California leads America in specialty crop funding

Oct 13, 2015

State will receive almost $20 million

California is set to receive the largest amount of specialty crop funding from the United States Department of Agriculture.

America’s 50 states will split about $63 million of total Specialty Crop Block Grant Program (SCBGP) funding with California receiving about $19.7 million.

“Specialty crops define much of California agriculture,” said CDFA secretary Karen Ross in a release. “This grant funding is an important piece of our partnership with the USDA as we work together to promote and protect a part of the food supply that is relied upon in California, across the country, and around the world.”

The SCBGP provides funding that’s to be used to enhance specialty crops, which include fruits, vegetables, tree nuts, dried fruits, horticulture and nursery crops.

The California Department of Food and Agriculture will use the grants to fund 66 projects. Projects include specialty crop awareness and nutrition, equipping current and the next generation of farmers, plant health and pest management, and marketing and promoting specialty crops.

Project funding

Specific projects include:

$450,000 for the Sunsweet Growers, Inc. The money will be used to expand market opportunities for prune producers through prune ingredient substitutes.
$298, 516 for the CDFA Division of Inspection Services, Office of Farm to Fork. The funding will be dedicated to promoting California specialty crops through means of education and enrichment.
The University of California, Davis will use $63,840 to study the effects of dried plums on bone and cardiovascular health.

Join the conversation and tell us your thoughts about California receiving nearly $20 million in specialty crop funding.

What are some specialty crops that could benefit from more focus on them?

Video: Cleaning Sheep Barns & Setting Up Chutes

Indoor sheep farming in winter at pre-lambing time requires that, at Ewetopia Farms, we need to clean out the barns and manure in order to keep the sheep pens clean, dry and fresh for the pregnant ewes to stay healthy while indoors in confinement. In today’s vlog, we put fresh bedding into all of the barns and we remove manure from the first groups of ewes due to lamb so that they are all ready for lambs being born in the next few days. Also, in preparation for lambing, we moved one of the sorting chutes to the Coveralls with the replacement ewe lambs. This allows us to do sorting and vaccines more easily with them while the barnyard is snow covered and hard to move sheep safely around in. Additionally, it frees up space for the second groups of pregnant ewes where the chute was initially.