Agriculture Daily News March 18

The Chinook salmon that swim upstream to spawn in the fall, the most robust run in the Sacramento River, have disappeared. Whatever the cause, there was widespread agreement among those attending a five-day meeting of the Pacific Fisheries Management Council here last week that the regional $150 million fishery, which usually opens for the four-month season on May 1, is almost certain to remain closed this year from northern Oregon to the Mexican border.  NY Times 3/17/08

 

Steeped in years of talk around college campuses and in stylish urban enclaves about the evils of factory farms (see the E. coli spinach outbreaks), the perils of relying on petroleum to deliver food over long distances (see global warming) and the beauty of greenmarkets (see the four-times-weekly locavore cornucopia in Union Square), some young urbanites are starting to put their muscles where their pro-environment, antiglobalization mouths are. They are creating small-scale farms near urban areas hungry for quality produce and willing to pay a premium. NY Times 3/16/08

 

Plans to build a peripheral canal to divert water around the Delta took a key step forward Monday when the Department of Water Resources launched a 30-month study on how to stabilize unreliable water supplies. The environmental analysis will examine the effects of building a canal along with other methods of getting water from the Sacramento River to the East Bay, San Joaquin Valley and Southern California. CC Times 3/18/08

 

Overall, food prices rose 4 percent in 2007, nearly twice as much as usual and the biggest single-year increase since 1990, according to the economic research service of the USDA. And in 2008, prices are expected to surge another 4 percent. CC Times 3/18/08

 

Financially strapped states are looking to take away government health insurance and benefits from millions of Americans already struggling with a souring economy. An Associated Press review of the budgets in all 50 states reveals that coverage would be eliminated for hundreds of thousands of poor children, disabled and the elderly. Nearly two dozen states are grappling with deep cuts and tax proposals to close shortfalls totaling more than $34 billion. That includes California, where lawmakers have made emergency cuts and authorized billions in bond sales to halve a deficit once projected at $16 billion through June 2009. Inside Bay Area 3/18/08

 

 

California officials on Monday said they have canceled a no-bid contract to promote the safety of aerial spraying for an invasive moth, acting after the Associated Press reported on the deal last week. The official said it was difficult to justify a public affairs campaign related to moth spraying as an emergency. Classifying it as an emergency allowed the contract to be exempted from normal contracting rules that are designed to limit favoritism. CC Times 3/18/08

 

 

Water from San Francisco Bay's delta and from at least two Santa Clara County reservoirs contains trace amounts of pharmaceutical compounds, including ibuprofen, hormones found in birth control pills and a drug used to reduce cholesterol. The Santa Clara Valley Water District released the information Monday in response to a request by the Mercury News. SJ Mercury 3/18/08