The holiday season is back; the bells and the cash registers will soon be ringing. That means it’s the perfect time to remind everyone to always double-check your receipts to make sure you’re not accidentally overcharged by faulty cash registers and price scanners. While buying online has become a normal part of daily life, most of us are still heading to the stores and the…
A smattering of Ramona folks, hats in hand and grins wide, gave a hearty cheer on February 4th as they hitched themselves to the notion of reviving their long-dormant Ramona Grange. It was a sight fit for a painter—some twenty souls gathered in a meeting hall, bent on deciding the fate of a once-thriving society of farmers, ranchers, vineyard keepers, and assorted agricultural folk. At…
Loss of business due to mass closures of restaurants, schools and corporate cafeterias in response to COVID-19 shelter-in-place orders has small farms looking to collaborate as they try to adapt to the crisis by finding new markets and changing sales strategies, according to Ching Lee, an assistant editor of Ag Alert, published by the California Farm Bureau. During a webinar last week aimed at helping…
Hike around the natural habitats of San Diego County and it becomes abundantly clear that honey bees, foreign to the area, are everywhere. A new study by Keng-Lou James Hung, Jennifer Kingston, Adrienne Lee, David Holway and Joshua Kohn of UC San Diego’s Division of Biological Sciences, published on Feb. 20 in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, found that honey bees focus their foraging on…
During the partial federal shutdown in December 2018 and January 2019, news reports showed furloughed government workers standing in line for donated meals. These images were reminders that for an estimated one out of eight Americans, food insecurity is a near-term risk. In California, where I teach, 80 percent of the population lives in cities. Feeding the cities of the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area,…
As the California Farm Bureau Federation begins its centennial celebration, CFBF President Jamie Johansson called farmers and ranchers to action, reminding them that Farm Bureau is an organization “that wants to go beyond making a statement by being determined to make a difference.” He made his remarks during the 100th CFBF Annual Meeting in San Diego last week, where he outlined the organization’s priorities in…
This is one unwanted visitor from Mexico that even Donald Trump’s fabled wall could never stop. And it’s a dire threat to local, state and national fruit growers and consumers. A portion of San Diego County has been placed under quarantine for the Mexican fruit fly following the detection of seven Mexflies within the City of Encinitas. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the…
Agriculture values in San Diego County returned to their growing ways in the latest annual County Crop Report, increasing by 2.63 percent to nearly $1.75 billion after two years of decline. The report was released Monday, Oct. 2. Total production values were led, as they have been for the last decade, by ornamental trees and shrubs like crepe myrtles and bottle brushes, indoor plants like…
Montado Farms in Santa Ysabel, operated by Kevin Muno and partners, also known as The Land of Milk and Honey, is on the frontier of a new farming technique dedicated to using soil to remove carbon dioxide from the environment and help reverse the effects of climate change. With a grant administered by San Diego Food System Alliance, Montado Farms is the southernmost outpost in this…
Seventh Annual North County Farm Tour Farmers will open their gates and give tours of their farms, showcasing San Diego County’s diverse agriculture during the seventh annual Farm Tour Day, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, ept. 17 Hosted by the San Diego County Farm Bureau, this event is an opportunity for locals to spend a day in the country, in their own backyard. The…