 50 first graders who have problems reading, 44 still have problems reading in fourth grade.

Reason 3. Preschool is a long-term economic and workforce investment and the earlier we make investments, the greater our return will be. James Heckman, Nobel Laureate in Economics, found that early interventions for disadvantaged children are more economically efficient and produce higher returns than programs targeted to help teenagers and young adults catch up later on. Cost-benefit analyses show that high-quality early childhood education offers one of the highest returns of any public investment - $7 to $16 for every dollar spent - returns generated by higher earnings, less remediation needed and less long-term reliance on social services.

Ask any business leader; competitiveness in the global economy requires problem solvers, innovators, higher-level thinkers, and strong communicators. Attracting and retaining businesses to Ventura County is closely linked with a sufficient local, skilled labor pool and quality of life assets, including access to quality early education.

Megan Roosevelt and Limoneira's Lemons for Life Visit Cal Poly Pomona

On May 20th, Megan Roosevelt, Registered spokesperson for Limoneira's Lemons for Life™ Campaign and Founder of Healthy Grocery Girl® visited California State Polytechnic University and spoke with Dr. Lisa Kessler, The Associate Dean of the College of Agriculture and two talented Ag students, Irena Ilic and Jose Bautista.

Roosevelt says, "Agriculture is one of the most important industries in the world. However, have you ever stopped to ask yourself where your food comes from? When people think of the word "agriculture" often farming is what comes to mind. However, agriculture consists of over 20 million people in America in 200 different job categories. Watch Megan's fun and informative video below.

Cal Poly Pomona opened September 15, 1938 with an all-male enrollment of 110 students as the Voorhis Unit of California State Polytechnic College in San Luis Obispo. It was located on the 150-acre San Dimas site of the former Voorhis School for Boys.

Breakfast cereal magnate W.K. Kellogg deeded 813 acres of land located three miles south of the Voorhis campus to the state of California in 1949.

In 1956, 508 students and 44 faculty and staff moved from San Dimas to the Kellogg campus. In a first for the all-male campus, 329 women joined the student body in 1961. The Pomona campus separated from the San Luis Obispo campus in 1966 and became California State Polytechnic College, Kellogg Campus. University status was granted in 1972.

Today, the campus covers 1,438 acres and is the second largest in area among the California State University's 23 campuses. About 2,700 faculty and staff support the education of 22,000 students.

Prior to joining Cal Poly, Dr. Kessler worked outside the US for ten years, specifically in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Cyprus and Austria while accompanying her husband in the Foreign Service. She served as Dean of Students at the American University in Dubai.

After Dubai, she continued in the Middle East as the Director of Health Education at King Fahd Hospital in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia where she was in charge of health education programming for the medical staff. Dr. Kessler was also an Assistant Professor at Intercollege in Larnaca, Cyprus and served as Adjunct Faculty at the Institute of Nutrition at the University of Vienna. 

Agriculture Jobs Picture Looks Promising Over Next Several Years

The study estimates that demand in agriculture and life science-related fields will be strongest for plant scientists, water-resource scientists and engineers, farm animal veterinarians, and precision ag and pest control specialists, among other positions.

USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack has stated that, "it's not just production agriculture now but this is an expanding, entrepreneurial, creative, opportunistic aspect of our economy that I think will continue."

According to the report, between 2015 and 2020 an average 26,700 annual jobs openings, or nearly half of the total predicted, will be available in management and business within the food, ag and related segments.

About 15,500 job openings, or 27 percent of the professional employment opportunities within the food, ag and related space, will be in science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines in the next five years. And about 8,500 jobs in sustainable food and biomaterials production will make up an estimated 15 percent of the total, while another 12 percent, or approximately 7,200 job openings, will come from ag and food jobs in other areas such as education, communication and governmental services.

It was noted that Agriculture is going through a transformation itself into more of that digital space and that many of the roles needed today did not exist just five years ago.

Teach100 - Recognizing The Country's Top Education Blogs

With America's need for more great teachers, particularly science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) teachers, Teach.com provides current and aspiring teachers an easy-to-navigate map outlining the steps to become a teacher, including information on teacher salaries, teacher preparation and certification requirements for all 50 states as well as information on teaching abroad. The site also profiles great teachers from around the country and highlights the need for more great teachers.

As part of their mission, Teach.com assists in producing Teach100 a resource to help educators and those in the field of education find the most relevant blogs from across the web. The list is compiled and is meant to reflect the quality of education blogs that are available.

How It Works

Teach.com receives recommendations of blogs with relevant, insightful content about the field of education. The blog is then added to their database for review. Every 24 hours, they scan the Internet for blogs in their database, and those blogs are assigned a score based on level of engagement from visitors, quality of content, frequency of updates and more. They post the rankings daily so that you can be sure viewers are reading the most influential and transformative blogs on the Web.

The Scores

There are four major components of the Teach100 score, which are aggregated when calculating a blog's Teach100 ranking. These four components are:

The Learning Network and Alan Singer - Two of The World's Highest Ranking Blogs from Teach 100

The New York Times Learning Network is a free blog for teachers, students and parents that provides teaching and learning materials and ideas based on New York Times content.

Teachers can use or adapt their lesson plans across subject areas and levels. Students can respond to their daily Opinion questions, participate in their contests, take their news quizzes, learn the Word of the Day, be part of their Film Club or comment on "What's Going On in This Picture?"

The Learning Network publishes new content every weekday, and thousands of students from all over the world post comments on the blog.

Alan Singer has a widely read blog on the Huffington Post and is a social studies educator in the Department of Curriculum and Teaching at Hofstra University in Long Island, New York and the editor of Social Science Docket (a joint publication of the New York and New Jersey Councils for Social Studies).

He taught at a number of secondary schools in New York City, including Franklin K. Lane High School and Edward R. Murrow High School. He is the author of Teaching to Learn, Learning to Teach: A Handbook for Secondary School Teachers (LEA, 2003), Social Studies For Secondary Schools, 3nd Edition (Taylor & Francis, 2008), and New York and Slavery, Time to Teach the Truth (SUNY, 2008).

The United Nations Global Education First Initiative

124 million children and adolescents are out of school today.

The United Nations Secretary-General launched the Global Education First Initiative (GEFI) to accelerate progress towards the Education for All goals and the education-related Millennium Development Goals. The Initiative aims to put quality, relevant and transformative education at the heart of the social, political and development agendas and generate additional and sufficient funding for education through sustained global advocacy efforts.

The initiative's three priority areas include putting every child in school, improving the quality of learning and fostering global citizenship.

How the Initiative Operates

There are a number of partners for the initiative including the United Nations Development Program, UNICEF, The World Bank, The Youth Advocacy Group and a number of philanthropic and business institutions.

GEFI's Steering Committee is a high-level body that provides strategic direction and guidance to the Secretary-General to ensure visibility and success of the Initiative.

The UN Secretary-General invited a group of Member States to serve as ' Champion Countries ' for GEFI. Their role is to catalyze political and financial support for education among governments.

The Youth Advocacy Group (YAG), comprised of young people from around the world, promotes the priorities of youth and GEFI activities and messages. 

As the GEFI Secretariat , UNESCO provides overall support to the Initiative. 

"Without universal education, in other words, winning the war against illiteracy and ignorance, we cannot also win the war against disease, squalor and unemployment. Without universal and high standard education we can only go so far but not far enough in breaking the cycle of poverty." - Gordon Brown, UN Special Envoy for Global Education.

The Way Forward

The GEFI is guided by a two-year strategic plan and action framework to: 

• Advocate for a broader and more ambitious vision for education at the core of the agenda;
• Broaden outreach and engagement on global citizenship education with a focus on learning and teaching for sustainable development; and

Advocate for closing the financing gap in education and for smarter funds allocation to reach the populations most in need, especially those in emergency situations.

Limoneira Lemons for Life - Consumer Perishables Data Book

Limoneira Lemons for Life advertising will appear in the Grocery Head Quarters Perishables Data Book which is produced in conjunction with the Nielsens Perishables Group. The information in the Data Book comes from 1,000 On-Line surveys, Scan Data from 13,000 supermarkets (only 30,000 in the industry) and 30,000,000 pieces of Loyalty Card data.

 It's the most comprehensive study of its kind, in the industry because it covers all perishables and appeals to everyone, from the buyer to the CEO. 

Harvest at Limoneira Update #2

A second update on Harvest at Limoneira was published in May in the Santa Paula Times and is now online at  harvestatlimoneira.com/faq . Work is being done to obtain grading permits for the fall of 2016, and throughout the remainder of this year, home sites will be prepared to sell to home builders. Phase I home sites are currently being designed and a tentative tract map for this phase will go to Santa Paula's Planning Commission and City Council for approval.  Harvest at Limoneira Commercial property is also in planning stages. We expect that homes will be available for purchase in 2018.

Cal Poly Students Visit Limoneira

We love to bring students of all ages to Limoneira. In May, two separate Cal Poly student groups came to visit. Dr. Lauren Garner's Fruit Science class toured both Limoneira and Calavo and received an overview on history, customers and how lemons and avocados are sold and marketed. Dr. Garner also teaches about citrus and avocado production, Crop Physiology and Introduction to Horticulture and Crop Science. Dr. Garner received a Master's degree from Cornell University and her PhD from U.C. Riverside. On a separate visit, Dorothy Farias, an Instructor-Agribusiness Management from Cal Poly Pomona brought her students to the Limoneira Visitor's Center and learned about Sustainability practices and viewed Megan Roosevelt's Lemons for Life videos on sustainability and lemon tips. Ms. Farias is in the process of completing her doctorate.

Jason Wu and Elias Dandouch Pay a Visit from Foothill Technology High School

Viewing Limoneira's 1920's packinghouse and then touring the recently commissioned new-state-of-the-art lemon packinghouse provided Jason and Elias with a 3-D look at the changes that a century have brought to the world of citrus packing.

Optical scanners, sophisticated LED digital display screens and 85,000 square feet of whirring conveyor belts, box builders, palletizers, and an overhead box aerial tramway shed a light on just how sophisticated agriculture has become. Add acres of solar panels, natural plant-gravity-filled water cleaning ponds and video conference calls to the far reaches of the globe including South Africa, Seoul Korea, Chile and it begs the question, what will the next century bring.

About Foothill Technology High School

Innovative. Dynamic. Caring. A place where students choose to change their lives, their community, and their world, Foothill Technology High School is one of six high schools in the Ventura Unified School District and was established in 2000 as a magnet public school, with a focus on technology, medical services and communications. One thousand students in grades 9-12 are enrolled through a random and unbiased lottery process.

Beyoncé - Lemonade

Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter is one of the world's top-earning women in music with an estimated net worth of $250 million. She has earned five Grammy Awards and has been featured the Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles "Crazy in Love" and "Baby Boy".

In other words.....she's a force.

As you can imagine, we were quite pleased with her recent release of Lemonade, her sixth studio album on April 23, 2016. According to a recent Huffington Post Story, "Thanks To Beyoncé, People Are Thirsty For Lemonade. Literally" and went on to say "There are some queens so powerful, their words can move mountains - or, at least, drive sales. When Beyoncé released her masterful visual album 'Lemonade' there was praise, there was gossip, there were think pieces and fan fiction and covers. But perhaps the strangest offshoot of the stellar album is that lemonade sales are up following the album's release. Yes, like, actual lemonade, the refreshing, citrus-y beverage".

Beyoncé's Lemonade was accompanied upon its release by a one-hour film aired on HBO.The album is described as every woman's journey of self-knowledge and healing.

The album title was inspired by Beyoncé's grandmother Agnéz Deréon, as well as her husband Jay Z's grandmother, Hattie White. At the end of track "Freedom", Hattie White is heard speaking to a crowd at her 90th birthday party in April 2015. During the speech, Hattie says "I had my ups and downs, but I always found the inner strength to pull myself up. I was served lemons, but I made lemonade."

In the United States, Lemonade debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, selling 485,000 copies in its first week (653,000 with additional equivalent-album units). In the same week, Beyoncé became the first female to chart 12 or more songs on the Billboard Hot 100 at the same time, with every song on the album debuting on the chart.  Additionally, Lemonade was streamed 115 million times via TIDAL, setting a record for the most-streamed album by a female artist in history.

Limoneira Winner's Block

This month our lucky winner is Tina Butler from Dallas, Texas. As our monthly winner,  Tina  has won a Limoneira Orchard Fresh or Lifestlyes Gift.  Congratulations  Tina !!!

For your chance to win, make sure you're on our mailing list to be entered into our monthly drawing. To join  click here  or visit our website at  www.Limoneira.com.

Be sure to check out our other contests and drawings for additional changes to win prizes.