"Food these days is often identified as the enemy. Butter, salt, sugar, eggs are all out to get you. And yet at our best we know better. Butter is...well, butter; it glorifies almost everything it touches. Salt is the sovereign perfecter of all flavors. Eggs are, pure and simple, one of the wonders of the world.

Swanton Pacific Ranch is a unique testbed for rangeland restoration practices. Join us to learn more about current research exploring the effects of varying compost application rates on different soil types.

The Soil Health and Carbon Benefits from Compost Application on Rangelands webinar featuring Cal Poly soil science professor Dr. Stewart Wilson and graduate student Aaron Lee takes place Tuesday, June 21st from 4-5:30pm. Free and open to all. Registration required.

All California active registered voters will receive a vote-by-mail ballot for the June 7, 2022, Primary Election. The last day to register to vote for the June 7, 2022, Primary Election is May 23, 2022. Official ballots will be mailed no later than May 9, 2022. Your official ballot will include candidates for U.S.

San Luis Obispo County and Santa Barbara County have released the number of ballots returned for the upcoming California Primary Election. 26,923 ballots have been returned in San Luis Obispo County, as of Thursday. That is out of 186,982 ballots that were issued in SLO County.

Democrats have super-dooper majorities in both houses of the California Legislature, which means its few Republican members are completely irrelevant. However, the Capitol still seethes with political intrigue as left-leaning Democrats vie with moderates for control of the legislative agenda.

Jostling has already started over the 2023 Farm Bill and both progressive and conservative activists told The Hill it will focus heavily on climate change and sustainability. "We're expecting it will be the largest climate bill of the next Congress," Heather Reams, executive director of conservative Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions told The Hill.

I am catching up with this week's column as last week I was in Washington D.C. as part of the California State Farm Bureau board's visit with congressional leaders and other governmental agencies. I flew in a few days early to visit with my sister Mia and her family, who live in Alexandria, Virginia.

LOS ANGELES (AP) - California's primary on Tuesday will set the stage for a November election where a handful of U.S. House seats in the Los Angeles area and Central Valley will help determine which party controls Congress.

Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack made an announcement Wednesday at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. on USDA's framework for improving the food supply chain and transforming the food system.

The Census of Agriculture is a complete count of U.S. farms and ranches and the people who operate them. Even small plots of land - whether rural or urban - growing fruit, vegetables or some food animals count if $1,000 or more of such products were raised and sold, or normally would have been sold, during the Census year.

At Good Humus Produce, a small organic farm in the Capay Valley northwest of Sacramento, members of the Main family built a local agricultural tradition with seasonal harvests of more than 200 varieties of flowers, vegetables and fruit. The farm was started by Jeff and Annie Main in 1976.

WASHINGTON - A report by the Agricultural and Food Policy Center, AFPC, at Texas A&M University titled "Economic Impact of Higher Crop and Input Prices on AFPC's Representative Crop Farms" provides insights into the economic impacts of higher crop and major input prices on the center's 64 representative crop farms. The report was compiled by Joe Outlaw, Ph.D., and Bart Fischer, Ph.D., co-directors of the AFPC in the Department of Agricultural Economics of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Texas A&M, Bryan-College Station.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - A California judge has ordered a halt to a state-run program of spraying pesticides on public lands and some private property, saying officials failed to assess the potential health effects as required.

As California finds itself amid another severe drought that has deepened the need for new water storage, the fever pitch to add new dams has run into a buzzsaw of opposition from environmentalists. At the top of their target list? The proposed Sites Reservoir project.

"The treated trees had very low bacteria counts, and one had no detectable bacteria anymore," Jin said. "This shows the peptide can rescue infected plants, which is important as so many trees are already positive." The team also tested applying the peptide by spraying it.

On June 2, Avocado Café will host a two-hour virtual seminar entitled, "Understanding Irrigation - How the Plant Responds and the Soil Beneath." It is the first in a series of sessions that will cover California avocado grove irrigation principles.

Most sectors of U.S. agriculture still faces labor shortages, new data confirms. Veronica Nigh, a senior economist with the American Farm Bureau Federation, says farmers have talked for at least a decade about a tight farm labor market. "The recent H2A data certainly proves that out.

While a new study throws up a red flag to the dangers of working close to wildfires, Santa Rosa farmworker Sandra De Leon is hoping drought doesn't fuel Wine Country infernos this year. That's because the 38-year-old Santa Rosa resident worked when 2020 wildfires raged, as her employer was granted the ability to allow the grape harvest to continue under a government program called the "ag pass."

DAVIS, Calif. - After a rash of wildfires across Southern California in 2003, many counties, cities and neighborhoods adopted Community Wildfire Protection Plans to improve their preparedness and fire response. But Rob Hazard, fire marshal for Santa Barbara County, has noticed that CWPPs and resources are unevenly distributed across areas at high risk of wildfire.

At first glance, 2022 cattle prices are higher than 2021. At $140, slaughter steer prices are 17.5% above 2021 prices, but even with higher prices, farmers and ranchers will travel a rocky road to profitability, paved with inflation and higher input costs in 2022.

Burgers and steaks are set to stay pricey as U.S. cattle ranchers shrink their herds, further constraining U.S. beef production in the months ahead. Rising costs for feed and other expenses are leading ranchers to sell their calves into feedlots at a faster pace, according to federal data, leaving fewer cattle available for slaughter later this year and in 2023.

Mention wine country and we tend to think of valleys. Northern California has Napa Valley, Sonoma Valley, Alexander and Anderson valleys, the Russian River Valley and the Green Valley of the Russian River Valley, just to name a few.

PUBLISHED ON DAVIS, Calif. - A new, $5.25 million greenhouse is being built on the University of California, Davis, campus to safeguard an important grapevine collection from red blotch disease and other pathogens. The 14,400-square-foot greenhouse will have a vestibuled entry, be insect-proof and provide another level of disease protection.

Chromolithography was a technique that made color printing widely available. The initial chromolithographic technique involved the use of multiple lithographic stones, one for each color, and was still extremely expensive when done for the best quality results. Depending on the number of colors, ...

In the future, cameras could spot blackbirds feeding on grapes in a vineyard and launch drones to drive off the avian irritants, then return to watch for the next invading flock. All without a human nearby. A Washington State University research team has developed just such a system, which they detail in a study published in the journal Computer and Electronics in Agriculture.

As a third year of drought continues, California officialdom is increasing pressure for more water conservation. Last week, the state Water Resources Control Board imposed a statewide ban on watering of "non-functional" turf, such as grass around commercial buildings, and directed local water agencies to implement water use restrictions.

In an effort to provide more education and outreach regarding the proposed designation of Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary, NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries (ONMS) West Coast Regional Office will be producing periodic newsletters to be posted on the proposed Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary website.

Cuyama Valley's water woes dominated Santa Barbara County 1st District Supervisor Das Williams' comments during a recent hearing about the future of water well permits in his county. "I just have some concerns about how this is going to impact high-priority basins, particularly Cuyama," Williams said during the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors' May 24 meeting.

With the bid process getting closer for companies seeking to build massive floating offshore wind farms off the San Luis Obispo County coast, energy storage developers are taking a good look at their prospects in the region.