Driest year on record [Stockton Record]
When
the Champagne flows at midnight today, 2013 will officially become the driest
calendar year on record in Stockton, along with much of the rest of
California….Those who manage our water don't measure success in calendar years.
January, February and March could turn things around, making 2013 a statistical
anomaly. But that's of little comfort at the moment to people such as Duane
Martin Jr., a Valley cattleman struggling to keep his cows healthy on brown,
dead fields. "We have probably written off any profit this year because of
the hay we've had to buy to get through it," Martin said….Indeed, it may
be farmers more than urbanites who feel the effects of drought, at least for
now. Some farmers are irrigating orchards that would normally not require water
this time of year. Wheat, a $20 million crop in San Joaquin County in 2012, has
been slow growing because of a lack of moisture.
Wacky
weather: Bakersfield gets more rain than San Francisco in 2013 [Fresno Bee]
How
crazy dry was 2013 in California? The desert landscape in Bakersfield wound up
with more rainfall than lush San Francisco….Blue skies and above-average
temperatures may be delightful, but they are alarming to farmers, city
officials and industry leaders all over the state….Scientists are not seeing a
big connection between the dry year and the ocean, said scientist Nicholas Bond
of NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle…."We didn't
see any indication that this dry pattern would develop in the far West,"
Bond said. "But it may be too early to panic. There's a lot of the winter
left, and California's wet season is typically the strongest in January."
Working
from Petaluma, salmon advocates make their mark statewide [Petaluma
Argus-Courier]
It
was 2008 when Petaluma resident and car dealership proprietor Victor Gonella
noticed something fishy with the state’s salmon population….So, he formed the
Golden Gate Salmon Association in 2010, the first nonprofit in the state
dedicated entirely to the protection of California salmon, operating out of
Gonella’s dealerships on Auto Center Drive in Petaluma….This year, the group
hit its first major milestone when the federal Department of Reclamation
adopted four GGSA salmon protection suggestions into its 2014 Central Valley
Project Water Plan, which dictates how water will be managed from Sacramento
River and its major streams….Louis Moore, a spokesman for the Department of
Reclamation, explained that there are many factors considered when the
department makes a drought plan. From species protection to agriculture to
private use in households, a variety of interests compete for the resource,
which has been scant this year. “Every drop of water has to include numerous
considerations,” Moore said.
Food
Processors Address Frozen Produce's Image Problem [Wall Street Journal]
In
winter's depths, family cooks often finds themselves facing a produce dilemma:
Buy "fresh" produce out of season, which may have spent days or weeks
getting to the local supermarket, or begrudgingly turn to the freezer aisle to
find a bag of frosty peas, broccoli or blueberries. Frozen produce is
convenient, and often it is nutritionally comparable to fresh produce. But it
has an image problem. Often, "there is a perception that if you are using
a frozen vegetable you have taken a shortcut and you are not trying to help
your family," says Kate Gallager, research and development manager for
Green Giant, a big producer of frozen produce and a unit of General Mills
Inc. Frozen food companies are going on the offensive, aiming to make products
that look better, taste better and offer enough convenience to overcome
frozen-food phobia.
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Social
Media as a Megaphone to Pressure the Food Industry [New York Times]
…While
the F.D.A. continues to allow certain dyes to be used in foods, deeming them
safe, parents and advocacy groups have been using websites and social media as
powerful megaphones to force titans of the food industry to reconsider the
ingredients in their foods and the labeling and processing of their products.
In several instances in the last year or so, major food companies and fast-food
chains have shifted to coloring derived from spices or other plant-based
sources, or changed or omitted certain labels from packaging….From Cargill’s
decision to label packages of its ground beef that contain “pink slime,” or what
the industry prefers to call finely textured meat, to PepsiCo’s decision to
replace brominated vegetable oil in Gatorade with a natural additive at the
behest of a teenager, corporations are increasingly capitulating to consumer
demands.
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