Posts Tagged: extension

Community Educators Gather in Hopland

Community Educators representing the state wide Research and Extension Centers System (RECS) sites gathered February 25-27 in Hopland. The meeting was an opportunity for many of the educators to meet for the first time. A chance to network and develop...

Researchers wanted for Hopland Green House!

Innovative evapotransporation study is explained to group

Rodrigues points out the difference between grazed land and non grazed land

Vernal pools

Lambing pens

Lambing generally occurs between November and February

nursing lamb

Sheep

Hopland maintains sheep flock that graze the majority of the Center's rangelands

sheep at day break

Hannah's babies, adopted and bottle fed will become part of the youth education programs at the Center

barn 2

Acorns in the Oaks-the Center supports more than 215 species of wild birds

Grass, wood-land, dense woodland, and chapparral are found at Hopland REC including more than 600 plant species

A Story about Cooperative Extension

 

This is a story about phone calls that come in to my message machine. Yesterday I got 3 calls from PCAs (Pest Control Advisors) and two from growers.  The two from growers were from a Papaya grower and the other from a dragon  fruit grower that I am working with to develop an industry here in Santa Barbara/Ventura.  One is in Carp the other in Montecito.  The PCA calls were from two that work on avocado and the other from a citrus grower.  I either get a call from an avocado grower direct because they can't afford a PCA or from the manager or the PCA of larger farms.  From citrus it is usually the manager or the PCA.  These are more developed industries and the grower usually lets the workers take care of problems because they are so familiar with the operations.  When it ‘s a new crop, the owner steps in. They want to know all that can go wrong with this new crop. 

Blueberries are expanding now along the coast and when we first started working on them 15 years ago, our collaborators were in touch with us constantly.  Now it's the managers who call.  Its now a developed industry.  The same for coffee.  When we started working on it we worked closely with out cooperators, now there is a coffee cooperative that takes care of itself.  We work with new things.  One of the calls from an avocado PCA was about a farm that is being infested with bagrada bug.  Everything in the area has dried up from the drought.  The bagarada bug normally goes after plants in the brassica family (cabbage, mustard, etc.), many of which are native and growing along streams and on hillsides.  The streams and hills have dried up and the bug is now going to the new avocado leaf tissue and the PCA wanted the bug identified and to provide a solution to the problem. 

Sometimes the weather works for us and sometimes against us.  We've got a parasitic wasp for controlling olive fruit fly. We went out all over southern Santa Barabara county to groves of olive trees to determine where to release the wasp and could find healthy olives, but no olive fruit.  No where to make to make releases this year.  The weather plays tricks on us.  But we keep looking for solutions.  Maybe next year we will be able to study if and how the wasp controls olive fruit fly.  It does in France.

 

ANR

Be a Scientist

Join the University of California Cooperative Extension in a one-day statewide science project. It's easy to participate. You can join us at the UC Hansen Agricultural Reaseach and Extension Center (UC HAREC) in Santa Paula where we will be...

What are RECS?

RECS is the acronym for Research and Extension System. The Hansen Agricultural Research and Extension Center is one of nine RECS throughout the state operated by the University of California division of Agriculture and Natural Resources...

NPR talks about land grant universities

While visiting the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, which is commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Morrill Act, NPR's Talk of the Nation did a segment about land grant universities.

Sara from Fresno called into the show to explain the role of UC Cooperative Extension. She said:  "...we use the Extension service to help us determine what kinds of things we can use to keep the crop healthy, not just pesticides, but how to check the crops and to make sure that they're healthy. They use independent research all the time to help us with this. And with the public funds just dwindling, we have a lot less independent research that go on and have to go on more of what the chemical companies are telling us."

When asked for an example, according to the show's transcript, Sara said: "Well, I'm looking at a cotton crop right now, and the farmer advisers, the cotton farmer advisors in California, helped us what the program called plant mapping, where we were able to take a look at what's going on with the plant even though we might have bugs out that could be damaging the crops."

Sandy Rikoon, professor of rural sociology at the University of Missouri, told listeners, "Many countries are trying to duplicate the Extension system. Many countries have research, agricultural research, but what they don't have is that group of people who take the research and then take it to the people."

Host Neal Cohan mistakenly said the California State University is one of the land grants and we have asked NPR to correct the online version to state that UC is California's land grant institution.

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