While there was a sense that “decision support” was important, the model developments nevertheless began with research tools that were motivated primarily to better understand basic processes and effects on system performance. As long as model development is motivated primarily by academic and research outcomes, it will remain only loosely connected to user needs. Therefore, …
Category Archives: Hydroponic Horticulture
Eighty percent of almond plantings are now located in the San Joaquin Valley
We examine the half-century of changes in regional shares of production for the major commodity groupings—fruit and nut crops, vegetable crops, and dairy products.Statewide acreage of fruit and nut crops increased throughout the last half a century from about 1.5 million acres in 1950 to nearly 2 million in 1975 and 2.5 million in 2000. …
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There appeared to be many harbingers of a dismal future for the industry
The next four columns vary that distance from 30-70 km in 10-km increments. As can be seen in Panel A, the impact of an additional fire is considerably larger when we focus on nearer fires, but this pattern of results no longer holds when we standardize our outcome measure based on the variability of test …
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This indicates that the hydrogel did help increase drought tolerance in the tomato plants
In controlled greenhouse conditions, we grew tomato plants from seeds for two weeks and then thinned the plants to one individual per pot where pots either contained soil treated with 0.4 wt % hydrogel mixed in the top half of the soil, near the plant root zone, or were untreated controls. We continued watering the plants …
The key assumption was that the rate of injury and illness was the same on large and small farms
Employers use OSHA form 300 to record each incident, including the employees name, job title, date, brief description of the incident, days absent, and other pertinent data. Employers sum the numbers within categories each year. The BLS, Office of Safety, Health, and Working Conditions, surveys roughly 250,000 firms and state and local government agencies, collecting …
Yield improvement is not the only form of varietal improvement
During the early 1980s, the adoption of drip expanded, and local dealers and personnel developed the skills to design and improve the systems. Currently, much of the design is done at the dealer level, and dealerships often have sales engineers who can design sophisticated drip systems. Some large farms are able to design their own …
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Removal of riparian vegetation to control PD is being hotly debated in California
Brown et al. estimated the optimal length of a barrier for an 800-feet long row of grapes originated at a riparian zone. They found the length of the barrier declined with the effectiveness of the barrier crop and the profits of grapes relative to the barrier crop.The average profits per acre of grapes without PD were …
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An easy test of the degree of follow-the-crop migrancy is to check turnover in a farm labor center
The people relationships on California farms are also different from stereotypical U.S. family farmers. Unlike family farmers who do most of the farm’s work with their hands every day, the managers responsible for most of California’s labor-intensive crops rarely hand-harvest themselves. Indeed, many are unable to communicate with the workers in their native languages: most …
Existing inspection rules ensure that foreign and domestic meats meet the same standards
Products exempt from the mandatory COOL regulation include ingredients in a processed food item and food sold in restaurants or through the food service channel. AMS defines an ingredient in a processed food item as either “a combination of ingredients that result in a product with an identity that is different from that of the …
Correlation with the FOB price for iceberg lettuce is also provided
The ability to provide account-specific products and services represents a major change from the days of uniform product offerings. While these services can be costly, many shippers are finding that they enable them to become preferred suppliers to large buyers, potentially stabilizing demand and somewhat lowering market risk. Many California grower-shippers obtain products from other …
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