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"disqusTitle": "Some Bugs Like it Hot: Climate Change and Agricultural Pests",
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"content": "\u003cp>Potato grower \u003ca title=\"Brian Kirschenmann bio\" href=\"http://www.uspotatoes.com/pressRoom/pr.php?id=82\" target=\"_blank\">Brian Kirschenmann\u003c/a> bent over the deep green plants in his field in New Cuyama, nestled in a verdant valley an hour southwest of Bakersfield, and looked at the bottom of each leaf.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Next to him, his crop advisor Gary Toschi examined a leaf under a magnifying glass.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That one is active,” said Toschi.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_44631\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/Jeff_Bradshaw_adultnympsandeggs_resized.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-44631\" title=\"Potato-tomato psyllids\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/Jeff_Bradshaw_adultnympsandeggs_resized-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An adult potato-tomato psyllid surrounded by young nymphs. Photo: Jeffrey Bradshaw, Univ. of Nebraska, Lincoln.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>He and Kirschenmann had found a round, bright green insect, about the size of the comma on a computer keyboard. The tiny pest is called a \u003ca title=\"University of Nebraska sheet about potato-tomato psyllids.\" href=\"http://www.ianrpubs.unl.edu/epublic/pages/publicationD.jsp?publicationId=1449\" target=\"_blank\">potato-tomato psyllid\u003c/a>, and both the young nymphs like the one they found, and the adults, which are shaped like a cicada, wreak havoc on potatoes, as well as tomatoes, peppers and about 40 other crops.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In potatoes, they suck the plant dry. And what’s worse, the pest also can transmit a disease that ruins potato chips – a $6 billion business in the United States, despite the bad rap chips get from nutritionists. The disease transmitted by potato-tomato psyllids gives chips a burnt flavor and causes them to develop brown streaks, which is why the disease is known as “\u003ca title=\"Information about zebra chip disease\" href=\"http://zebrachipscri.tamu.edu/about-the-project/\" target=\"_blank\">zebra chip\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_44657\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/John_Trumble_Zebra_Chip_Comparison_resized.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-44657\" title=\"Potatoes with zebra chip disease.\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/John_Trumble_Zebra_Chip_Comparison_resized-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Potatoes infected with zebra chip disease streak when they're fried. Photo: John Trumble.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In 2008, Kirschenmann lost $250,000, when one of his potato fields in Kern County was infected with zebra chip and Frito Lay wouldn’t buy his chipper potatoes. Though potatoes aren’t one of California’s main crops, in Kern County they’re among the top 10 in value, to the tune of $130 million.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Zebra chip disease hasn’t caused widespread losses in California, but the state’s potato growers are worried, especially after South Korea banned potato imports from Washington, Oregon and Idaho in August, out of concern over the disease. The ban is costing producers in those states some $8 million.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s my biggest fear,” said Kirschenmann, who grows 5,700 acres of potatoes in Kern County and New Cuyama and is a member of the United States Potato Board. Though California doesn’t export potatoes to South Korea, Kirschenmann does sell part of his crop to Guatemala and the Dominican Republic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_44626\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/Brian_Kirschenmann_potato_grower_resize.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-44626\" title=\"Brian Kirschenmann, potato grower\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/Brian_Kirschenmann_potato_grower_resize-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Potato grower Brian Kirschenmann.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>California has had potato-tomato psyllids for more than 100 years. What makes them a new problem for growers is that now they don’t just live in the state during the warmer months; they also spend the winter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our temperatures have increased by 2 to 3 degrees Fahrenheit, and that seems to be enough to keep them from being frozen out during the winter,” said entomologist \u003ca title=\"John Trumble bio\" href=\"http://www.facultydirectory.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/pub/public_individual.pl?faculty=159\" target=\"_blank\">John Trumble\u003c/a>, of the University of California, Riverside. “I suspect that global warming is at least playing a role in this particular insect’s spread into California.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Insects can’t produce their own heat, the way mammals do, so most of them do better in warmer temperatures. Around the world, scientists have started to document changes in insect behavior, as a result of climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_44627\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/John-Trumble_resized.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-44627\" title=\"John Trumble, UC Riverside\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/John-Trumble_resized-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Entomologist John Trumble, from UC Riverside, says warmer temperatures are making a pest of potatoes and tomatoes more abundant in California.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In Spain, the European grapevine moth is flying out earlier in the summer and reproducing more abundantly than it did 20 years ago. On Tanzania’s Mt. Kilimanjaro, malaria mosquitoes are moving farther up the mountain. And in Japan, a pest called the green stink bug, that damages rice and soybeans, is expanding its range northward.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is not speculative, this is not something that we would predict,” said Trumble. “This is what’s happening now.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Trumble discovered, in the year 2000, that potato-tomato psyllids had spent the winter near one of his research tomato fields in Irvine, he knew this change in the insect’s behavior was bad news: it meant the pest could begin attacking crops early in the growing season.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s much more dangerous for the grower,” said Trumble, “because early infestation in a crop oftentimes leads to much more damage than if the pest occurs late in the crop.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When spring temperatures get warm, this sends a cue to insects to begin their development, said entomologist Peter Oboyski, manager of collections at the University of California, Berkeley’s Essig Museum of Entomology.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If the season gets warmer earlier, that gives insects that much more time to develop, that much more time to eat a plant, that much more time to produce another generation,” said Oboyski.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_44634\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/Jack_Kelly_Clark_I-HO-PCOC-AD.003_resized.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-44634\" title=\"Potato-tomato psyllid\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/Jack_Kelly_Clark_I-HO-PCOC-AD.003_resized-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Potato-tomato psyllid. Photo: Jack Kelly Clark, courtesy University of California Statewide IPM Program.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But how did UC Riverside’s John Trumble know that he was seeing a new behavior in the psyllid?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To figure out if spending the winter in California was a new behavior, Trumble turned to the historical record. He was fortunate that scientists in California have been collecting psyllids and making detailed notes about their habits since the 1880s. Through this information, he concluded that he was seeing something new.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Every 30 years, since about 1900, it’s moved into California,” said Trumble, “and we would find it, it would be here for six months to a year, and then it would disappear, presumably because it got too cold.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That pattern changed radically in 2000, with the psyllid spending the winter in Trumble’s field in Irvine. And the pest has since overwintered in locations further and further north.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2004, tomato growers discovered psyllids had overwintered in Hollister. In 2012, scientists found they had spent the winter in the Washington-Oregon-Idaho area, where half of the country’s potatoes are grown. And this year, the pest also appeared in Manitoba, Canada, early in the growing season, a sign that it might have spent the winter there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“As temperatures warm up in California and across the United States,” said Trumble, “these insects will be able to overwinter further and further north.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, down south, farmers have already been hit hard by the pest. In Mexico’s Baja California, the psyllids destroyed 85 percent of the tomato crop in 2001, said Trumble. Partly in response to the new pest, California farmers who grow tomatoes in Baja California have moved much of their production inside screened enclosures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Spraying for psyllids is costing California potato growers about $75 per acre, said Kirschenmann.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_44628\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/Tractor_in_New_Cuyama_WWS_resize.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-44628\" title=\"Potato field in New Cuyama, California\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/Tractor_in_New_Cuyama_WWS_resize-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Potato field in New Cuyama Valley, an hour southwest of Bakersfield. Potato-tomato psyllids have been found nearby. Photos: Gabriela Quirós.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>This need for additional spraying has Trumble concerned. Since the 1970s, he and other scientists around the state have worked with growers to reduce pesticide use in conventionally-grown crops. The results have been dramatic, he said. Tomato growers, for example, cut spraying by half in the 1990s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Less pesticide use means less concern by the consumers for pesticide residue. We use less fossil fuel; we have fewer volatile organic compounds that appear in the atmosphere; it reduces smog. It’s a real win-win for everybody in California,” said Trumble.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But warmer temperatures, and the pests that thrive in them, now threaten to undermine these gains.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So if you have an insect with multiple generations, you get more generations. If you’ve got an insect that occurs early in a crop, it will occur earlier in the crop, and faster,” said Trumble. “So all of these things are desperately in need of additional research.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>A shorter version of this video story is part of the 30-minute documentary \u003ca title=\"Heat and Harvest - the documentary\" href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/video/heat-and-harvest/\" target=\"_blank\">Heat and Harvest\u003c/a>, a co-production of KQED and the Center for Investigative Reporting, that airs on KQED and PBS stations around California on Friday September 28 at 7:30 pm. Check your local listings.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Potato grower \u003ca title=\"Brian Kirschenmann bio\" href=\"http://www.uspotatoes.com/pressRoom/pr.php?id=82\" target=\"_blank\">Brian Kirschenmann\u003c/a> bent over the deep green plants in his field in New Cuyama, nestled in a verdant valley an hour southwest of Bakersfield, and looked at the bottom of each leaf.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Next to him, his crop advisor Gary Toschi examined a leaf under a magnifying glass.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That one is active,” said Toschi.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_44631\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/Jeff_Bradshaw_adultnympsandeggs_resized.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-44631\" title=\"Potato-tomato psyllids\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/Jeff_Bradshaw_adultnympsandeggs_resized-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An adult potato-tomato psyllid surrounded by young nymphs. Photo: Jeffrey Bradshaw, Univ. of Nebraska, Lincoln.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>He and Kirschenmann had found a round, bright green insect, about the size of the comma on a computer keyboard. The tiny pest is called a \u003ca title=\"University of Nebraska sheet about potato-tomato psyllids.\" href=\"http://www.ianrpubs.unl.edu/epublic/pages/publicationD.jsp?publicationId=1449\" target=\"_blank\">potato-tomato psyllid\u003c/a>, and both the young nymphs like the one they found, and the adults, which are shaped like a cicada, wreak havoc on potatoes, as well as tomatoes, peppers and about 40 other crops.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In potatoes, they suck the plant dry. And what’s worse, the pest also can transmit a disease that ruins potato chips – a $6 billion business in the United States, despite the bad rap chips get from nutritionists. The disease transmitted by potato-tomato psyllids gives chips a burnt flavor and causes them to develop brown streaks, which is why the disease is known as “\u003ca title=\"Information about zebra chip disease\" href=\"http://zebrachipscri.tamu.edu/about-the-project/\" target=\"_blank\">zebra chip\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_44657\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/John_Trumble_Zebra_Chip_Comparison_resized.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-44657\" title=\"Potatoes with zebra chip disease.\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/John_Trumble_Zebra_Chip_Comparison_resized-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Potatoes infected with zebra chip disease streak when they're fried. Photo: John Trumble.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In 2008, Kirschenmann lost $250,000, when one of his potato fields in Kern County was infected with zebra chip and Frito Lay wouldn’t buy his chipper potatoes. Though potatoes aren’t one of California’s main crops, in Kern County they’re among the top 10 in value, to the tune of $130 million.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Zebra chip disease hasn’t caused widespread losses in California, but the state’s potato growers are worried, especially after South Korea banned potato imports from Washington, Oregon and Idaho in August, out of concern over the disease. The ban is costing producers in those states some $8 million.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s my biggest fear,” said Kirschenmann, who grows 5,700 acres of potatoes in Kern County and New Cuyama and is a member of the United States Potato Board. Though California doesn’t export potatoes to South Korea, Kirschenmann does sell part of his crop to Guatemala and the Dominican Republic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_44626\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/Brian_Kirschenmann_potato_grower_resize.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-44626\" title=\"Brian Kirschenmann, potato grower\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/Brian_Kirschenmann_potato_grower_resize-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Potato grower Brian Kirschenmann.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>California has had potato-tomato psyllids for more than 100 years. What makes them a new problem for growers is that now they don’t just live in the state during the warmer months; they also spend the winter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our temperatures have increased by 2 to 3 degrees Fahrenheit, and that seems to be enough to keep them from being frozen out during the winter,” said entomologist \u003ca title=\"John Trumble bio\" href=\"http://www.facultydirectory.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/pub/public_individual.pl?faculty=159\" target=\"_blank\">John Trumble\u003c/a>, of the University of California, Riverside. “I suspect that global warming is at least playing a role in this particular insect’s spread into California.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Insects can’t produce their own heat, the way mammals do, so most of them do better in warmer temperatures. Around the world, scientists have started to document changes in insect behavior, as a result of climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_44627\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/John-Trumble_resized.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-44627\" title=\"John Trumble, UC Riverside\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/John-Trumble_resized-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Entomologist John Trumble, from UC Riverside, says warmer temperatures are making a pest of potatoes and tomatoes more abundant in California.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In Spain, the European grapevine moth is flying out earlier in the summer and reproducing more abundantly than it did 20 years ago. On Tanzania’s Mt. Kilimanjaro, malaria mosquitoes are moving farther up the mountain. And in Japan, a pest called the green stink bug, that damages rice and soybeans, is expanding its range northward.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is not speculative, this is not something that we would predict,” said Trumble. “This is what’s happening now.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Trumble discovered, in the year 2000, that potato-tomato psyllids had spent the winter near one of his research tomato fields in Irvine, he knew this change in the insect’s behavior was bad news: it meant the pest could begin attacking crops early in the growing season.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s much more dangerous for the grower,” said Trumble, “because early infestation in a crop oftentimes leads to much more damage than if the pest occurs late in the crop.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When spring temperatures get warm, this sends a cue to insects to begin their development, said entomologist Peter Oboyski, manager of collections at the University of California, Berkeley’s Essig Museum of Entomology.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If the season gets warmer earlier, that gives insects that much more time to develop, that much more time to eat a plant, that much more time to produce another generation,” said Oboyski.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_44634\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/Jack_Kelly_Clark_I-HO-PCOC-AD.003_resized.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-44634\" title=\"Potato-tomato psyllid\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/Jack_Kelly_Clark_I-HO-PCOC-AD.003_resized-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Potato-tomato psyllid. Photo: Jack Kelly Clark, courtesy University of California Statewide IPM Program.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But how did UC Riverside’s John Trumble know that he was seeing a new behavior in the psyllid?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To figure out if spending the winter in California was a new behavior, Trumble turned to the historical record. He was fortunate that scientists in California have been collecting psyllids and making detailed notes about their habits since the 1880s. Through this information, he concluded that he was seeing something new.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Every 30 years, since about 1900, it’s moved into California,” said Trumble, “and we would find it, it would be here for six months to a year, and then it would disappear, presumably because it got too cold.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That pattern changed radically in 2000, with the psyllid spending the winter in Trumble’s field in Irvine. And the pest has since overwintered in locations further and further north.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2004, tomato growers discovered psyllids had overwintered in Hollister. In 2012, scientists found they had spent the winter in the Washington-Oregon-Idaho area, where half of the country’s potatoes are grown. And this year, the pest also appeared in Manitoba, Canada, early in the growing season, a sign that it might have spent the winter there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“As temperatures warm up in California and across the United States,” said Trumble, “these insects will be able to overwinter further and further north.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, down south, farmers have already been hit hard by the pest. In Mexico’s Baja California, the psyllids destroyed 85 percent of the tomato crop in 2001, said Trumble. Partly in response to the new pest, California farmers who grow tomatoes in Baja California have moved much of their production inside screened enclosures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Spraying for psyllids is costing California potato growers about $75 per acre, said Kirschenmann.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_44628\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/Tractor_in_New_Cuyama_WWS_resize.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-44628\" title=\"Potato field in New Cuyama, California\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/Tractor_in_New_Cuyama_WWS_resize-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Potato field in New Cuyama Valley, an hour southwest of Bakersfield. Potato-tomato psyllids have been found nearby. Photos: Gabriela Quirós.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>This need for additional spraying has Trumble concerned. Since the 1970s, he and other scientists around the state have worked with growers to reduce pesticide use in conventionally-grown crops. The results have been dramatic, he said. Tomato growers, for example, cut spraying by half in the 1990s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Less pesticide use means less concern by the consumers for pesticide residue. We use less fossil fuel; we have fewer volatile organic compounds that appear in the atmosphere; it reduces smog. It’s a real win-win for everybody in California,” said Trumble.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But warmer temperatures, and the pests that thrive in them, now threaten to undermine these gains.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So if you have an insect with multiple generations, you get more generations. If you’ve got an insect that occurs early in a crop, it will occur earlier in the crop, and faster,” said Trumble. “So all of these things are desperately in need of additional research.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>A shorter version of this video story is part of the 30-minute documentary \u003ca title=\"Heat and Harvest - the documentary\" href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/video/heat-and-harvest/\" target=\"_blank\">Heat and Harvest\u003c/a>, a co-production of KQED and the Center for Investigative Reporting, that airs on KQED and PBS stations around California on Friday September 28 at 7:30 pm. Check your local listings.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Uncool Cherries\u003c/strong> looks at the challenges facing cherry growers near Stockton. Life is hardly a bowl of cherries if you're trying to grow them in California lately. Cherries and other major fruit crops need a certain number of \"chilling hours\" in order to produce healthy blossoms and fruit. But in recent years, the spring nights have brought warmer temperatures and less of the legendary Valley fog that helps keep the chill on. (Reporter: Mark Schapiro / Producer: Serene Fang)\u003cbr>\n\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Uncool Cherries\u003c/strong>is one of the three stories in \u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/video/heat-and-harvest/\" title=\"Heat and Harvest\" target=\"_blank\">Heat and Harvest\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>, a half-hour documentary on how climate change is challenging California’s $30 billion agricultural industry. \u003cstrong>Heat and Harvest \u003c/strong>is a co-production of KQED and the \u003ca title=\"Center for Investigative Reporting\" href=\"http://cironline.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Center for Investigative Reporting\u003c/a> and airs on KQED channel 9 on Friday Sept. 28 and Monday Oct. 1 at 7:30 pm. The film also airs on PBS stations around California in September and October. Check local listings.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Higher temperatures bring new struggles to California grape and cherry growers\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>By Mark Schapiro\u003cbr>\nCenter for Investigative Reporting\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This article is part 2 of a two-part series published in newspapers across California on Fri. Sept. 28.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Farmers have always been gamblers, long accustomed to betting on the probabilities of the weather. But for the Napa Valley, where the temperatures have been ideal for the wine industry, the changes could be significant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re used to rolling the dice every year,” said \u003ca href=\"http://creeksidescience.com/people/\" title=\"Stuart Weiss bio\" target=\"_blank\">Stuart Weiss\u003c/a>, a conservation biologist and chief scientist at the \u003ca href=\"http://creeksidescience.com/\" title=\"Creekside Center for Earth Observation\" target=\"_blank\">Creekside Center for Earth Observation\u003c/a>, which assists growers and municipalities dealing with the disruptions caused by the changing climate. “Now, though, climate change is stacking the dice.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the next 30 years, Weiss estimates, the temperature in the Napa Valley will rise by 1.8 degrees – an 80 percent jump over previous rates, which were about 1 degree every three decades since temperatures were first recorded in 1896. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He has turned worries about climate change into a business opportunity: His other company, \u003ca href=\"http://www.viticision.com/\" title=\"Viticision\" target=\"_blank\">Viticision\u003c/a>, consults with growers facing the shifting conditions on their land. \u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">California produces 95 percent of the country’s apricots, almonds, artichokes, figs, kiwis, raisin grapes, olives, cling peaches, dried plums, persimmons, pistachios and walnuts. \u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Weiss, who has been studying butterflies since his days at Stanford University, realized eight years ago that what he was learning about the Lepidoptera family could be applied to wine grapes. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He noticed that the processes that a caterpillar larva uses to metabolize energy drawn from the sun and water prior to its emergence as a butterfly were similar to how a grapevine metabolizes the same elements before producing a fully formed wine grape.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, he consults with wineries dealing with the alterations in sun and water triggered by climate change. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The verbs are the same,” Weiss said. “It’s just the nouns that have shifted.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alterations in the California climate have prompted the insurance industry to start assessing the potential damage and its financial exposure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The nation’s crop insurance system, a hybrid of private insurers backed by the \u003ca href=\"http://www.rma.usda.gov/\" title=\"Risk Management Agency\" target=\"_blank\">U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Risk Management Agency\u003c/a>, has been paying out steadily increasing amounts for weather-related damages across the country, according to the Congressional Research Service – from $2.1 billion in 2000 to a record-breaking $12.1 billion last year. This summer’s drought in the Midwest is expected to further catapult insurance payments. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although it’s difficult to distinguish how many extreme events would have occurred without the atmospheric concentration of CO2, the Risk Management Agency now has identified climate change as one of the major risk factors for U.S. agriculture. \u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">The Risk Management Agency now has identified climate change as one of the major risk factors for U.S. agriculture. \u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>In a 2010 report, it paid particular attention to the vulnerabilities of California, which produces 95 percent of the country’s apricots, almonds, artichokes, figs, kiwis, raisin grapes, olives, cling peaches, dried plums, persimmons, pistachios and walnuts. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Since the production of these commodities is so concentrated into one geographical area the climatic impacts in these agricultural markets could be profound,” the report concluded.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The agency even suggested an adaptation strategy that sounds very much like the breeding efforts already under way at nurseries across the Central Valley: more research into “drought-tolerant, heat-tolerant, and other crop varieties better suited to the changing conditions.”\u003cbr>\nThe California office of the Risk Management Agency is considering whether year-round farming is a reasonable risk for the agency to assume in the Central and Imperial valleys, where water stresses are intensifying. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the Central Valley, the agency is considering requiring farmers relying on nonirrigated water to fallow some of their land during the summer months to hedge against potential losses when water supplies fall short. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And last year, the agency withdrew its insurance rating for parts of Imperial County, which it determined was uninsurable for proposed wheat farming due to concerns about the reliability of the water supply.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The high volatility associated with climate change prompted a team of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to found the first insurance company, \u003ca href=\"http://www.climate.com/\" title=\"The Climate Corporation\" target=\"_blank\">The Climate Corporation\u003c/a>, to focus exclusively on insuring against swings in the weather. \u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">The high volatility associated with climate change prompted a team of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to found the first insurance company to focus exclusively on insuring against swings in the weather.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.climate.com/company/leadership/\" title=\"David Friedberg bio\" target=\"_blank\">David Friedberg\u003c/a> was a corporate development executive at Google before founding the company in San Francisco in 2006, as farmers found themselves at the front lines of climate change. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Things are getting far more erratic and difficult to predict,” said Friedberg, whose background is in physics and mathematics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One likely result of the atmospheric tumult, he added, is rising food prices. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Farmers are having to hedge and pay for insurance claims,” he said. “That increases the price of food, and when they experience losses, we and others pay them for those losses, but that also means their food is not being produced.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For example, the effects of the Midwest drought this summer, which has devastated food crops for cattle and chicken – mostly corn and soybeans – will be rippling back to California in the form of prices that are 10 to 15 percent higher for beef, milk and poultry, according to the USDA and other analysts. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Wine country climate shake-up\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Napa vintners already are feeling the effects of the changing odds. In 2010, the wine industry had one of its worst years on record when days of record-breaking heat in August were followed by a few freakish days of frost. \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_45202\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/030-Grapes-6-29-07_resized.jpg\">\u003cimg src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/030-Grapes-6-29-07_resized.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"Wine grapes in Napa Valley\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" class=\"size-full wp-image-45202\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/030-Grapes-6-29-07_resized.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/030-Grapes-6-29-07_resized-400x225.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Wine grapes in Napa Valley are ripening earlier in the season. This shrinks the timespan for their full development. Photo: Joan Johnson, KQED.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Weiss, the conservation biologist, cites a map that offers a sobering perspective on future Napa varietals, demonstrating how the increasing heat is triggering the ripening process earlier in the season – from the first week of October, for example, into the third or fourth week of September, which shrinks the timespan for full development of wine grapes. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You’re ripening earlier in a warmer time of the year under a warmer climate, so you’re getting a double whammy,” he said. Even just a week’s difference, he said, can have an impact on the quality of a cabernet sauvignon. \u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">“There are a lot of similarities between Australia and California, and if we don’t look to places that have undergone this sort of ‘first shot across the bow’ of the effect of climate change, I think we’d be doing ourselves a disservice.” Stuart Weiss, conservation biologist\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Jeff Yasui, director of the California office of the Risk Management Agency, said one sign of the growing stress in wine country is that over the past four years, the number of wine grape growers who increased their insurance coverage from the base-level policy – which covers half of all losses – to more substantial, and more expensive, protection increased from 28 percent of all policies to 40 percent this year. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of Weiss’ clients is \u003ca href=\"http://www.treasurywineestates.com/\" title=\"Treasury Wine Estates\" target=\"_blank\">Treasury Wine Estates\u003c/a>, one of the largest wine companies in Australia, which also owns some 6,000 acres and eight labels – including Beringer Vineyards, Stags’ Leap Winery and Souverain – in Napa and Sonoma counties. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Australia experienced an early taste of climate change in 2009 and 2010, Weiss said, when heat waves and drought led to dramatic drops in yield from shriveled grapevines, leading to significant financial losses for the country’s wine industry. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"http://www.csiro.au/\" title=\"CSIRO\" target=\"_blank\">national science agency of Australia\u003c/a> warns that as the weather gets hotter, the growing season for Australian wines is steadily shrinking – at a rate that’s been accelerating over the past 40 years, a phenomenon similar to that which Weiss has identified in Napa County. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There are a lot of similarities between Australia and California,” Weiss said, “and if we don’t look to places that have undergone this sort of ‘first shot across the bow’ of the effect of climate change, I think we’d be doing ourselves a disservice.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>From his home office on a rustic road in Menlo Park, shaded by a huge oak tree, Weiss uses sophisticated monitors in the fields to track the increasing amount of sun hitting each grape and attempt to predict how moving a row by a few feet, or adjusting a trellis, might offer protection against the sun’s intensifying rays. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s how climate change is happening,” Weiss said. “Slow but steady increases in heat are already causing disarray in wine country.” \u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">“Slow but steady increases in heat are already causing disarray in wine country.” Stuart Weiss\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>With that information, he’s able to suggest how wineries could move forward. Vineyards generally are productive over 25-year spans; it takes about five years for new vines to start producing grapes, and the vines generally are replaced every 25 to 30 years. Current vines were planted at a time of weather patterns that are now changing. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many fields are at the end of their 25-year cycle and are about to be replanted. Weiss also offers advice on the varietals most suited to the next quarter-century of changing climate – whether to plant, for example, another crop of cabernet sauvignon, which thrives in cooler climates, or a more heat-tolerant variety like pinot noir, zinfandel or chardonnay. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“With the new cycle, we don’t want to lock in mistakes,” Weiss said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Cherry crops feel the heat \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For a look into the future, consider what’s already happening to the state’s cherry crop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last April, the cherries were blooming in the Colombini family orchard in the San Joaquin Valley, their pink and white blossoms a signal that the harvest would be coming in six weeks’ time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_45180\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/ch09_packflr_resized1.jpg\">\u003cimg src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/ch09_packflr_resized1.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"Workers pack cherries at Delta Packing, Modesto, California\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" class=\"size-full wp-image-45180\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/ch09_packflr_resized1.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/ch09_packflr_resized1-400x225.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Workers pack cherries at Delta Packing, in Modesto. This year, the company saw another 50 percent drop in cherries from previous years. Photo: Center for Investigative Reporting. \u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But there was trouble lurking under those delicate blossoms. Jeff Colombini, director of the family company, Lodi Farming, pointed to the erratic blooms on his trees – a blossom here, a blossom there, but many stunted, half-grown blossoms. That is a sign, he said, of the “stresses that come with not enough chill hours.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most of the highest-quality cherry varieties in the state are tuned for a November or December chill, which functions to slow down the metabolism of the nascent fruits and thus elongates the ripening process that comes with the onset of warmer weather. \u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">Too much time in the sun during the budding process leads to what shoppers regularly encounter: “doubling,” in which two cherries are fused like conjoined twins, and “spurring,” a little raisinlike growth stuck to the side of the fruit.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>For a perfect California cherry, the trees need 1,200 to 1,400 hours of “chill time.” But Joseph Grant, a UC Cooperative Extension farm adviser based in Stockton, said that lately, cherry growers have been seeing more like 1,000 to 1,100 hours per season. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another factor may be the fog: Early results from a study at UC Berkeley’s College of Natural Resources suggest that a lack of the usual fog hours also might be contributing to overheating of cherry buds at a time when they need to be shaded from the sun.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re seeing those low-chill effects every year now, as opposed to how we used to see them once every 10 years or so,” Grant said. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the overall cherry crop recovered late in the season, the overall effect of the shortened chill, according to Grant, is declining quality of California cherries. They’re shrinking in size, and the extended ripening time means the cherries are not as firm. When rains came unexpectedly during harvest time last year, yields dropped in parts of the county by more than half. This year, the Delta Packing Co., based in Lodi, saw another 50 percent drop in cherries from previous years, according to Matt Nowak, a sales representative for the company. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The lack of chilly nights in the winter makes cherries one of the most vulnerable to climate change,” said \u003ca href=\"http://foodsecurity.stanford.edu/people/david_lobell\" title=\"David Lobell bio\" target=\"_blank\">David Lobell\u003c/a>, a fellow at Stanford’s Center on Food Security and the Environment. Lobell co-wrote a report published last November predicting dramatic declines in cherry yields under a 2-degree warming scenario. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Crop insurance in the red\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Until 2000, there was no government-subsidized insurance program for cherry farmers. But that year, according to Yasui, of the Risk Management Agency, farmers began responding to the turbulent weather by requesting that the USDA extend them coverage. Since then, there’s been a steady rise in cherry farmers obtaining climate-related insurance.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">“The climate here around Stockton is looking more and more like the climate down in Bakersfield.” Joseph Grant, farm adviser \u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Last year, California cherry growers received a record $22.5 million in crop insurance payouts – sending crop insurers into the red. For every $1 paid into the system for cherry policies that year, $1.60 was paid to farmers. The USDA paid out almost $8 million to subsidize the losses. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What’s happening,” Grant said, “is that the climate here around Stockton is looking more and more like the climate down in Bakersfield.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Two parallel changes are unfolding at either end of the San Joaquin Valley. The northern cherries, planted decades ago during cooler climactic conditions, now are growing in conditions more like those farther south in Bakersfield. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And specially tailored varieties in the south are being grown in conditions far hotter than the temperatures for which they were bred. A lack of chill in the northern San Joaquin is damaging cherries, while higher temperatures are harming cherries in the southern San Joaquin. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another consequence of the longer and hotter ripening season, Grant said, is “deformities in the cherry flowers and abnormalities in the fruit.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_45176\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/ch01_blossom_resized1.jpg\">\u003cimg src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/ch01_blossom_resized1-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"Cherry blossom\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-45176\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cherries need a certain number of \"chilling hours\" to form perfect fruit. Warmer temperatures and less fog are impacting the California cherry harvest. Photo: Center for Investigative Reporting.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Too much time in the sun during the budding process leads to what shoppers regularly encounter: “doubling,” in which two cherries are fused like conjoined twins, and “spurring,” a little raisinlike growth stuck to the side of the fruit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those deformities generally weaken the position of California cherries in the marketplace, threatening California’s competitive advantage in producing cherries earlier in the season than in Oregon and Washington – where the climate for the fruit remains ideal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cherries’ protracted ripening, according to Colombini, also means that the farm workers whom he and other growers usually hire for a week or so during harvest season must be hired for an extra two or three weeks – which means more payroll and more expensive cherries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The problem down the line here in California is that we could see the displacement of an entire industry,” Grant said. “You may have better conditions up north, but Joe Farmer has land here, not in Oregon.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ultimately, said Paul Wenger, president of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.cfbf.com/\" title=\"California Farm Bureau Federation\" target=\"_blank\">California Farm Bureau Federation\u003c/a>, farmers are “dealing with the changing climate every day.” Wenger raises almonds in the Central Valley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Farmers are adaptable,” he said. “If crops aren’t working in one place, they’ll switch crops. Or they’ll move their crops.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was edited by Robert Salladay and copy edited by Nikki Frick and Christine Lee. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This story was produced by the nonprofit \u003ca href=\"http://cironline.org/\" title=\"Center for Investigative Reporting\" target=\"_blank\">Center for Investigative Reporting\u003c/a>, the country’s largest investigative reporting team, in collaboration with KQED. Mark Schapiro can be reached at \u003ca href=\"mailto:mschapiro@cironline.org\">mschapiro@cironline.org\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Climate change is contributing to reduced cherry yields in California. This video is part of the Heat and Harvest series, co-produced by KQED and the Center for Investigative Reporting.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Uncool Cherries\u003c/strong> looks at the challenges facing cherry growers near Stockton. Life is hardly a bowl of cherries if you're trying to grow them in California lately. Cherries and other major fruit crops need a certain number of \"chilling hours\" in order to produce healthy blossoms and fruit. But in recent years, the spring nights have brought warmer temperatures and less of the legendary Valley fog that helps keep the chill on. (Reporter: Mark Schapiro / Producer: Serene Fang)\u003cbr>\n\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Uncool Cherries\u003c/strong>is one of the three stories in \u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/video/heat-and-harvest/\" title=\"Heat and Harvest\" target=\"_blank\">Heat and Harvest\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>, a half-hour documentary on how climate change is challenging California’s $30 billion agricultural industry. \u003cstrong>Heat and Harvest \u003c/strong>is a co-production of KQED and the \u003ca title=\"Center for Investigative Reporting\" href=\"http://cironline.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Center for Investigative Reporting\u003c/a> and airs on KQED channel 9 on Friday Sept. 28 and Monday Oct. 1 at 7:30 pm. The film also airs on PBS stations around California in September and October. Check local listings.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Higher temperatures bring new struggles to California grape and cherry growers\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>By Mark Schapiro\u003cbr>\nCenter for Investigative Reporting\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This article is part 2 of a two-part series published in newspapers across California on Fri. Sept. 28.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Farmers have always been gamblers, long accustomed to betting on the probabilities of the weather. But for the Napa Valley, where the temperatures have been ideal for the wine industry, the changes could be significant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re used to rolling the dice every year,” said \u003ca href=\"http://creeksidescience.com/people/\" title=\"Stuart Weiss bio\" target=\"_blank\">Stuart Weiss\u003c/a>, a conservation biologist and chief scientist at the \u003ca href=\"http://creeksidescience.com/\" title=\"Creekside Center for Earth Observation\" target=\"_blank\">Creekside Center for Earth Observation\u003c/a>, which assists growers and municipalities dealing with the disruptions caused by the changing climate. “Now, though, climate change is stacking the dice.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the next 30 years, Weiss estimates, the temperature in the Napa Valley will rise by 1.8 degrees – an 80 percent jump over previous rates, which were about 1 degree every three decades since temperatures were first recorded in 1896. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He has turned worries about climate change into a business opportunity: His other company, \u003ca href=\"http://www.viticision.com/\" title=\"Viticision\" target=\"_blank\">Viticision\u003c/a>, consults with growers facing the shifting conditions on their land. \u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">California produces 95 percent of the country’s apricots, almonds, artichokes, figs, kiwis, raisin grapes, olives, cling peaches, dried plums, persimmons, pistachios and walnuts. \u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Weiss, who has been studying butterflies since his days at Stanford University, realized eight years ago that what he was learning about the Lepidoptera family could be applied to wine grapes. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He noticed that the processes that a caterpillar larva uses to metabolize energy drawn from the sun and water prior to its emergence as a butterfly were similar to how a grapevine metabolizes the same elements before producing a fully formed wine grape.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, he consults with wineries dealing with the alterations in sun and water triggered by climate change. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The verbs are the same,” Weiss said. “It’s just the nouns that have shifted.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alterations in the California climate have prompted the insurance industry to start assessing the potential damage and its financial exposure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The nation’s crop insurance system, a hybrid of private insurers backed by the \u003ca href=\"http://www.rma.usda.gov/\" title=\"Risk Management Agency\" target=\"_blank\">U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Risk Management Agency\u003c/a>, has been paying out steadily increasing amounts for weather-related damages across the country, according to the Congressional Research Service – from $2.1 billion in 2000 to a record-breaking $12.1 billion last year. This summer’s drought in the Midwest is expected to further catapult insurance payments. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although it’s difficult to distinguish how many extreme events would have occurred without the atmospheric concentration of CO2, the Risk Management Agency now has identified climate change as one of the major risk factors for U.S. agriculture. \u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">The Risk Management Agency now has identified climate change as one of the major risk factors for U.S. agriculture. \u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>In a 2010 report, it paid particular attention to the vulnerabilities of California, which produces 95 percent of the country’s apricots, almonds, artichokes, figs, kiwis, raisin grapes, olives, cling peaches, dried plums, persimmons, pistachios and walnuts. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Since the production of these commodities is so concentrated into one geographical area the climatic impacts in these agricultural markets could be profound,” the report concluded.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The agency even suggested an adaptation strategy that sounds very much like the breeding efforts already under way at nurseries across the Central Valley: more research into “drought-tolerant, heat-tolerant, and other crop varieties better suited to the changing conditions.”\u003cbr>\nThe California office of the Risk Management Agency is considering whether year-round farming is a reasonable risk for the agency to assume in the Central and Imperial valleys, where water stresses are intensifying. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the Central Valley, the agency is considering requiring farmers relying on nonirrigated water to fallow some of their land during the summer months to hedge against potential losses when water supplies fall short. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And last year, the agency withdrew its insurance rating for parts of Imperial County, which it determined was uninsurable for proposed wheat farming due to concerns about the reliability of the water supply.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The high volatility associated with climate change prompted a team of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to found the first insurance company, \u003ca href=\"http://www.climate.com/\" title=\"The Climate Corporation\" target=\"_blank\">The Climate Corporation\u003c/a>, to focus exclusively on insuring against swings in the weather. \u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">The high volatility associated with climate change prompted a team of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to found the first insurance company to focus exclusively on insuring against swings in the weather.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.climate.com/company/leadership/\" title=\"David Friedberg bio\" target=\"_blank\">David Friedberg\u003c/a> was a corporate development executive at Google before founding the company in San Francisco in 2006, as farmers found themselves at the front lines of climate change. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Things are getting far more erratic and difficult to predict,” said Friedberg, whose background is in physics and mathematics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One likely result of the atmospheric tumult, he added, is rising food prices. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Farmers are having to hedge and pay for insurance claims,” he said. “That increases the price of food, and when they experience losses, we and others pay them for those losses, but that also means their food is not being produced.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For example, the effects of the Midwest drought this summer, which has devastated food crops for cattle and chicken – mostly corn and soybeans – will be rippling back to California in the form of prices that are 10 to 15 percent higher for beef, milk and poultry, according to the USDA and other analysts. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Wine country climate shake-up\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Napa vintners already are feeling the effects of the changing odds. In 2010, the wine industry had one of its worst years on record when days of record-breaking heat in August were followed by a few freakish days of frost. \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_45202\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/030-Grapes-6-29-07_resized.jpg\">\u003cimg src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/030-Grapes-6-29-07_resized.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"Wine grapes in Napa Valley\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" class=\"size-full wp-image-45202\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/030-Grapes-6-29-07_resized.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/030-Grapes-6-29-07_resized-400x225.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Wine grapes in Napa Valley are ripening earlier in the season. This shrinks the timespan for their full development. Photo: Joan Johnson, KQED.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Weiss, the conservation biologist, cites a map that offers a sobering perspective on future Napa varietals, demonstrating how the increasing heat is triggering the ripening process earlier in the season – from the first week of October, for example, into the third or fourth week of September, which shrinks the timespan for full development of wine grapes. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You’re ripening earlier in a warmer time of the year under a warmer climate, so you’re getting a double whammy,” he said. Even just a week’s difference, he said, can have an impact on the quality of a cabernet sauvignon. \u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">“There are a lot of similarities between Australia and California, and if we don’t look to places that have undergone this sort of ‘first shot across the bow’ of the effect of climate change, I think we’d be doing ourselves a disservice.” Stuart Weiss, conservation biologist\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Jeff Yasui, director of the California office of the Risk Management Agency, said one sign of the growing stress in wine country is that over the past four years, the number of wine grape growers who increased their insurance coverage from the base-level policy – which covers half of all losses – to more substantial, and more expensive, protection increased from 28 percent of all policies to 40 percent this year. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of Weiss’ clients is \u003ca href=\"http://www.treasurywineestates.com/\" title=\"Treasury Wine Estates\" target=\"_blank\">Treasury Wine Estates\u003c/a>, one of the largest wine companies in Australia, which also owns some 6,000 acres and eight labels – including Beringer Vineyards, Stags’ Leap Winery and Souverain – in Napa and Sonoma counties. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Australia experienced an early taste of climate change in 2009 and 2010, Weiss said, when heat waves and drought led to dramatic drops in yield from shriveled grapevines, leading to significant financial losses for the country’s wine industry. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"http://www.csiro.au/\" title=\"CSIRO\" target=\"_blank\">national science agency of Australia\u003c/a> warns that as the weather gets hotter, the growing season for Australian wines is steadily shrinking – at a rate that’s been accelerating over the past 40 years, a phenomenon similar to that which Weiss has identified in Napa County. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There are a lot of similarities between Australia and California,” Weiss said, “and if we don’t look to places that have undergone this sort of ‘first shot across the bow’ of the effect of climate change, I think we’d be doing ourselves a disservice.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>From his home office on a rustic road in Menlo Park, shaded by a huge oak tree, Weiss uses sophisticated monitors in the fields to track the increasing amount of sun hitting each grape and attempt to predict how moving a row by a few feet, or adjusting a trellis, might offer protection against the sun’s intensifying rays. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s how climate change is happening,” Weiss said. “Slow but steady increases in heat are already causing disarray in wine country.” \u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">“Slow but steady increases in heat are already causing disarray in wine country.” Stuart Weiss\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>With that information, he’s able to suggest how wineries could move forward. Vineyards generally are productive over 25-year spans; it takes about five years for new vines to start producing grapes, and the vines generally are replaced every 25 to 30 years. Current vines were planted at a time of weather patterns that are now changing. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many fields are at the end of their 25-year cycle and are about to be replanted. Weiss also offers advice on the varietals most suited to the next quarter-century of changing climate – whether to plant, for example, another crop of cabernet sauvignon, which thrives in cooler climates, or a more heat-tolerant variety like pinot noir, zinfandel or chardonnay. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“With the new cycle, we don’t want to lock in mistakes,” Weiss said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Cherry crops feel the heat \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For a look into the future, consider what’s already happening to the state’s cherry crop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last April, the cherries were blooming in the Colombini family orchard in the San Joaquin Valley, their pink and white blossoms a signal that the harvest would be coming in six weeks’ time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_45180\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/ch09_packflr_resized1.jpg\">\u003cimg src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/ch09_packflr_resized1.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"Workers pack cherries at Delta Packing, Modesto, California\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" class=\"size-full wp-image-45180\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/ch09_packflr_resized1.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/ch09_packflr_resized1-400x225.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Workers pack cherries at Delta Packing, in Modesto. This year, the company saw another 50 percent drop in cherries from previous years. Photo: Center for Investigative Reporting. \u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But there was trouble lurking under those delicate blossoms. Jeff Colombini, director of the family company, Lodi Farming, pointed to the erratic blooms on his trees – a blossom here, a blossom there, but many stunted, half-grown blossoms. That is a sign, he said, of the “stresses that come with not enough chill hours.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most of the highest-quality cherry varieties in the state are tuned for a November or December chill, which functions to slow down the metabolism of the nascent fruits and thus elongates the ripening process that comes with the onset of warmer weather. \u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">Too much time in the sun during the budding process leads to what shoppers regularly encounter: “doubling,” in which two cherries are fused like conjoined twins, and “spurring,” a little raisinlike growth stuck to the side of the fruit.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>For a perfect California cherry, the trees need 1,200 to 1,400 hours of “chill time.” But Joseph Grant, a UC Cooperative Extension farm adviser based in Stockton, said that lately, cherry growers have been seeing more like 1,000 to 1,100 hours per season. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another factor may be the fog: Early results from a study at UC Berkeley’s College of Natural Resources suggest that a lack of the usual fog hours also might be contributing to overheating of cherry buds at a time when they need to be shaded from the sun.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re seeing those low-chill effects every year now, as opposed to how we used to see them once every 10 years or so,” Grant said. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the overall cherry crop recovered late in the season, the overall effect of the shortened chill, according to Grant, is declining quality of California cherries. They’re shrinking in size, and the extended ripening time means the cherries are not as firm. When rains came unexpectedly during harvest time last year, yields dropped in parts of the county by more than half. This year, the Delta Packing Co., based in Lodi, saw another 50 percent drop in cherries from previous years, according to Matt Nowak, a sales representative for the company. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The lack of chilly nights in the winter makes cherries one of the most vulnerable to climate change,” said \u003ca href=\"http://foodsecurity.stanford.edu/people/david_lobell\" title=\"David Lobell bio\" target=\"_blank\">David Lobell\u003c/a>, a fellow at Stanford’s Center on Food Security and the Environment. Lobell co-wrote a report published last November predicting dramatic declines in cherry yields under a 2-degree warming scenario. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Crop insurance in the red\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Until 2000, there was no government-subsidized insurance program for cherry farmers. But that year, according to Yasui, of the Risk Management Agency, farmers began responding to the turbulent weather by requesting that the USDA extend them coverage. Since then, there’s been a steady rise in cherry farmers obtaining climate-related insurance.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">“The climate here around Stockton is looking more and more like the climate down in Bakersfield.” Joseph Grant, farm adviser \u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Last year, California cherry growers received a record $22.5 million in crop insurance payouts – sending crop insurers into the red. For every $1 paid into the system for cherry policies that year, $1.60 was paid to farmers. The USDA paid out almost $8 million to subsidize the losses. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What’s happening,” Grant said, “is that the climate here around Stockton is looking more and more like the climate down in Bakersfield.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Two parallel changes are unfolding at either end of the San Joaquin Valley. The northern cherries, planted decades ago during cooler climactic conditions, now are growing in conditions more like those farther south in Bakersfield. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And specially tailored varieties in the south are being grown in conditions far hotter than the temperatures for which they were bred. A lack of chill in the northern San Joaquin is damaging cherries, while higher temperatures are harming cherries in the southern San Joaquin. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another consequence of the longer and hotter ripening season, Grant said, is “deformities in the cherry flowers and abnormalities in the fruit.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_45176\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/ch01_blossom_resized1.jpg\">\u003cimg src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/ch01_blossom_resized1-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"Cherry blossom\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-45176\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cherries need a certain number of \"chilling hours\" to form perfect fruit. Warmer temperatures and less fog are impacting the California cherry harvest. Photo: Center for Investigative Reporting.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Too much time in the sun during the budding process leads to what shoppers regularly encounter: “doubling,” in which two cherries are fused like conjoined twins, and “spurring,” a little raisinlike growth stuck to the side of the fruit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those deformities generally weaken the position of California cherries in the marketplace, threatening California’s competitive advantage in producing cherries earlier in the season than in Oregon and Washington – where the climate for the fruit remains ideal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cherries’ protracted ripening, according to Colombini, also means that the farm workers whom he and other growers usually hire for a week or so during harvest season must be hired for an extra two or three weeks – which means more payroll and more expensive cherries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The problem down the line here in California is that we could see the displacement of an entire industry,” Grant said. “You may have better conditions up north, but Joe Farmer has land here, not in Oregon.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ultimately, said Paul Wenger, president of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.cfbf.com/\" title=\"California Farm Bureau Federation\" target=\"_blank\">California Farm Bureau Federation\u003c/a>, farmers are “dealing with the changing climate every day.” Wenger raises almonds in the Central Valley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Farmers are adaptable,” he said. “If crops aren’t working in one place, they’ll switch crops. Or they’ll move their crops.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was edited by Robert Salladay and copy edited by Nikki Frick and Christine Lee. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This story was produced by the nonprofit \u003ca href=\"http://cironline.org/\" title=\"Center for Investigative Reporting\" target=\"_blank\">Center for Investigative Reporting\u003c/a>, the country’s largest investigative reporting team, in collaboration with KQED. Mark Schapiro can be reached at \u003ca href=\"mailto:mschapiro@cironline.org\">mschapiro@cironline.org\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dry and Salted\u003c/strong> examines the major wildcards in California's farming future: water and salt. Growers are having to learn to get along with less of the first and more of the second. That can mean leaving once-productive fields fallow or having to find less water-intensive crops and irrigation methods. But water quality is also presenting a challenge as growers find themselves having to cope with salt in their groundwater and the threat of encroaching saltwater from rising seas. (Reporter: Mark Schapiro / Producer: Serene Fang)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dry and Salted \u003c/strong>is one of the three stories in \u003cstrong>\u003ca title=\"Heat and Harvest\" href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/video/heat-and-harvest/\" target=\"_blank\">Heat and Harvest\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>, a half-hour documentary on how climate change is challenging California’s $30 billion agricultural industry. \u003cstrong>Heat and Harvest \u003c/strong>is a co-production of KQED and the \u003ca title=\"Center for Investigative Reporting\" href=\"http://cironline.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Center for Investigative Reporting\u003c/a> and airs on KQED channel 9 on Friday Sept. 28 and Monday Oct. 1 at 7:30 pm. The film also airs on PBS stations around California in September and October. Check local listings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch1>Volatile weather creates dramatic changes for California farmers\u003c/h1>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nBy Mark Schapiro\u003cbr>\nCenter for Investigative Reporting\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This article is part 1 of a two-part series published in newspapers across California on Thurs. Sept. 27.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ten miles outside of Modesto, in the farming town of Hughson just off Highway 99, the \u003ca title=\"Duarte Nursery\" href=\"http://duartenursery.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Duarte Nursery\u003c/a> is at the front line of dramatic changes now under way in California’s immense agriculture industry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_45068\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/sa08_Jduarte_resized.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-45068\" title=\"John Duarte, of Duarte Nursery\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/sa08_Jduarte_resized-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">John Duarte, of Duarte Nursery. Photo: Center for Investigative Reporting.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The family-run nursery, founded in 1976, is one of the largest in the United States, and there’s a good chance the berries, nuts and citrus fruits eaten across the West began their journey to market as seedlings in Duarte’s 30 acres of greenhouses, labs and breeding stations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The nursery’s owners have built a thriving business using state-of-the-art techniques to develop varieties adapted to the particular conditions and pests California farmers face.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These days, according to John Duarte, president of the nursery, that means breeding for elevated levels of heat and salt, which researchers say are symptoms of climate change – even if Duarte doesn’t necessarily see it that way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Whether it’s carbon built up in the atmosphere or just friggin’ bad luck,” he said, “the conditions are straining us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The cause of Duarte’s woes might be in dispute among farmers in California’s $31 billion agriculture industry. But the symptoms are clear. From the vast fields of fruits and nuts in the Central Valley to the wineries of Napa and Sonoma, the increasingly volatile weather is altering the fundamental conditions for growing food, California’s largest industry.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">Climate change already has cost farmers money. In the Central Valley, some growers are paying more for seeds designed to withstand the new extremes.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Farmers are in many ways at the front line of climate change. They conjure food from soil, sunlight and water – all of which are profoundly affected, scientists say, by climate change. Stresses have emerged across the state as water supplies tighten. Rain is coming at unexpected times. Winters aren’t getting cold enough. And salt from the rising ocean is making its way into Central Valley water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Climate change already has cost farmers money. In the Central Valley, some growers are paying more for seeds designed to withstand the new extremes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the nurseries and colleges in what Duarte calls “the Silicon Valley of agricultural innovation,” these changing conditions have forced botanists to look for varieties of almond, pepper, citrus, cherry and other crops resistant to drought and salt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other interests also are bracing for dramatic change. The crop insurance industry is calculating potential billion-dollar losses from extreme weather conditions, as well as the floods and fires that occur in their wake. Climate change could join the ranks of earthquake and hurricane insurance as a special – and hugely expensive – problem for insurers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_45066\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/sa04_clone_resized.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-45066\" title=\"Plant clone\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/sa04_clone_resized-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">John Duarte, of Duarte Nursery, holds a plant that he's breeding to be more tolerant to heat and salt. Photo: Center for Investigative Reporting.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Over the past 20 years, there has been more than $500 million in crop losses from heat waves, floods and ill-timed rainstorms in the heavily agricultural counties of San Joaquin, Merced, Kings, Kern, Napa and Sonoma, according to a study last year by a team of Stanford University researchers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Compared to 20 or 30 years ago, farmers are recognizing a lot more risk factors in climate events,” said Jeff Yasui, director of the \u003ca title=\"USDA Risk Management Agency\" href=\"http://www.rma.usda.gov/\" target=\"_blank\">U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Risk Management Agency office\u003c/a> in California, which handles crop insurance in the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Climate and agriculture scientists predicted much of this. \u003ca title=\"Charles Kolstad bio\" href=\"http://www2.bren.ucsb.edu/~kolstad/HmPg/\" target=\"_blank\">Charles Kolstad\u003c/a>, an environmental economist at UC Santa Barbara, said California agriculture is being hit with a trifecta of converging forces prompted by climate change: longer seasons of extreme heat, shorter cold seasons and dwindling water supplies.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">Rain is coming at unexpected times. Winters aren’t getting cold enough. And salt from the rising ocean is making its way into Central Valley water.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Yields of key crops are expected to drop significantly over the coming decades as climate change alters these growing conditions, according to a report Kolstad co-wrote for the state Environmental Protection Agency and Energy Commission and published last fall in the peer-reviewed journal Climatic Change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Climate scientists believe the Earth’s average temperature will rise at least 2 degrees in the next four decades – their most conservative estimate. Along the way, the yields of citrus crops in the San Joaquin Valley are expected to drop about 18 percent, grapes about 6 percent, and cherries and other orchard crops about 9 percent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those crops – accustomed to the cooler edges of California’s climate – are showing declining yields already, according to the \u003ca title=\"National Agricultural Statistics Service\" href=\"http://www.nass.usda.gov/\" target=\"_blank\">USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service\u003c/a>. That could mean higher prices for consumers as the supply shrinks. This summer’s record droughts in the Midwest also prompted the USDA to predict a similar rise in prices driven by devastated yields for corn and soybeans, the primary food for chicken and cattle nationwide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kolstad and other scientists have focused on tree-based perennial crops because they are fixed in 25- to 30-year cycles and cannot easily be adapted to changing conditions. Switching a tree orchard from cherries, for example, to more heat-tolerant pistachios, avocados or tangerines can cost millions of dollars before the trees start bearing marketable fruit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If California’s water crisis persists, seasonal vegetables and fruits also will be dramatically affected. Some already are.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">This year, Sacramento Delta water supplies are not expected to come anywhere close to filling the irrigation needs of Central Valley farmers.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Much of the southern Central Valley, spreading along either side of Interstate 5, is now a patchwork of fallow fields, according to Gayle Holman with the \u003ca title=\"Westlands Water District\" href=\"http://www.westlandswater.org/wwd/default2.asp?cwide=1280\" target=\"_blank\">Westlands Water District\u003c/a> in Fresno. Thousands of acres that once grew onions, tomatoes, melons and other crops have been set aside by farmers because they can no longer obtain, or afford, water – a scarcity, scientists say, that is significantly due to the dramatic shifts in the timing of rainfalls in the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those grower cutbacks are felt most acutely in Central Valley towns like Mendota, where farm workers can no longer find the seasonal fieldwork upon which they once relied. Official unemployment in the area ranges between 15 and 20 percent. Studies by the state’s Employment Development Department show an inverse correlation between water allocations and unemployment in the valley: The water supply goes down, and the unemployment rate goes up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>One problem, then another\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like just about everything having to do with climate change, the consequences unfold like a sequence of trapdoors. First, there’s the temperature, a jagged progression over the past decade of unusual highs and lows occurring at times of the year that can debilitate growing crops.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_45073\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/California_Aqueduct_and_fields_resized1.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-45073\" title=\"California Aqueduct\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/California_Aqueduct_and_fields_resized1-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Scientists warn that less water is coming into the system. Photo: Gabriela Quirós.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Then there’s the water. California’s water sources are caught in a pincer: More water is needed at a time when less water is being delivered into the network of canals carrying it from the north to the agricultural regions in the south.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A precipitous drop in snowfall has led to declining water runoff in the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers in the spring and summer months, when it’s central to irrigation in the valley. Over the past century, the state \u003ca title=\"Department of Water Resources\" href=\"http://www.water.ca.gov/\" target=\"_blank\">Department of Water Resources\u003c/a> has measured a steady 10 percent decline in runoff from April to July. In recent years, however, the rate has accelerated to as much as 20 percent during those critical months.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the three years between 2006 and 2009, the runoff amounted to the equivalent of two “normal” years, according to John Leahigh, chief of operations planning for the \u003ca title=\"California State Water Project\" href=\"http://www.water.ca.gov/swp/\" target=\"_blank\">California State Water Project\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, such calculations appear to be the new normal. This year, Sacramento Delta water supplies are not expected to come anywhere close to filling the irrigation needs of Central Valley farmers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In February, the Department of Water Resources cut the delivery of water to valley farmers from 60 to 50 percent of their allotment – a practically unprecedented reduction that late in the growing season, according to Leahigh.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Parts of the valley supplied by the federal water project have been cut even more severely, to 30 percent of their normal allotment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Farmers in the valley generally blame the drop-off in water on the 2007 state Supreme Court decision affirming the need for water to preserve Pacific smelt and other endangered species.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A study by the \u003ca title=\"Public Policy Institute of California\" href=\"http://www.ppic.org/main/home.asp\" target=\"_blank\">Public Policy Institute of California\u003c/a>, however, concludes that the roughly 300,000 acre-feet of water diverted to comply with the Endangered Species Act constitutes no more than 15 to 20 percent of the reduced water flow to the valley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rather, the overall pool of water is shrinking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s less water coming into the system,” said \u003ca title=\"Francis Chung bio\" href=\"http://baydeltaoffice.water.ca.gov/modeling/keypersonnel.cfm\" target=\"_blank\">Francis Chung\u003c/a>, chief of the Modeling Support Branch for the Department of Water Resources. “The water that used to exist is now coming earlier in the year. So there’s less water to distribute (to the valley) during the summer.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rising sea levels threaten water supply\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another growing problem has been rising sea levels associated with climate change. The San Francisco Bay, according to a recent assessment by the \u003ca title=\"National Research Council\" href=\"http://nationalacademies.org/nrc/\" target=\"_blank\">National Research Council\u003c/a>, is projected to rise by as much as 18 inches, and potentially triple that by the end of the century. Those inches translate into waves of new salt sources lapping into the delta.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Less water channeled into the delta from the Sierra means less available freshwater to dilute the onrush of salt, which has been pushing steadily eastward.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For each foot in sea level, 200,000 acre-feet of freshwater, known as “carriage water,” is needed to hold the line on the saltwater. That amounts to one-fifth the volume of Folsom Lake each year, according to Chung, and the diversions will only increase as the sea level rises.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A study by UC Davis estimates that if salinity continues to rise at the current rate, by 2030, the financial costs to the Central Valley could be huge: as much as $1 billion to $1.5 billion a year in decreased agricultural activity, amounting to some 27,000 to 53,000 jobs lost.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_45064\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/sa01_leaves_resized1.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-45064\" title=\"Almond leaves burned by salt\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/sa01_leaves_resized1-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Salt in the groundwater burns almond leaves and reduces a tree's yield. Photo: Center for Investigative Reporting.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Over the next 40 years, salinity is expected to increase by 4 to 26 percent, depending on the time of year, at the two water-pumping stations outside of Tracy. From there, most of the water destined for the valley is sent southward, according to a study by the Public Policy Institute of California and the \u003ca title=\"Center for Watershed Sciences\" href=\"http://watershed.ucdavis.edu/front?destination=node/116\" target=\"_blank\">Center for Watershed Sciences at UC Davis\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca title=\"Ellen Hanak bio\" href=\"http://www.ppic.org/main/bio.asp?i=72\" target=\"_blank\">Ellen Hanak\u003c/a>, senior policy fellow at the institute, explained that inside the delta, the network of waterways helps to dilute the salt content. But in the Central Valley, she said, there’s not enough freshwater to reduce the salt’s impact. That’s partly the result of farmers using more targeted irrigation to reduce waste; they no longer have the excess spillover to mix with the salt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s no drainage,” she said. “They can’t get rid of it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As freshwater supplies decrease, the decisions over how to use it are likely to become even more difficult.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Water used to push the ocean back is water not used for agriculture,” said Tara Smith, an analyst and water modeling expert for the Department of Water Resources.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In other words, the liquid barricade needed to hold back the ocean is drawn from a dwindling amount of freshwater. The reduction in allocations issued by the water board in February means that more water is necessary to hold back the advancing Pacific Ocean and push the saltwater intrusion westward.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re going to have to keep reducing the volume of exports from the delta because of the increased volume needed of carriage water,” said Chung at the Department of Water Resources.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">“The higher the value of the crop, the more sensitive it is to salt.”\u003cbr>\nDaniel Cozad, executive director, Central Valley Salinity Coalition \u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Nevertheless, 40 railroad cars’ worth of salt – about 500,000 tons a year – flow daily out of the delta into the fields of the Central Valley. That adds extra salt to valley soils already made salty by the intensive pumping of groundwater from what millions of years ago was the ocean floor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Daniel Cozad, executive director of the \u003ca title=\"Central Valley Salinity Coalition\" href=\"http://cvsalinity.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Central Valley Salinity Coalition\u003c/a>, a group of local farmers, businessmen and government officials, said some farmers in the western valley are being forced to adapt by switching from salt-sensitive crops like strawberries and avocados to less sensitive – and less profitable – crops like alfalfa and wheat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Unfortunately,” Cozad said, “the higher the value of the crop, the more sensitive it is to salt.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was edited by Robert Salladay and copy edited by Nikki Frick and Christine Lee. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This story was produced by the nonprofit \u003ca title=\"Center for Investigative Reporting\" href=\"http://cironline.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Center for Investigative Reporting\u003c/a>, the country’s largest investigative reporting team, in collaboration with KQED. Mark Schapiro can be reached at \u003ca href=\"mailto:mschapiro@cironline.org\">mschapiro@cironline.org\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Salty groundwater is ruining almond crops in the Central Valley, and scientists expect sea level rise to worsen the problem. This video is part of the Heat and Harvest series, co-produced by KQED and the Center for Investigative Reporting.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dry and Salted\u003c/strong> examines the major wildcards in California's farming future: water and salt. Growers are having to learn to get along with less of the first and more of the second. That can mean leaving once-productive fields fallow or having to find less water-intensive crops and irrigation methods. But water quality is also presenting a challenge as growers find themselves having to cope with salt in their groundwater and the threat of encroaching saltwater from rising seas. (Reporter: Mark Schapiro / Producer: Serene Fang)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dry and Salted \u003c/strong>is one of the three stories in \u003cstrong>\u003ca title=\"Heat and Harvest\" href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/video/heat-and-harvest/\" target=\"_blank\">Heat and Harvest\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>, a half-hour documentary on how climate change is challenging California’s $30 billion agricultural industry. \u003cstrong>Heat and Harvest \u003c/strong>is a co-production of KQED and the \u003ca title=\"Center for Investigative Reporting\" href=\"http://cironline.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Center for Investigative Reporting\u003c/a> and airs on KQED channel 9 on Friday Sept. 28 and Monday Oct. 1 at 7:30 pm. The film also airs on PBS stations around California in September and October. Check local listings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch1>Volatile weather creates dramatic changes for California farmers\u003c/h1>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nBy Mark Schapiro\u003cbr>\nCenter for Investigative Reporting\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This article is part 1 of a two-part series published in newspapers across California on Thurs. Sept. 27.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ten miles outside of Modesto, in the farming town of Hughson just off Highway 99, the \u003ca title=\"Duarte Nursery\" href=\"http://duartenursery.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Duarte Nursery\u003c/a> is at the front line of dramatic changes now under way in California’s immense agriculture industry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_45068\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/sa08_Jduarte_resized.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-45068\" title=\"John Duarte, of Duarte Nursery\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/sa08_Jduarte_resized-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">John Duarte, of Duarte Nursery. Photo: Center for Investigative Reporting.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The family-run nursery, founded in 1976, is one of the largest in the United States, and there’s a good chance the berries, nuts and citrus fruits eaten across the West began their journey to market as seedlings in Duarte’s 30 acres of greenhouses, labs and breeding stations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The nursery’s owners have built a thriving business using state-of-the-art techniques to develop varieties adapted to the particular conditions and pests California farmers face.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These days, according to John Duarte, president of the nursery, that means breeding for elevated levels of heat and salt, which researchers say are symptoms of climate change – even if Duarte doesn’t necessarily see it that way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Whether it’s carbon built up in the atmosphere or just friggin’ bad luck,” he said, “the conditions are straining us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The cause of Duarte’s woes might be in dispute among farmers in California’s $31 billion agriculture industry. But the symptoms are clear. From the vast fields of fruits and nuts in the Central Valley to the wineries of Napa and Sonoma, the increasingly volatile weather is altering the fundamental conditions for growing food, California’s largest industry.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">Climate change already has cost farmers money. In the Central Valley, some growers are paying more for seeds designed to withstand the new extremes.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Farmers are in many ways at the front line of climate change. They conjure food from soil, sunlight and water – all of which are profoundly affected, scientists say, by climate change. Stresses have emerged across the state as water supplies tighten. Rain is coming at unexpected times. Winters aren’t getting cold enough. And salt from the rising ocean is making its way into Central Valley water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Climate change already has cost farmers money. In the Central Valley, some growers are paying more for seeds designed to withstand the new extremes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the nurseries and colleges in what Duarte calls “the Silicon Valley of agricultural innovation,” these changing conditions have forced botanists to look for varieties of almond, pepper, citrus, cherry and other crops resistant to drought and salt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other interests also are bracing for dramatic change. The crop insurance industry is calculating potential billion-dollar losses from extreme weather conditions, as well as the floods and fires that occur in their wake. Climate change could join the ranks of earthquake and hurricane insurance as a special – and hugely expensive – problem for insurers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_45066\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/sa04_clone_resized.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-45066\" title=\"Plant clone\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/sa04_clone_resized-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">John Duarte, of Duarte Nursery, holds a plant that he's breeding to be more tolerant to heat and salt. Photo: Center for Investigative Reporting.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Over the past 20 years, there has been more than $500 million in crop losses from heat waves, floods and ill-timed rainstorms in the heavily agricultural counties of San Joaquin, Merced, Kings, Kern, Napa and Sonoma, according to a study last year by a team of Stanford University researchers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Compared to 20 or 30 years ago, farmers are recognizing a lot more risk factors in climate events,” said Jeff Yasui, director of the \u003ca title=\"USDA Risk Management Agency\" href=\"http://www.rma.usda.gov/\" target=\"_blank\">U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Risk Management Agency office\u003c/a> in California, which handles crop insurance in the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Climate and agriculture scientists predicted much of this. \u003ca title=\"Charles Kolstad bio\" href=\"http://www2.bren.ucsb.edu/~kolstad/HmPg/\" target=\"_blank\">Charles Kolstad\u003c/a>, an environmental economist at UC Santa Barbara, said California agriculture is being hit with a trifecta of converging forces prompted by climate change: longer seasons of extreme heat, shorter cold seasons and dwindling water supplies.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">Rain is coming at unexpected times. Winters aren’t getting cold enough. And salt from the rising ocean is making its way into Central Valley water.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Yields of key crops are expected to drop significantly over the coming decades as climate change alters these growing conditions, according to a report Kolstad co-wrote for the state Environmental Protection Agency and Energy Commission and published last fall in the peer-reviewed journal Climatic Change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Climate scientists believe the Earth’s average temperature will rise at least 2 degrees in the next four decades – their most conservative estimate. Along the way, the yields of citrus crops in the San Joaquin Valley are expected to drop about 18 percent, grapes about 6 percent, and cherries and other orchard crops about 9 percent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those crops – accustomed to the cooler edges of California’s climate – are showing declining yields already, according to the \u003ca title=\"National Agricultural Statistics Service\" href=\"http://www.nass.usda.gov/\" target=\"_blank\">USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service\u003c/a>. That could mean higher prices for consumers as the supply shrinks. This summer’s record droughts in the Midwest also prompted the USDA to predict a similar rise in prices driven by devastated yields for corn and soybeans, the primary food for chicken and cattle nationwide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kolstad and other scientists have focused on tree-based perennial crops because they are fixed in 25- to 30-year cycles and cannot easily be adapted to changing conditions. Switching a tree orchard from cherries, for example, to more heat-tolerant pistachios, avocados or tangerines can cost millions of dollars before the trees start bearing marketable fruit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If California’s water crisis persists, seasonal vegetables and fruits also will be dramatically affected. Some already are.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">This year, Sacramento Delta water supplies are not expected to come anywhere close to filling the irrigation needs of Central Valley farmers.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Much of the southern Central Valley, spreading along either side of Interstate 5, is now a patchwork of fallow fields, according to Gayle Holman with the \u003ca title=\"Westlands Water District\" href=\"http://www.westlandswater.org/wwd/default2.asp?cwide=1280\" target=\"_blank\">Westlands Water District\u003c/a> in Fresno. Thousands of acres that once grew onions, tomatoes, melons and other crops have been set aside by farmers because they can no longer obtain, or afford, water – a scarcity, scientists say, that is significantly due to the dramatic shifts in the timing of rainfalls in the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those grower cutbacks are felt most acutely in Central Valley towns like Mendota, where farm workers can no longer find the seasonal fieldwork upon which they once relied. Official unemployment in the area ranges between 15 and 20 percent. Studies by the state’s Employment Development Department show an inverse correlation between water allocations and unemployment in the valley: The water supply goes down, and the unemployment rate goes up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>One problem, then another\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like just about everything having to do with climate change, the consequences unfold like a sequence of trapdoors. First, there’s the temperature, a jagged progression over the past decade of unusual highs and lows occurring at times of the year that can debilitate growing crops.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_45073\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/California_Aqueduct_and_fields_resized1.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-45073\" title=\"California Aqueduct\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/California_Aqueduct_and_fields_resized1-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Scientists warn that less water is coming into the system. Photo: Gabriela Quirós.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Then there’s the water. California’s water sources are caught in a pincer: More water is needed at a time when less water is being delivered into the network of canals carrying it from the north to the agricultural regions in the south.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A precipitous drop in snowfall has led to declining water runoff in the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers in the spring and summer months, when it’s central to irrigation in the valley. Over the past century, the state \u003ca title=\"Department of Water Resources\" href=\"http://www.water.ca.gov/\" target=\"_blank\">Department of Water Resources\u003c/a> has measured a steady 10 percent decline in runoff from April to July. In recent years, however, the rate has accelerated to as much as 20 percent during those critical months.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the three years between 2006 and 2009, the runoff amounted to the equivalent of two “normal” years, according to John Leahigh, chief of operations planning for the \u003ca title=\"California State Water Project\" href=\"http://www.water.ca.gov/swp/\" target=\"_blank\">California State Water Project\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, such calculations appear to be the new normal. This year, Sacramento Delta water supplies are not expected to come anywhere close to filling the irrigation needs of Central Valley farmers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In February, the Department of Water Resources cut the delivery of water to valley farmers from 60 to 50 percent of their allotment – a practically unprecedented reduction that late in the growing season, according to Leahigh.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Parts of the valley supplied by the federal water project have been cut even more severely, to 30 percent of their normal allotment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Farmers in the valley generally blame the drop-off in water on the 2007 state Supreme Court decision affirming the need for water to preserve Pacific smelt and other endangered species.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A study by the \u003ca title=\"Public Policy Institute of California\" href=\"http://www.ppic.org/main/home.asp\" target=\"_blank\">Public Policy Institute of California\u003c/a>, however, concludes that the roughly 300,000 acre-feet of water diverted to comply with the Endangered Species Act constitutes no more than 15 to 20 percent of the reduced water flow to the valley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rather, the overall pool of water is shrinking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s less water coming into the system,” said \u003ca title=\"Francis Chung bio\" href=\"http://baydeltaoffice.water.ca.gov/modeling/keypersonnel.cfm\" target=\"_blank\">Francis Chung\u003c/a>, chief of the Modeling Support Branch for the Department of Water Resources. “The water that used to exist is now coming earlier in the year. So there’s less water to distribute (to the valley) during the summer.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rising sea levels threaten water supply\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another growing problem has been rising sea levels associated with climate change. The San Francisco Bay, according to a recent assessment by the \u003ca title=\"National Research Council\" href=\"http://nationalacademies.org/nrc/\" target=\"_blank\">National Research Council\u003c/a>, is projected to rise by as much as 18 inches, and potentially triple that by the end of the century. Those inches translate into waves of new salt sources lapping into the delta.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Less water channeled into the delta from the Sierra means less available freshwater to dilute the onrush of salt, which has been pushing steadily eastward.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For each foot in sea level, 200,000 acre-feet of freshwater, known as “carriage water,” is needed to hold the line on the saltwater. That amounts to one-fifth the volume of Folsom Lake each year, according to Chung, and the diversions will only increase as the sea level rises.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A study by UC Davis estimates that if salinity continues to rise at the current rate, by 2030, the financial costs to the Central Valley could be huge: as much as $1 billion to $1.5 billion a year in decreased agricultural activity, amounting to some 27,000 to 53,000 jobs lost.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_45064\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/sa01_leaves_resized1.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-45064\" title=\"Almond leaves burned by salt\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/sa01_leaves_resized1-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Salt in the groundwater burns almond leaves and reduces a tree's yield. Photo: Center for Investigative Reporting.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Over the next 40 years, salinity is expected to increase by 4 to 26 percent, depending on the time of year, at the two water-pumping stations outside of Tracy. From there, most of the water destined for the valley is sent southward, according to a study by the Public Policy Institute of California and the \u003ca title=\"Center for Watershed Sciences\" href=\"http://watershed.ucdavis.edu/front?destination=node/116\" target=\"_blank\">Center for Watershed Sciences at UC Davis\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca title=\"Ellen Hanak bio\" href=\"http://www.ppic.org/main/bio.asp?i=72\" target=\"_blank\">Ellen Hanak\u003c/a>, senior policy fellow at the institute, explained that inside the delta, the network of waterways helps to dilute the salt content. But in the Central Valley, she said, there’s not enough freshwater to reduce the salt’s impact. That’s partly the result of farmers using more targeted irrigation to reduce waste; they no longer have the excess spillover to mix with the salt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s no drainage,” she said. “They can’t get rid of it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As freshwater supplies decrease, the decisions over how to use it are likely to become even more difficult.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Water used to push the ocean back is water not used for agriculture,” said Tara Smith, an analyst and water modeling expert for the Department of Water Resources.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In other words, the liquid barricade needed to hold back the ocean is drawn from a dwindling amount of freshwater. The reduction in allocations issued by the water board in February means that more water is necessary to hold back the advancing Pacific Ocean and push the saltwater intrusion westward.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re going to have to keep reducing the volume of exports from the delta because of the increased volume needed of carriage water,” said Chung at the Department of Water Resources.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">“The higher the value of the crop, the more sensitive it is to salt.”\u003cbr>\nDaniel Cozad, executive director, Central Valley Salinity Coalition \u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Nevertheless, 40 railroad cars’ worth of salt – about 500,000 tons a year – flow daily out of the delta into the fields of the Central Valley. That adds extra salt to valley soils already made salty by the intensive pumping of groundwater from what millions of years ago was the ocean floor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Daniel Cozad, executive director of the \u003ca title=\"Central Valley Salinity Coalition\" href=\"http://cvsalinity.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Central Valley Salinity Coalition\u003c/a>, a group of local farmers, businessmen and government officials, said some farmers in the western valley are being forced to adapt by switching from salt-sensitive crops like strawberries and avocados to less sensitive – and less profitable – crops like alfalfa and wheat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Unfortunately,” Cozad said, “the higher the value of the crop, the more sensitive it is to salt.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was edited by Robert Salladay and copy edited by Nikki Frick and Christine Lee. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This story was produced by the nonprofit \u003ca title=\"Center for Investigative Reporting\" href=\"http://cironline.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Center for Investigative Reporting\u003c/a>, the country’s largest investigative reporting team, in collaboration with KQED. Mark Schapiro can be reached at \u003ca href=\"mailto:mschapiro@cironline.org\">mschapiro@cironline.org\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "West Coast a Test Bed for Ocean Acidification",
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"content": "\u003cp>This week, scientists from around the world are \u003ca href=\"http://www.highco2-iii.org/main.cfm?cid=2259\">meeting\u003c/a> in Monterey to discuss what they call the “other” climate change problem: the \u003ca href=\"http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/What+is+Ocean+Acidification%3F\">oceans are becoming more acidic\u003c/a>. It happens as oceans absorb the carbon dioxide we add to the air through burning fossil fuels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scientists say it can be bad news for ocean animals with shells like oysters, mussels and others that are key to the marine food web. How bad? Some scientists are hoping that ocean conditions off the California coast will help them find out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Oyster Farms Face Impacts\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You don’t have to go far to see the impacts that acidification is already having. At \u003ca href=\"http://hogislandoysters.com/\">Hog Island Oyster Company\u003c/a>, just outside Point Reyes, co-owner Terry Sawyer is seeing the effects in his supply chain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The oysters grow up in big, mesh bags that sit out in Tomales Bay, but Sawyer gets the oysters when they’re small, “the size of your little fingernail,” he says. He orders them from hatcheries in Oregon and Washington.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A few years ago, Sawyer started getting calls from those suppliers. They couldn’t fill his orders.\u003cbr>\n“They would have tens of thousands of gallons of tanks that were absolutely full of larvae. They would have the entire system die or crash,” says Sawyer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_44938\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/oysters.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-44938\" title=\"Oysters\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/oysters.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"198\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A pile of oysters being sorted at Hog Island Oyster Farm.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The hatcheries were \u003ca href=\"http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/12/study-links-raised-carbon-dioxide-levels-to-oyster-die-offs/\">filling their tanks with seawater\u003c/a> that was becoming more acidic. Scientists say the oceans are 30 percent more acidic since the start of the Industrial Revolution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The more acidic the water, the harder it is for animals like oysters to build their shells. Their shells are weaker and they grow more slowly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sawyer is raising his own oyster larvae now so he’ll have a more predictable supply. But he says there’s no question that climate change is affecting his bottom line.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We don’t know if we’re going to be able to survive the very real trending that is going on out there,\" he says. It’s a trend that could affect the entire food web.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Acidification on the California Coast\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You can see here, this is a mussel bed that’s made up of lots of California mussels,” says Eric Sanford, an ecologist with UC Davis’s Bodega Marine Lab.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The rocky point we’re standing on is covered in tightly packed, purplish mussels – what he calls the “foundation species” of the California coast. “One that really defines the whole ecosystem, sort of the way corals define a coral reef,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mussels are a key part of the food web and so are a lot of animals with shells, says oceanographer Tessa Hill. “Probably most people like the fact that we have things like whales and salmon off along our coast. Those organisms are likely to be impacted because their food source will be impacted,” Hill says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The big question is: will animals with shells be able to adapt to a more acidic future – where, in a hundred years, the oceans could be more than twice as acidic?\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_44940\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/sanford.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-44940\" title=\"SONY DSC\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/sanford.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"226\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Eric Sanford at a mussel bed near Bodega Marine Lab.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>These California mussels could help answer that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re facing the most acidic water that you’d see in the open ocean today,” says Hill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Hill explains, acidic water from the deep ocean rises to the surface on the West Coast in the spring and summer, when the wind is blowing. This upwelling makes the waters off California some of the most acidic in the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As part of \u003ca href=\"http://omegas.science.oregonstate.edu/?q=node/3\">OMEGAS\u003c/a>, a new project linking universities up and down the West Coast, researchers are asking: if organisms here have been blasted with more acidic water for generations, have they adapted to handle it?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inside their lab, Hill and Sanford show me jars full of young mussels, almost too small to see. Each jar is from a different part of the West Coast from Oregon to Santa Barbara. They’re being grown in water that reflects conditions in 2100, says Eric Sanford.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The issue we’re looking at is whether there might be genetic differences among different populations along the coast in their ability to cope with ocean acidification,” he says.\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\nFinding Genetic Tools\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We found they have lucky genes,” says Steve Palumbi, biology professor at Stanford University who is also working on the OMEGAS project. He studied populations of another shelled animal on the West Coast - sea urchins.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can think of genes like a set of tools, he says. “If you happen to have bad plumbing, you will have more plumbing tools in your house.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There have been lots of plumbing problems on the West Coast, so to speak, in the form of acidic water. “And so all these populations, urchins anyway, have had to get the toolset to deal with it,” says Palumbi.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a paper still in review, Palumbi says they found a segment of the urchin population that had around 100 genes that make them better adapted to more acidic water. That makes them more likely to survive and reproduce. (\u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDcDqULXDOE&feature=share&list=UUbf-eynjiFxUKGLFMt8KNoQ\">Check out this microdoc video\u003c/a> for more on their research).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is good news,” he says, “because these organisms have the capacity to deal with more acidification. But it’s not good news forever because all it does is give us a little breathing room. The trouble is right now, the rate at which the ocean is acidifying is way faster than it ever has before.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Organisms will evolve, he says, but probably not fast enough to keep up. In the meantime, Palumbi and other scientists are mapping where the genetically resilient mussels and urchins are on the West Coast, so policymakers can look at protecting them.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>This week, scientists from around the world are \u003ca href=\"http://www.highco2-iii.org/main.cfm?cid=2259\">meeting\u003c/a> in Monterey to discuss what they call the “other” climate change problem: the \u003ca href=\"http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/What+is+Ocean+Acidification%3F\">oceans are becoming more acidic\u003c/a>. It happens as oceans absorb the carbon dioxide we add to the air through burning fossil fuels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scientists say it can be bad news for ocean animals with shells like oysters, mussels and others that are key to the marine food web. How bad? Some scientists are hoping that ocean conditions off the California coast will help them find out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Oyster Farms Face Impacts\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You don’t have to go far to see the impacts that acidification is already having. At \u003ca href=\"http://hogislandoysters.com/\">Hog Island Oyster Company\u003c/a>, just outside Point Reyes, co-owner Terry Sawyer is seeing the effects in his supply chain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The oysters grow up in big, mesh bags that sit out in Tomales Bay, but Sawyer gets the oysters when they’re small, “the size of your little fingernail,” he says. He orders them from hatcheries in Oregon and Washington.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A few years ago, Sawyer started getting calls from those suppliers. They couldn’t fill his orders.\u003cbr>\n“They would have tens of thousands of gallons of tanks that were absolutely full of larvae. They would have the entire system die or crash,” says Sawyer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_44938\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/oysters.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-44938\" title=\"Oysters\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/oysters.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"198\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A pile of oysters being sorted at Hog Island Oyster Farm.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The hatcheries were \u003ca href=\"http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/12/study-links-raised-carbon-dioxide-levels-to-oyster-die-offs/\">filling their tanks with seawater\u003c/a> that was becoming more acidic. Scientists say the oceans are 30 percent more acidic since the start of the Industrial Revolution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The more acidic the water, the harder it is for animals like oysters to build their shells. Their shells are weaker and they grow more slowly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sawyer is raising his own oyster larvae now so he’ll have a more predictable supply. But he says there’s no question that climate change is affecting his bottom line.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We don’t know if we’re going to be able to survive the very real trending that is going on out there,\" he says. It’s a trend that could affect the entire food web.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Acidification on the California Coast\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You can see here, this is a mussel bed that’s made up of lots of California mussels,” says Eric Sanford, an ecologist with UC Davis’s Bodega Marine Lab.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The rocky point we’re standing on is covered in tightly packed, purplish mussels – what he calls the “foundation species” of the California coast. “One that really defines the whole ecosystem, sort of the way corals define a coral reef,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mussels are a key part of the food web and so are a lot of animals with shells, says oceanographer Tessa Hill. “Probably most people like the fact that we have things like whales and salmon off along our coast. Those organisms are likely to be impacted because their food source will be impacted,” Hill says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The big question is: will animals with shells be able to adapt to a more acidic future – where, in a hundred years, the oceans could be more than twice as acidic?\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_44940\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/sanford.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-44940\" title=\"SONY DSC\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/sanford.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"226\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Eric Sanford at a mussel bed near Bodega Marine Lab.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>These California mussels could help answer that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re facing the most acidic water that you’d see in the open ocean today,” says Hill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Hill explains, acidic water from the deep ocean rises to the surface on the West Coast in the spring and summer, when the wind is blowing. This upwelling makes the waters off California some of the most acidic in the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As part of \u003ca href=\"http://omegas.science.oregonstate.edu/?q=node/3\">OMEGAS\u003c/a>, a new project linking universities up and down the West Coast, researchers are asking: if organisms here have been blasted with more acidic water for generations, have they adapted to handle it?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inside their lab, Hill and Sanford show me jars full of young mussels, almost too small to see. Each jar is from a different part of the West Coast from Oregon to Santa Barbara. They’re being grown in water that reflects conditions in 2100, says Eric Sanford.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The issue we’re looking at is whether there might be genetic differences among different populations along the coast in their ability to cope with ocean acidification,” he says.\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\nFinding Genetic Tools\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We found they have lucky genes,” says Steve Palumbi, biology professor at Stanford University who is also working on the OMEGAS project. He studied populations of another shelled animal on the West Coast - sea urchins.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can think of genes like a set of tools, he says. “If you happen to have bad plumbing, you will have more plumbing tools in your house.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There have been lots of plumbing problems on the West Coast, so to speak, in the form of acidic water. “And so all these populations, urchins anyway, have had to get the toolset to deal with it,” says Palumbi.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a paper still in review, Palumbi says they found a segment of the urchin population that had around 100 genes that make them better adapted to more acidic water. That makes them more likely to survive and reproduce. (\u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDcDqULXDOE&feature=share&list=UUbf-eynjiFxUKGLFMt8KNoQ\">Check out this microdoc video\u003c/a> for more on their research).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is good news,” he says, “because these organisms have the capacity to deal with more acidification. But it’s not good news forever because all it does is give us a little breathing room. The trouble is right now, the rate at which the ocean is acidifying is way faster than it ever has before.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Organisms will evolve, he says, but probably not fast enough to keep up. In the meantime, Palumbi and other scientists are mapping where the genetically resilient mussels and urchins are on the West Coast, so policymakers can look at protecting them.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>Additional reporting by Nicholas Christen\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_24399\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 340px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-24399\" title=\"IMG_2485\" src=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/climatewatch/files/2012/09/IMG_2485.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"340\" height=\"244\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Even tomatoes can only take so much heat. A belt from Bakersfield to the northern Sacramento Valley produces a third of the nation's canning tomatoes.\" credit=\"Craig Miller / KQED\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Autumn is here, so says the calendar. Living on the coast, it might be easy to think that California escaped the heat wave suffered by much of the nation this summer. While that may be true for most of the large coastal population centers, it was a different story for much of the state's interior farm belt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Throughout June and July, even Central Valley spots escaped much of the heat felt by the Great Plains, though Cal Expo officials blamed the heat, in part, for tamping down attendance at the state fair. Then things heated up quickly -- especially in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys -- through August and into September. Valley towns including Redding, Red Bluff, Sacramento, Merced, Madera, Fresno, and Bakersfield, have been on the order of three-to-five degrees above normal for the duration of August and September.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fresno saw 27 days above normal during August and most of those days were at least three degrees above normal, a string one meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Fresno called, \"pretty amazing.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even Central Valley farmers, who are used to triple-digit days, were taken aback.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Yeah, this summer has been one of the hottest that I remember,\" said Don Cameron, who runs 7,000 acres of crops for the Terranova Ranch, southeast of Fresno. He's been farming the Valley for 30 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Our tomatoes have taken a little bit of a beating from the 110 degree weather we’ve had, but with the drip irrigation we’re able to keep them a little fresher, a little cooler when it does get hot like that.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the day we visited Cameron, the fever seemed to have broken. \"Yeah, we’re in the low 90s today,\" he snorted. \"It’s like -- like a spring day.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We had just a couple of weeks on end where we were 109, 110, 111 degrees. Just brutal. The nights don’t cool down, it’s hard on the plants, it’s hard on the people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There has been a plus side to all this.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I can remember we used to get a lot of real severe frosts during the spring growing season,\" recalled Cameron. \"I can’t remember the last time we had one that was actually a killing frost during April.\" That's created an opportunity of sorts for growers. \"We’ve been able to plant our tomatoes earlier in the year for earlier harvest, which extends the, the season for the cannery.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The roast continued well into September, bringing with it an unusual late-season streak of 90-plus-degree days in downtown Sacramento. This year could eclipse the September record of 20 days, set back in 1899.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_24410\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-large wp-image-24410\" title=\"AugTemps_Sac_NWS\" src=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/climatewatch/files/2012/09/AugTemps_Sac_NWS-620x561.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"452\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">August was more than four degrees above average in Sacramento.\" credit=\"\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>See more on how climate change is challenging California farmers on the documentary, \u003c/em>\u003ca title=\"H&H - main\" href=\"http://www.kqed.org/heatandharvest\">Heat and Harvest\u003c/a>\u003cem>. It premieres Friday evening on KQED TV.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Autumn is here, so says the calendar. Living on the coast, it might be easy to think that California escaped the heat wave suffered by much of the nation this summer. While that may be true for most of the large coastal population centers, it was a different story for much of the state's interior farm belt.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>Additional reporting by Nicholas Christen\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_24399\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 340px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-24399\" title=\"IMG_2485\" src=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/climatewatch/files/2012/09/IMG_2485.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"340\" height=\"244\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Even tomatoes can only take so much heat. A belt from Bakersfield to the northern Sacramento Valley produces a third of the nation's canning tomatoes.\" credit=\"Craig Miller / KQED\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Autumn is here, so says the calendar. Living on the coast, it might be easy to think that California escaped the heat wave suffered by much of the nation this summer. While that may be true for most of the large coastal population centers, it was a different story for much of the state's interior farm belt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Throughout June and July, even Central Valley spots escaped much of the heat felt by the Great Plains, though Cal Expo officials blamed the heat, in part, for tamping down attendance at the state fair. Then things heated up quickly -- especially in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys -- through August and into September. Valley towns including Redding, Red Bluff, Sacramento, Merced, Madera, Fresno, and Bakersfield, have been on the order of three-to-five degrees above normal for the duration of August and September.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fresno saw 27 days above normal during August and most of those days were at least three degrees above normal, a string one meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Fresno called, \"pretty amazing.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even Central Valley farmers, who are used to triple-digit days, were taken aback.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Yeah, this summer has been one of the hottest that I remember,\" said Don Cameron, who runs 7,000 acres of crops for the Terranova Ranch, southeast of Fresno. He's been farming the Valley for 30 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Our tomatoes have taken a little bit of a beating from the 110 degree weather we’ve had, but with the drip irrigation we’re able to keep them a little fresher, a little cooler when it does get hot like that.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the day we visited Cameron, the fever seemed to have broken. \"Yeah, we’re in the low 90s today,\" he snorted. \"It’s like -- like a spring day.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We had just a couple of weeks on end where we were 109, 110, 111 degrees. Just brutal. The nights don’t cool down, it’s hard on the plants, it’s hard on the people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There has been a plus side to all this.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I can remember we used to get a lot of real severe frosts during the spring growing season,\" recalled Cameron. \"I can’t remember the last time we had one that was actually a killing frost during April.\" That's created an opportunity of sorts for growers. \"We’ve been able to plant our tomatoes earlier in the year for earlier harvest, which extends the, the season for the cannery.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The roast continued well into September, bringing with it an unusual late-season streak of 90-plus-degree days in downtown Sacramento. This year could eclipse the September record of 20 days, set back in 1899.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_24410\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-large wp-image-24410\" title=\"AugTemps_Sac_NWS\" src=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/climatewatch/files/2012/09/AugTemps_Sac_NWS-620x561.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"452\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">August was more than four degrees above average in Sacramento.\" credit=\"\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>See more on how climate change is challenging California farmers on the documentary, \u003c/em>\u003ca title=\"H&H - main\" href=\"http://www.kqed.org/heatandharvest\">Heat and Harvest\u003c/a>\u003cem>. It premieres Friday evening on KQED TV.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "Heat and Harvest: Calif. Farms on a Climate Collision Course",
"title": "Heat and Harvest: Calif. Farms on a Climate Collision Course",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_44465\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 342px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/2012/09/24/heat-and-harvest-calif-farms-on-a-climate-collision-course/img_1626/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-44465\">\u003cimg class=\"size-medium wp-image-44465 \" title=\"IMG_1626\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/IMG_1626-450x253.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"342\" height=\"192\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A farm in Dixon, California. (Photo: Craig Miller)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>New pests, a shrinking water supply and rising temperatures will alter agriculture in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Heat and Harvest\u003c/em>, a \u003ca title=\"H&H - main\" href=\"http://www.kqed.org/heatandharvest\">new series\u003c/a> from KQED Science and the Center for Investigative Reporting looks at the multiple climate challenges confronting California farmers. It's no trivial matter. California's Central Valley is widely known as \"the nation's salad bowl,\" and there's more than bragging rights at stake. Ag contributes more than $30 billion a year to the state's economy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Previously, KQED has focused on efforts in the ag sector to conserve water or lower the carbon footprint. Some farmers are trying new technologies, others are experimenting with renewable energy. But meeting climate challenges on multiple fronts will, for some farmers and ranchers, be a matter of survival.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here are links to some previous reporting from \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/climatewatch/\">KQED's \u003cem>Climate Watch\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, from ag's potential role in California's emerging cap-and-trade program for carbon emissions, to innovation on the renewable energy front and new conflicts over land use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/climatewatch/2012/09/07/planting-the-seeds-for-greener-farms/\">Planting the Seeds for Greener Farms\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nSupporters of sustainable agriculture are looking forward to some “sustenance” of their own, after an eleventh-hour win in Sacramento. The new bills lays out an approach for ensuring that all proceeds from the sale of cap-and-trade permits be used to further reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Among the eligible activities listed in the bill are farming and ranching practices that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and sequester carbon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/climatewatch/2012/07/17/satellites-helping-save-water-on-california-farms/\">Satellites Help Save Water on California Farms\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nEngineers at NASA and CSU Monterey Bay are developing an online tool that can estimate how much water a farm's field might need. Satellites orbiting the earth take high-resolution pictures which are combined with on-the-ground data from farms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/climatewatch/2012/01/03/can-solar-and-farming-make-good-neighbors/\">Making Hay While the Sun Shines: A Flap over Solar Panels in Farm Country\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nSun and open land make the San Joaquin Valley ideal for growing crops. But they're also attracting an increasing number of large-scale solar power developers to the region. And that's generating debate over whether farming the sun is really farming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/climatewatch/2011/08/24/another-renewable-energy-frontier-farm-biomass/\">Making Renewable Energy from Farm Waste\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nCalifornia is just a few votes away from changing the rules to allow farmers to connect machines that create bioenergy to the electrical grid, a privilege that has thus far been reserved for farm-generated wind and solar energy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/climatewatch/2012/01/26/new-map-for-gardeners-wont-help-californias-green-thumbs/\">New Map for Gardeners Won’t Help California’s Green Thumbs\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>It’s been more than two decades since the U.S. Department of Agriculture updated its Plant Hardiness Zones Map, used by gardeners across the country to determine what will grow in their yards. The new GIS-enabled map unveiled this week is a boost to people who live in places that get a lot of cold weather and may be seeing slightly warmer average winters now. Despite the new level of detail in the map, gardeners in California and the Bay Area in particular, won’t learn much from it.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_44465\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 342px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/2012/09/24/heat-and-harvest-calif-farms-on-a-climate-collision-course/img_1626/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-44465\">\u003cimg class=\"size-medium wp-image-44465 \" title=\"IMG_1626\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/IMG_1626-450x253.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"342\" height=\"192\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A farm in Dixon, California. (Photo: Craig Miller)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>New pests, a shrinking water supply and rising temperatures will alter agriculture in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Heat and Harvest\u003c/em>, a \u003ca title=\"H&H - main\" href=\"http://www.kqed.org/heatandharvest\">new series\u003c/a> from KQED Science and the Center for Investigative Reporting looks at the multiple climate challenges confronting California farmers. It's no trivial matter. California's Central Valley is widely known as \"the nation's salad bowl,\" and there's more than bragging rights at stake. Ag contributes more than $30 billion a year to the state's economy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Previously, KQED has focused on efforts in the ag sector to conserve water or lower the carbon footprint. Some farmers are trying new technologies, others are experimenting with renewable energy. But meeting climate challenges on multiple fronts will, for some farmers and ranchers, be a matter of survival.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here are links to some previous reporting from \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/climatewatch/\">KQED's \u003cem>Climate Watch\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, from ag's potential role in California's emerging cap-and-trade program for carbon emissions, to innovation on the renewable energy front and new conflicts over land use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/climatewatch/2012/09/07/planting-the-seeds-for-greener-farms/\">Planting the Seeds for Greener Farms\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nSupporters of sustainable agriculture are looking forward to some “sustenance” of their own, after an eleventh-hour win in Sacramento. The new bills lays out an approach for ensuring that all proceeds from the sale of cap-and-trade permits be used to further reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Among the eligible activities listed in the bill are farming and ranching practices that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and sequester carbon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/climatewatch/2012/07/17/satellites-helping-save-water-on-california-farms/\">Satellites Help Save Water on California Farms\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nEngineers at NASA and CSU Monterey Bay are developing an online tool that can estimate how much water a farm's field might need. Satellites orbiting the earth take high-resolution pictures which are combined with on-the-ground data from farms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/climatewatch/2012/01/03/can-solar-and-farming-make-good-neighbors/\">Making Hay While the Sun Shines: A Flap over Solar Panels in Farm Country\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nSun and open land make the San Joaquin Valley ideal for growing crops. But they're also attracting an increasing number of large-scale solar power developers to the region. And that's generating debate over whether farming the sun is really farming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/climatewatch/2011/08/24/another-renewable-energy-frontier-farm-biomass/\">Making Renewable Energy from Farm Waste\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nCalifornia is just a few votes away from changing the rules to allow farmers to connect machines that create bioenergy to the electrical grid, a privilege that has thus far been reserved for farm-generated wind and solar energy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/climatewatch/2012/01/26/new-map-for-gardeners-wont-help-californias-green-thumbs/\">New Map for Gardeners Won’t Help California’s Green Thumbs\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>It’s been more than two decades since the U.S. Department of Agriculture updated its Plant Hardiness Zones Map, used by gardeners across the country to determine what will grow in their yards. The new GIS-enabled map unveiled this week is a boost to people who live in places that get a lot of cold weather and may be seeing slightly warmer average winters now. Despite the new level of detail in the map, gardeners in California and the Bay Area in particular, won’t learn much from it.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "Heat, Salt and Pests Threaten California Fields",
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"content": "\u003cp>http://www.kqed.org/.stream/anon/radio/quest/2012/09/2012-09-24-quest.mp3\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/IMG_24291-e1348179997154.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-44525\" title=\"tomatoes\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/IMG_24291-e1348179997154.jpg\" alt=\"tomatoes\" width=\"639\" height=\"359\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/IMG_24291-e1348179997154.jpg 639w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/IMG_24291-e1348179997154-400x225.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 639px) 100vw, 639px\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This summer, while the media was full of images of desiccated corn stalks in the Midwest, climate change was quietly creeping up on the California farm belt. The effects of rising temperatures, encroaching pests and shrinking water supplies are all showing up in California fields, threatening a $30 billion-dollar industry and putting pressure on produce prices.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now those concerns — and some possible solutions — are explored in a new documentary, \u003ca href=\"http://ow.ly/dSjxu\">Heat and Harvest,\u003c/a> co-reported by \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/quest/author/cmiller/\">KQED Science Editor Craig Miller \u003c/a>and \u003ca href=\"http://californiawatch.org/user/mark-schapiro\">Mark Schapiro of the Center for Investigative Reporting\u003c/a>, whose forthcoming book examines the financial costs of America’s carbon footprint. In this conversation, the two compare notes from their reporting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MARK SCHAPIRO: Let's remember, farmers are the ones who experience climate change most directly of all of us. So the extraordinary heat — really the volatility of the heat when it's showing up at different times — has had a major impact on the types of crops being grown.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CRAIG MILLER: Yeah, a lot of people think about the nice warm, consistent growing climate that California has. But I think what a lot of people don't realize is that many crops need some relief from that warmth and heat, in order to develop properly, right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MS: Yes, that was interesting. I certainly didn't expect, when I was reporting, to find that cherries, for example, are extremely sensitive to climactic conditions. They need to get cold in the winter so that they can kind of hibernate, and preserve their energy for when they blossom. Well, we've been seeing less of that chill factor here in the state of California. We've also been seeing less fog.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CM: …in the inland areas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MS: In the inland areas, you know, we're talking about the Central Valley. And so you've seen pretty significant drop-offs in cherry production\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CM: And also what we're seeing are some of the indirect effects of temperatures on crops, such as what turned up in our reporting on a tiny little bug called the psyllid, which is making its home in California's potato and tomato fields, and can do enormous damage, as John Trumble, an entomologist at UC Riverside told us:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\"The losses in San Diego County alone were about 85% of total productivity in 2004-2005; the losses were substantial. They were so large in Mexico, and Baja in particular, that they began planting tomatoes in screen houses, instead of large thousands-of-acre fields.\"\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MS: What are these, bugs that are more accustomed to warmer climates somewhere else in the world?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CM: Yeah, the psyllids have always been in California at least part time. They would move up from Mexico; in the case of California, they're coming from Baja, basically. They would move into California during the summer season, and then retreat during the winters. But researchers at UC Riverside found just a few years ago, all of the sudden, they're not retreating anymore. They're staying over the winter. And because they're staying here during the winter, they can start a lot earlier and do a lot more damage. And they're being found farther and farther North all the time. They've been found in Northern California, and even up in Idaho, which of course is big-time potato country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I think we all know that water is becoming a bigger and bigger issue in California, particularly for agriculture, but there's this interesting connection with salt. Talk about that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MS: Right, remember that the Central Valley is built on top of what used to be the ocean, and like, 2 million years ago you'd go surfing in Modesto [both laugh]. So, that salt is at rest deep inside the aquifer. All those years of pumping ground water has brought huge amounts of salt to the surface, which they used to drain with water. So number one, you have an increasing problem with salt, and you have farmers who are utilizing water with salt that is actually hurting their plants. We talk about that in the documentary; we show farmers whose crops have been directly impacted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CM: Almonds, in particular - another huge crop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MS: Right, right. And two, you have the rising sea level. So, remember: climate change, rising sea level, could be as much as a foot-and-a-half by 2050, according to the National Academy of Sciences. And all of that saltwater coming into the Delta…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CM: …pushing back on it, basically.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MS: Exactly. What you've got is the state of California now committing huge amounts of its freshwater — that precious freshwater, the water that actually does come out of the mountains —is used to actually push back the salt water in the Sacramento delta to prevent it from coming down into the Central Valley. So, as a result, you have two things happening with water: One, less is falling as snow, so it's not preserved in the mountains in a big reservoir, and two, huge amounts of that freshwater is needed to hold back the rising sea.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CM: Did you get the sense, in your reporting, that there are solutions out there for these problems, or not yet?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MS: Uh, good question, I mean basically look, the overall solution is going to be to slow the rate of climate change. That is the overall big solution that you cannot get around.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CM: Right, reducing the carbon footprint.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MS: Reducing the carbon footprint. Short of that, you have scientists who are trying to develop new crop varieties that are more resistant to salt, more resistant to heat, and don’t need as much chill. And these are efforts. We visited one of the nurseries, I know you've talked to some of the scientists involved in the pest department--so they're trying very hard to kind of adapt to this circumstance. We'll see how effective that is, really.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>See and hear more about all of the issues discussed here in the documentary, \u003cstrong>Heat and Harvest\u003c/strong>, which premieres Friday, September 28, on KQED TV, at 7:30 pm.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>http://www.kqed.org/.stream/anon/radio/quest/2012/09/2012-09-24-quest.mp3\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/IMG_24291-e1348179997154.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-44525\" title=\"tomatoes\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/IMG_24291-e1348179997154.jpg\" alt=\"tomatoes\" width=\"639\" height=\"359\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/IMG_24291-e1348179997154.jpg 639w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/IMG_24291-e1348179997154-400x225.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 639px) 100vw, 639px\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This summer, while the media was full of images of desiccated corn stalks in the Midwest, climate change was quietly creeping up on the California farm belt. The effects of rising temperatures, encroaching pests and shrinking water supplies are all showing up in California fields, threatening a $30 billion-dollar industry and putting pressure on produce prices.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now those concerns — and some possible solutions — are explored in a new documentary, \u003ca href=\"http://ow.ly/dSjxu\">Heat and Harvest,\u003c/a> co-reported by \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/quest/author/cmiller/\">KQED Science Editor Craig Miller \u003c/a>and \u003ca href=\"http://californiawatch.org/user/mark-schapiro\">Mark Schapiro of the Center for Investigative Reporting\u003c/a>, whose forthcoming book examines the financial costs of America’s carbon footprint. In this conversation, the two compare notes from their reporting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MARK SCHAPIRO: Let's remember, farmers are the ones who experience climate change most directly of all of us. So the extraordinary heat — really the volatility of the heat when it's showing up at different times — has had a major impact on the types of crops being grown.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CRAIG MILLER: Yeah, a lot of people think about the nice warm, consistent growing climate that California has. But I think what a lot of people don't realize is that many crops need some relief from that warmth and heat, in order to develop properly, right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MS: Yes, that was interesting. I certainly didn't expect, when I was reporting, to find that cherries, for example, are extremely sensitive to climactic conditions. They need to get cold in the winter so that they can kind of hibernate, and preserve their energy for when they blossom. Well, we've been seeing less of that chill factor here in the state of California. We've also been seeing less fog.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CM: …in the inland areas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MS: In the inland areas, you know, we're talking about the Central Valley. And so you've seen pretty significant drop-offs in cherry production\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CM: And also what we're seeing are some of the indirect effects of temperatures on crops, such as what turned up in our reporting on a tiny little bug called the psyllid, which is making its home in California's potato and tomato fields, and can do enormous damage, as John Trumble, an entomologist at UC Riverside told us:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\"The losses in San Diego County alone were about 85% of total productivity in 2004-2005; the losses were substantial. They were so large in Mexico, and Baja in particular, that they began planting tomatoes in screen houses, instead of large thousands-of-acre fields.\"\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MS: What are these, bugs that are more accustomed to warmer climates somewhere else in the world?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CM: Yeah, the psyllids have always been in California at least part time. They would move up from Mexico; in the case of California, they're coming from Baja, basically. They would move into California during the summer season, and then retreat during the winters. But researchers at UC Riverside found just a few years ago, all of the sudden, they're not retreating anymore. They're staying over the winter. And because they're staying here during the winter, they can start a lot earlier and do a lot more damage. And they're being found farther and farther North all the time. They've been found in Northern California, and even up in Idaho, which of course is big-time potato country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I think we all know that water is becoming a bigger and bigger issue in California, particularly for agriculture, but there's this interesting connection with salt. Talk about that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MS: Right, remember that the Central Valley is built on top of what used to be the ocean, and like, 2 million years ago you'd go surfing in Modesto [both laugh]. So, that salt is at rest deep inside the aquifer. All those years of pumping ground water has brought huge amounts of salt to the surface, which they used to drain with water. So number one, you have an increasing problem with salt, and you have farmers who are utilizing water with salt that is actually hurting their plants. We talk about that in the documentary; we show farmers whose crops have been directly impacted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CM: Almonds, in particular - another huge crop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MS: Right, right. And two, you have the rising sea level. So, remember: climate change, rising sea level, could be as much as a foot-and-a-half by 2050, according to the National Academy of Sciences. And all of that saltwater coming into the Delta…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CM: …pushing back on it, basically.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MS: Exactly. What you've got is the state of California now committing huge amounts of its freshwater — that precious freshwater, the water that actually does come out of the mountains —is used to actually push back the salt water in the Sacramento delta to prevent it from coming down into the Central Valley. So, as a result, you have two things happening with water: One, less is falling as snow, so it's not preserved in the mountains in a big reservoir, and two, huge amounts of that freshwater is needed to hold back the rising sea.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CM: Did you get the sense, in your reporting, that there are solutions out there for these problems, or not yet?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MS: Uh, good question, I mean basically look, the overall solution is going to be to slow the rate of climate change. That is the overall big solution that you cannot get around.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CM: Right, reducing the carbon footprint.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MS: Reducing the carbon footprint. 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"disqusTitle": "California's Prop. 37: Are GMO Labels a Scarlet Letter?",
"title": "California's Prop. 37: Are GMO Labels a Scarlet Letter?",
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"content": "\u003cp>Proposition 37 could make California the first state in the country to require labels on foods made with genetically-modified ingredients. It’s shaping up to be one of the most contentious -- and certainly the most expensive -- battles on the state’s November ballot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On one side are organic food groups that have spent about $3 million in support of the labeling law. On the other are biotech firms like Monsanto, and food giants like Pepsi, Sara Lee, and General Mills, which have contributed upwards of $28 million to try and keep GMO labels off food packages.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If Proposition 37 passes, you’ll see a change in nearly every part of the grocery store.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Take the cereal aisle, where Stacy Malkan with the \"Yes on 37\" campaign recently picked up a box of granola and pointed to the ingredients panel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Many of these products have corn syrup, cornstarch, sugar beets, and soy products that are genetically engineered,\" she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the United States, up to 90 percent of those foods are grown from seeds that have been genetically modified. Scientists made changes in the plants’ DNA to make the crop, for example, resist pests, or stay fresh longer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Malkan thinks that's something consumers should know about.\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\nWould labels inform people? Or scare them?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It's not a warning sticker,” she says. “[it’s not] a skull and crossbones or anything. It's literally just a few words added to existing labels, just indicating [the food was] partially produced with genetic engineering.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But to the \"No On 37\" camp, there is nothing benign about a label.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Take, for instance, Kent Bradford, a professor of plant science at the University of California, Davis, and director of its Seed Biotechnology Center.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bradford's team works with, among other plants, lettuce.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_43645\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 450px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/Bradford_scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-medium wp-image-43645\" title=\"Bradford_scaled\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/Bradford_scaled-450x253.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"450\" height=\"253\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kent Bradford directs UC Davis's Seed Biotechnology Center\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>California supplies 80 percent of the nation's lettuce. But growers here, he says, increasingly find themselves at odds with a fact of nature.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lettuce, he says, evolved for a Mediterranean climate. Its seeds lay dormant when it’s hot, and germinate when it rains.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it’s getting hotter here in California. And farmers want to be able to grow lettuce year-round, not just when it rains. So Bradford’s team is developing a new kind of lettuce seed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He points to several strands of straggly, stringy lettuce. At this overgrown stage, it's not appetizing-looking produce. But Bradford says these plants could help farmers adapt to a changing climate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"What we've identified here is if we turn off this one gene, it eliminates that mechanism of inability to germinate at high temperature,\" he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>GM isn't an ingredient, it's a technology \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Part of what bothers Bradford about Proposition 37 is that genetic modification isn’t an ingredient, like saturated fat. It's a technology, one capable of creating countless variations on nature, some of them potentially very useful.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_43644\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/Lettuce_scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-43644\" title=\"Lettuce_scaled\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/Lettuce_scaled-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Genetically-engineered lettuce can sprout in a hot, dry climate.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\"You wouldn't want to label a screwdriver as dangerous just because someone might poke it through their hand or something.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bradford fears that if Prop 37 passes, consumers will regard those GMO label as a scarlet letter, a signal that the entire technology is flawed and dangerous.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Why would they be putting this on the label if it weren’t something I should be concerned about?\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Indeed, that's the question many consumers have about genetically modified foods: Are they safe?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Is GM safe? Grappling with a scarcity of science\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unfortunately, the body of peer-reviewed research on GM foods is tiny, consisting of a handful of small studies done on mice. Some of these studies suggest possible links to immune-system impairment and other problems. Compared to the amount of research done on, for instance, BPA, it's a drop in the bucket.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Both the American Medical Association and the FDA say that genetically-modified foods are safe to eat and do not need to be labeled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Prop. 37 advocates and critics of GM foods say the fact that the science is nascent only underscores the need for greater regulation and labeling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They say the process of genetic engineering can be imprecise, and that plant scientists may not always know the full, long-term implications of the crops they develop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"The jury is still out on the health effects,\" says Yes on 37's Stacy Malkan. \"And in many ways, the evidence hasn’t even been presented.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Such concerns are widespread in Europe, where GM labeling is mandatory. But that's also increasingly the case in California, where a recent poll found 65 percent of voters planning to support Prop. 37.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here in the states, at least, it wasn't always this way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>We've been here before: The lesson of the Flavr Savr tomato \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Belinda Martineau was a plant scientist at the Davis-based biotech firm Calgene in the late 1980s and early 90s. She was part of the team that helped invent the Flavr Savr tomato, the world’s first commercially-available genetically modified whole food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Martineau says she and others at Calgene weren't sure how the Flavr Savr was going to go over with the public.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Jurassic Park came out while we were readying the tomato for the marketplace,\" she recalls. \"We were worried about it. We were worried about the public’s perception.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_43663\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 315px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/Martineau.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-medium wp-image-43663\" title=\"Martineau\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/Martineau-315x253.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"315\" height=\"253\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Belinda Martineau helped develop the Flavr Savr tomato\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>So Calgene made a choice: total transparency. The Flavr Savr wasn’t just labeled, it came with a brochure shaped like a tomato.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It actually explained the genetic engineering technology in lay terms that people could understand,\" \"And it had a 1-800 number, in case people wanted to learn more.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>No laws required that Calgene label the tomato. Martineau says the company wanted to label the Flavr Savr because they were proud of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\"We wanted to be transparent\"\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We believed in what we were doing. We thought if we were careful about it, and transparent, that we could convince the public that they should be as enthusiastic about it as we were.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And shoppers were enthusiastic. In Davis, where Martineau lives, Flavr Savrs flew off the shelves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"They had a policy at the local IGA that you could only purchase two Flavr Savor tomatoes per person, per day,\" says Martineau. \"How they kept track of that, I don't know.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What ultimately killed the Flavr Savr wasn't the public’s fear of genetic engineering. It was the technology itself. Flavr Savrs didn’t taste better than regular tomatoes and they were too difficult to transport.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Martineau, there’s a lesson here. Not labeling, she says, makes the industry look like it has something to hide. She believes labeling is an opportunity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"This is one of the best ways the industry can turn public opinion around, is to be honest, to be transparent. And to come out and be proud of their products.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If Proposition 37 passes on November 6, the question is whether the public will see those labels the same way Martineau does.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Proposition 37 could make California the first state in the country to require \"Made with GMO\" labels on genetically-engineered foods. But would the labels inform people? Or scare them? ",
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"description": "Proposition 37 could make California the first state in the country to require "Made with GMO" labels on genetically-engineered foods. But would the labels inform people? Or scare them? ",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Proposition 37 could make California the first state in the country to require labels on foods made with genetically-modified ingredients. It’s shaping up to be one of the most contentious -- and certainly the most expensive -- battles on the state’s November ballot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On one side are organic food groups that have spent about $3 million in support of the labeling law. On the other are biotech firms like Monsanto, and food giants like Pepsi, Sara Lee, and General Mills, which have contributed upwards of $28 million to try and keep GMO labels off food packages.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If Proposition 37 passes, you’ll see a change in nearly every part of the grocery store.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Take the cereal aisle, where Stacy Malkan with the \"Yes on 37\" campaign recently picked up a box of granola and pointed to the ingredients panel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Many of these products have corn syrup, cornstarch, sugar beets, and soy products that are genetically engineered,\" she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the United States, up to 90 percent of those foods are grown from seeds that have been genetically modified. Scientists made changes in the plants’ DNA to make the crop, for example, resist pests, or stay fresh longer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Malkan thinks that's something consumers should know about.\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\nWould labels inform people? Or scare them?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It's not a warning sticker,” she says. “[it’s not] a skull and crossbones or anything. It's literally just a few words added to existing labels, just indicating [the food was] partially produced with genetic engineering.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But to the \"No On 37\" camp, there is nothing benign about a label.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Take, for instance, Kent Bradford, a professor of plant science at the University of California, Davis, and director of its Seed Biotechnology Center.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bradford's team works with, among other plants, lettuce.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_43645\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 450px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/Bradford_scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-medium wp-image-43645\" title=\"Bradford_scaled\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/Bradford_scaled-450x253.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"450\" height=\"253\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kent Bradford directs UC Davis's Seed Biotechnology Center\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>California supplies 80 percent of the nation's lettuce. But growers here, he says, increasingly find themselves at odds with a fact of nature.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lettuce, he says, evolved for a Mediterranean climate. Its seeds lay dormant when it’s hot, and germinate when it rains.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it’s getting hotter here in California. And farmers want to be able to grow lettuce year-round, not just when it rains. So Bradford’s team is developing a new kind of lettuce seed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He points to several strands of straggly, stringy lettuce. At this overgrown stage, it's not appetizing-looking produce. But Bradford says these plants could help farmers adapt to a changing climate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"What we've identified here is if we turn off this one gene, it eliminates that mechanism of inability to germinate at high temperature,\" he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>GM isn't an ingredient, it's a technology \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Part of what bothers Bradford about Proposition 37 is that genetic modification isn’t an ingredient, like saturated fat. It's a technology, one capable of creating countless variations on nature, some of them potentially very useful.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_43644\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/Lettuce_scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-43644\" title=\"Lettuce_scaled\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/Lettuce_scaled-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Genetically-engineered lettuce can sprout in a hot, dry climate.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\"You wouldn't want to label a screwdriver as dangerous just because someone might poke it through their hand or something.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bradford fears that if Prop 37 passes, consumers will regard those GMO label as a scarlet letter, a signal that the entire technology is flawed and dangerous.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Why would they be putting this on the label if it weren’t something I should be concerned about?\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Indeed, that's the question many consumers have about genetically modified foods: Are they safe?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Is GM safe? Grappling with a scarcity of science\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unfortunately, the body of peer-reviewed research on GM foods is tiny, consisting of a handful of small studies done on mice. Some of these studies suggest possible links to immune-system impairment and other problems. Compared to the amount of research done on, for instance, BPA, it's a drop in the bucket.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Both the American Medical Association and the FDA say that genetically-modified foods are safe to eat and do not need to be labeled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Prop. 37 advocates and critics of GM foods say the fact that the science is nascent only underscores the need for greater regulation and labeling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They say the process of genetic engineering can be imprecise, and that plant scientists may not always know the full, long-term implications of the crops they develop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"The jury is still out on the health effects,\" says Yes on 37's Stacy Malkan. \"And in many ways, the evidence hasn’t even been presented.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Such concerns are widespread in Europe, where GM labeling is mandatory. But that's also increasingly the case in California, where a recent poll found 65 percent of voters planning to support Prop. 37.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here in the states, at least, it wasn't always this way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>We've been here before: The lesson of the Flavr Savr tomato \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Belinda Martineau was a plant scientist at the Davis-based biotech firm Calgene in the late 1980s and early 90s. She was part of the team that helped invent the Flavr Savr tomato, the world’s first commercially-available genetically modified whole food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Martineau says she and others at Calgene weren't sure how the Flavr Savr was going to go over with the public.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Jurassic Park came out while we were readying the tomato for the marketplace,\" she recalls. \"We were worried about it. We were worried about the public’s perception.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_43663\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 315px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/Martineau.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-medium wp-image-43663\" title=\"Martineau\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/09/Martineau-315x253.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"315\" height=\"253\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Belinda Martineau helped develop the Flavr Savr tomato\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>So Calgene made a choice: total transparency. The Flavr Savr wasn’t just labeled, it came with a brochure shaped like a tomato.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It actually explained the genetic engineering technology in lay terms that people could understand,\" \"And it had a 1-800 number, in case people wanted to learn more.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>No laws required that Calgene label the tomato. Martineau says the company wanted to label the Flavr Savr because they were proud of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\"We wanted to be transparent\"\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We believed in what we were doing. We thought if we were careful about it, and transparent, that we could convince the public that they should be as enthusiastic about it as we were.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And shoppers were enthusiastic. In Davis, where Martineau lives, Flavr Savrs flew off the shelves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"They had a policy at the local IGA that you could only purchase two Flavr Savor tomatoes per person, per day,\" says Martineau. \"How they kept track of that, I don't know.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What ultimately killed the Flavr Savr wasn't the public’s fear of genetic engineering. It was the technology itself. Flavr Savrs didn’t taste better than regular tomatoes and they were too difficult to transport.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Martineau, there’s a lesson here. Not labeling, she says, makes the industry look like it has something to hide. She believes labeling is an opportunity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"This is one of the best ways the industry can turn public opinion around, is to be honest, to be transparent. And to come out and be proud of their products.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If Proposition 37 passes on November 6, the question is whether the public will see those labels the same way Martineau does.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "Is Organic Food Better For Consumers' Health? – 9/4 KQED Science News Roundup",
"title": "Is Organic Food Better For Consumers' Health? – 9/4 KQED Science News Roundup",
"headTitle": "QUEST | KQED Science",
"content": "\u003cp>Here's today's roundup of science, nature and environment news from the Bay Area and beyond.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv>\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly\">News from The Associated PressWASHINGTON (AP) -- Patient after patient asked: Is eating organic food, which costs more, really better for me? Unsure, Stanford University doctors dug through reams of research to find out - and concluded there's little evidence that going organic is much healthier, citing only a few differences involving pesticides and antibiotics.\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly-clear\">\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"embedly-powered\" style=\"float: right\">\u003ca title=\"Powered by Embedly\" href=\"http://embed.ly?src=anywhere\" target=\"_blank\">\u003cimg src=\"//static.embed.ly/images/logos/embedly-powered-small-light.png\" alt=\"Embedly Powered\">\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"media-attribution\">\u003cspan>via \u003c/span>\u003ca class=\"media-attribution-link\" href=\"http://hosted.ap.org\" target=\"_blank\">Ap\u003c/a>\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly-clear\">\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv>\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly\">\u003cimg class=\"thumb embedly-thumbnail-small\" src=\"http://www.kcet.org/news/rewire/assets_c/2012/08/Capitol-HDR-Sacramento-8-31-12-thumb-autox100-35314.jpeg\" alt=\"\">\u003ca class=\"embedly-title\" href=\"http://ow.ly/dseNd\">Solar Bills Pass California Legislature | Government | ReWire | KCET\u003c/a>Three bills designed to make it easier for Californians to join the solar world passed the California legislature this week. Though fairly technical in nature, the bills streamline and simplify the process of hooking up to solar power generation for California residents and businesses.\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly-clear\">\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"embedly-powered\" style=\"float: right\">\u003ca title=\"Powered by Embedly\" href=\"http://embed.ly?src=anywhere\" target=\"_blank\">\u003cimg src=\"//static.embed.ly/images/logos/embedly-powered-small-light.png\" alt=\"Embedly Powered\">\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"media-attribution\">\u003cspan>via \u003c/span>\u003ca class=\"media-attribution-link\" href=\"http://www.kcet.org\" target=\"_blank\">Kcet\u003c/a>\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly-clear\">\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv>\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly\">News from The Associated PressPASADENA, Calif. (AP) -- Thirty-five years after leaving Earth, Voyager 1 is reaching for the stars. Sooner or later, the workhorse spacecraft will bid adieu to the solar system and enter a new realm of space - the first time a manmade object will have escaped to the other side.\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly-clear\">\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"embedly-powered\" style=\"float: right\">\u003ca title=\"Powered by Embedly\" href=\"http://embed.ly?src=anywhere\" target=\"_blank\">\u003cimg src=\"//static.embed.ly/images/logos/embedly-powered-small-light.png\" alt=\"Embedly Powered\">\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"media-attribution\">\u003cspan>via \u003c/span>\u003ca class=\"media-attribution-link\" href=\"http://hosted.ap.org\" target=\"_blank\">Ap\u003c/a>\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly-clear\">\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv>\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly\">\u003cimg class=\"thumb embedly-thumbnail-small\" src=\"http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/common/icons/t_wb_75.gif\" alt=\"\">\u003ca class=\"embedly-title\" href=\"http://ow.ly/dsfWK\">New Tick-Borne Heartland Virus Has Scientists Puzzled\u003c/a>For a year and a half, scientists have been swarming over a 100-acre farm in northwestern Missouri, catching ticks and drawing blood from raccoons, possums, turkeys and deer. \"They even bled my horses, and my dogs and cats,\" the owner of the farm said. \"They got to looking at me, and I said, 'I already gave.'\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly-clear\">\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"embedly-powered\" style=\"float: right\">\u003ca title=\"Powered by Embedly\" href=\"http://embed.ly?src=anywhere\" target=\"_blank\">\u003cimg src=\"//static.embed.ly/images/logos/embedly-powered-small-light.png\" alt=\"Embedly Powered\">\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"media-attribution\">\u003cspan>via \u003c/span>\u003ca class=\"media-attribution-link\" href=\"http://www.nytimes.com\" target=\"_blank\">Nytimes\u003c/a>\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly-clear\">\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv>\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly\">\u003ca class=\"embedly-title\" href=\"http://ow.ly/dsgPq\">UK paraplegic woman first to take robotic suit home\u003c/a>LONDON (Reuters) - A British woman paralyzed from the chest down by a horse riding accident has become the first person to take home a robotic exoskeleton that enables her to walk. Although bionic exoskeletons have been used in hospitals and rehabilitation centers, Claire Lomas is the first to take the ReWalk suit home for everyday use.\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly-clear\">\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"embedly-powered\" style=\"float: right\">\u003ca title=\"Powered by Embedly\" href=\"http://embed.ly?src=anywhere\" target=\"_blank\">\u003cimg src=\"//static.embed.ly/images/logos/embedly-powered-small-light.png\" alt=\"Embedly Powered\">\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"media-attribution\">\u003cspan>via \u003c/span>\u003ca class=\"media-attribution-link\" href=\"http://www.reuters.com\" target=\"_blank\">Reuters\u003c/a>\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly-clear\">\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Here's today's roundup of science, nature and environment news from the Bay Area and beyond.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv>\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly\">News from The Associated PressWASHINGTON (AP) -- Patient after patient asked: Is eating organic food, which costs more, really better for me? Unsure, Stanford University doctors dug through reams of research to find out - and concluded there's little evidence that going organic is much healthier, citing only a few differences involving pesticides and antibiotics.\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly-clear\">\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"embedly-powered\" style=\"float: right\">\u003ca title=\"Powered by Embedly\" href=\"http://embed.ly?src=anywhere\" target=\"_blank\">\u003cimg src=\"//static.embed.ly/images/logos/embedly-powered-small-light.png\" alt=\"Embedly Powered\">\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"media-attribution\">\u003cspan>via \u003c/span>\u003ca class=\"media-attribution-link\" href=\"http://hosted.ap.org\" target=\"_blank\">Ap\u003c/a>\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly-clear\">\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv>\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly\">\u003cimg class=\"thumb embedly-thumbnail-small\" src=\"http://www.kcet.org/news/rewire/assets_c/2012/08/Capitol-HDR-Sacramento-8-31-12-thumb-autox100-35314.jpeg\" alt=\"\">\u003ca class=\"embedly-title\" href=\"http://ow.ly/dseNd\">Solar Bills Pass California Legislature | Government | ReWire | KCET\u003c/a>Three bills designed to make it easier for Californians to join the solar world passed the California legislature this week. Though fairly technical in nature, the bills streamline and simplify the process of hooking up to solar power generation for California residents and businesses.\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly-clear\">\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"embedly-powered\" style=\"float: right\">\u003ca title=\"Powered by Embedly\" href=\"http://embed.ly?src=anywhere\" target=\"_blank\">\u003cimg src=\"//static.embed.ly/images/logos/embedly-powered-small-light.png\" alt=\"Embedly Powered\">\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"media-attribution\">\u003cspan>via \u003c/span>\u003ca class=\"media-attribution-link\" href=\"http://www.kcet.org\" target=\"_blank\">Kcet\u003c/a>\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly-clear\">\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv>\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly\">News from The Associated PressPASADENA, Calif. (AP) -- Thirty-five years after leaving Earth, Voyager 1 is reaching for the stars. Sooner or later, the workhorse spacecraft will bid adieu to the solar system and enter a new realm of space - the first time a manmade object will have escaped to the other side.\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly-clear\">\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"embedly-powered\" style=\"float: right\">\u003ca title=\"Powered by Embedly\" href=\"http://embed.ly?src=anywhere\" target=\"_blank\">\u003cimg src=\"//static.embed.ly/images/logos/embedly-powered-small-light.png\" alt=\"Embedly Powered\">\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"media-attribution\">\u003cspan>via \u003c/span>\u003ca class=\"media-attribution-link\" href=\"http://hosted.ap.org\" target=\"_blank\">Ap\u003c/a>\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly-clear\">\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv>\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly\">\u003cimg class=\"thumb embedly-thumbnail-small\" src=\"http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/common/icons/t_wb_75.gif\" alt=\"\">\u003ca class=\"embedly-title\" href=\"http://ow.ly/dsfWK\">New Tick-Borne Heartland Virus Has Scientists Puzzled\u003c/a>For a year and a half, scientists have been swarming over a 100-acre farm in northwestern Missouri, catching ticks and drawing blood from raccoons, possums, turkeys and deer. \"They even bled my horses, and my dogs and cats,\" the owner of the farm said. \"They got to looking at me, and I said, 'I already gave.'\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly-clear\">\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"embedly-powered\" style=\"float: right\">\u003ca title=\"Powered by Embedly\" href=\"http://embed.ly?src=anywhere\" target=\"_blank\">\u003cimg src=\"//static.embed.ly/images/logos/embedly-powered-small-light.png\" alt=\"Embedly Powered\">\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"media-attribution\">\u003cspan>via \u003c/span>\u003ca class=\"media-attribution-link\" href=\"http://www.nytimes.com\" target=\"_blank\">Nytimes\u003c/a>\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly-clear\">\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv>\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly\">\u003ca class=\"embedly-title\" href=\"http://ow.ly/dsgPq\">UK paraplegic woman first to take robotic suit home\u003c/a>LONDON (Reuters) - A British woman paralyzed from the chest down by a horse riding accident has become the first person to take home a robotic exoskeleton that enables her to walk. Although bionic exoskeletons have been used in hospitals and rehabilitation centers, Claire Lomas is the first to take the ReWalk suit home for everyday use.\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly-clear\">\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"embedly-powered\" style=\"float: right\">\u003ca title=\"Powered by Embedly\" href=\"http://embed.ly?src=anywhere\" target=\"_blank\">\u003cimg src=\"//static.embed.ly/images/logos/embedly-powered-small-light.png\" alt=\"Embedly Powered\">\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"media-attribution\">\u003cspan>via \u003c/span>\u003ca class=\"media-attribution-link\" href=\"http://www.reuters.com\" target=\"_blank\">Reuters\u003c/a>\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly-clear\">\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"disqusTitle": "Starbucks' Food Waste Fuels Experimental Biorefinery",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_43050\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/2012/08/29/starbucks-food-waste-fuels-experimental-biorefinery/starbucks/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-43050\">\u003cimg class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-43050\" title=\"starbucks\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/08/starbucks-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"starbucks pastry\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Leftover pastries and coffee grounds from Starbucks could be turned into precursors to plastic. Credit: {link url=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/andreanna/4468677088/\"}Andreanna Moya Photography/Flickr{/link}\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>An experimental biorefinery turns spent coffee grounds and old pastries from Starbucks into a building block for plastic. Using food waste as fuel might improve the sustainability of biobased chemical production, the researchers say.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Oil refineries clean up crude oil to produce fuel for cars, trucks and planes. Side products from that process include building blocks for plastics, fabrics and detergents, like lactic acid, succinic acid and glycerol.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Biorefineries could reduce our dependence on fossil fuels by creating fuel from renewable sources of energy like plant biomass. Right now, many biorefineries consume sugars and starches from corn – a plant we eat as food. Should food supplies become scarce, humans and biorefineries would compete for fuel. Energy from food waste, instead of food plants, could make biobased chemical production more sustainable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Carol Lin, at the City University of Hong Kong, and her coworkers developed a tabletop biorefinery to run on food waste from Starbucks. Fungi first break down the food into sugars. Then bacteria transform those sugars into succinic acid, a chemical building block for plastics, spandex, detergents and deicing solution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Starbucks Hong Kong donated money to help fund Lin’s research, which she presented at a meeting of the American Chemical Society last week. The company produces nearly 5000 tons of food waste yearly in Hong Kong alone, which would normally be burned or buried in landfills.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lin says she is adapting the biorefinery to make other chemicals from the pastry waste. And there is funding to test the technology on a pilot scale in Germany, she said in \u003ca href=\"http://portal.acs.org/portal/acs/corg/content?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=PP_ARTICLEMAIN&node_id=222&content_id=CNBP_030537&use_sec=true&sec_url_var=region1&__uuid=85bffd3d-35ad-40f4-b0dd-7e90a1e51fd0\">a statement\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some companies already produce succinic acid using sugars in wheat and corn. BioAmber, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, is running a pilot plant in France and \u003ca href=\"http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bioamber-announces-biobased-succinic-acid-plant-in-ontario-canada-128586383.html\">plans to open a larger plant\u003c/a> in Ontario in 2013. The new plant will produce 18 thousand tons of succinic acid at first, scaling up to more than 38 thousand tons at peak production. Reverdia will soon open a plant in Italy that can produce about 10 thousand tons of succinic acid yearly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The “food versus fuel” debate over the sugar source for biorefineries often involves biofuel production more than chemical production. About 33 to 40% of corn in the U.S. goes towards making ethanol. And in a year where drought affects corn supplies, some groups are pushing government agencies to reduce their biofuel mandates.\u003cbr>\nMeanwhile, biobased chemical production \u003ca href=\"http://cenblog.org/cleantech-chemistry/2012/08/rfs-plagued-by-critics-while-bio-based-chemicals-move-forward/\">remains under their radar\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One way to sidestep this debate – for both fuels and chemicals – involves using cellulose in wood pulp and dried corn stalks as a sugar source. But this approach can't produce cost-competitive biofuels right now. It takes too much energy to disassemble rigid cellulose fibers into edible sugars for biorefinery microbes. Nevertheless, some companies hope to find ways to use cellulose for biobased chemical production.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One day our favorite fuels, plastics and detergents may come from plant and food waste instead of fossil fuels.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Most of our plastics come from petroleum-based chemicals. Now, thanks to engineered microbes, similar materials might be made using food waste from Starbucks.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_43050\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/2012/08/29/starbucks-food-waste-fuels-experimental-biorefinery/starbucks/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-43050\">\u003cimg class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-43050\" title=\"starbucks\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/08/starbucks-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"starbucks pastry\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Leftover pastries and coffee grounds from Starbucks could be turned into precursors to plastic. Credit: {link url=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/andreanna/4468677088/\"}Andreanna Moya Photography/Flickr{/link}\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>An experimental biorefinery turns spent coffee grounds and old pastries from Starbucks into a building block for plastic. Using food waste as fuel might improve the sustainability of biobased chemical production, the researchers say.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Oil refineries clean up crude oil to produce fuel for cars, trucks and planes. Side products from that process include building blocks for plastics, fabrics and detergents, like lactic acid, succinic acid and glycerol.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Biorefineries could reduce our dependence on fossil fuels by creating fuel from renewable sources of energy like plant biomass. Right now, many biorefineries consume sugars and starches from corn – a plant we eat as food. Should food supplies become scarce, humans and biorefineries would compete for fuel. Energy from food waste, instead of food plants, could make biobased chemical production more sustainable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Carol Lin, at the City University of Hong Kong, and her coworkers developed a tabletop biorefinery to run on food waste from Starbucks. Fungi first break down the food into sugars. Then bacteria transform those sugars into succinic acid, a chemical building block for plastics, spandex, detergents and deicing solution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Starbucks Hong Kong donated money to help fund Lin’s research, which she presented at a meeting of the American Chemical Society last week. The company produces nearly 5000 tons of food waste yearly in Hong Kong alone, which would normally be burned or buried in landfills.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lin says she is adapting the biorefinery to make other chemicals from the pastry waste. And there is funding to test the technology on a pilot scale in Germany, she said in \u003ca href=\"http://portal.acs.org/portal/acs/corg/content?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=PP_ARTICLEMAIN&node_id=222&content_id=CNBP_030537&use_sec=true&sec_url_var=region1&__uuid=85bffd3d-35ad-40f4-b0dd-7e90a1e51fd0\">a statement\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some companies already produce succinic acid using sugars in wheat and corn. BioAmber, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, is running a pilot plant in France and \u003ca href=\"http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bioamber-announces-biobased-succinic-acid-plant-in-ontario-canada-128586383.html\">plans to open a larger plant\u003c/a> in Ontario in 2013. The new plant will produce 18 thousand tons of succinic acid at first, scaling up to more than 38 thousand tons at peak production. Reverdia will soon open a plant in Italy that can produce about 10 thousand tons of succinic acid yearly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The “food versus fuel” debate over the sugar source for biorefineries often involves biofuel production more than chemical production. About 33 to 40% of corn in the U.S. goes towards making ethanol. And in a year where drought affects corn supplies, some groups are pushing government agencies to reduce their biofuel mandates.\u003cbr>\nMeanwhile, biobased chemical production \u003ca href=\"http://cenblog.org/cleantech-chemistry/2012/08/rfs-plagued-by-critics-while-bio-based-chemicals-move-forward/\">remains under their radar\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One way to sidestep this debate – for both fuels and chemicals – involves using cellulose in wood pulp and dried corn stalks as a sugar source. But this approach can't produce cost-competitive biofuels right now. It takes too much energy to disassemble rigid cellulose fibers into edible sugars for biorefinery microbes. Nevertheless, some companies hope to find ways to use cellulose for biobased chemical production.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One day our favorite fuels, plastics and detergents may come from plant and food waste instead of fossil fuels.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Decades ago, researchers figured out how to create the picture-perfect tomato that travels well and is available year-round. The trouble is, as any supermarket shopper can tell you, tomatoes that look great sometimes taste terrible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not hard to see how much some tomatoes have changed. Just take the trucks on California highways during the summer, each pulling a double trailer stacked high with tomatoes. There’s a reason the tomatoes at the bottom of the pile aren’t squished into a tomato-y mess. That's thanks to the \u003ca href=\"http://daviswiki.org/square_tomato\">square tomato\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The square tomato is kind of a misnomer,” says Roger Chetelat, director of the Tomato Genetics Resource Center at the University of California-Davis. We’re in a greenhouse on campus where he’s holding a few square tomatoes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You can see they’re not square but they are blocky,” he says. The tomatoes are sort of flat on the side and are firm to the touch even though they’re ripe, sort of like a baseball. “I think I’d prefer to have a tomato like that thrown at me than a baseball, but yeah, they’re pretty tough,” Chetelat says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fifty years ago, farmers were looking for tougher tomatoes that could withstand new mechanical picking machines. So, plant breeders at UC Davis created a tomato with thick skin and a firm, meaty inside. California’s tomato production boomed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Unintended Genetic Consequences\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the era of modern plant breeding came with some unintended effects, as UC Davis researcher Ann Powell discovered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She demonstrates with a genetic taste test, of sorts. “We can try one of these,” she says, cutting up a standard grocery store tomato. “Tastes tomato-y.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_42812\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/08/GreenShoulders.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-42812\" title=\"SONY DSC\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/08/GreenShoulders.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"197\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Young tomatoes with green shoulders on the left and no shoulders on the right.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The other one we’re sampling has what Powell calls “green shoulders.” That means, as it grew, the tomato was dark green on top around the stem – something that’s controlled by a specific gene.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re sweeter,” Powell says, tasting it. “Whether it’s all due to that particular gene, I can’t tell you. But, I don’t know, you can taste the difference.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If green shoulders don’t sound familiar, that’s because most commercial tomatoes don’t have them anymore. Seventy years ago, breeders selected for uniformly light green tomatoes with no shoulders, which stood out better against the plant’s dark leaves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re a lot easier to see so a farmer could judge his yield. They could see how productive the plants were a lot easier,” says Powell. Their uniform color was also more attractive to consumers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It turns out, those green shoulders have a key job. “We found that it influences the amount of sugar in the ripe fruit,” she says. The dark green parts have more chloroplasts, which turn sunlight into sugars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It made about a 20 percent difference in the amount of sugars. I think of it a little bit like how you eat berries. Most of us, including me, sprinkle a little bit of sugar on top to sort of enhance the flavor,” says Powell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_42819\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/08/Powell.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-42819\" title=\"Powell\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/08/Powell.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"212\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ann Powell looks at tomatoes in a UC Davis greenhouse.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Most heirloom tomatoes still have green shoulders, but Powell says now that they know about this gene, plant breeders could put it back in commercial varieties. And since the tomato genome was sequenced earlier this year, there are still other flavor genes to study.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Focusing on Taste and Nutrition\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ve modified and changed our food radically,” says Alyson Mitchell, professor in UC Davis’s Food Science and Technology Department.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ve bred these seeds and plants to have all of these other characteristics: uniform shape, size, color, good disease resistance, high yield,” she says. That’s had major benefits: produce is widely available and more affordable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the other hand, “we’ve absolutely not paid attention to flavor and nutrition. You know, we’re telling children, eat more fruits and vegetables at a time that fruits and vegetables have never tasted worse,” Mitchell says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scientists are just starting to understand the molecular compounds that control taste and nutrition. “What we do know is that not all tomatoes are the same. Different cultivars have different levels of nutrients in them,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Growing them organically can also change the levels of nutrients. In a ten-year controlled study of tomatoes, organic tomatoes showed higher levels of antioxidants and molecules that make up flavor and color. But researchers still aren’t sure which of these compounds are the most important for our health. Take flavonoids, which have gotten a lot of hype as antioxidants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There are about sixteen hundred described flavonoids to date and we don’t even really at this point understand what that complement is, let alone what all of those different compounds do to benefit our health,” Mitchell says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even if there is one nutrient that stands out, it’s not always easy to enhance it. Take the case of “super broccoli.” “So they made this broccoli and the idea was to market it as a super broccoli because it had very high levels of this antioxidant, quercetin. Well quercetin is really bitter and they sat a bunch of people down to eat and nobody could eat it, it was so awful,” says Mitchell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mitchell says it’s probably the combination of nutrients that gives produce its punch, which they’re working to understand better. Until then, she says, there is one way to make sure you’re getting those benefits: follow your mom’s advice and eat more fruits and vegetables.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Decades ago, researchers figured out how to create the picture-perfect tomato that travels well and is available year-round. The trouble is, as any supermarket shopper can tell you, tomatoes that look great sometimes taste terrible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not hard to see how much some tomatoes have changed. Just take the trucks on California highways during the summer, each pulling a double trailer stacked high with tomatoes. There’s a reason the tomatoes at the bottom of the pile aren’t squished into a tomato-y mess. That's thanks to the \u003ca href=\"http://daviswiki.org/square_tomato\">square tomato\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The square tomato is kind of a misnomer,” says Roger Chetelat, director of the Tomato Genetics Resource Center at the University of California-Davis. We’re in a greenhouse on campus where he’s holding a few square tomatoes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You can see they’re not square but they are blocky,” he says. The tomatoes are sort of flat on the side and are firm to the touch even though they’re ripe, sort of like a baseball. “I think I’d prefer to have a tomato like that thrown at me than a baseball, but yeah, they’re pretty tough,” Chetelat says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fifty years ago, farmers were looking for tougher tomatoes that could withstand new mechanical picking machines. So, plant breeders at UC Davis created a tomato with thick skin and a firm, meaty inside. California’s tomato production boomed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Unintended Genetic Consequences\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the era of modern plant breeding came with some unintended effects, as UC Davis researcher Ann Powell discovered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She demonstrates with a genetic taste test, of sorts. “We can try one of these,” she says, cutting up a standard grocery store tomato. “Tastes tomato-y.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_42812\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/08/GreenShoulders.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-42812\" title=\"SONY DSC\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/08/GreenShoulders.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"197\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Young tomatoes with green shoulders on the left and no shoulders on the right.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The other one we’re sampling has what Powell calls “green shoulders.” That means, as it grew, the tomato was dark green on top around the stem – something that’s controlled by a specific gene.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re sweeter,” Powell says, tasting it. “Whether it’s all due to that particular gene, I can’t tell you. But, I don’t know, you can taste the difference.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If green shoulders don’t sound familiar, that’s because most commercial tomatoes don’t have them anymore. Seventy years ago, breeders selected for uniformly light green tomatoes with no shoulders, which stood out better against the plant’s dark leaves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re a lot easier to see so a farmer could judge his yield. They could see how productive the plants were a lot easier,” says Powell. Their uniform color was also more attractive to consumers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It turns out, those green shoulders have a key job. “We found that it influences the amount of sugar in the ripe fruit,” she says. The dark green parts have more chloroplasts, which turn sunlight into sugars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It made about a 20 percent difference in the amount of sugars. I think of it a little bit like how you eat berries. Most of us, including me, sprinkle a little bit of sugar on top to sort of enhance the flavor,” says Powell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_42819\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/08/Powell.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-42819\" title=\"Powell\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/08/Powell.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"212\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ann Powell looks at tomatoes in a UC Davis greenhouse.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Most heirloom tomatoes still have green shoulders, but Powell says now that they know about this gene, plant breeders could put it back in commercial varieties. And since the tomato genome was sequenced earlier this year, there are still other flavor genes to study.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Focusing on Taste and Nutrition\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ve modified and changed our food radically,” says Alyson Mitchell, professor in UC Davis’s Food Science and Technology Department.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ve bred these seeds and plants to have all of these other characteristics: uniform shape, size, color, good disease resistance, high yield,” she says. That’s had major benefits: produce is widely available and more affordable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the other hand, “we’ve absolutely not paid attention to flavor and nutrition. You know, we’re telling children, eat more fruits and vegetables at a time that fruits and vegetables have never tasted worse,” Mitchell says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scientists are just starting to understand the molecular compounds that control taste and nutrition. “What we do know is that not all tomatoes are the same. Different cultivars have different levels of nutrients in them,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Growing them organically can also change the levels of nutrients. In a ten-year controlled study of tomatoes, organic tomatoes showed higher levels of antioxidants and molecules that make up flavor and color. But researchers still aren’t sure which of these compounds are the most important for our health. Take flavonoids, which have gotten a lot of hype as antioxidants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There are about sixteen hundred described flavonoids to date and we don’t even really at this point understand what that complement is, let alone what all of those different compounds do to benefit our health,” Mitchell says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even if there is one nutrient that stands out, it’s not always easy to enhance it. Take the case of “super broccoli.” “So they made this broccoli and the idea was to market it as a super broccoli because it had very high levels of this antioxidant, quercetin. Well quercetin is really bitter and they sat a bunch of people down to eat and nobody could eat it, it was so awful,” says Mitchell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mitchell says it’s probably the combination of nutrients that gives produce its punch, which they’re working to understand better. Until then, she says, there is one way to make sure you’re getting those benefits: follow your mom’s advice and eat more fruits and vegetables.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "How I Learned to Love Olives and Hate Their Pests",
"title": "How I Learned to Love Olives and Hate Their Pests",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>\"Reflect that I may be an acquired taste. You probably did not like olives the first time you tasted them. Now you probably do. Give me the same chance you would an olive.\"\u003cbr>\n--P.G. Wodehouse,\u003c/em> Leave it to Psmith\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I've always hated olives. I'd pick them off pizzas and out of salads. And as for eating one whole? Forget it! But in the last few weeks, I've actually started eating them on purpose. It could be because I'm pregnant, a condition which has me \u003ca href=\"http://www.ajcn.org/content/43/3/414.short\" title=\"Taste Changes During Pregnancy\">craving salt\u003c/a>--and few foods are saltier than a nice olive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_39713\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 231px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/2012/06/19/how-i-learned-to-love-olives-and-hate-their-pests/olive_diversity/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-39713\">\u003cimg src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/06/olive_diversity-231x169.jpg\" alt=\"Diversity of Olives\" title=\"olive_diversity\" width=\"231\" height=\"169\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-39713\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Diversity of olives. Photo by {link url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/}Steve Jurvetson{/link}.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Olives, of course, don't come off the tree salty. But they also don't come off the tree edible. Lye can leach out the raw olive's bitterness in just a few days, but it's not exactly flavorful, so the cured olives must be washed and transferred to brine. If you're willing to wait for weeks, you can also bypass the lye and just cure the olives in straight brine. Plain water and plain salt are \u003ca href=\"http://www.wikihow.com/Cure-Olives\" title=\"How to Cure Olives\">other alternatives\u003c/a> for patient olive-curers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Curing, as I've learned, is only one of many factors that determine the nature of the final product. Do they pick the fruit unripe or ripe? It's not as obvious as you might think--some olives are ripe when green, and some unripe olives are made black by processing. Do they treat the olives with vinegar as well as brine? That's how to make kalamatas--which I still haven't warmed up to, despite my newfound affection for this 7000-year-old crop. No, I'm loyal. I love my California olives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_39715\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 168px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/2012/06/19/how-i-learned-to-love-olives-and-hate-their-pests/olives/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-39715\">\u003cimg src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/06/olives_glass-168x253.jpg\" alt=\"Olives in a glass\" title=\"Olives\" width=\"168\" height=\"253\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-39715\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Martini olives. Photo by {link url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/evpeters/}Edward Peters{/link}.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Olive trees were brought to California by Fransciscan missionaries in 1769; the Mediterranean climate must have reminded them of home, for they flourished. In fact, depending on \u003ca href=\"http://www.martinimuse.com/how_the_martini_got_its_name.shtml\" title=\"How the Martini Got Its Name\">which story you believe\u003c/a>, California olives may have debuted in the original martini, named after the city of Martinez. I only mention this because yesterday was National Martini Day, if you're into that kind of thing. (For obvious reasons, I'm not.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Olive trees in California managed to live free of their native pest, the \u003ca href=\"http://figueroafarms.com/orchardservices/olive-fly/OliveFruitFly.pdf\" title=\"Olive Fruit Fly\">olive fruit fly\u003c/a>, for over 200 years. But the persistent parasite finally arrived in the New World in 1998, and within a few years spread across the state's olive groves. It lays its eggs in olive fruits, ruining them for both oil and eating, and it can perform this trick every 30 days when summer temperatures are ideal. Best for the little maggots is a range of 68 to 86 degrees Fahrenheit, which means California can fight back with hot summers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unfortunately, the fruit flies won the 2011 round. Not only was last summer relatively mild, but the table olive crop was light. When the crop is light, sometimes it's not worth picking an orchard, so farmers also don't bother to spray for fruit flies. The triple play of cool summers, fruit left on the trees, and no spray gave olive fruit flies a field day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Starting with the recent \u003ca href=\"http://www.mercurynews.com/health/ci_20875211/bay-area-copes-surprisingly-sweltering-weather\" title=\"Mercury News - Hot Weather\">heat wave\u003c/a> across the Bay Area, I'm wondering if this summer might deliver a fruit fly smackdown. That's something pleasant to think about as we sit around sweltering and sucking on ice cubes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, I'm going to get some olives right now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_39712\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/2012/06/19/how-i-learned-to-love-olives-and-hate-their-pests/franciscan_olives/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-39712\">\u003cimg src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/06/Franciscan_olives.jpg\" alt=\"Olives left on the tree\" title=\"Franciscan_olives\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" class=\"size-full wp-image-39712\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/39/2012/06/Franciscan_olives.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/39/2012/06/Franciscan_olives-400x225.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Olives left on the tree, Franciscan Winery, Napa. Photo by {link url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/nagarjun/}Nagarjun Kandukuru{/link}.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "I've always hated olives. I'd pick them off pizzas and out of salads. But in the last few weeks, I've actually started eating them on purpose. It could be because I'm pregnant, a condition which has me craving salt—and few foods are saltier than a nice olive.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>\"Reflect that I may be an acquired taste. You probably did not like olives the first time you tasted them. Now you probably do. Give me the same chance you would an olive.\"\u003cbr>\n--P.G. Wodehouse,\u003c/em> Leave it to Psmith\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I've always hated olives. I'd pick them off pizzas and out of salads. And as for eating one whole? Forget it! But in the last few weeks, I've actually started eating them on purpose. It could be because I'm pregnant, a condition which has me \u003ca href=\"http://www.ajcn.org/content/43/3/414.short\" title=\"Taste Changes During Pregnancy\">craving salt\u003c/a>--and few foods are saltier than a nice olive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_39713\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 231px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/2012/06/19/how-i-learned-to-love-olives-and-hate-their-pests/olive_diversity/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-39713\">\u003cimg src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/06/olive_diversity-231x169.jpg\" alt=\"Diversity of Olives\" title=\"olive_diversity\" width=\"231\" height=\"169\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-39713\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Diversity of olives. Photo by {link url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/}Steve Jurvetson{/link}.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Olives, of course, don't come off the tree salty. But they also don't come off the tree edible. Lye can leach out the raw olive's bitterness in just a few days, but it's not exactly flavorful, so the cured olives must be washed and transferred to brine. If you're willing to wait for weeks, you can also bypass the lye and just cure the olives in straight brine. Plain water and plain salt are \u003ca href=\"http://www.wikihow.com/Cure-Olives\" title=\"How to Cure Olives\">other alternatives\u003c/a> for patient olive-curers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Curing, as I've learned, is only one of many factors that determine the nature of the final product. Do they pick the fruit unripe or ripe? It's not as obvious as you might think--some olives are ripe when green, and some unripe olives are made black by processing. Do they treat the olives with vinegar as well as brine? That's how to make kalamatas--which I still haven't warmed up to, despite my newfound affection for this 7000-year-old crop. No, I'm loyal. I love my California olives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_39715\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 168px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/2012/06/19/how-i-learned-to-love-olives-and-hate-their-pests/olives/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-39715\">\u003cimg src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/06/olives_glass-168x253.jpg\" alt=\"Olives in a glass\" title=\"Olives\" width=\"168\" height=\"253\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-39715\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Martini olives. Photo by {link url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/evpeters/}Edward Peters{/link}.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Olive trees were brought to California by Fransciscan missionaries in 1769; the Mediterranean climate must have reminded them of home, for they flourished. In fact, depending on \u003ca href=\"http://www.martinimuse.com/how_the_martini_got_its_name.shtml\" title=\"How the Martini Got Its Name\">which story you believe\u003c/a>, California olives may have debuted in the original martini, named after the city of Martinez. I only mention this because yesterday was National Martini Day, if you're into that kind of thing. (For obvious reasons, I'm not.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Olive trees in California managed to live free of their native pest, the \u003ca href=\"http://figueroafarms.com/orchardservices/olive-fly/OliveFruitFly.pdf\" title=\"Olive Fruit Fly\">olive fruit fly\u003c/a>, for over 200 years. But the persistent parasite finally arrived in the New World in 1998, and within a few years spread across the state's olive groves. It lays its eggs in olive fruits, ruining them for both oil and eating, and it can perform this trick every 30 days when summer temperatures are ideal. Best for the little maggots is a range of 68 to 86 degrees Fahrenheit, which means California can fight back with hot summers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unfortunately, the fruit flies won the 2011 round. Not only was last summer relatively mild, but the table olive crop was light. When the crop is light, sometimes it's not worth picking an orchard, so farmers also don't bother to spray for fruit flies. The triple play of cool summers, fruit left on the trees, and no spray gave olive fruit flies a field day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Starting with the recent \u003ca href=\"http://www.mercurynews.com/health/ci_20875211/bay-area-copes-surprisingly-sweltering-weather\" title=\"Mercury News - Hot Weather\">heat wave\u003c/a> across the Bay Area, I'm wondering if this summer might deliver a fruit fly smackdown. That's something pleasant to think about as we sit around sweltering and sucking on ice cubes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, I'm going to get some olives right now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_39712\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/2012/06/19/how-i-learned-to-love-olives-and-hate-their-pests/franciscan_olives/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-39712\">\u003cimg src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/06/Franciscan_olives.jpg\" alt=\"Olives left on the tree\" title=\"Franciscan_olives\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" class=\"size-full wp-image-39712\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/39/2012/06/Franciscan_olives.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/39/2012/06/Franciscan_olives-400x225.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Olives left on the tree, Franciscan Winery, Napa. Photo by {link url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/nagarjun/}Nagarjun Kandukuru{/link}.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
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"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
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"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
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"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
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"possible": {
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"title": "Possible",
"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
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"pri-the-world": {
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"info": "Each weekday, host Marco Werman and his team of producers bring you the world's most interesting stories in an hour of radio that reminds us just how small our planet really is.",
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"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-World-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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},
"radiolab": {
"id": "radiolab",
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"info": "A two-time Peabody Award-winner, Radiolab is an investigation told through sounds and stories, and centered around one big idea. In the Radiolab world, information sounds like music and science and culture collide. Hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, the show is designed for listeners who demand skepticism, but appreciate wonder. WNYC Studios is the producer of other leading podcasts including Freakonomics Radio, Death, Sex & Money, On the Media and many more.",
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"reveal": {
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"info": "Created by The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, Reveal is public radios first one-hour weekly radio show and podcast dedicated to investigative reporting. Credible, fact based and without a partisan agenda, Reveal combines the power and artistry of driveway moment storytelling with data-rich reporting on critically important issues. The result is stories that inform and inspire, arming our listeners with information to right injustices, hold the powerful accountable and improve lives.Reveal is hosted by Al Letson and showcases the award-winning work of CIR and newsrooms large and small across the nation. In a radio and podcast market crowded with choices, Reveal focuses on important and often surprising stories that illuminate the world for our listeners.",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.revealnews.org/episodes/",
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},
"rightnowish": {
"id": "rightnowish",
"title": "Rightnowish",
"tagline": "Art is where you find it",
"info": "Rightnowish digs into life in the Bay Area right now… ish. Journalist Pendarvis Harshaw takes us to galleries painted on the sides of liquor stores in West Oakland. We'll dance in warehouses in the Bayview, make smoothies with kids in South Berkeley, and listen to classical music in a 1984 Cutlass Supreme in Richmond. Every week, Pen talks to movers and shakers about how the Bay Area shapes what they create, and how they shape the place we call home.",
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},
"science-friday": {
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