Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Capital press. (Salem, OR) 19??-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 8, 2017)
September 8, 2017 Subscribe to our weekly California email newsletter at CapitalPress.com/newsletters CapitalPress.com 9 California Harvey relief won’t jeopardize dam funds By TIM HEARDEN Capital Press OROVILLE, Calif. — The massive relief effort underway for victims of Hurricane Har- vey won’t jeopardize funding to rebuild the Oroville Dam, a Federal Emergency Manage- ment Agency official told the Capital Press. While the cost of cleaning up after Harvey’s flood wa- ters in Texas and Louisiana has been estimated to be in the billions of dollars, relief for damage from California’s storms last winter is treated as separate, said Victor Inge, a FEMA external affairs officer for the West Coast region. “In the immediate sense, nothing has changed here,” said Inge, a member of an incident management team sent to California in February. “We’re proceeding as busi- ness as usual.” FEMA did send some re- lief workers from Califor- nia to the Gulf Coast to help while “at the same time we retained enough staff so that it would not affect the opera- tion here and enough staff that we’re poised for anything that can happen,” Inge said. Rep. Doug LaMalfa, R-Calif., whose district in- cludes the Lake Oroville area, said he’s received similar assurances from FEMA offi- cials. “We’ve just met with FEMA yesterday and it’s an ongoing issue but I think (it) is being handled OK for now,” LaMalfa said Aug. 30 in a message via Facebook. State Department of Wa- ter Resources spokeswoman Erin Mellon said it’s “our understanding as well” that Oroville funding won’t be af- fected by Harvey. The assurances come as crews are in the midst of a $275.4 million repair and re- construction project at the Or- oville Dam, whose spillways nearly failed in February. Spillway ruptures led to the two-day evacuation of about 188,000 area residents and threatened a large portion of the Eastern Sacramento Val- Prune harvest starts slowly as fruit gains in size, flavor By TIM HEARDEN Capital Press RED BLUFF, Calif. — The harvest of an anticipated 105,000-ton prune crop is off to a late start as growers wait for fruit with the desired size and flavor. A failed crop last year left trees with such a heavy load this season that many grow- ers thinned their crops, but they’re still having a hard time getting the remaining fruit to size, said Dani Light- le, a University of California Cooperative Extension farm adviser. “Many of them even after thinning couldn’t get their numbers down to where they needed to be,” Lightle said. In addition, the big loads and hot afternoons have slowed the prunes’ process of sweetening on the tree. “We’re getting off to a slow start,” said Tyler Chris- tensen, a grower in Red Bluff. “It’s kind of late. The sugar is still coming up in the fruit.” While some growers are waiting a few extra days to send the shakers into the or- chard, they can only wait so long. “You’re looking at firm- ness to decide when to har- vest,” Lightle said. “Once you get to that point, it’s time to go.” This year’s prune crop is expected to be more than double the 51,000 tons of plums that came out of dry- ers in 2016, according to the Tim Hearden/Capital Press A worker pushes flats of harvested plums along a track at the Mill Race Dryer in Red Bluff, Calif., on Aug. 29 as a bin full of finished prunes sits in the foreground. The harvest of a heavy prune crop is underway in California. National Agricultural Statis- tics Service. Rain and wind during last year’s bloom spoiled the crop. This year, plum trees for prunes took advantage of breaks in the rain to achieve decent pollination. Like many fruit produc- ers, prune growers use a re- fractometer to measure the sugar content in prunes. The goal is to reach 24 meters, or brix, of sugar, but heavy tree loads can hinder the fruit from reaching that goal. ley’s $1.5 billion agriculture industry, including rice and tree crops and several proces- sors along the Highway 99 corridor between Chico and Yuba City. While the dam’s refurbish- ment will take several years to complete, work on the main spillway recently passed the midway point for this summer and is on track to be finished by Nov. 1, officials said. The ongoing construction has complicated water allo- cations by the State Water Project, for which Lake Or- oville is the main reservoir. The project irrigates more than 600,000 acres of Central Valley farmland and serves 20 million customers in the San Francisco Bay area and Southern California. So far, FEMA has allocat- ed $43 million in relief for California, which includes Oroville and numerous other repairs of roads, bridges and other facilities throughout the state that were damaged by last winter’s heavy storms and flooding, Inge said. President Donald Trump has committed up to $274 million for the Oroville proj- ect, but the grants will come in phases as work proceeds, LaMalfa noted. The federal commitments came before the Category 4 Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas on Aug. 25, creating a flood zone the size of Lake Michigan and causing one of the most expensive natural disasters in American history. Joel Myers, founder and president of AccuWeather, be- lieves Harvey will end up being costlier than hurricanes Katrina and Sandy combined. He pre- dicts the disaster will cause a $190 billion hit to the American economy, or 1 percent of the to- tal gross domestic product. “The disaster is just begin- ning in certain areas,” Myers said in a statement. “Parts of Houston, the United States’ fourth largest city, will be uninhabitable for weeks and possibly months due to water damage, mold, disease-ridden water and all that will follow this 1,000-year flood.” Almond advocates seek farm bill funding By TIM HEARDEN Capital Press MODESTO, Calif. — An advocacy group for the al- mond industry is pushing for more money in the 2018 Farm Bill for trade promo- tion, conservation, research and other initiatives. There have been no fund- ing increases for several important programs in the last two farm bills while the challenges facing agriculture “have exploded,” said Kelly Covello, president of the Al- mond Alliance of California. On the subject of trade, Covello said the Market Ac- cess Program, the Foreign Market Development Pro- gram and Technical Assis- tance for Specialty Crops are among the programs that are crucial for continued eco- nomic growth. However, funding for MAP hasn’t increased since 2006 and Foreign Market De- velopment hasn’t had a boost since 2002, she said. Covello wants Congress to increase MAP funding from $200 million to $400 million annually and bring Foreign Market funding from $34.5 million to $69 million a year. She said she under- stands it’s a tall order. “Under the current admin- istration there is pressure to reduce costs within the feder- al government, so Congress has work to do to balance these two objectives as they draft the 2018 Farm Bill,” she told the Capital Press in an email. Covello recently made her pitch at a recent farm bill listening session in Modesto attended by several mem- bers of the House Agriculture Committee, including chair- man Mike Conaway, R-Tex- as, Doug LaMalfa and Jeff Denham, both R-Calif., and Dwight Evans, D-Pa. About 75 speakers gave three hours of testimony on all aspects of the farm bill. “California provides the country with an abundance of products, including fruits, vegetables, dairy, nuts, live- stock and nursery products,” Conaway said. “This wide cross-section of U.S. agricul- ture makes California a crit- ical stop as we travel across the country hearing from pro- ducers about improvements to our nation’s farm policy.” Almond production di- rectly and indirectly con- tributes more than $21.5 bil- lion annually to California’s economy and creates more than 100,000 jobs, accord- ing to University of Califor- nia-Davis researchers. Bearing acreage is expect- ed to reach the 1 million mark this year, more than double the 418,000 acres that bore almonds in 1995, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service. As growers have become more environmentally con- scious, of importance is the Environmental Quality In- centives Program, which provides funding for meet- ing certain standards, Cov- ello said. For instance, the industry has used EQIP to upgrade agricultural motors in the San Joaquin Valley to help the region meet federal air quality standards, she said. The difficulties come as the industry has been trying to market California prunes as a higher-quality alterna- tive to those from competi- tors such as Chile and Argen- tina. Industry insiders say that South American growers’ practice of sun-drying plums rather than putting them in dryers produces prunes that are smaller, less sweet and less nutritious, but they can be sold for about half the price of California prunes. DID YOU KNOW? FACT: • There is new stabilized dry granular NITRATE form of fertilizer available. • NITRATE nitrogen is the fastest acting nitrogen source. • SAN 30-6 has 30% nitrogen and 6% Phosphate. • A unique combination of ammonium phosphate and ammonium nitrate in a homogenous granule. • SAN 30-6 gets nitrogen to the plant when it needs it. Use for early, mid and late season applications. • SAN 30-6 is less volatile than other dry forms of Nitrogen. No need to add a nitrogen stabilizer. • Grass crops prefer a mixture of both Nitrate and Ammonium forms of nitrogen. • Grass seed set is determined in the Fall, so proper nitrogen and phosphorous nutrition are essential for maximum yield. AVAILABLE THROUGH YOUR LOCAL AG RETAILER. For Questions and More Information, Contact Two Rivers Terminal 866-947-7776 info@tworiversterminal.com www.tworiversterminal.com 36-2/102 36-2/101
