Agriculture - page 5

(UC ANR) — Last May, a Turlock almond grower noticed nearly all the nuts on a row of trees in his orchard had fallen to the ground.

“It looked like we shook this row,” he said. “I was scared. I thought the whole orchard was going to go.”

He called UC Cooperative Extension.

UCCE Integrated Pest Management advisor Jhalendra Rijal, who serves Stanislaus, San Joaquin and Merced counties, determined the cause was an infestation of brown marmorated stink bug (BMSB), an invasive pest from Asia. For years, BMSB had only been found in urban areas of California – most notably a 2013 infestation in midtown Sacramento.

Continue Reading on AG NET West

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. – For this pass-through city, long a favorite target for jokes from late-night comedians, the small stuff turns out not to be small at all.

Highway 99 races through almond groves and oil fields here, then bend north toward Fresno and the flat croplands of the Central Valley. This high-speed vantage provides the blurry view of bobbing derricks, fuel storage tanks and fast-food billboards that have defined the city for Californians and tourists traveling between the sunny coast and the Sierra.

There’s a relatively new side-of-the-highway sign that now notifies drivers that maybe, just maybe, there is something more here than the freeway vista offers. It reads, “Bakersfield – Next 13 Exits,” a kind of invitation to a large and growing city once shorthand for a place to avoid.

Continue Reading on The Press Democrat