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8 CapitalPress.com April 14, 2017 California Subscribe to our weekly California email newsletter at CapitalPress.com/newsletters Growers struggling to make use of ‘overwhelming’ data, experts say Tim Hearden/Capital Press The harvest of navel oranges in the San Joaquin Valley is about 70 percent complete as the blossom for next year’s crop is at its peak. Navel oranges in good condition as harvest enters home stretch By TIM HEARDEN Capital Press SACRAMENTO — Navel orange growers are slogging through their season, as 70 percent of the harvest is com- plete despite rains that have slowed their progress. The picking continues as the blossom for next year’s crop is at its peak, prevent- ing growers from using pes- ticides, said Alyssa Houtby, spokeswoman for the Exeter, Calif.-based California Citrus Mutual. But the crop has remained in good shape despite wild swings in the weather. Utili- zation rates — the percentage of oranges that can be sold as fresh and not discarded or diverted to juice — have re- mained above 80 percent, she said. “We’re moving along,” Houtby said. “There’s a lot of harvesting going on in Exeter right now.” The harvest of navels in the San Joaquin Valley typical- ly begins in mid-autumn and continues until the following summer. Storms disrupted the harvest this winter, as growers grappled with muddy orchard floors and had to apply treat- ments against the fungus that can come with heavy rains. Growers were concerned that the intermittent storms and warm sunshine would com- bine to cause issues with rot, but so far those issues haven’t materialized, Houtby said. Growers have reported their crop is smaller than originally estimated. Going into the season, farms were expecting an 81-million-car- ton crop, down from the 88 million cartons weighing 1.76 million tons that came out of groves in a weather-bolstered 2015-2016 season, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service in Sacra- mento. The smaller crop wasn’t a surprise considering last year’s abundance, but it’s turning out to be as much as 18 percent below last year’s production, CCM vice presi- dent Bob Blakely has said. The slow pace and under- sized crop have enhance the increase in price that normal- ly happens after New Year’s Day, which was needed as prices earlier this season were lower than they had been for several years. As of March 31, an 8-pound bag of navel oranges sold for an average of $6.44, up from $5.33 the previous week and $5.46 at the same point last year, according to the USDA’s National Retail Report. Early in the season, pickers usually focus on blocks with larger fruit and leave smaller oranges on trees to continue to grow, as smaller fruit often must be discounted to move it out. The slower pace of har- vest helped some fruit gain in size. Demand has been steady this spring for mid-sized to larger oranges, Houtby said. By TIM HEARDEN Capital Press WOODLAND, Calif. — There’s a wealth of digital data available to growers, but the challenge is to put it all to- gether and present it in a way that’s easy for them to use, ex- perts say. The advent of drones, smart sensors and robotics is revolutionizing farming and enabling growers to “trade knowledge for effort,” said David Slaughter, a biological and agricultural engineering professor who runs the Uni- versity of California-Davis SmartFarm project. The challenge, however, is keeping track of it all and be- ing able to access it quickly, said Bob Payne, a tree nut and row crop farmer in the south- ern Sacramento Valley. “Now we have so much data that managing the data is just overwhelming,” he said. “There are different platforms for every program.” Payne said he’s looking forward to the day when dif- ferent sets of data “can talk to each other.” “Sometimes right now it’s hard to make a decision be- Tim Hearden/Capital Press From left, Monsanto strategic account manager Candace Wilson moderates a panel discussion on ag technology with David Slaughter of the University of California-Davis, Erik Ehn of Blue River Technolo- gy and nut and row crop farmer Bob Payne. They agreed that a lot of data is available to farmers, but the hurdle is putting it to good use. cause there’s just too much of it,” he said. Slaughter and Payne were taking part in a panel discus- sion on the opportunities and challenges of new ag tech- nology during a recent me- dia tour and presentation at Monsanto’s vegetable seed research and development lab in Woodland. The discussion comes as new technology is becoming a game changer for many commodities. For instance, the dairy industry is develop- ing technology that can distill cow manure into dry fertilizer and clean water, making pol- luted runoff from dairies a problem of the past. UC Cooperative Extension researchers are also testing tree monitors and weather gauges connected to online data systems and new ad- vances in aerial imagery to help growers with precision irrigation. And automation is being developed for harvest- ing everything from raisins to apples. Blue River Technology, a Sunnyvale, Calif., com- pany with about 50 em- ployees, has developed a machine that helps lettuce growers thin their crop. Growers typically overplant to be sure to get enough top-quality lettuce, and the camera-equipped machine weeds out the rest by apply- ing a lethal dose of fertilizer that won’t harm neighboring plants or the soil, said Erik Ehn, Blue River’s director of product management. “There’s a tremendous amount of innovation going on in agriculture,” said Sam Eathington, chief scientist for The Climate Corp., a Mon- santo subsidiary. The com- pany examines weather, soil and field data to help growers determine potential yield-lim- iting factors in their fields, ac- cording to its website. Variability is a factor in ev- ery agricultural field, and the key is finding the right inputs and hybrid plants that will work better in each soil type, Eathington said. Groups say new fuel, vehicle taxes disproportionately hit ag By TIM HEARDEN Capital Press SACRAMENTO — Farm groups are displeased over the Legislature’s passage of $52 billion in new vehicle and fuel taxes over the next de- cade that they say will dispro- portionately impact growers. Lawmakers late April 6 approved Gov. Jerry Brown’s more than $5 billion-a-year plan to fund major road re- pairs, which will hike vehicle registration fees while raising gas taxes by 12 cents a gallon and increasing diesel sales taxes from 16 cents to 36 cents per gallon. Western Growers presi- dent and chief executive of- ficer Tom Nassif argued the tax increases will add to the “staggering regulatory bur- dens and costs placed on Cal- ifornia farmers” that “have already placed our industry at a competitive disadvantage relative to other states” and countries. California Citrus Mutual leaders agreed. “Any increase in transpor- tation costs cannot be passed on to consumers,” CCM spokeswoman Alyssa Houtby told the Capital Press. “We are price takers, not price set- ters. Any time the government imposes fees or regulations … it directly impacts the bot- tom line to the grower.” Western Growers and CCM were among more than two dozen agricultural groups that had urged lawmakers to oppose Senate Bill 1, the transportation bill by Sen. Jim Beall, D-San Jose. Other groups included the Califor- nia Farm Bureau Federation, the California Fresh Fruit Association, the Almond Al- liance and the California Cat- tlemen’s Association. The groups asserted the new taxes will dramatically increase costs for farmers and ranchers who use large vehi- cles to manage their opera- tions and bring their products to market, while a significant portion of the money will go to urban public transportation, trails and commuter corridors that are far removed from ru- ral areas and won’t benefit the growers. Trucks that producers use will likely be subject to the top tier for registration fees, while many agricultural ve- hicles are also subject to weight fees, the groups told lawmakers in an April 3 let- ter. New registration fees will range from $25 to $175 de- pending on the value of the vehicle, and the taxes and fees will rise each year with inflation. The 20-cent-per-gallon increase for diesel fuel is “a pretty significant number,” said Justin Oldfield, the Cal- ifornia Cattlemen’s Associa- tion’s vice president of gov- ernment affairs. “It’s a tax that everyone is going to have to pay for,” Oldfield said. “Whether you’re poor or in a business … you’re going to be required to pay it.” However, the bill does re- strict future regulations on greenhouse gas emissions for commercial trucks — a con- cession to the trucking indus- try that displeased environ- mentalists. The bill passed the Senate and Assembly by the two- thirds majorities needed for tax increases after a week of campaigning by Brown, Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon and Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon. 15-7/#8 15-1/#4N 15-2/#8