Mangoes and Agave in the Central Valley? California Farmers Try New Crops to Cope With Climate Change
How Hoverflies Spawn Maggots that Sweeten Your Oranges
A California Water Board Assures the Public That Oil Wastewater Is Safe for Irrigation, but Experts Say the Evidence Is Scant
Central Valley Farmers Weigh in on California's Historic Drought
Leaf Miner Fly Babies Scribble All Over Your Salad
EVs Are Coming to the Farm in California's Central Coast
How About a Burger With Everything - Except the Animals?
This Bee Gets Punched by Flowers for Your Ice Cream
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She has won several regional Emmy awards, a regional and a national Edward R. Murrow award. The Association for Health Journalists awarded Lesley best beat coverage. The Society of Professional Journalists has recognized her reporting several times. The Society of Environmental Journalists spotlighted her ongoing coverage of California's historic drought. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Before joining KQED in 2016, she covered food and sustainability for Capital Public Radio, the environment for Colorado Public Radio, and reported for both KUOW and KCTS9 in Seattle. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When not hunched over her laptop Lesley enjoys skiing with her toddler, surfing with her husband or scheming their next globetrotting adventure. Before motherhood she relished dancing tango till sunrise. 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Varroa mites, the bees’ ghastly parasites, are one of the main culprits. After hitching a ride into a hive, a mite mom hides in a honeycomb cell, where she and her offspring feed on a growing bee. But beekeepers and scientists are helping honeybees fight back.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>TRANSCRIPT\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Here’s a go-to recipe for beekeepers. It’s called a “sugar shake.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Take a half-cup of bees. That’s about 300.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Put them in a jar and cover them with a mesh lid.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Add two tablespoons confectioners’ sugar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shake for 30 seconds. We’re going for a nice, even coat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Empty the sugar onto a tray. And there you have it: frosted varroa mites, aka \u003cem>Varroa destructor\u003c/em>. They’re a honeybee’s worst enemy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The fine-powdered sugar made them lose the grip they had on their hosts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A minute ago, the mites were on the bees in the hive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s as if you were carrying around a tick the size of a dinner plate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Every year, up to half the managed honeybee hives in the United States die from hazards like pesticide exposure, lack of flowers to forage on year-round, and varroa mites.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To feed, a varroa mite nestles between the bees’ protective plates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It digs in with its gnarly mouth, the gnathosoma. The mite sinks it into a crucial organ called the fat body. It’s a layer of tissue that lines the abdomen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote]\u003cbr>\nADDITIONAL RESOURCES\u003cbr>\nElina L. Niño, associate professor of cooperative extension in apiculture at UC Davis, has answered \u003ca href=\"https://elninobeelab.sf.ucdavis.edu/resources-community\">common questions about honeybees\u003c/a> from beekeepers, homeowners and gardeners, including where to send pests to be identified. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This 2019 paper by Samuel Ramsey and colleagues details how they discovered that \u003ca href=\"https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1818371116\">varroa mites feed on the fat body of honeybees\u003c/a>. For a long time, it was thought that the mites fed on honeybees’ blood, known as hemolymph.\u003cbr>\n[/pullquote]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sort of like the human liver, the fat body helps the bee break down harmful stuff, including pesticides. And it maintains the bee’s immune system. So, when varroa mites attack the fat body, they seriously weaken the bee.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The mites can also transmit a virus that causes a bee to be born with deformed wings, no good for flying.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Let’s go back to the “sugar shake.” Beekeepers use them to monitor the varroa mites in their hives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As few as three mites per half-cup of bees could kill a hive within the year. That’s because varroa mites are great at sneaking into hives, hiding, and reproducing like mad.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first mite gets into a hive by hitching a ride on a bee from another colony. Maybe the bee’s own colony wasn’t doing well and it was looking for a new home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The mite sniffs around for a bee larva and sneaks in right before the bees cover the cell with wax.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The defenseless larva is now trapped with its enemy, which begins to feed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the larva grows into a pupa, the mite, called a foundress, starts her family. Take a look underneath this bee pupa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The mite’s firstborn is always a son. The rest are daughters. They’re hard to tell apart when they’re young.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the siblings come of age inside the cell, they’ll meet up on this pile of mite poop – maybe they’re guided by the scent. And they’ll mate … with each other.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sometimes two foundresses make it into a cell. Then their offspring get to mate with someone they’re not related to.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The mites live off the bee pupa, but they don’t kill it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the bee is all grown up, it chews its way out of the cell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The mite slips onto its next victim. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, why don’t the bees just pick those mites off themselves?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well, we didn’t start seeing varroa mites in the U.S. until the 1980s. They evolved on eastern honeybees, in Asia. That’s why the western honeybees in the Americas and Europe aren’t yet good at defending against them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When beekeepers find mites in a sugar shake, they treat a hive with pesticide strips that kill the mites. But mites are becoming resistant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, researchers are selectively breeding honeybees to fight back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The U.S. Department of Agriculture and private companies are breeding bees that can sniff out varroa mites. When the bees find some, they uncap the cells and interrupt reproduction. The bees then, um, “recycle” the unlucky pupa. Yep, they’re eating it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Purdue and Central State universities, scientists breed honeybees known as “mite-biters.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After collecting sperm from a male bee, they inseminate a queen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Both the queen and the male come from colonies that are particularly good at killing mites by chewing off their legs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a grisly end for these tormentors and – just maybe – a fair shake for the honeybees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hey sugar, what’s shakin’? We’ve got more bee stories for you. Bindweed turret bees fill their underground nests with pollen. See those “pollen pants”? But freeloading flies drop their own eggs into the nests … from the air!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Also, PBS Digital Studios wants to know what you enjoy on YouTube and what you want more of. Follow the link in the description to take their annual survey. You even get to vote on new show ideas. Thanks for representing, and please tell them Deep Look sent you.\u003c/p>\n\n","blocks":[],"excerpt":"Every year, up to half the honeybee colonies in the U.S. die. Varroa mites, the bees’ ghastly parasites, are one of the main culprits. After hitching a ride into a hive, a mite mom hides in a honeycomb cell, where she and her offspring feed on a growing bee. But beekeepers and scientists are helping honeybees fight back.","status":"publish","parent":0,"modified":1704845855,"stats":{"hasAudio":false,"hasVideo":false,"hasChartOrMap":false,"iframeSrcs":[],"hasGoogleForm":false,"hasGallery":false,"hasHearkenModule":false,"hasPolis":false,"paragraphCount":43,"wordCount":972},"headData":{"title":"Varroa Mites Are a Honeybee’s 8-Legged Nightmare | KQED","description":"Every year, up to half the honeybee colonies in the U.S. die. Varroa mites, the bees’ ghastly parasites, are one of the main culprits. After hitching a ride into a hive, a mite mom hides in a honeycomb cell, where she and her offspring feed on a growing bee. But beekeepers and scientists are helping honeybees fight back.","ogTitle":"","ogDescription":"","ogImgId":"","twTitle":"","twDescription":"","twImgId":"","schema":{"@context":"http://schema.org","@type":"Article","headline":"Varroa Mites Are a Honeybee’s 8-Legged Nightmare","datePublished":"2023-10-24T15:00:40.000Z","dateModified":"2024-01-10T00:17:35.000Z","image":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"}},"videoEmbed":"https://youtu.be/69Do8tw_xy0","source":"Food","sourceUrl":"/food/","sticky":false,"excludeFromSiteSearch":"Include","articleAge":"0","path":"/science/1984850/varroa-mites-are-a-honeybees-8-legged-nightmare","audioTrackLength":null,"parsedContent":[{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"dl_subscribe","attributes":{"named":{"label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Every year, up to half the honeybee colonies in the U.S. die. Varroa mites, the bees’ ghastly parasites, are one of the main culprits. After hitching a ride into a hive, a mite mom hides in a honeycomb cell, where she and her offspring feed on a growing bee. But beekeepers and scientists are helping honeybees fight back.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>TRANSCRIPT\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Here’s a go-to recipe for beekeepers. It’s called a “sugar shake.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Take a half-cup of bees. That’s about 300.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Put them in a jar and cover them with a mesh lid.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"fullwidth"},"numeric":["fullwidth"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Add two tablespoons confectioners’ sugar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shake for 30 seconds. We’re going for a nice, even coat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Empty the sugar onto a tray. And there you have it: frosted varroa mites, aka \u003cem>Varroa destructor\u003c/em>. They’re a honeybee’s worst enemy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The fine-powdered sugar made them lose the grip they had on their hosts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A minute ago, the mites were on the bees in the hive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s as if you were carrying around a tick the size of a dinner plate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Every year, up to half the managed honeybee hives in the United States die from hazards like pesticide exposure, lack of flowers to forage on year-round, and varroa mites.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To feed, a varroa mite nestles between the bees’ protective plates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It digs in with its gnarly mouth, the gnathosoma. The mite sinks it into a crucial organ called the fat body. It’s a layer of tissue that lines the abdomen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"\u003cbr>\nADDITIONAL RESOURCES\u003cbr>\nElina L. Niño, associate professor of cooperative extension in apiculture at UC Davis, has answered \u003ca href=\"https://elninobeelab.sf.ucdavis.edu/resources-community\">common questions about honeybees\u003c/a> from beekeepers, homeowners and gardeners, including where to send pests to be identified. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This 2019 paper by Samuel Ramsey and colleagues details how they discovered that \u003ca href=\"https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1818371116\">varroa mites feed on the fat body of honeybees\u003c/a>. For a long time, it was thought that the mites fed on honeybees’ blood, known as hemolymph.\u003cbr>\n","name":"pullquote","attributes":{"named":{"label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sort of like the human liver, the fat body helps the bee break down harmful stuff, including pesticides. And it maintains the bee’s immune system. So, when varroa mites attack the fat body, they seriously weaken the bee.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The mites can also transmit a virus that causes a bee to be born with deformed wings, no good for flying.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Let’s go back to the “sugar shake.” Beekeepers use them to monitor the varroa mites in their hives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As few as three mites per half-cup of bees could kill a hive within the year. That’s because varroa mites are great at sneaking into hives, hiding, and reproducing like mad.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first mite gets into a hive by hitching a ride on a bee from another colony. Maybe the bee’s own colony wasn’t doing well and it was looking for a new home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The mite sniffs around for a bee larva and sneaks in right before the bees cover the cell with wax.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The defenseless larva is now trapped with its enemy, which begins to feed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the larva grows into a pupa, the mite, called a foundress, starts her family. Take a look underneath this bee pupa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The mite’s firstborn is always a son. The rest are daughters. They’re hard to tell apart when they’re young.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the siblings come of age inside the cell, they’ll meet up on this pile of mite poop – maybe they’re guided by the scent. And they’ll mate … with each other.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sometimes two foundresses make it into a cell. Then their offspring get to mate with someone they’re not related to.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The mites live off the bee pupa, but they don’t kill it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the bee is all grown up, it chews its way out of the cell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The mite slips onto its next victim. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, why don’t the bees just pick those mites off themselves?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well, we didn’t start seeing varroa mites in the U.S. until the 1980s. They evolved on eastern honeybees, in Asia. That’s why the western honeybees in the Americas and Europe aren’t yet good at defending against them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When beekeepers find mites in a sugar shake, they treat a hive with pesticide strips that kill the mites. But mites are becoming resistant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, researchers are selectively breeding honeybees to fight back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The U.S. Department of Agriculture and private companies are breeding bees that can sniff out varroa mites. When the bees find some, they uncap the cells and interrupt reproduction. The bees then, um, “recycle” the unlucky pupa. Yep, they’re eating it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Purdue and Central State universities, scientists breed honeybees known as “mite-biters.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After collecting sperm from a male bee, they inseminate a queen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Both the queen and the male come from colonies that are particularly good at killing mites by chewing off their legs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a grisly end for these tormentors and – just maybe – a fair shake for the honeybees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hey sugar, what’s shakin’? We’ve got more bee stories for you. Bindweed turret bees fill their underground nests with pollen. See those “pollen pants”? But freeloading flies drop their own eggs into the nests … from the air!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Also, PBS Digital Studios wants to know what you enjoy on YouTube and what you want more of. Follow the link in the description to take their annual survey. You even get to vote on new show ideas. Thanks for representing, and please tell them Deep Look sent you.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}}],"link":"/science/1984850/varroa-mites-are-a-honeybees-8-legged-nightmare","authors":["6186"],"series":["science_1935"],"categories":["science_2874","science_30","science_36","science_40","science_4450","science_86"],"tags":["science_392","science_1120","science_5178","science_1970","science_309"],"featImg":"science_1984881","label":"source_science_1984850"},"science_1982673":{"type":"posts","id":"science_1982673","meta":{"index":"posts_1591205157","site":"science","id":"1982673","score":null,"sort":[1683756094000]},"guestAuthors":[],"slug":"mangoes-and-agave-in-the-central-valley-california-farmers-try-new-crops-to-cope-with-climate-change","title":"Mangoes and Agave in the Central Valley? California Farmers Try New Crops to Cope With Climate Change","publishDate":1683756094,"format":"standard","headTitle":"Mangoes and Agave in the Central Valley? California Farmers Try New Crops to Cope With Climate Change | KQED","labelTerm":{},"content":"\u003cp>In a world of worsening heat waves, flooding, drought, glacial melting, megafires and other calamities of a changing climate, Gary Gragg is an optimist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As California warms, Gragg — a nurseryman, micro-scale farmer and tropical fruit enthusiast — looks forward to the day that he can grow and sell mangoes in Northern California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve been banking on this since I was 10 years old and first heard about global warming,” said Gragg, 54, who has planted several mango trees, among other subtropical trees, in his orchard about 25 miles west of Sacramento.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gragg’s little orchard might be the continent’s northernmost grove of mangoes, which normally are grown in places like Florida, Hawaii and Puerto Rico.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Northern California’s climate, he said, is becoming increasingly suitable for heat-loving, frost-sensitive mango trees, as well as avocados, cherimoyas and tropical palms, a specialty of his plant nursery \u003ca href=\"https://www.goldengatepalms.com/\">Golden Gate Palms\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Climate change isn’t all bad,” Gragg said. “People almost never talk about the positives of global warming, but there will be winners and losers everywhere.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mangoes may never become a mainstream crop in the northern half of California, but change is undoubtedly coming. Hustling to adapt, farmers around the state are experimenting with new, more sustainable crops and varieties bred to better tolerate drought, heat, humidity and other elements of the increasingly unruly climate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the Central Valley, farmers are investing in avocados, which are traditionally planted farther south, and \u003ca href=\"https://www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/agave-drought-tolerant-california-crop\">agave\u003c/a>, a drought-resistant succulent grown in Mexico to make tequila.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Santa Cruz, one grower is trying a tropical exotic, lucuma, that is native to South American regions with mild winters. Others are growing tropical dragon fruit from the Central Coast down to San Diego.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some Sonoma and Napa Valley wineries have planted new vineyards in cooler coastal hills and valleys to escape the extreme heat of inland areas. And several Bay Area farmers have planted yangmei, a delicacy in China that can resist blights that ravage peaches and other popular California crops during rainy springs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote align='left' citation='Gary Gragg, farmer, Sacramento Valley']‘People almost never talk about the positives of global warming, but there will be winners and losers everywhere.’[/pullquote]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Near the town of Linden, farmer Mike Machado, who served in the state Assembly and Senate from 1994 to 2008, is one of many growers in the arid San Joaquin Valley who have replaced some stone fruit and nut trees with olives, historically a minor California crop mostly produced in Mediterranean nations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re adjusting for survival,” Machado said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Climate change essentially means that Southern California’s conditions are creeping north up the coast and into the valley, while Oregon and Washington are becoming more like Northern California. Precipitation, winds, fog and seasonal and daily temperature patterns — all of which determine which crops can be grown where — have all been altered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“With climate change, we’re getting more erratic entries into fall and more erratic entries into spring,” said \u003ca href=\"https://www.plantsciences.ucdavis.edu/people/louise-ferguson\">Louise Ferguson\u003c/a>, a UC Davis plant physiologist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Researchers predicted that “\u003ca href=\"https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0006166\">climatic conditions by the middle to end of the 21st century will no longer support some of the main tree crops currently grown in California\u003c/a> … For some crops, production might no longer be possible.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Fruit growers all around the world in the warm regions are worried about” warming trends, particularly in winter, said Eike Luedeling, co-author of the study and professor of horticultural sciences at Germany’s University of Bonn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>UC Davis researchers are at the cutting edge of the push to adapt, working to make California’s lucrative walnut, pistachio and stone fruit orchards more resilient by selectively breeding for heat, disease and drought tolerance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>About three-quarters of the nation’s fruits and nuts are grown in California, but fruit and nut trees are among the most vulnerable crops to climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Luedeling’s research, for example, suggests that high winter temperatures could severely reduce walnut yields about once a decade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ucanr.edu/?facultyid=26295\">Katherine Jarvis-Shean\u003c/a>, an orchard adviser with the UC Agriculture and Natural Resources program, said that effect will be magnified farther south: “That’s probably one in five years in the southern San Joaquin Valley,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Searching for genetic resilience\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://apps1.cdfa.ca.gov/FertilizerResearch/docs/Pistachio_Production_CA.pdf\">Pistachios have grown to be one of the state’s mightiest crops (PDF)\u003c/a>, with acreage of mature trees now covering more than 400,000 acres. The 2021 harvest totaled about 577,000 tons and was valued at nearly $3 billion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now crop scientists are working to save these valuable orchards from the effects of warming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Warmer winters can cause male varieties to bloom and release pollen too late, after the female flowers have opened. This means less pollination and less fruit, and in 2015 many orchards suffered total crop failure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Patrick Brown, a UC Davis nut crop breeder, said farmers have solved this problem, at least for now, by grafting additional male varieties with different blooming schedules into the groves. “It’s a fairly easy hedge against that problem (of warmer winters),” he said. “No matter when the females bloom, there should be some pollen for them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Breeding programs to reduce nuts’ chill requirements are underway, but Brown said these trees have trade-offs: They tend to wake up earlier from winter dormancy, which can put premature foliage at risk of frost damage and expose young leaves to rainfall that causes blight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brown is now leading a hunt for genetic resistance to walnut blight in the shady groves of the Wolfskill Experimental Orchards, a repository of nearly 9,000 grapevine and tree fruit varieties from around the world. This genetic bank, owned by UC Davis and jointly run with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, includes walnut trees of several species and hundreds of varieties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brown’s experiment involves showering the walnuts with sprinklers in spring and summer and observing which develop the symptoms of blight — oil-black stains on the leaves and fruit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His research is focused on walnut trees grown from \u003ca href=\"https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/the-great-georgian-fruit-hunt-68708316/\">seeds collected in the Republic of Georgia\u003c/a>, where humidity creates conditions amenable to the disease. This likely has created localized genetic resistance — what Brown hopes to find.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It gets pretty hot and humid (in Georgia) during the growing season, and if there’s resistance to blight anywhere, that would probably be a good place to look,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote align='left' citation='Claire Heinitz, research leader, US Department of Agriculture']‘Drought tolerance is a really tough nut to crack, because it doesn’t just involve roots — it involves every system of the plant.’[/pullquote]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still other problems are emerging as California’s weather patterns grow more erratic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Early fall rains have been a problem for walnuts, spoiling ripening fruits. And heat waves — especially when they follow a rain event — can cause fruit to drop or spoil. Almost 40% of last fall’s walnut crop was lost when Central Valley temperatures approached 115 degrees, according to \u003ca href=\"https://walnuts.org/news/robert-verloop-named-executive-director-and-ceo-for-the-california-walnut-board-and-california-walnut-commission/\">Robert Verloop\u003c/a>, executive director of the California Walnut Board and the California Walnut Commission.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Walnut growers “are worried about heat waves, and they should be,” Jarvis-Shean said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another UC Davis study at the Wolfskill orchards aims to identify genes for heat tolerance in European walnut trees. Claire Heinitz, a U.S. Department of Agriculture research leader, said trees are sampled with an instrument that measures photosynthesis. The idea is to find unique individuals that maintain basic functions under brutal heat conditions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This year, she said, the project, led by researchers \u003ca href=\"https://mcelrone.ucdavis.edu/people/andrew-j-mcelrone\">Andrew McElrone\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://mcelrone.ucdavis.edu/people/mina-momayyezi\">Mina Momayyezi\u003c/a>, might be expanded to include grapes, which are highly prone to heat damage, as well as pistachios and almonds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Heinitz said much of the research aims to create hardier root systems, which can protect the trees against soil pathogens, salts and other stressors. However, breeding \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/environment/2021/09/california-drought-farmers/\">drought resilience\u003c/a> into California’s major crops may be a more elusive goal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Drought tolerance is a really tough nut to crack, because it doesn’t just involve roots — it involves every system of the plant,” Heinitz said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982676\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1982676\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-16-CM-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A man uses a sensor on a leaf of an almond tree. \" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-16-CM-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-16-CM-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-16-CM-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-16-CM-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-16-CM.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Researcher Andrew McElrone uses a porometer on an almond tree leaf at the Wolfskill Experimental Orchards near Winters. \u003ccite>(Rahul Lal/CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>California’s subtropical future?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The winter of 2023 was an unusually cold one, but it hardly suggests a trend toward nut-friendly weather.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain said last month that the low temperatures of the past several months were “a fluke” amid a long-term trajectory of increasingly warm winters. In fact, he said, “this may well be the coldest winter that some places will see now for the rest of our lives.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If true, that could mean smooth sailing for Chiles Wilson Jr. and his family. A fifth-generation Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta farmer, Wilson has planted thousands of avocado trees of a dozen varieties near Walnut Grove and Cortland. Now the fruit, harvested almost year-round, is a key component of the family’s fruit-packing company, \u003ca href=\"https://www.rivermaid.com/\">Rivermaid\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most California avocados are grown between San Diego and Santa Barbara, covering nearly 50,000 acres and producing more than $300 million in direct farm sales.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wilson recalls that when he pitched the avocado idea to his family nearly a decade ago, they discouraged him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They said, ‘Nah, they won’t produce here,’” he said. “And I said, ‘But that one does.’” He pointed to a large, fruit-laden avocado tree within sight of the farm’s main office. They gave it a shot, planting more than 600 avocado trees per acre.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wilson knows, even in an era of warming, that his avocado orchards are a gamble. “We’re one killer freeze away from being wiped out,” Wilson said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, this winter, the temperature dipped below freezing 16 times in the Wilsons’ avocado groves, yet the trees survived and are producing fruit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982677\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1982677\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-13-CM-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"Avocados seen hanging from a tree.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-13-CM-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-13-CM-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-13-CM-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-13-CM-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-13-CM.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Gragg holds Pinkerton avocados that he grows in the Sacramento Valley. \u003ccite>(Rahul Lal/CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Still other fruits, barely known to most Americans, could rise to greatness in a warmer California. Charlie Lucero, a home orchardist in Menlo Park, is helping introduce Californians to yangmei. Lychee-like red orbs with pits inside like a cherry and a taste like pomegranate and pine resin, yangmei are typically grown in China.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now Lucero is serving as a consultant and marketer for several Northern California growers who are preparing to harvest their second crop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lucero said the fruit — a relative of the bayberry — has “zero chill requirement” and is also resistant to fungi and bacteria that can plague stone fruit growers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If we get a late rain, it doesn’t hurt us,” Lucero said of his small yangmei collaborative, called \u003ca href=\"http://calmei-yangmei.com/\">Calmei\u003c/a>. “These trees are well-suited for California, where the weather is becoming less predictable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lucero said they’ve been retailing for about $60 a pound. Last year’s crop totaled about 2.5 tons; this year, he expects about twice that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An orchard project near Santa Cruz offers another glimpse into California’s possible future of farming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nate Blackmore of \u003ca href=\"https://www.wildlandsplants.com/\">Wildlands Farm and Nursery\u003c/a> is planting several acres with subtropical fruits, mostly from Central and South America: white sapote, ice cream bean, cherimoya, uvaia, dragon fruit and guabiroba.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The main attraction of his up-and-coming orchard will be \u003ca href=\"https://www.cbi.eu/market-information/honey-sweeteners/lucuma\">lucuma\u003c/a> trees. Native to western South America, lucuma resembles a round avocado with a pointed bottom, with mealy, sweet flesh like a yam.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All these species are tolerant of frost — but just barely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s so scary having all these subtropical fruit trees, and wondering how many would survive a bad freeze,” Blackmore said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet another tropical crop could gain an advantage from California’s warming climate: coffee.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s being grown at orchards in Santa Barbara, Ventura and San Diego counties, and it’s not cheap: One company is selling organic coffee beans for \u003ca href=\"https://frinjcoffee.com/product/good-land-organics-geisha-3/\">$286 per pound\u003c/a>. But the trees are hardly sustainable in those regions, which are reliant on water imported from Northern California and the Colorado River: Watering them takes at least \u003ca href=\"https://www.britannica.com/topic/coffee-production\">several feet of water\u003c/a> per year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another tropical fruit more suitable for drought-prone land is the pitaya, or dragon fruit. Grown from tropical cactus plants, it can be farmed in California with as little as 1.5 feet of applied water — a third of what citrus and avocados need, according to Ramiro Lobo, a San Diego County farm adviser with the UC Cooperative Extension program. His program has distributed about 50,000 dragon fruit cactus cuttings to small farmers from San Luis Obispo down to San Diego and at least 1,000 acres are in production.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Dry farming to cope with water scarcity\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Among all the pressures for California farmers, none is so persistent and serious as water supply. The agriculture industry uses about 80% of the water Californians consume. During droughts, farmers — especially those growing some 4 million acres of grapevines and fruit trees — pump water from the ground.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This has caused thousands of drinking water wells to run dry and land to sink \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/environment/water/2023/02/california-depleted-groundwater-storms/\">as aquifers shrivel\u003c/a>. The state passed a new groundwater law in 2014 that is beginning to take effect, and could force as much as \u003ca href=\"https://www.ppic.org/publication/policy-brief-the-future-of-agriculture-in-the-san-joaquin-valley/\">900,000 acres\u003c/a> of irrigated cropland, mostly in the arid San Joaquin Valley, out of production.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But this is inconsequential to farmers like Tristan Benson. Based in western Sonoma County, he practices dry farming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Benson and his partners usually harvest 20 to 30 tons of heirloom wheat and barley from loamy hillsides, selling the grain for use in bread, beer and distilling. To grow these staples, they just need a little rain, forgoing \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/environment/2023/01/colorado-river-water/\">the irrigation that other growers, like those in the Central and Imperial valleys, rely upon\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even through recent droughts, Benson said, he has always pulled in a crop. “The closer to the coast we are, the better we do,” he said. Fields are planted in October or November, and about a week after the first heavy rain, the seeds germinate, and usually the ground stays moist until the summer harvest time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Benson’s methods could be a model for sustainability for other California growers, who have “planted millions of acres of trees that always need water, and our reservoirs have at most a three-year supply,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982678\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1982678 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-19-CM-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A 40-ish white woman with long, dark brown hair, olive pants, boots, and a mauve long-sleeved top and a purple vest, stands in a grassy, shaded lane between two verdant, leafy rows of trees.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-19-CM-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-19-CM-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-19-CM-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-19-CM-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-19-CM.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Claire Heinitz, a scientist with the US Department of of Agriculture, helps manage the Wolfskill Experimental Orchards, a collection of thousands of crop varieties used for breeding experiments \u003ccite>(Rahul Lal/CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Benson thinks a smart farming model is to grow winter crops without irrigation, and when reservoirs are full — as they are now — plant irrigated fields with annual summer fruits and vegetables. Apples, tomatoes, pears, grapes and potatoes can all be dry-farmed in cooler regions; farther inland and to the south, dry farming is more challenging, at least for most crops.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Geoff Vanden Heuvel, director of regulatory and economic affairs at the Milk Producers Council, said winter farming of grain and feed crops, with just a few inches of irrigation water, could help feed livestock with less groundwater use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than a quarter of the state’s feed crops are grown in areas entirely reliant on groundwater, and this dependency will likely translate into fewer California cows in the future, he said. By the 2040s, when the groundwater law takes full effect, dairy herds are expected to drop by about 10%. “That’s about 130,000 fewer cows,” Vanden Heuvel said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ferguson of UC Davis said Central Valley farmers have grown accustomed to harvesting maximum yields because “we had more reliable water. Maybe now, when we don’t have the water or it’s more expensive, they’ll have to settle for a lower yield.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://caes.ucdavis.edu/people/daniel-sumner\">Daniel Sumner\u003c/a>, a UC Davis professor of agricultural and resource economics, said California’s agricultural identity already has changed drastically over time. In its earliest days of statehood, California was a major producer of \u003ca href=\"https://apps1.cdfa.ca.gov/FertilizerResearch/docs/Wheat_Production_CA.pdf\">rain-watered wheat, grown on several million acres (PDF)\u003c/a>. When irrigation became ubiquitous, so did specialty crops that thrive in a hot, dry climate but need water in the summer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Almonds now cover more than 1.6 million acres of the Central Valley, and pistachios have seen explosive growth, “from almost nothing to a $2 billion crop in a few decades,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He added that predicting what crops will be trending in California in several decades is impossible, “but it’s hard to picture that we wouldn’t stay a specialty crop producer.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Economic turbulence, too\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>It’s not just the changing climate that’s guiding the future of one of California’s top industries. In the decades to come, growers will experience economic shifts, competition from imports and rising labor costs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The increasing minimum wage, for example, has made even some high-value crops, like table olives, unprofitable to grow in California unless machines prune the trees and pick the fruit. \u003ca href=\"https://ucanr.edu/sites/mecholive/Overview_-_Objectives/\">Hand-based labor can suck up 45% to 60% of gross revenue\u003c/a>, largely because olives must be carefully handled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.atlasbig.com/en-us/countries-olive-production#:~:text=Worldwide%2019%2C464%2C495%20tonnes%20of%20olive%20is%20produced%20per,Morocco%20is%20the%20third%20largest%20producer%20of%20olive.\">Spain, the world’s superproducer of olives\u003c/a>, generates a cheaper product and has forced California growers to adapt, said Dennis Burreson, vice president at the Musco Family Olive Co., based in Tracy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Burreson said machine harvesting is now becoming standard for many tree crops, adding, “eventually, I think hand-harvesting of many orchard crops is going to be in the rearview mirror.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, the state’s mighty walnut industry has been knocked on its side as oversupply and competition from China have sent prices crashing. In 2013, \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/Statistics/PDFs/2022_Ag_Stats_Review.pdf\">a ton of walnuts sold off the farm for $3,700 (PDF)\u003c/a>. Now it’s about $700 per ton. On top of that, growers “are still sitting on 130,000 tons of the 2021 crop,” Verloop, of the California Walnut Board and the California Walnut Commission, said, with some of that excess distributed to food banks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So many walnut growers are now reportedly scheduled to have their trees uprooted and chipped that removal services can’t keep up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sumner said the economic upheaval of the walnut industry “doesn’t look like it’s turning around.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brown suspects that labor costs and land values will be just as strong drivers of agriculture’s evolution as the changing climate. Other regions of the world are producing crops for less, he said, which means California’s specialties will be niche and higher-quality produce.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Whatever is going to be grown in California in 50 years,” he said, “is what can’t be grown elsewhere or what can be grown better here.”\u003c/p>\n\n","blocks":[],"excerpt":"The future of farming in California is changing as the planet warms, altering the rain and heat patterns that guide which crops are grown where. 'We're adjusting for survival,' one grower said.","status":"publish","parent":0,"modified":1704846014,"stats":{"hasAudio":false,"hasVideo":false,"hasChartOrMap":false,"iframeSrcs":[],"hasGoogleForm":false,"hasGallery":false,"hasHearkenModule":false,"hasPolis":false,"paragraphCount":83,"wordCount":3217},"headData":{"title":"Mangoes and Agave in the Central Valley? California Farmers Try New Crops to Cope With Climate Change | KQED","description":"The future of farming in California is changing as the planet warms, altering the rain and heat patterns that guide which crops are grown where. 'We're adjusting for survival,' one grower said.","ogTitle":"","ogDescription":"","ogImgId":"","twTitle":"","twDescription":"","twImgId":"","schema":{"@context":"http://schema.org","@type":"Article","headline":"Mangoes and Agave in the Central Valley? California Farmers Try New Crops to Cope With Climate Change","datePublished":"2023-05-10T22:01:34.000Z","dateModified":"2024-01-10T00:20:14.000Z","image":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"}},"source":"CalMatters","sourceUrl":"https://www.kqed.org/news/affiliate/calmatters","sticky":false,"nprByline":"\u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/author/alastair-bland/\">Alastair Bland\u003c/a>","excludeFromSiteSearch":"Include","showOnAuthorArchivePages":"No","articleAge":"0","path":"/science/1982673/mangoes-and-agave-in-the-central-valley-california-farmers-try-new-crops-to-cope-with-climate-change","audioTrackLength":null,"parsedContent":[{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>In a world of worsening heat waves, flooding, drought, glacial melting, megafires and other calamities of a changing climate, Gary Gragg is an optimist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As California warms, Gragg — a nurseryman, micro-scale farmer and tropical fruit enthusiast — looks forward to the day that he can grow and sell mangoes in Northern California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve been banking on this since I was 10 years old and first heard about global warming,” said Gragg, 54, who has planted several mango trees, among other subtropical trees, in his orchard about 25 miles west of Sacramento.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gragg’s little orchard might be the continent’s northernmost grove of mangoes, which normally are grown in places like Florida, Hawaii and Puerto Rico.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Northern California’s climate, he said, is becoming increasingly suitable for heat-loving, frost-sensitive mango trees, as well as avocados, cherimoyas and tropical palms, a specialty of his plant nursery \u003ca href=\"https://www.goldengatepalms.com/\">Golden Gate Palms\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"fullwidth"},"numeric":["fullwidth"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Climate change isn’t all bad,” Gragg said. “People almost never talk about the positives of global warming, but there will be winners and losers everywhere.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mangoes may never become a mainstream crop in the northern half of California, but change is undoubtedly coming. Hustling to adapt, farmers around the state are experimenting with new, more sustainable crops and varieties bred to better tolerate drought, heat, humidity and other elements of the increasingly unruly climate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the Central Valley, farmers are investing in avocados, which are traditionally planted farther south, and \u003ca href=\"https://www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/agave-drought-tolerant-california-crop\">agave\u003c/a>, a drought-resistant succulent grown in Mexico to make tequila.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Santa Cruz, one grower is trying a tropical exotic, lucuma, that is native to South American regions with mild winters. Others are growing tropical dragon fruit from the Central Coast down to San Diego.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some Sonoma and Napa Valley wineries have planted new vineyards in cooler coastal hills and valleys to escape the extreme heat of inland areas. And several Bay Area farmers have planted yangmei, a delicacy in China that can resist blights that ravage peaches and other popular California crops during rainy springs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"‘People almost never talk about the positives of global warming, but there will be winners and losers everywhere.’","name":"pullquote","attributes":{"named":{"align":"left","citation":"Gary Gragg, farmer, Sacramento Valley","label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Near the town of Linden, farmer Mike Machado, who served in the state Assembly and Senate from 1994 to 2008, is one of many growers in the arid San Joaquin Valley who have replaced some stone fruit and nut trees with olives, historically a minor California crop mostly produced in Mediterranean nations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re adjusting for survival,” Machado said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Climate change essentially means that Southern California’s conditions are creeping north up the coast and into the valley, while Oregon and Washington are becoming more like Northern California. Precipitation, winds, fog and seasonal and daily temperature patterns — all of which determine which crops can be grown where — have all been altered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“With climate change, we’re getting more erratic entries into fall and more erratic entries into spring,” said \u003ca href=\"https://www.plantsciences.ucdavis.edu/people/louise-ferguson\">Louise Ferguson\u003c/a>, a UC Davis plant physiologist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Researchers predicted that “\u003ca href=\"https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0006166\">climatic conditions by the middle to end of the 21st century will no longer support some of the main tree crops currently grown in California\u003c/a> … For some crops, production might no longer be possible.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Fruit growers all around the world in the warm regions are worried about” warming trends, particularly in winter, said Eike Luedeling, co-author of the study and professor of horticultural sciences at Germany’s University of Bonn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>UC Davis researchers are at the cutting edge of the push to adapt, working to make California’s lucrative walnut, pistachio and stone fruit orchards more resilient by selectively breeding for heat, disease and drought tolerance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>About three-quarters of the nation’s fruits and nuts are grown in California, but fruit and nut trees are among the most vulnerable crops to climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Luedeling’s research, for example, suggests that high winter temperatures could severely reduce walnut yields about once a decade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ucanr.edu/?facultyid=26295\">Katherine Jarvis-Shean\u003c/a>, an orchard adviser with the UC Agriculture and Natural Resources program, said that effect will be magnified farther south: “That’s probably one in five years in the southern San Joaquin Valley,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Searching for genetic resilience\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://apps1.cdfa.ca.gov/FertilizerResearch/docs/Pistachio_Production_CA.pdf\">Pistachios have grown to be one of the state’s mightiest crops (PDF)\u003c/a>, with acreage of mature trees now covering more than 400,000 acres. The 2021 harvest totaled about 577,000 tons and was valued at nearly $3 billion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now crop scientists are working to save these valuable orchards from the effects of warming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Warmer winters can cause male varieties to bloom and release pollen too late, after the female flowers have opened. This means less pollination and less fruit, and in 2015 many orchards suffered total crop failure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Patrick Brown, a UC Davis nut crop breeder, said farmers have solved this problem, at least for now, by grafting additional male varieties with different blooming schedules into the groves. “It’s a fairly easy hedge against that problem (of warmer winters),” he said. “No matter when the females bloom, there should be some pollen for them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Breeding programs to reduce nuts’ chill requirements are underway, but Brown said these trees have trade-offs: They tend to wake up earlier from winter dormancy, which can put premature foliage at risk of frost damage and expose young leaves to rainfall that causes blight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brown is now leading a hunt for genetic resistance to walnut blight in the shady groves of the Wolfskill Experimental Orchards, a repository of nearly 9,000 grapevine and tree fruit varieties from around the world. This genetic bank, owned by UC Davis and jointly run with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, includes walnut trees of several species and hundreds of varieties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brown’s experiment involves showering the walnuts with sprinklers in spring and summer and observing which develop the symptoms of blight — oil-black stains on the leaves and fruit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His research is focused on walnut trees grown from \u003ca href=\"https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/the-great-georgian-fruit-hunt-68708316/\">seeds collected in the Republic of Georgia\u003c/a>, where humidity creates conditions amenable to the disease. This likely has created localized genetic resistance — what Brown hopes to find.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It gets pretty hot and humid (in Georgia) during the growing season, and if there’s resistance to blight anywhere, that would probably be a good place to look,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"‘Drought tolerance is a really tough nut to crack, because it doesn’t just involve roots — it involves every system of the plant.’","name":"pullquote","attributes":{"named":{"align":"left","citation":"Claire Heinitz, research leader, US Department of Agriculture","label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still other problems are emerging as California’s weather patterns grow more erratic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Early fall rains have been a problem for walnuts, spoiling ripening fruits. And heat waves — especially when they follow a rain event — can cause fruit to drop or spoil. Almost 40% of last fall’s walnut crop was lost when Central Valley temperatures approached 115 degrees, according to \u003ca href=\"https://walnuts.org/news/robert-verloop-named-executive-director-and-ceo-for-the-california-walnut-board-and-california-walnut-commission/\">Robert Verloop\u003c/a>, executive director of the California Walnut Board and the California Walnut Commission.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Walnut growers “are worried about heat waves, and they should be,” Jarvis-Shean said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another UC Davis study at the Wolfskill orchards aims to identify genes for heat tolerance in European walnut trees. Claire Heinitz, a U.S. Department of Agriculture research leader, said trees are sampled with an instrument that measures photosynthesis. The idea is to find unique individuals that maintain basic functions under brutal heat conditions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This year, she said, the project, led by researchers \u003ca href=\"https://mcelrone.ucdavis.edu/people/andrew-j-mcelrone\">Andrew McElrone\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://mcelrone.ucdavis.edu/people/mina-momayyezi\">Mina Momayyezi\u003c/a>, might be expanded to include grapes, which are highly prone to heat damage, as well as pistachios and almonds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Heinitz said much of the research aims to create hardier root systems, which can protect the trees against soil pathogens, salts and other stressors. However, breeding \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/environment/2021/09/california-drought-farmers/\">drought resilience\u003c/a> into California’s major crops may be a more elusive goal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Drought tolerance is a really tough nut to crack, because it doesn’t just involve roots — it involves every system of the plant,” Heinitz said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982676\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1982676\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-16-CM-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A man uses a sensor on a leaf of an almond tree. \" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-16-CM-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-16-CM-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-16-CM-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-16-CM-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-16-CM.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Researcher Andrew McElrone uses a porometer on an almond tree leaf at the Wolfskill Experimental Orchards near Winters. \u003ccite>(Rahul Lal/CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>California’s subtropical future?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The winter of 2023 was an unusually cold one, but it hardly suggests a trend toward nut-friendly weather.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain said last month that the low temperatures of the past several months were “a fluke” amid a long-term trajectory of increasingly warm winters. In fact, he said, “this may well be the coldest winter that some places will see now for the rest of our lives.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If true, that could mean smooth sailing for Chiles Wilson Jr. and his family. A fifth-generation Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta farmer, Wilson has planted thousands of avocado trees of a dozen varieties near Walnut Grove and Cortland. Now the fruit, harvested almost year-round, is a key component of the family’s fruit-packing company, \u003ca href=\"https://www.rivermaid.com/\">Rivermaid\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most California avocados are grown between San Diego and Santa Barbara, covering nearly 50,000 acres and producing more than $300 million in direct farm sales.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wilson recalls that when he pitched the avocado idea to his family nearly a decade ago, they discouraged him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They said, ‘Nah, they won’t produce here,’” he said. “And I said, ‘But that one does.’” He pointed to a large, fruit-laden avocado tree within sight of the farm’s main office. They gave it a shot, planting more than 600 avocado trees per acre.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wilson knows, even in an era of warming, that his avocado orchards are a gamble. “We’re one killer freeze away from being wiped out,” Wilson said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, this winter, the temperature dipped below freezing 16 times in the Wilsons’ avocado groves, yet the trees survived and are producing fruit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982677\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1982677\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-13-CM-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"Avocados seen hanging from a tree.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-13-CM-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-13-CM-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-13-CM-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-13-CM-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-13-CM.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Gragg holds Pinkerton avocados that he grows in the Sacramento Valley. \u003ccite>(Rahul Lal/CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Still other fruits, barely known to most Americans, could rise to greatness in a warmer California. Charlie Lucero, a home orchardist in Menlo Park, is helping introduce Californians to yangmei. Lychee-like red orbs with pits inside like a cherry and a taste like pomegranate and pine resin, yangmei are typically grown in China.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now Lucero is serving as a consultant and marketer for several Northern California growers who are preparing to harvest their second crop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lucero said the fruit — a relative of the bayberry — has “zero chill requirement” and is also resistant to fungi and bacteria that can plague stone fruit growers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If we get a late rain, it doesn’t hurt us,” Lucero said of his small yangmei collaborative, called \u003ca href=\"http://calmei-yangmei.com/\">Calmei\u003c/a>. “These trees are well-suited for California, where the weather is becoming less predictable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lucero said they’ve been retailing for about $60 a pound. Last year’s crop totaled about 2.5 tons; this year, he expects about twice that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An orchard project near Santa Cruz offers another glimpse into California’s possible future of farming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nate Blackmore of \u003ca href=\"https://www.wildlandsplants.com/\">Wildlands Farm and Nursery\u003c/a> is planting several acres with subtropical fruits, mostly from Central and South America: white sapote, ice cream bean, cherimoya, uvaia, dragon fruit and guabiroba.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The main attraction of his up-and-coming orchard will be \u003ca href=\"https://www.cbi.eu/market-information/honey-sweeteners/lucuma\">lucuma\u003c/a> trees. Native to western South America, lucuma resembles a round avocado with a pointed bottom, with mealy, sweet flesh like a yam.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All these species are tolerant of frost — but just barely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s so scary having all these subtropical fruit trees, and wondering how many would survive a bad freeze,” Blackmore said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet another tropical crop could gain an advantage from California’s warming climate: coffee.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s being grown at orchards in Santa Barbara, Ventura and San Diego counties, and it’s not cheap: One company is selling organic coffee beans for \u003ca href=\"https://frinjcoffee.com/product/good-land-organics-geisha-3/\">$286 per pound\u003c/a>. But the trees are hardly sustainable in those regions, which are reliant on water imported from Northern California and the Colorado River: Watering them takes at least \u003ca href=\"https://www.britannica.com/topic/coffee-production\">several feet of water\u003c/a> per year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another tropical fruit more suitable for drought-prone land is the pitaya, or dragon fruit. Grown from tropical cactus plants, it can be farmed in California with as little as 1.5 feet of applied water — a third of what citrus and avocados need, according to Ramiro Lobo, a San Diego County farm adviser with the UC Cooperative Extension program. His program has distributed about 50,000 dragon fruit cactus cuttings to small farmers from San Luis Obispo down to San Diego and at least 1,000 acres are in production.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Dry farming to cope with water scarcity\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Among all the pressures for California farmers, none is so persistent and serious as water supply. The agriculture industry uses about 80% of the water Californians consume. During droughts, farmers — especially those growing some 4 million acres of grapevines and fruit trees — pump water from the ground.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This has caused thousands of drinking water wells to run dry and land to sink \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/environment/water/2023/02/california-depleted-groundwater-storms/\">as aquifers shrivel\u003c/a>. The state passed a new groundwater law in 2014 that is beginning to take effect, and could force as much as \u003ca href=\"https://www.ppic.org/publication/policy-brief-the-future-of-agriculture-in-the-san-joaquin-valley/\">900,000 acres\u003c/a> of irrigated cropland, mostly in the arid San Joaquin Valley, out of production.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But this is inconsequential to farmers like Tristan Benson. Based in western Sonoma County, he practices dry farming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Benson and his partners usually harvest 20 to 30 tons of heirloom wheat and barley from loamy hillsides, selling the grain for use in bread, beer and distilling. To grow these staples, they just need a little rain, forgoing \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/environment/2023/01/colorado-river-water/\">the irrigation that other growers, like those in the Central and Imperial valleys, rely upon\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even through recent droughts, Benson said, he has always pulled in a crop. “The closer to the coast we are, the better we do,” he said. Fields are planted in October or November, and about a week after the first heavy rain, the seeds germinate, and usually the ground stays moist until the summer harvest time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Benson’s methods could be a model for sustainability for other California growers, who have “planted millions of acres of trees that always need water, and our reservoirs have at most a three-year supply,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982678\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1982678 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-19-CM-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A 40-ish white woman with long, dark brown hair, olive pants, boots, and a mauve long-sleeved top and a purple vest, stands in a grassy, shaded lane between two verdant, leafy rows of trees.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-19-CM-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-19-CM-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-19-CM-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-19-CM-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-19-CM.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Claire Heinitz, a scientist with the US Department of of Agriculture, helps manage the Wolfskill Experimental Orchards, a collection of thousands of crop varieties used for breeding experiments \u003ccite>(Rahul Lal/CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Benson thinks a smart farming model is to grow winter crops without irrigation, and when reservoirs are full — as they are now — plant irrigated fields with annual summer fruits and vegetables. Apples, tomatoes, pears, grapes and potatoes can all be dry-farmed in cooler regions; farther inland and to the south, dry farming is more challenging, at least for most crops.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Geoff Vanden Heuvel, director of regulatory and economic affairs at the Milk Producers Council, said winter farming of grain and feed crops, with just a few inches of irrigation water, could help feed livestock with less groundwater use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than a quarter of the state’s feed crops are grown in areas entirely reliant on groundwater, and this dependency will likely translate into fewer California cows in the future, he said. By the 2040s, when the groundwater law takes full effect, dairy herds are expected to drop by about 10%. “That’s about 130,000 fewer cows,” Vanden Heuvel said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ferguson of UC Davis said Central Valley farmers have grown accustomed to harvesting maximum yields because “we had more reliable water. Maybe now, when we don’t have the water or it’s more expensive, they’ll have to settle for a lower yield.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://caes.ucdavis.edu/people/daniel-sumner\">Daniel Sumner\u003c/a>, a UC Davis professor of agricultural and resource economics, said California’s agricultural identity already has changed drastically over time. In its earliest days of statehood, California was a major producer of \u003ca href=\"https://apps1.cdfa.ca.gov/FertilizerResearch/docs/Wheat_Production_CA.pdf\">rain-watered wheat, grown on several million acres (PDF)\u003c/a>. When irrigation became ubiquitous, so did specialty crops that thrive in a hot, dry climate but need water in the summer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Almonds now cover more than 1.6 million acres of the Central Valley, and pistachios have seen explosive growth, “from almost nothing to a $2 billion crop in a few decades,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He added that predicting what crops will be trending in California in several decades is impossible, “but it’s hard to picture that we wouldn’t stay a specialty crop producer.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Economic turbulence, too\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>It’s not just the changing climate that’s guiding the future of one of California’s top industries. In the decades to come, growers will experience economic shifts, competition from imports and rising labor costs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The increasing minimum wage, for example, has made even some high-value crops, like table olives, unprofitable to grow in California unless machines prune the trees and pick the fruit. \u003ca href=\"https://ucanr.edu/sites/mecholive/Overview_-_Objectives/\">Hand-based labor can suck up 45% to 60% of gross revenue\u003c/a>, largely because olives must be carefully handled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.atlasbig.com/en-us/countries-olive-production#:~:text=Worldwide%2019%2C464%2C495%20tonnes%20of%20olive%20is%20produced%20per,Morocco%20is%20the%20third%20largest%20producer%20of%20olive.\">Spain, the world’s superproducer of olives\u003c/a>, generates a cheaper product and has forced California growers to adapt, said Dennis Burreson, vice president at the Musco Family Olive Co., based in Tracy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Burreson said machine harvesting is now becoming standard for many tree crops, adding, “eventually, I think hand-harvesting of many orchard crops is going to be in the rearview mirror.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, the state’s mighty walnut industry has been knocked on its side as oversupply and competition from China have sent prices crashing. In 2013, \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/Statistics/PDFs/2022_Ag_Stats_Review.pdf\">a ton of walnuts sold off the farm for $3,700 (PDF)\u003c/a>. Now it’s about $700 per ton. On top of that, growers “are still sitting on 130,000 tons of the 2021 crop,” Verloop, of the California Walnut Board and the California Walnut Commission, said, with some of that excess distributed to food banks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So many walnut growers are now reportedly scheduled to have their trees uprooted and chipped that removal services can’t keep up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sumner said the economic upheaval of the walnut industry “doesn’t look like it’s turning around.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brown suspects that labor costs and land values will be just as strong drivers of agriculture’s evolution as the changing climate. Other regions of the world are producing crops for less, he said, which means California’s specialties will be niche and higher-quality produce.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"floatright"},"numeric":["floatright"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Whatever is going to be grown in California in 50 years,” he said, “is what can’t be grown elsewhere or what can be grown better here.”\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}}],"link":"/science/1982673/mangoes-and-agave-in-the-central-valley-california-farmers-try-new-crops-to-cope-with-climate-change","authors":["byline_science_1982673"],"categories":["science_31","science_35","science_40","science_4450"],"tags":["science_392","science_5178","science_194","science_1452"],"featImg":"science_1982675","label":"source_science_1982673"},"science_1980847":{"type":"posts","id":"science_1980847","meta":{"index":"posts_1591205157","site":"science","id":"1980847","score":null,"sort":[1669126051000]},"guestAuthors":[],"slug":"how-hoverflies-spawn-maggots-that-sweeten-your-oranges","title":"How Hoverflies Spawn Maggots that Sweeten Your Oranges","publishDate":1669126051,"format":"video","headTitle":"How Hoverflies Spawn Maggots that Sweeten Your Oranges | KQED","labelTerm":{"term":1935,"site":"science"},"content":"\u003cp>[dl_subscribe]\u003cem> Oblique streaktail hoverflies zip from bloom to bloom wearing a wasp costume to avoid getting eaten. But it’s all show – they don’t even have stingers! Their fierce maggots, on the other hand, devour hundreds of insect pests. As they gorge, they help keep orange trees safe from disease.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>TRANSCRIPT\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>What hovers like a tiny helicopter and flies backwards?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Has the flashy backside of a wasp … the huge eyes of a fly … and spawns murderous maggots?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meet the hoverflies, also known as “flower flies,” or syrphids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are 6,000 species, each with its own style.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bold stripes or plump fuzzy bodies make them look like wasps or bees. But it’s just a ruse. This protective disguise tricks predators into thinking they might get a face full of stinger if they try to eat the hoverflies. This bluff is called Batesian mimicry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This one with the intricate pattern on her back is an oblique streaktail. Right now, she’s on a mission in this Southern California flower patch, fueling up on the pollen that will help her grow her eggs. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She loves this fragrant alyssum and pollinates it as she darts from bloom to bloom. See how precisely she lands?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her wraparound eyes catch the faintest motion … just in time for her to escape this hungry crab spider.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After filling up on pollen, she uses her stubby, but powerful, antennae to smell for the perfect spot for her eggs … an orange tree under attack by these yellow insects with curlicue poop: Asian citrus psyllids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The hoverfly lays her eggs next to them. When maggots hatch out of the eggs, they’ll have plenty of those psyllids nearby to eat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote]\u003cbr>\nADDITIONAL RESOURCES\u003cbr>\nLearn \u003ca href=\"https://www2.ipm.ucanr.edu/natural-enemies/syrphids/\">how to tell hoverflies apart from the bees and wasps they mimic\u003c/a>, and what other garden pests their maggots feed on, from the UC Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program.\u003cbr>\n[/pullquote]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Orange growers despise Asian citrus psyllids, which spread a destructive bacterium.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead of these juicy beauties, trees suffering from this “citrus greening” make green, bitter fruit … and eventually die.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, scientist \u003ca href=\"https://biocontrol.ucr.edu/nic-irvin\">Nic Irvin\u003c/a>, at the University of California, Riverside, has planted alyssum in orange groves to attract oblique streaktails.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Their maggots hunt for psyllids on the orange trees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the psyllids have a security detail: Argentine ants. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They feed on the psyllids’ poop. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In exchange, the ants try to keep the maggots away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But this big one has the upper hand. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It digs its mouthparts in and injects some venom. It even sucks out a little taste, to see if it might want to eat the ant. Nope. It’s really after the psyllids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Each maggot will devour more than 400 in the week before it turns into a pupa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And that gluttony means more oranges for you and me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hey Deep Peeps! Here’s one of our creepiest episodes: hairworms that control a cricket’s brain, from the inside. Also, want to help us shape the future of Deep Look and even vote on potential new shows for PBS? Sweet! Go take our annual viewer survey – link in the description – and come right back for more Deep Look.\u003c/p>\n\n","blocks":[],"excerpt":"Oblique streaktail hoverflies zip from bloom to bloom wearing a wasp costume to avoid getting eaten. But it’s all show – they don’t even have stingers! Their fierce maggots, on the other hand, devour hundreds of insect pests. As they gorge, they help keep orange trees safe from disease.","status":"publish","parent":0,"modified":1704846147,"stats":{"hasAudio":false,"hasVideo":false,"hasChartOrMap":false,"iframeSrcs":[],"hasGoogleForm":false,"hasGallery":false,"hasHearkenModule":false,"hasPolis":false,"paragraphCount":26,"wordCount":548},"headData":{"title":"How Hoverflies Spawn Maggots that Sweeten Your Oranges | KQED","description":"Oblique streaktail hoverflies zip from bloom to bloom wearing a wasp costume to avoid getting eaten. But it’s all show – they don’t even have stingers! Their fierce maggots, on the other hand, devour hundreds of insect pests. As they gorge, they help keep orange trees safe from disease.","ogTitle":"","ogDescription":"","ogImgId":"","twTitle":"","twDescription":"","twImgId":"","schema":{"@context":"http://schema.org","@type":"Article","headline":"How Hoverflies Spawn Maggots that Sweeten Your Oranges","datePublished":"2022-11-22T14:07:31.000Z","dateModified":"2024-01-10T00:22:27.000Z","image":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"}},"videoEmbed":"https://youtu.be/E3nLuK7D7LY","sticky":false,"excludeFromSiteSearch":"Include","path":"/science/1980847/how-hoverflies-spawn-maggots-that-sweeten-your-oranges","audioTrackLength":null,"parsedContent":[{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"dl_subscribe","attributes":{"named":{"label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cem> Oblique streaktail hoverflies zip from bloom to bloom wearing a wasp costume to avoid getting eaten. But it’s all show – they don’t even have stingers! Their fierce maggots, on the other hand, devour hundreds of insect pests. As they gorge, they help keep orange trees safe from disease.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>TRANSCRIPT\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>What hovers like a tiny helicopter and flies backwards?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Has the flashy backside of a wasp … the huge eyes of a fly … and spawns murderous maggots?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meet the hoverflies, also known as “flower flies,” or syrphids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are 6,000 species, each with its own style.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"fullwidth"},"numeric":["fullwidth"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bold stripes or plump fuzzy bodies make them look like wasps or bees. But it’s just a ruse. This protective disguise tricks predators into thinking they might get a face full of stinger if they try to eat the hoverflies. This bluff is called Batesian mimicry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This one with the intricate pattern on her back is an oblique streaktail. Right now, she’s on a mission in this Southern California flower patch, fueling up on the pollen that will help her grow her eggs. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She loves this fragrant alyssum and pollinates it as she darts from bloom to bloom. See how precisely she lands?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her wraparound eyes catch the faintest motion … just in time for her to escape this hungry crab spider.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After filling up on pollen, she uses her stubby, but powerful, antennae to smell for the perfect spot for her eggs … an orange tree under attack by these yellow insects with curlicue poop: Asian citrus psyllids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The hoverfly lays her eggs next to them. When maggots hatch out of the eggs, they’ll have plenty of those psyllids nearby to eat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"\u003cbr>\nADDITIONAL RESOURCES\u003cbr>\nLearn \u003ca href=\"https://www2.ipm.ucanr.edu/natural-enemies/syrphids/\">how to tell hoverflies apart from the bees and wasps they mimic\u003c/a>, and what other garden pests their maggots feed on, from the UC Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program.\u003cbr>\n","name":"pullquote","attributes":{"named":{"label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Orange growers despise Asian citrus psyllids, which spread a destructive bacterium.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead of these juicy beauties, trees suffering from this “citrus greening” make green, bitter fruit … and eventually die.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, scientist \u003ca href=\"https://biocontrol.ucr.edu/nic-irvin\">Nic Irvin\u003c/a>, at the University of California, Riverside, has planted alyssum in orange groves to attract oblique streaktails.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Their maggots hunt for psyllids on the orange trees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the psyllids have a security detail: Argentine ants. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They feed on the psyllids’ poop. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In exchange, the ants try to keep the maggots away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But this big one has the upper hand. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It digs its mouthparts in and injects some venom. It even sucks out a little taste, to see if it might want to eat the ant. Nope. It’s really after the psyllids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Each maggot will devour more than 400 in the week before it turns into a pupa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And that gluttony means more oranges for you and me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hey Deep Peeps! Here’s one of our creepiest episodes: hairworms that control a cricket’s brain, from the inside. Also, want to help us shape the future of Deep Look and even vote on potential new shows for PBS? Sweet! Go take our annual viewer survey – link in the description – and come right back for more Deep Look.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}}],"link":"/science/1980847/how-hoverflies-spawn-maggots-that-sweeten-your-oranges","authors":["6186"],"series":["science_1935"],"categories":["science_2874","science_30","science_40","science_4450","science_86"],"tags":["science_392","science_1970"],"featImg":"science_1980851","label":"science_1935"},"science_1978374":{"type":"posts","id":"science_1978374","meta":{"index":"posts_1591205157","site":"science","id":"1978374","score":null,"sort":[1644229165000]},"guestAuthors":[],"slug":"a-california-water-board-assures-the-public-that-oil-wastewater-is-safe-for-irrigation-but-experts-say-the-evidence-is-scant","title":"A California Water Board Assures the Public That Oil Wastewater Is Safe for Irrigation, but Experts Say the Evidence Is Scant ","publishDate":1644229165,"format":"image","headTitle":"A California Water Board Assures the Public That Oil Wastewater Is Safe for Irrigation, but Experts Say the Evidence Is Scant | KQED","labelTerm":{"site":"science"},"content":"\u003cp>After years of controversy, the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board assured the public in the fall that eating California crops grown with oil field wastewater “creates no identifiable increased health risks,” based on studies commissioned as part of an extensive Food Safety Project.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet a review of the science and interviews with a public health scientist affiliated with the project and other experts show that there is scant evidence to support the board’s safety claims.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size='small' align='right' citation='Clay Rodgers, assistant executive officer, Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board']‘The commitment I made to our board was that if we ever discovered that there was an effect on people consuming crops grown with this, we would stop it immediately.’[/pullquote]The “neutral, third-party consultant” the board retained to conduct the studies, GSI Environmental, has regularly worked for the oil industry. That work includes marshaling evidence to help Chevron, Kern County’s biggest provider of produced water, and other oil giants defend their interests in high-stakes lawsuits around the country and globe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>GSI did not tell water board officials about its ties to the oil industry, which shared the roughly $3.4 million in costs for the firm’s studies and related work with the water districts that benefit from the distribution of wastewater from oil extraction, known as “produced water.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One member of the board’s Food Safety Expert Panel that reviewed GSI’s studies was nominated by Chevron and initially paid by the oil industry, and a second panel member worked as a consultant for an oil company selling produced water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, the expert panel’s own review concluded that GSI’s studies could not answer fundamental safety questions about irrigating crops with produced water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size='small' align='left' citation='Hollin Kretzmann, senior attorney, Center for Biological Diversity, Climate Law Institute']‘This is an industry from top to bottom that’s used to getting its way, whether that’s drilling in neighborhoods, or disposing of the wastewater in unlined pits, or using that wastewater for unsafe purposes.’[/pullquote]Thomas Borch of Colorado State University, a leading expert on treating and reusing produced water for crop irrigation who was not involved in the project, said that based on the data GSI had and the way they designed the experiments, “they were not able to draw the conclusions they did. Period.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Robert Scofield, who led the work for GSI, said in a statement via email that his firm agreed with the water board that the studies were performed in “the most technically sound manner.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Clay Rodgers, the water board official who oversaw the Food Safety Project, said he promised the board that if any evidence were ever discovered that produced water was harming people consuming crops, “we would stop it immediately.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Under the water board’s direction, GSI compiled a list of hundreds of chemicals used in oil operations, then focused on those that might pose health risks. But an absence of information to assess safety dogged the project from the start. Many of the chemicals had never been studied before, or lacked critical details about their use, the board’s panel of experts noted, because the oil companies said doing so would reveal trade secrets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Already there was a data gap there because some of those chemicals don’t have reliable toxicity information,” said John Fleming, senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The findings of the board and its expert panel found no food safety or public health concern, said David Ansolabehere, general manager of the Cawelo Water District, which has taken produced water from Chevron for decades. “Cawelo will continue to test the water based on the regional board’s permit requirements.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1978392\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100035.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1978392\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100035-800x534.jpg\" alt=\"White steam rises off gray water at a Cawelo Water District reservoir filled with wastewater from Chevron's Kern River Oil Field. In the foreground and behind the oval reservoir are brown fields. A long pipeline extends from the far right of the photo to the edge of the reservoir.\" width=\"800\" height=\"534\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100035-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100035-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100035-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100035-768x513.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100035-1536x1026.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100035-1920x1283.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100035.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Steam rises from a Cawelo Water District reservoir filled with wastewater from Chevron’s Kern River Oil Field. Chevron treats the wastewater, then transfers it via pipeline to the reservoir, where it’s blended with surface water and/or groundwater and sent to irrigation canals. \u003ccite>(Liza Gross/Inside Climate News)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Chevron tested for all additives used in the Kern River field for which a testing method approved by the Environmental Protection Agency exists, said Jonathan Harshman, communications advisor for Chevron’s San Joaquin Valley Business Unit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet more than a fifth of the chemicals GSI identified — and 60% of those deemed most likely to pose a health risk — lacked both toxicity information and approved testing methods. The water board conceded that the data gaps left “potentially significant unknowns” about the chemicals’ safety.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When they say this is safe,” Fleming said, “it’s based on what chemicals they were able to test.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That means the “no identifiable increased health risks” assertion applies to just a fraction of potential chemicals in produced water applied to crops.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Oil’s profligate water use\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In early August, during one of the driest summers on record, Wasco farmer Nate Siemens received a troubling notice from his irrigation district, which is regulated by the Central Valley water board. “Please be aware that this water includes some amount of reclaimed oilfield production water,” it said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1978401\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1090930.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1978401\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1090930-800x534.jpg\" alt=\"Almond farmer Nate Siemens stands in front of a large tree on his farm. He's wearing a red and black plaid shirt over a black hoodie, and a silver and gold ball cap. Siemens, an organic agriculture consultant for the Rodale Institute, is moving his family's Fat Uncle Farms away from thirsty crops like almonds and has no interest in taking the oil industry's wastewater.\" width=\"800\" height=\"534\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1090930-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1090930-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1090930-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1090930-768x513.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1090930-1536x1026.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1090930-1920x1283.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1090930.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nate Siemens, an organic agriculture consultant for the Rodale Institute, is moving his family’s Fat Uncle Farms away from thirsty crops like almonds and has no interest in taking the oil industry’s wastewater. \u003ccite>(Liza Gross, Inside Climate News)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Siemens, an organic agriculture consultant with the Rodale Institute, was shocked. Siemens needed that water. But he’s transitioning his family’s Fat Uncle Farms to organic and wasn’t keen on using the oil industry’s wastewater to irrigate his almonds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Siemens’s farming roots in the region predate the rise of Kern County’s oil industry, which produces more than 70% of the state’s oil. He was well aware that climate-polluting pump jacks operate among corporate farms growing miles of water-intensive almonds and pistachios, California’s most valuable export crops. But he had no idea just how entrenched oil operations had become in \u003ca href=\"http://www.kernag.com/caap/crop-reports/crop20_29/crop2020.pdf\">the county’s $7.6 billion agricultural industry\u003c/a> until he received that notice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>About 30 miles southeast of Siemens’s farm, thousands of densely packed pump jacks stretch as far as the eye can see toward the horizon, bobbing robotically as they suck oil and water from wells carved into the denuded landscape of the Kern River Oil Field.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pump jacks have pried more than 2 billion barrels from the field since oil was discovered here in 1899. But wresting Kern’s notoriously viscous crude from receding oil reserves requires injecting ever increasing amounts of water and hot steam underground.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/Oils-unquenchable-thirst.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1978382\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/Oils-unquenchable-thirst.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"650\" height=\"690\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/Oils-unquenchable-thirst.png 650w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/Oils-unquenchable-thirst-160x170.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 650px) 100vw, 650px\">\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\nThat water returns to the surface along with groundwater. The mixture contains arsenic, uranium and other naturally occurring toxic elements, along with potentially hundreds of chemicals used in the extraction process. Since 1985, the ratio of water to oil recovered has more than doubled, from seven barrels of water per barrel of oil to 18 barrels today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a region with less than nine inches of rain in a normal year — the definition of a desert — getting enough water is a perennial concern. Nearly 30 years ago, Chevron struck what a former Cawelo Water District manager called a “win-win” deal to deliver some of the massive amounts of wastewater produced every day to farmers’ fields.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Every year, more than 38,000 acre-feet of produced water from Chevron and other oil companies hydrates California farmland, including roughly 11% of Kern County’s irrigated farmland. That’s enough to cover about 38,000 football fields with a foot of water, or more than 12.4 billion gallons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/Treating-Oil-Wastewater.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1978379\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/Treating-Oil-Wastewater.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"700\" height=\"627\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/Treating-Oil-Wastewater.png 700w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/Treating-Oil-Wastewater-160x143.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\">\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\nChevron treats produced water from its Kern River Oil Field by removing oil from water through gravity separation, then skimming off solids and residual oil before filtering it through walnut hulls. The water then travels several miles by pipeline to a Cawelo holding pond, where it’s blended with surface and groundwater and sent to irrigation canals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first time Seth Shonkoff, a public health scientist with the nonprofit Physicians, Scientists, and Engineers (PSE) for Healthy Energy and a member of the expert panel, visited the Cawelo holding pond several years ago, he smelled an “extraordinarily strong” whiff of asphalt and crude oil. The same odors were much less offensive when he visited the pond with the panel a few years later.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Either there’s natural variability in the water, Shonkoff said, or someone did something different before experts came to evaluate the operation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size='small' align='right' citation='Thomas Borch, Colorado State University']‘We could have done some much more impressive and well-designed studies to either conclude that we can continue to use this water or that we should maybe improve the way we treat the water before we reuse it. We certainly don’t know enough to evaluate whether we need to be worried or not.’[/pullquote]Chevron claims that recycling produced water for irrigation allows the company to operate in a “\u003ca href=\"https://www.chevron.com/stories/protecting-the-environment\">sustainable manner\u003c/a>,” by minimizing reliance on fresh water. Yet the massive energy requirements of the extraction process make Kern’s oil one of the world’s most climate-polluting fossil fuels, and Chevron one of California’s top greenhouse gas emitters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“California has this green reputation, but if you scratch the surface on the oil industry in the state, you quickly discover that that’s not the case at all,” said Hollin Kretzmann, senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is an industry from top to bottom that’s used to getting its way, whether that’s drilling in neighborhoods, or disposing of the wastewater in unlined pits, or using that wastewater for unsafe purposes,” Kretzmann said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Unfit for purpose \u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The Central Valley water board said it focused on crops grown in oil wastewater to address public concerns, which included petitions with hundreds of thousands of signatures, protests outside the state Capitol and a bill to label food grown with the water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then-Assemblymember Mike Gatto (D-Los Angeles) introduced the bill in 2015, after learning that farmers could get organic certification for shunning pesticides while using produced water, and consumers would never know. “I thought that was a real problem,” said Gatto.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The same year, \u003ca href=\"https://sd10.senate.ca.gov/news/2015-03-06-threat-groundwater-posed-improperly-sited-oil-injection-wells-be-explored-senate\">legislators called hearings\u003c/a> to increase scrutiny of oil companies after learning their practices posed risks to protected groundwater, including potential drinking water and irrigation supplies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The commitment I made to our board was that if we ever discovered that there was an effect on people consuming crops grown with this, we would stop it immediately,” said Clay Rodgers, assistant executive officer of the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board, who oversaw the Food Safety Project.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Testing crops for harmful chemicals to figure out whether they’re safe to eat may seem logical, but techniques to analyze food for oil-related chemicals are “light years” behind those for detecting the compounds in water and soil, Shonkoff said. He raised the problem repeatedly at panel meetings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the end, the panel agreed. Its first recommendation to the board was to discontinue crop sampling. It would be far more productive to focus on produced water and irrigated soil, the panel said, using approaches that can reveal the toxicity of the water and soil itself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, Shonkoff said, “most of the work that was done to test things for chemicals was done in food. Unfortunately, that was, in my professional opinion, a pretty big waste of time and resources.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The data GSI compiled — including the list of chemicals and their hazard profiles — was “way too limited” to draw conclusions about lack of toxicity, said Borch, the Colorado State University professor and produced water expert.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That doesn’t mean it’s toxic,” said Borch. But there was no way they could conclude that produced water posed no identifiable health risks based on the data they had and their experimental approach, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1978406\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100019.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1978406\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100019-800x534.jpg\" alt='A sign is posted behind a chain link fence, protected with strands of barbed wire. The sign, in Spanish and English, reads \"Danger. Hot Water. Keep Away.\"' width=\"800\" height=\"534\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100019-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100019-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100019-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100019-768x513.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100019-1536x1026.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100019-1920x1283.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100019.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Chevron relies on steam injections to extract Kern County’s tarry crude oil from aging formations, then sends the hot wastewater north to the Cawelo Water District via pipeline. \u003ccite>(Liza Gross/Inside Climate News)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>That leaves Siemens, who’s transitioning to organic, in a tough spot. Although produced water isn’t specifically defined under organic standards, organic farmers can’t use water that contains arsenic, a constituent of Kern’s produced water, and most synthetic compounds, like those used in oil and gas operations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Siemens stopped watering his orchard for a few weeks after his district notified him about the produced water. “And the trees suffered,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But as the almond harvest approached, Siemens couldn’t risk losing the trees. He used just enough of the water to keep them alive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We didn’t know what we were getting into,” he said. “We just didn’t have time to do the research.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even if Siemens had done the research, it might not have mattered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We could have done some much more impressive and well-designed studies to either conclude that we can continue to use this water or that we should maybe improve the way we treat the water before we reuse it,” said Borch. “We certainly don’t know enough to evaluate whether we need to be worried or not.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>A failure to disclose\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>One of the biggest hurdles to evaluating the safety of produced water has been oil companies’ unwillingness to reveal key details about the chemicals they put down wells.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before joining the panel, Shonkoff was working on an independent study of fracking for the California Council on Science and Technology, or CCST, when he discovered a dataset he’d never seen before: a list of chemicals used in conventional oil development, from fields in Southern California. At the time, no other location in the country, and maybe the world, required chemical disclosure for conventional operations. The CCST assessment, commissioned by the state, revealed that \u003ca href=\"https://ccst.us/wp-content/uploads/2015SB4-v2ES.pdf\">testing and treatment of produced water used for irrigation might not remove or even detect chemical\u003c/a>s used in fracking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During fracking, operators inject a high-pressure mixture of water, chemicals and sand deep underground to break and then prop open surrounding rock to extract oil or gas. Conventional operations, by contrast, inject high-pressure steam to loosen gooey oil. Wastewater from both conventional and fracking operations falls under the heading of “produced water.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Shonkoff dug into the newfound data, and read the permits and regulations for Kern County’s produced water, he realized Chevron and other oil companies could put nearly any additives they wanted down wells.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although the water board prohibits using water from fracked wells for irrigation, fracking and conventional operations employ many of the same chemicals, Shonkoff told the board at the panel’s first public meeting. And most compounds used in conventional extraction processes in Kern County, he said, lack the information needed to assess safety.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s imperative that oil companies disclose not just which chemicals they use in oil and gas production but also the volume and frequency of their use, Shonkoff said. Until then, he said, “I’m not quite sure that we can say with any real level of certainty that this is safe or unsafe.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rodgers of the water board said he’d obtained a list of all the chemical compounds oil companies use. But to avoid trade secret information, he said, the board could not get the recipe, which details how often a chemical is used and how much goes down wells.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rodgers said he felt the highest priority was to get a list he could share with the panel members and the public and compensated for not getting the recipe by assuming all the chemicals were used.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But knowing the hazard associated with a chemical depends on knowing that recipe, the panel concluded. It also requires knowing chemicals’ breakdown products.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chemicals are injected under intense heat and pressure into oil reservoirs, where they interact with scores of other compounds, before they’re pulled back to the surface and exposed to air. All these conditions can affect a chemical’s toxicity. And scientists have no good tools to understand how chemical interactions increase toxicity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This assumption that we should be looking for the chemicals that were added to oil and gas operations, and the assumption that they will continue to be those same chemicals after all the processes that they go through, is too big of a leap to make,” Shonkoff said. “Of course, you’re not going to find them, because they most certainly have transformed into other types of chemical constituents by the time things are being monitored and tested for.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some chemical additives might degrade into harmless substances, but others can prove more toxic. Shonkoff pointed to glutaraldehyde, a chemical widely used to kill microorganisms that gum up oil and gas extraction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Glutaraldehyde is toxic to people, he said. Some of its breakdown products are even more toxic, some are less toxic and others are completely unknown because they haven’t been studied.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we’re talking about hundreds of chemicals, many of which we don’t have good toxicological information on,” Shonkoff said, “the idea that you can really understand the toxicological dimensions of their daughter products, and their transformation products in the presence of other chemicals, is outstripping what we know scientifically.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even a plant’s own metabolism can affect a chemical’s toxicity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Plants could take up chemicals in one form and turn them into something else that’s more harmful, said Fleming of the Center for Biological Diversity. But if you’re just testing for a list of chemicals added to the well, he said, you’re testing for the wrong thing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Robert Scofield, who led the work for GSI, agreed to answer questions only by email. Asked about the focus on testing crops, Scofield offered a carefully worded statement that ended: “We agree with the Water Board and their scientific advisor that this direct testing was the most technically sound manner to address the questions posed in the study.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When asked about the failure to address chemicals’ breakdown products, he responded with the exact same statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s a really big assumption baked into the GSI work,” said Shonkoff. The studies assume that the chemicals remain in the same form from the oil field to a consumer’s plate and that it’s sufficient to monitor those particular chemicals, he said. “And that’s obviously incorrect.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Still waiting for answers\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>California supplies 99% of the world’s almonds and pistachios, mostly from Kern County.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Water board regulators say nothing has received more scrutiny than the oil field water that irrigates those crops. “We know more about that produced water than probably any other produced water in the world,” said Rodgers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the evidence is still so scarce, said Colorado State’s Borch, “you can argue both sides.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are no established tools to do a “real toxicity analysis,” Borch said, and there’s “not a good framework” to evaluate risk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a study of treated produced water released into a stream for irrigation in Wyoming, Borch and his colleagues found that most of the chemicals they detected had no health safety standard. There were likely other chemicals and breakdown products “with unknown impacts” that had escaped detection, they noted in the 2020 study, \u003ca href=\"https://www-sciencedirect-com.libproxy.berkeley.edu/science/article/pii/S0048969720301170\">published in Science of the Total Environment\u003c/a>. In a related study published later that year, Borch’s team \u003ca href=\"https://www-sciencedirect-com.libproxy.berkeley.edu/science/article/pii/S004896972030454X\">assessed the potential of treated produced water to cause cancer\u003c/a>. Several different tests showed that the water caused increased mutation rates — an indication of cancer risk — even though most chemicals were present in low concentrations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many stakeholders stand to benefit if produced water can be reused safely, the scientists wrote. But if the practice is expanded prematurely, they warned, it could harm water quality as well as the health of soil, livestock, and crops and people who eat them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People are still using benchmarks for water quality that were not developed with oil field wastewater in mind, Borch said, even though the complexity and chemical makeup of produced water is very different.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And simply looking to see whether chemicals are present, as the GSI studies did, doesn’t say anything about toxicity. Many compounds in the wastewater may be present in concentrations low enough to escape detection, said Borch. But that doesn’t mean they’re not toxic, he said: “It just means you don’t have the method that allows for extraction and analysis of the compounds.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a paper published in December, Borch and his colleagues presented a model for taking a holistic \u003ca href=\"https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsestengg.1c00248\">approach that exposes cells and lab organisms to produced water to detect harmful responses\u003c/a>, along the lines Shonkoff had recommended.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Borch’s “adverse outcome” approach is also likely to catch the breakdown products the Food Safety Panel identified as a major testing inadequacy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Environmental Protection Agency is taking a similar approach, led by its Region 8 office in Colorado, as part of a national program to study the safety of produced water, said Tricia Pfeiffer, an environmental engineer in Region 8’s Technical Assistance Branch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The effort is addressing the need to harness cutting-edge approaches for evaluating oil-related contaminants, and their byproducts, in produced water intended for reuse. That includes enlisting tools to analyze human cells to identify any worrisome changes caused by chemicals in produced water while applying complementary approaches to detect toxic constituents in the water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is actual research,” Pfeiffer said. “It’s way more complicated than doing something that already has an analytical method.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As we grapple with climate change issues, she said, “we’re looking for alternative water sources. And as a researcher, my biggest goal with this project is to help fill data gaps and make sure that we’re protective of human health and the environment.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Borch said the technology exists to remove all sorts of contaminants from water, but it’s far more expensive than the low-cost methods used by Kern County oil companies. If people aren’t willing to pay the real costs of growing crops in a water-scarce region, he said, “maybe we shouldn’t even produce almonds because they use so much water.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Choosing less water-intensive crops is critical to keeping land productive, said Siemens, the Wasco farmer who was shocked to learn that his water district was sending him oil field wastewater.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Siemens is moving away from thirsty almonds to dry-farming olives, mulberries and figs, focusing on farming in ways that suit the region. Like raising goats.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Goats would be happy to eat all these weeds out there,” Siemens said, pointing to the field behind his house. And lots of people in the valley would be happy to eat goat meat, he said. “You can go to any taqueria in the area and buy \u003cem>carne de cabra\u003c/em>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Siemens’s vision of sustainable farming does not include taking the wastewater of an industry whose greenhouse gas emissions have helped fuel California’s relentless droughts and contaminated its precious groundwater supplies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re not just trying to meet a USDA organic standard,” Siemens said. “We’re trying to increase the vitality of this land for the future. Our kids live here, and I hope my grandkids will live here.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That means protecting the soil and aquifers that helped turn Kern County into one of the richest agricultural regions in the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, the results of a truly independent analysis of whether oil field-produced water is fit to irrigate crops sent around the world, Pfeiffer said, is still years away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Anne Marshall-Chalmers, an Inside Climate News fellow, contributed to this report. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/\">InsideClimate News\u003c/a> is a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for the ICN newsletter \u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/newsletter/\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n","blocks":[],"excerpt":"Studies in Kern County, performed by oil industry consultants, cannot answer fundamental safety questions about irrigating crops with 'produced water,' the board's own panel of experts concedes.","status":"publish","parent":0,"modified":1704846318,"stats":{"hasAudio":false,"hasVideo":false,"hasChartOrMap":false,"iframeSrcs":[],"hasGoogleForm":false,"hasGallery":false,"hasHearkenModule":false,"hasPolis":false,"paragraphCount":90,"wordCount":4189},"headData":{"title":"A California Water Board Assures the Public That Oil Wastewater Is Safe for Irrigation, but Experts Say the Evidence Is Scant | KQED","description":"Studies in Kern County, performed by oil industry consultants, cannot answer fundamental safety questions about irrigating crops with 'produced water,' the board's own panel of experts concedes.","ogTitle":"","ogDescription":"","ogImgId":"","twTitle":"","twDescription":"","twImgId":"","schema":{"@context":"http://schema.org","@type":"Article","headline":"A California Water Board Assures the Public That Oil Wastewater Is Safe for Irrigation, but Experts Say the Evidence Is Scant ","datePublished":"2022-02-07T10:19:25.000Z","dateModified":"2024-01-10T00:25:18.000Z","image":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"}},"sticky":false,"nprByline":"Liza Gross, Inside Climate News","excludeFromSiteSearch":"Include","showOnAuthorArchivePages":"No","path":"/science/1978374/a-california-water-board-assures-the-public-that-oil-wastewater-is-safe-for-irrigation-but-experts-say-the-evidence-is-scant","audioTrackLength":null,"parsedContent":[{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>After years of controversy, the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board assured the public in the fall that eating California crops grown with oil field wastewater “creates no identifiable increased health risks,” based on studies commissioned as part of an extensive Food Safety Project.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet a review of the science and interviews with a public health scientist affiliated with the project and other experts show that there is scant evidence to support the board’s safety claims.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"‘The commitment I made to our board was that if we ever discovered that there was an effect on people consuming crops grown with this, we would stop it immediately.’","name":"pullquote","attributes":{"named":{"size":"small","align":"right","citation":"Clay Rodgers, assistant executive officer, Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board","label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The “neutral, third-party consultant” the board retained to conduct the studies, GSI Environmental, has regularly worked for the oil industry. That work includes marshaling evidence to help Chevron, Kern County’s biggest provider of produced water, and other oil giants defend their interests in high-stakes lawsuits around the country and globe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>GSI did not tell water board officials about its ties to the oil industry, which shared the roughly $3.4 million in costs for the firm’s studies and related work with the water districts that benefit from the distribution of wastewater from oil extraction, known as “produced water.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One member of the board’s Food Safety Expert Panel that reviewed GSI’s studies was nominated by Chevron and initially paid by the oil industry, and a second panel member worked as a consultant for an oil company selling produced water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, the expert panel’s own review concluded that GSI’s studies could not answer fundamental safety questions about irrigating crops with produced water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"‘This is an industry from top to bottom that’s used to getting its way, whether that’s drilling in neighborhoods, or disposing of the wastewater in unlined pits, or using that wastewater for unsafe purposes.’","name":"pullquote","attributes":{"named":{"size":"small","align":"left","citation":"Hollin Kretzmann, senior attorney, Center for Biological Diversity, Climate Law Institute","label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Thomas Borch of Colorado State University, a leading expert on treating and reusing produced water for crop irrigation who was not involved in the project, said that based on the data GSI had and the way they designed the experiments, “they were not able to draw the conclusions they did. Period.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Robert Scofield, who led the work for GSI, said in a statement via email that his firm agreed with the water board that the studies were performed in “the most technically sound manner.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Clay Rodgers, the water board official who oversaw the Food Safety Project, said he promised the board that if any evidence were ever discovered that produced water was harming people consuming crops, “we would stop it immediately.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Under the water board’s direction, GSI compiled a list of hundreds of chemicals used in oil operations, then focused on those that might pose health risks. But an absence of information to assess safety dogged the project from the start. Many of the chemicals had never been studied before, or lacked critical details about their use, the board’s panel of experts noted, because the oil companies said doing so would reveal trade secrets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Already there was a data gap there because some of those chemicals don’t have reliable toxicity information,” said John Fleming, senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The findings of the board and its expert panel found no food safety or public health concern, said David Ansolabehere, general manager of the Cawelo Water District, which has taken produced water from Chevron for decades. “Cawelo will continue to test the water based on the regional board’s permit requirements.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1978392\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100035.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1978392\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100035-800x534.jpg\" alt=\"White steam rises off gray water at a Cawelo Water District reservoir filled with wastewater from Chevron's Kern River Oil Field. In the foreground and behind the oval reservoir are brown fields. A long pipeline extends from the far right of the photo to the edge of the reservoir.\" width=\"800\" height=\"534\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100035-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100035-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100035-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100035-768x513.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100035-1536x1026.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100035-1920x1283.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100035.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Steam rises from a Cawelo Water District reservoir filled with wastewater from Chevron’s Kern River Oil Field. Chevron treats the wastewater, then transfers it via pipeline to the reservoir, where it’s blended with surface water and/or groundwater and sent to irrigation canals. \u003ccite>(Liza Gross/Inside Climate News)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Chevron tested for all additives used in the Kern River field for which a testing method approved by the Environmental Protection Agency exists, said Jonathan Harshman, communications advisor for Chevron’s San Joaquin Valley Business Unit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet more than a fifth of the chemicals GSI identified — and 60% of those deemed most likely to pose a health risk — lacked both toxicity information and approved testing methods. The water board conceded that the data gaps left “potentially significant unknowns” about the chemicals’ safety.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When they say this is safe,” Fleming said, “it’s based on what chemicals they were able to test.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That means the “no identifiable increased health risks” assertion applies to just a fraction of potential chemicals in produced water applied to crops.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Oil’s profligate water use\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In early August, during one of the driest summers on record, Wasco farmer Nate Siemens received a troubling notice from his irrigation district, which is regulated by the Central Valley water board. “Please be aware that this water includes some amount of reclaimed oilfield production water,” it said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1978401\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1090930.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1978401\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1090930-800x534.jpg\" alt=\"Almond farmer Nate Siemens stands in front of a large tree on his farm. He's wearing a red and black plaid shirt over a black hoodie, and a silver and gold ball cap. Siemens, an organic agriculture consultant for the Rodale Institute, is moving his family's Fat Uncle Farms away from thirsty crops like almonds and has no interest in taking the oil industry's wastewater.\" width=\"800\" height=\"534\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1090930-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1090930-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1090930-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1090930-768x513.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1090930-1536x1026.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1090930-1920x1283.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1090930.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nate Siemens, an organic agriculture consultant for the Rodale Institute, is moving his family’s Fat Uncle Farms away from thirsty crops like almonds and has no interest in taking the oil industry’s wastewater. \u003ccite>(Liza Gross, Inside Climate News)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Siemens, an organic agriculture consultant with the Rodale Institute, was shocked. Siemens needed that water. But he’s transitioning his family’s Fat Uncle Farms to organic and wasn’t keen on using the oil industry’s wastewater to irrigate his almonds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Siemens’s farming roots in the region predate the rise of Kern County’s oil industry, which produces more than 70% of the state’s oil. He was well aware that climate-polluting pump jacks operate among corporate farms growing miles of water-intensive almonds and pistachios, California’s most valuable export crops. But he had no idea just how entrenched oil operations had become in \u003ca href=\"http://www.kernag.com/caap/crop-reports/crop20_29/crop2020.pdf\">the county’s $7.6 billion agricultural industry\u003c/a> until he received that notice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>About 30 miles southeast of Siemens’s farm, thousands of densely packed pump jacks stretch as far as the eye can see toward the horizon, bobbing robotically as they suck oil and water from wells carved into the denuded landscape of the Kern River Oil Field.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pump jacks have pried more than 2 billion barrels from the field since oil was discovered here in 1899. But wresting Kern’s notoriously viscous crude from receding oil reserves requires injecting ever increasing amounts of water and hot steam underground.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/Oils-unquenchable-thirst.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1978382\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/Oils-unquenchable-thirst.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"650\" height=\"690\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/Oils-unquenchable-thirst.png 650w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/Oils-unquenchable-thirst-160x170.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 650px) 100vw, 650px\">\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\nThat water returns to the surface along with groundwater. The mixture contains arsenic, uranium and other naturally occurring toxic elements, along with potentially hundreds of chemicals used in the extraction process. Since 1985, the ratio of water to oil recovered has more than doubled, from seven barrels of water per barrel of oil to 18 barrels today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a region with less than nine inches of rain in a normal year — the definition of a desert — getting enough water is a perennial concern. Nearly 30 years ago, Chevron struck what a former Cawelo Water District manager called a “win-win” deal to deliver some of the massive amounts of wastewater produced every day to farmers’ fields.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Every year, more than 38,000 acre-feet of produced water from Chevron and other oil companies hydrates California farmland, including roughly 11% of Kern County’s irrigated farmland. That’s enough to cover about 38,000 football fields with a foot of water, or more than 12.4 billion gallons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/Treating-Oil-Wastewater.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1978379\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/Treating-Oil-Wastewater.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"700\" height=\"627\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/Treating-Oil-Wastewater.png 700w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/Treating-Oil-Wastewater-160x143.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\">\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\nChevron treats produced water from its Kern River Oil Field by removing oil from water through gravity separation, then skimming off solids and residual oil before filtering it through walnut hulls. The water then travels several miles by pipeline to a Cawelo holding pond, where it’s blended with surface and groundwater and sent to irrigation canals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first time Seth Shonkoff, a public health scientist with the nonprofit Physicians, Scientists, and Engineers (PSE) for Healthy Energy and a member of the expert panel, visited the Cawelo holding pond several years ago, he smelled an “extraordinarily strong” whiff of asphalt and crude oil. The same odors were much less offensive when he visited the pond with the panel a few years later.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Either there’s natural variability in the water, Shonkoff said, or someone did something different before experts came to evaluate the operation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"‘We could have done some much more impressive and well-designed studies to either conclude that we can continue to use this water or that we should maybe improve the way we treat the water before we reuse it. We certainly don’t know enough to evaluate whether we need to be worried or not.’","name":"pullquote","attributes":{"named":{"size":"small","align":"right","citation":"Thomas Borch, Colorado State University","label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Chevron claims that recycling produced water for irrigation allows the company to operate in a “\u003ca href=\"https://www.chevron.com/stories/protecting-the-environment\">sustainable manner\u003c/a>,” by minimizing reliance on fresh water. Yet the massive energy requirements of the extraction process make Kern’s oil one of the world’s most climate-polluting fossil fuels, and Chevron one of California’s top greenhouse gas emitters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“California has this green reputation, but if you scratch the surface on the oil industry in the state, you quickly discover that that’s not the case at all,” said Hollin Kretzmann, senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is an industry from top to bottom that’s used to getting its way, whether that’s drilling in neighborhoods, or disposing of the wastewater in unlined pits, or using that wastewater for unsafe purposes,” Kretzmann said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Unfit for purpose \u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The Central Valley water board said it focused on crops grown in oil wastewater to address public concerns, which included petitions with hundreds of thousands of signatures, protests outside the state Capitol and a bill to label food grown with the water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then-Assemblymember Mike Gatto (D-Los Angeles) introduced the bill in 2015, after learning that farmers could get organic certification for shunning pesticides while using produced water, and consumers would never know. “I thought that was a real problem,” said Gatto.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The same year, \u003ca href=\"https://sd10.senate.ca.gov/news/2015-03-06-threat-groundwater-posed-improperly-sited-oil-injection-wells-be-explored-senate\">legislators called hearings\u003c/a> to increase scrutiny of oil companies after learning their practices posed risks to protected groundwater, including potential drinking water and irrigation supplies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The commitment I made to our board was that if we ever discovered that there was an effect on people consuming crops grown with this, we would stop it immediately,” said Clay Rodgers, assistant executive officer of the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board, who oversaw the Food Safety Project.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Testing crops for harmful chemicals to figure out whether they’re safe to eat may seem logical, but techniques to analyze food for oil-related chemicals are “light years” behind those for detecting the compounds in water and soil, Shonkoff said. He raised the problem repeatedly at panel meetings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the end, the panel agreed. Its first recommendation to the board was to discontinue crop sampling. It would be far more productive to focus on produced water and irrigated soil, the panel said, using approaches that can reveal the toxicity of the water and soil itself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, Shonkoff said, “most of the work that was done to test things for chemicals was done in food. Unfortunately, that was, in my professional opinion, a pretty big waste of time and resources.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The data GSI compiled — including the list of chemicals and their hazard profiles — was “way too limited” to draw conclusions about lack of toxicity, said Borch, the Colorado State University professor and produced water expert.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That doesn’t mean it’s toxic,” said Borch. But there was no way they could conclude that produced water posed no identifiable health risks based on the data they had and their experimental approach, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1978406\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100019.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1978406\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100019-800x534.jpg\" alt='A sign is posted behind a chain link fence, protected with strands of barbed wire. The sign, in Spanish and English, reads \"Danger. Hot Water. Keep Away.\"' width=\"800\" height=\"534\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100019-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100019-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100019-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100019-768x513.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100019-1536x1026.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100019-1920x1283.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2022/02/P1100019.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Chevron relies on steam injections to extract Kern County’s tarry crude oil from aging formations, then sends the hot wastewater north to the Cawelo Water District via pipeline. \u003ccite>(Liza Gross/Inside Climate News)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>That leaves Siemens, who’s transitioning to organic, in a tough spot. Although produced water isn’t specifically defined under organic standards, organic farmers can’t use water that contains arsenic, a constituent of Kern’s produced water, and most synthetic compounds, like those used in oil and gas operations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Siemens stopped watering his orchard for a few weeks after his district notified him about the produced water. “And the trees suffered,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But as the almond harvest approached, Siemens couldn’t risk losing the trees. He used just enough of the water to keep them alive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We didn’t know what we were getting into,” he said. “We just didn’t have time to do the research.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even if Siemens had done the research, it might not have mattered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We could have done some much more impressive and well-designed studies to either conclude that we can continue to use this water or that we should maybe improve the way we treat the water before we reuse it,” said Borch. “We certainly don’t know enough to evaluate whether we need to be worried or not.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>A failure to disclose\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>One of the biggest hurdles to evaluating the safety of produced water has been oil companies’ unwillingness to reveal key details about the chemicals they put down wells.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before joining the panel, Shonkoff was working on an independent study of fracking for the California Council on Science and Technology, or CCST, when he discovered a dataset he’d never seen before: a list of chemicals used in conventional oil development, from fields in Southern California. At the time, no other location in the country, and maybe the world, required chemical disclosure for conventional operations. The CCST assessment, commissioned by the state, revealed that \u003ca href=\"https://ccst.us/wp-content/uploads/2015SB4-v2ES.pdf\">testing and treatment of produced water used for irrigation might not remove or even detect chemical\u003c/a>s used in fracking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During fracking, operators inject a high-pressure mixture of water, chemicals and sand deep underground to break and then prop open surrounding rock to extract oil or gas. Conventional operations, by contrast, inject high-pressure steam to loosen gooey oil. Wastewater from both conventional and fracking operations falls under the heading of “produced water.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Shonkoff dug into the newfound data, and read the permits and regulations for Kern County’s produced water, he realized Chevron and other oil companies could put nearly any additives they wanted down wells.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although the water board prohibits using water from fracked wells for irrigation, fracking and conventional operations employ many of the same chemicals, Shonkoff told the board at the panel’s first public meeting. And most compounds used in conventional extraction processes in Kern County, he said, lack the information needed to assess safety.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s imperative that oil companies disclose not just which chemicals they use in oil and gas production but also the volume and frequency of their use, Shonkoff said. Until then, he said, “I’m not quite sure that we can say with any real level of certainty that this is safe or unsafe.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rodgers of the water board said he’d obtained a list of all the chemical compounds oil companies use. But to avoid trade secret information, he said, the board could not get the recipe, which details how often a chemical is used and how much goes down wells.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rodgers said he felt the highest priority was to get a list he could share with the panel members and the public and compensated for not getting the recipe by assuming all the chemicals were used.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But knowing the hazard associated with a chemical depends on knowing that recipe, the panel concluded. It also requires knowing chemicals’ breakdown products.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chemicals are injected under intense heat and pressure into oil reservoirs, where they interact with scores of other compounds, before they’re pulled back to the surface and exposed to air. All these conditions can affect a chemical’s toxicity. And scientists have no good tools to understand how chemical interactions increase toxicity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This assumption that we should be looking for the chemicals that were added to oil and gas operations, and the assumption that they will continue to be those same chemicals after all the processes that they go through, is too big of a leap to make,” Shonkoff said. “Of course, you’re not going to find them, because they most certainly have transformed into other types of chemical constituents by the time things are being monitored and tested for.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some chemical additives might degrade into harmless substances, but others can prove more toxic. Shonkoff pointed to glutaraldehyde, a chemical widely used to kill microorganisms that gum up oil and gas extraction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Glutaraldehyde is toxic to people, he said. Some of its breakdown products are even more toxic, some are less toxic and others are completely unknown because they haven’t been studied.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we’re talking about hundreds of chemicals, many of which we don’t have good toxicological information on,” Shonkoff said, “the idea that you can really understand the toxicological dimensions of their daughter products, and their transformation products in the presence of other chemicals, is outstripping what we know scientifically.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even a plant’s own metabolism can affect a chemical’s toxicity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Plants could take up chemicals in one form and turn them into something else that’s more harmful, said Fleming of the Center for Biological Diversity. But if you’re just testing for a list of chemicals added to the well, he said, you’re testing for the wrong thing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Robert Scofield, who led the work for GSI, agreed to answer questions only by email. Asked about the focus on testing crops, Scofield offered a carefully worded statement that ended: “We agree with the Water Board and their scientific advisor that this direct testing was the most technically sound manner to address the questions posed in the study.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When asked about the failure to address chemicals’ breakdown products, he responded with the exact same statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s a really big assumption baked into the GSI work,” said Shonkoff. The studies assume that the chemicals remain in the same form from the oil field to a consumer’s plate and that it’s sufficient to monitor those particular chemicals, he said. “And that’s obviously incorrect.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Still waiting for answers\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>California supplies 99% of the world’s almonds and pistachios, mostly from Kern County.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Water board regulators say nothing has received more scrutiny than the oil field water that irrigates those crops. “We know more about that produced water than probably any other produced water in the world,” said Rodgers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the evidence is still so scarce, said Colorado State’s Borch, “you can argue both sides.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are no established tools to do a “real toxicity analysis,” Borch said, and there’s “not a good framework” to evaluate risk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a study of treated produced water released into a stream for irrigation in Wyoming, Borch and his colleagues found that most of the chemicals they detected had no health safety standard. There were likely other chemicals and breakdown products “with unknown impacts” that had escaped detection, they noted in the 2020 study, \u003ca href=\"https://www-sciencedirect-com.libproxy.berkeley.edu/science/article/pii/S0048969720301170\">published in Science of the Total Environment\u003c/a>. In a related study published later that year, Borch’s team \u003ca href=\"https://www-sciencedirect-com.libproxy.berkeley.edu/science/article/pii/S004896972030454X\">assessed the potential of treated produced water to cause cancer\u003c/a>. Several different tests showed that the water caused increased mutation rates — an indication of cancer risk — even though most chemicals were present in low concentrations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many stakeholders stand to benefit if produced water can be reused safely, the scientists wrote. But if the practice is expanded prematurely, they warned, it could harm water quality as well as the health of soil, livestock, and crops and people who eat them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People are still using benchmarks for water quality that were not developed with oil field wastewater in mind, Borch said, even though the complexity and chemical makeup of produced water is very different.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And simply looking to see whether chemicals are present, as the GSI studies did, doesn’t say anything about toxicity. Many compounds in the wastewater may be present in concentrations low enough to escape detection, said Borch. But that doesn’t mean they’re not toxic, he said: “It just means you don’t have the method that allows for extraction and analysis of the compounds.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a paper published in December, Borch and his colleagues presented a model for taking a holistic \u003ca href=\"https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsestengg.1c00248\">approach that exposes cells and lab organisms to produced water to detect harmful responses\u003c/a>, along the lines Shonkoff had recommended.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Borch’s “adverse outcome” approach is also likely to catch the breakdown products the Food Safety Panel identified as a major testing inadequacy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Environmental Protection Agency is taking a similar approach, led by its Region 8 office in Colorado, as part of a national program to study the safety of produced water, said Tricia Pfeiffer, an environmental engineer in Region 8’s Technical Assistance Branch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The effort is addressing the need to harness cutting-edge approaches for evaluating oil-related contaminants, and their byproducts, in produced water intended for reuse. That includes enlisting tools to analyze human cells to identify any worrisome changes caused by chemicals in produced water while applying complementary approaches to detect toxic constituents in the water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is actual research,” Pfeiffer said. “It’s way more complicated than doing something that already has an analytical method.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As we grapple with climate change issues, she said, “we’re looking for alternative water sources. And as a researcher, my biggest goal with this project is to help fill data gaps and make sure that we’re protective of human health and the environment.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Borch said the technology exists to remove all sorts of contaminants from water, but it’s far more expensive than the low-cost methods used by Kern County oil companies. If people aren’t willing to pay the real costs of growing crops in a water-scarce region, he said, “maybe we shouldn’t even produce almonds because they use so much water.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Choosing less water-intensive crops is critical to keeping land productive, said Siemens, the Wasco farmer who was shocked to learn that his water district was sending him oil field wastewater.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Siemens is moving away from thirsty almonds to dry-farming olives, mulberries and figs, focusing on farming in ways that suit the region. Like raising goats.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Goats would be happy to eat all these weeds out there,” Siemens said, pointing to the field behind his house. And lots of people in the valley would be happy to eat goat meat, he said. “You can go to any taqueria in the area and buy \u003cem>carne de cabra\u003c/em>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Siemens’s vision of sustainable farming does not include taking the wastewater of an industry whose greenhouse gas emissions have helped fuel California’s relentless droughts and contaminated its precious groundwater supplies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re not just trying to meet a USDA organic standard,” Siemens said. “We’re trying to increase the vitality of this land for the future. Our kids live here, and I hope my grandkids will live here.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That means protecting the soil and aquifers that helped turn Kern County into one of the richest agricultural regions in the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, the results of a truly independent analysis of whether oil field-produced water is fit to irrigate crops sent around the world, Pfeiffer said, is still years away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Anne Marshall-Chalmers, an Inside Climate News fellow, contributed to this report. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/\">InsideClimate News\u003c/a> is a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for the ICN newsletter \u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/newsletter/\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"fullwidth"},"numeric":["fullwidth"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"floatright"},"numeric":["floatright"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}}],"link":"/science/1978374/a-california-water-board-assures-the-public-that-oil-wastewater-is-safe-for-irrigation-but-experts-say-the-evidence-is-scant","authors":["byline_science_1978374"],"categories":["science_31","science_35","science_40","science_4450","science_98"],"tags":["science_392","science_194","science_4414","science_4122","science_952"],"featImg":"science_1978393","label":"science"},"science_1976510":{"type":"posts","id":"science_1976510","meta":{"index":"posts_1591205157","site":"science","id":"1976510","score":null,"sort":[1631559623000]},"guestAuthors":[],"slug":"central-valley-farmers-weigh-in-on-californias-historic-drought","title":"Central Valley Farmers Weigh in on California's Historic Drought","publishDate":1631559623,"format":"standard","headTitle":"Central Valley Farmers Weigh in on California’s Historic Drought | KQED","labelTerm":{},"content":"\u003cp>Unless you have a personal connection to the Central Valley or work in agriculture, chances are you haven’t been able to speak directly to a farmer about how they’re experiencing this year’s historic drought.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Recently on \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101885168/drought-felt-by-california-farmers-%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8Bwho-fear-worst-is-yet-to-come\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">KQED Forum\u003c/a>, three farmers from the Central Valley, where roughly 40% of the nation’s fruits, vegetables and nuts are grown, shared just how little water they have to work with, how they’re adapting, and what the drought means for their industry long term.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here are some highlights from the conversation, edited for length and clarity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How little water are farmers working with?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Joe Del Bosque, CEO of Del Bosque Farms:\u003c/strong> This year, we got zero water from the Bureau of Reclamation. So we’ve had to look toward other irrigation districts that have higher water rights, and purchase water from them. If it hadn’t been for our ability to buy from other farmers, we would not be able to farm today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Don Cameron, Terranova Ranch, California State Board of Food and Agriculture president:\u003c/strong> We rely primarily on groundwater pumped in our region. About 5%, in a normal year, [is] surface water. So we have depended on the groundwater for years. And we are in a critically overdrafting basin, which means we are now dealing with sustainable groundwater management; we need to stop the decline in groundwater.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Stuart Woolf, Woolf Farming & Processing:\u003c/strong> Our surface water was taken to zero. We have maintained some wells in the area. Traditionally in dry years, we’d lean into our wells, and years ago when we had adequate surface supplies, we would then recharge our aquifers. But we’re seeing the loss of our surface supplies now, and that is basically exacerbating the issues with groundwater out here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How much more does water cost right now?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Stuart Woolf:\u003c/strong> In a normal year in Westlands [Water District], for our surface water, we end up paying about $250 an acre-foot. And in a year like this, if you can find it and actually buy it, we’re thinking in terms of like $2,000 to $2,500 per acre-foot, on an incremental cost basis. You can have surface water that you receive that costs $400, $500, the incremental cost being much, much higher. Pumping costs are closer to that $250.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Less water means fewer crops, smaller yields\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Joe Del Bosque:\u003c/strong> We’ve cut back our melon program. We’ve grown asparagus for 20 years and we took that out. We removed the asparagus to try to save our melon program because that’s where our largest focus is. So we sacrificed that crop. And we may also have to sacrifice the sweet corn crop next year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Don Cameron:\u003c/strong> It’s been more of an issue with climate. We have the heat. We had 114-degree heat in early June, which caused our tomato plants to abort the flowers and essentially come up with a yield lower than we’ve seen in the 40 years I’ve been farming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Stuart Woolf:\u003c/strong> We’ve had to make some difficult decisions, like pulling out almond trees prematurely. Normally they would last 20, 25 years, and we pulled some out recently that were about 15 years old simply because we were looking at the incremental cost of trying to get water to them if we could get it. We just came to the conclusion that when you kind of worked out all the economics and looked at the orchard itself, we’d be better off pulling the trees out early and using water we had on our tomato crop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Market share matters\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Joe Del Bosque:\u003c/strong> We have some market share with our melons. It’s something that we need to protect. If we do not plant our melons, we lose our market share. And not only that, we lose our very skilled workforce that has been with us for decades. We have people who work in our harvest that have been with us for many years and have done this job very well. Just because we have annual crops doesn’t mean that they’re that easy to fallow. And so that concerns me. If we are not able to plant melons next year, we’re basically out of that program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Effects on workers\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Joe Del Bosque\u003c/strong> That asparagus [we pulled up], it sustained 70 people for about two months in the early spring, when there aren’t a lot of jobs in this area. So those jobs are going to be gone. Those folks will probably have to migrate somewhere else to look for work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Don Cameron:\u003c/strong> We’ve seen some land retirement near us in the past, and the local communities suffer. You see half of some of these small towns boarded up. You don’t see the the economy increasing. It’s really difficult for the communities. It’s hard for our workers. But, you know, it actually stretches even beyond our local reach here. So many of the crops are exported through the Port of Oakland or Long Beach. So the effect is really far-reaching within California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Don Cameron:\u003c/strong> Right now there are more farms for sale than I’ve seen in the time I’ve been farming. People understand that there are changes, and for a lot of reasons they’re getting out of farming or they’re trying to get out of farming. It’s more difficult to sell a piece of farmland without an adequate water supply that we’re faced with during a drought. .\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How farmers are adapting\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Don Cameron:\u003c/strong> We have been very proactive and have developed a groundwater recharge system and put in canals and infrastructure, to bring floodwater onto the farm to actually recharge our groundwater, so that we can be more sustainable in the future and have a much better supply of groundwater.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Stuart Woolf:\u003c/strong> I think my charge right now is to try to figure out how to optimize the lands that I’m likely going to be fallowing. And so we are looking at industrial solar as kind of a new crop. We are leasing ground, putting solar projects out there. We have one breaking ground in November; it will be about 1,300 acres. So we’re covering up some very productive and diverse farmland with a lease, but we’re generating some rental income, and we’ll take what water allocations we have on those lands and use them on the properties that we are irrigating.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’re looking at some alternative crops. I’m experimenting. I happen to be a tequila drinker, so I’m planting some agave. We’ve partnered with some other neighbors and taken part of our property to set it aside as a water bank, so when those flood flows do show up and we have access to water, we’ll be sinking it in the ground. And honestly, we’ve looked at other parts of the state where there’s better groundwater or better rights, and we’ve actually developed and invested in some properties in those other areas to try to mitigate the pressure that we have here in western Fresno County.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Stuart Woolf:\u003c/strong> I think long term, what’s going to happen, we will gravitate to more crops that are just specialty crops that are unique to California that will likely go up in value. And we’ll be growing fewer acres of lower-value crops or water-intensive crops like alfalfa or cotton or grains and what have you. I think our cropping patterns will change over time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Don Cameron:\u003c/strong> The state left this at the local level and you’ve got growers and water districts involved, and we will get to sustainability. We have to. I have realized now for many, many years that we have to do something about declining groundwater, and so we took it upon ourselves to get involved early on and put a large project together, that when it’s complete, will actually serve 30,000 acres.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changes farmers would like to see\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Joe Del Bosque:\u003c/strong> In the short run, [water] transfers would help get us out of this predicament we’re in now. It takes months to get a transfer approved. And even when you have them approved, sometimes they’re still held up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We should facilitate storm flows to go to places where we can recharge groundwater.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the long run, we have to have more storage. Today, we’re getting more rain, it seems, and that’s not stored up in the mountains. That needs to come down and be stored here. I think that there are some projects that could be done fairly easily, something as simple as raising San Luis Reservoir 15 feet. I think we have to look at all of these things, because in the future, our storage may not be adequate for the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Don Cameron:\u003c/strong> We know that we have to capture floodwater when it is available. It comes quick. It comes fast. Now we need to be ready. Let’s face it, during the drought is when we need to be building the infrastructure for floodwater capture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Effects on consumers\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Don Cameron:\u003c/strong> We’re already seeing price increases of 15% to 25% for the fall planted crops. We know that if we get to the end of December and there really isn’t much of a snowpack, a grower is not going to put seeds in a greenhouse to plant tomatoes, let’s say, for next year’s crop. This coming winter is going to be absolutely critical, but you’re definitely going to see higher food prices for things that are grown within California, and if we don’t see adequate snowpack, this will continue into 2023, with limited products possible on your food shelf. We’re growing food here for people, and I think it is sometimes forgotten that if we don’t have the water to produce a crop, someone is going to be short.\u003c/p>\n\n","blocks":[],"excerpt":"Farmers in California's Central Valley share how they're adapting and what they're losing to the current drought. They also discuss how California's agriculture industry may change for the long-term as the state becomes warmer and drier. ","status":"publish","parent":0,"modified":1704846440,"stats":{"hasAudio":false,"hasVideo":false,"hasChartOrMap":false,"iframeSrcs":[],"hasGoogleForm":false,"hasGallery":false,"hasHearkenModule":false,"hasPolis":false,"paragraphCount":34,"wordCount":1742},"headData":{"title":"Central Valley Farmers Weigh in on California's Historic Drought | KQED","description":"Farmers in California's Central Valley share how they're adapting and what they're losing to the current drought. They also discuss how California's agriculture industry may change for the long-term as the state becomes warmer and drier. ","ogTitle":"","ogDescription":"","ogImgId":"","twTitle":"","twDescription":"","twImgId":"","schema":{"@context":"http://schema.org","@type":"Article","headline":"Central Valley Farmers Weigh in on California's Historic Drought","datePublished":"2021-09-13T19:00:23.000Z","dateModified":"2024-01-10T00:27:20.000Z","image":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"}},"source":"Agriculture","sticky":false,"path":"/science/1976510/central-valley-farmers-weigh-in-on-californias-historic-drought","audioTrackLength":null,"parsedContent":[{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Unless you have a personal connection to the Central Valley or work in agriculture, chances are you haven’t been able to speak directly to a farmer about how they’re experiencing this year’s historic drought.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Recently on \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101885168/drought-felt-by-california-farmers-%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8Bwho-fear-worst-is-yet-to-come\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">KQED Forum\u003c/a>, three farmers from the Central Valley, where roughly 40% of the nation’s fruits, vegetables and nuts are grown, shared just how little water they have to work with, how they’re adapting, and what the drought means for their industry long term.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here are some highlights from the conversation, edited for length and clarity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How little water are farmers working with?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Joe Del Bosque, CEO of Del Bosque Farms:\u003c/strong> This year, we got zero water from the Bureau of Reclamation. So we’ve had to look toward other irrigation districts that have higher water rights, and purchase water from them. If it hadn’t been for our ability to buy from other farmers, we would not be able to farm today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"fullwidth"},"numeric":["fullwidth"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Don Cameron, Terranova Ranch, California State Board of Food and Agriculture president:\u003c/strong> We rely primarily on groundwater pumped in our region. About 5%, in a normal year, [is] surface water. So we have depended on the groundwater for years. And we are in a critically overdrafting basin, which means we are now dealing with sustainable groundwater management; we need to stop the decline in groundwater.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Stuart Woolf, Woolf Farming & Processing:\u003c/strong> Our surface water was taken to zero. We have maintained some wells in the area. Traditionally in dry years, we’d lean into our wells, and years ago when we had adequate surface supplies, we would then recharge our aquifers. But we’re seeing the loss of our surface supplies now, and that is basically exacerbating the issues with groundwater out here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How much more does water cost right now?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Stuart Woolf:\u003c/strong> In a normal year in Westlands [Water District], for our surface water, we end up paying about $250 an acre-foot. And in a year like this, if you can find it and actually buy it, we’re thinking in terms of like $2,000 to $2,500 per acre-foot, on an incremental cost basis. You can have surface water that you receive that costs $400, $500, the incremental cost being much, much higher. Pumping costs are closer to that $250.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Less water means fewer crops, smaller yields\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Joe Del Bosque:\u003c/strong> We’ve cut back our melon program. We’ve grown asparagus for 20 years and we took that out. We removed the asparagus to try to save our melon program because that’s where our largest focus is. So we sacrificed that crop. And we may also have to sacrifice the sweet corn crop next year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Don Cameron:\u003c/strong> It’s been more of an issue with climate. We have the heat. We had 114-degree heat in early June, which caused our tomato plants to abort the flowers and essentially come up with a yield lower than we’ve seen in the 40 years I’ve been farming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Stuart Woolf:\u003c/strong> We’ve had to make some difficult decisions, like pulling out almond trees prematurely. Normally they would last 20, 25 years, and we pulled some out recently that were about 15 years old simply because we were looking at the incremental cost of trying to get water to them if we could get it. We just came to the conclusion that when you kind of worked out all the economics and looked at the orchard itself, we’d be better off pulling the trees out early and using water we had on our tomato crop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Market share matters\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Joe Del Bosque:\u003c/strong> We have some market share with our melons. It’s something that we need to protect. If we do not plant our melons, we lose our market share. And not only that, we lose our very skilled workforce that has been with us for decades. We have people who work in our harvest that have been with us for many years and have done this job very well. Just because we have annual crops doesn’t mean that they’re that easy to fallow. And so that concerns me. If we are not able to plant melons next year, we’re basically out of that program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Effects on workers\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Joe Del Bosque\u003c/strong> That asparagus [we pulled up], it sustained 70 people for about two months in the early spring, when there aren’t a lot of jobs in this area. So those jobs are going to be gone. Those folks will probably have to migrate somewhere else to look for work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Don Cameron:\u003c/strong> We’ve seen some land retirement near us in the past, and the local communities suffer. You see half of some of these small towns boarded up. You don’t see the the economy increasing. It’s really difficult for the communities. It’s hard for our workers. But, you know, it actually stretches even beyond our local reach here. So many of the crops are exported through the Port of Oakland or Long Beach. So the effect is really far-reaching within California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Don Cameron:\u003c/strong> Right now there are more farms for sale than I’ve seen in the time I’ve been farming. People understand that there are changes, and for a lot of reasons they’re getting out of farming or they’re trying to get out of farming. It’s more difficult to sell a piece of farmland without an adequate water supply that we’re faced with during a drought. .\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How farmers are adapting\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Don Cameron:\u003c/strong> We have been very proactive and have developed a groundwater recharge system and put in canals and infrastructure, to bring floodwater onto the farm to actually recharge our groundwater, so that we can be more sustainable in the future and have a much better supply of groundwater.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Stuart Woolf:\u003c/strong> I think my charge right now is to try to figure out how to optimize the lands that I’m likely going to be fallowing. And so we are looking at industrial solar as kind of a new crop. We are leasing ground, putting solar projects out there. We have one breaking ground in November; it will be about 1,300 acres. So we’re covering up some very productive and diverse farmland with a lease, but we’re generating some rental income, and we’ll take what water allocations we have on those lands and use them on the properties that we are irrigating.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’re looking at some alternative crops. I’m experimenting. I happen to be a tequila drinker, so I’m planting some agave. We’ve partnered with some other neighbors and taken part of our property to set it aside as a water bank, so when those flood flows do show up and we have access to water, we’ll be sinking it in the ground. And honestly, we’ve looked at other parts of the state where there’s better groundwater or better rights, and we’ve actually developed and invested in some properties in those other areas to try to mitigate the pressure that we have here in western Fresno County.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Stuart Woolf:\u003c/strong> I think long term, what’s going to happen, we will gravitate to more crops that are just specialty crops that are unique to California that will likely go up in value. And we’ll be growing fewer acres of lower-value crops or water-intensive crops like alfalfa or cotton or grains and what have you. I think our cropping patterns will change over time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Don Cameron:\u003c/strong> The state left this at the local level and you’ve got growers and water districts involved, and we will get to sustainability. We have to. I have realized now for many, many years that we have to do something about declining groundwater, and so we took it upon ourselves to get involved early on and put a large project together, that when it’s complete, will actually serve 30,000 acres.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changes farmers would like to see\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Joe Del Bosque:\u003c/strong> In the short run, [water] transfers would help get us out of this predicament we’re in now. It takes months to get a transfer approved. And even when you have them approved, sometimes they’re still held up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We should facilitate storm flows to go to places where we can recharge groundwater.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the long run, we have to have more storage. Today, we’re getting more rain, it seems, and that’s not stored up in the mountains. That needs to come down and be stored here. I think that there are some projects that could be done fairly easily, something as simple as raising San Luis Reservoir 15 feet. I think we have to look at all of these things, because in the future, our storage may not be adequate for the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Don Cameron:\u003c/strong> We know that we have to capture floodwater when it is available. It comes quick. It comes fast. Now we need to be ready. Let’s face it, during the drought is when we need to be building the infrastructure for floodwater capture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Effects on consumers\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"floatright"},"numeric":["floatright"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Don Cameron:\u003c/strong> We’re already seeing price increases of 15% to 25% for the fall planted crops. We know that if we get to the end of December and there really isn’t much of a snowpack, a grower is not going to put seeds in a greenhouse to plant tomatoes, let’s say, for next year’s crop. This coming winter is going to be absolutely critical, but you’re definitely going to see higher food prices for things that are grown within California, and if we don’t see adequate snowpack, this will continue into 2023, with limited products possible on your food shelf. We’re growing food here for people, and I think it is sometimes forgotten that if we don’t have the water to produce a crop, someone is going to be short.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}}],"link":"/science/1976510/central-valley-farmers-weigh-in-on-californias-historic-drought","authors":["70"],"categories":["science_40","science_4450"],"tags":["science_392"],"featImg":"science_1976710","label":"source_science_1976510"},"science_1973500":{"type":"posts","id":"science_1973500","meta":{"index":"posts_1591205157","site":"science","id":"1973500","score":null,"sort":[1617714029000]},"guestAuthors":[],"slug":"leaf-miner-fly-babies-scribble-all-over-your-salad","title":"Leaf Miner Fly Babies Scribble All Over Your Salad","publishDate":1617714029,"format":"video","headTitle":"Leaf Miner Fly Babies Scribble All Over Your Salad | KQED","labelTerm":{"term":1935,"site":"science"},"content":"\u003cp>[dl_subscribe]If you have a green thumb, spring in the Bay Area marks the harvesting of lemons and oranges, onions and garlic, and greens like arugula, kale and mustard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But what are those squiggly marks crisscrossing your arugula and lemon tree leaves?\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1973522\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1919px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Mine_in_leaf_1920.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1973522\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Mine_in_leaf_1920.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1919\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Mine_in_leaf_1920.jpg 1919w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Mine_in_leaf_1920-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Mine_in_leaf_1920-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Mine_in_leaf_1920-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Mine_in_leaf_1920-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Mine_in_leaf_1920-1536x864.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1919px) 100vw, 1919px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The mining from a \u003cem>Scaptomyza\u003c/em> fly larva leaves a pattern of discoloration in a wild mustard leaf growing at UC Berkeley. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Those curlicues are the work of leaf miners, tiny insect larvae that tunnel through leaves. The mines they carve out might be a whitish tan or light gray. They can be neatly serpentine or converge and have a blotch-like appearance, depending on what insect made them. Many different flies, butterflies and moths lay eggs on the leaves of citrus, vegetables and ornamental plants that grow into leaf miners.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re ubiquitous in the Bay Area,” said James Farr, a \u003ca href=\"http://acmg.ucanr.edu/Contact_Us/\">master gardener\u003c/a> with Alameda County who answers residents’ home gardening questions. “Every year we have leaf miners on my citrus.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The mines that appear in May and June on the lemon, lime and orange trees he grows in his home near Pleasanton are created by the larvae of moths that lay their eggs on the citrus leaves. The trails can appear as early as April if the weather is warm enough.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1973581\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/Jack_Kelly_Clark_UC_I-LP-PCIT-LV.005_1920.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/Jack_Kelly_Clark_UC_I-LP-PCIT-LV.005_1920.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1973581\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/Jack_Kelly_Clark_UC_I-LP-PCIT-LV.005_1920.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/Jack_Kelly_Clark_UC_I-LP-PCIT-LV.005_1920-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/Jack_Kelly_Clark_UC_I-LP-PCIT-LV.005_1920-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/Jack_Kelly_Clark_UC_I-LP-PCIT-LV.005_1920-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/Jack_Kelly_Clark_UC_I-LP-PCIT-LV.005_1920-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/Jack_Kelly_Clark_UC_I-LP-PCIT-LV.005_1920-1536x864.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A citrus leaf miner left a trail of poop behind as it ate inside a lemon leaf. \u003ccite>(Jack Kelly Clark/UC Statewide IPM Program)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>If you were to pull back the outermost layer of a leaf, you’d see a translucent larva about a fourth of an inch long tunneling through the leaf’s spongy layer. Their mines, shiny films with a neat, dark stripe of poop inside, might be the best evidence that moths are living in a garden. Leaf miner adults can be infamously elusive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve been growing for 20 years,” he said, “and I can’t say that I’ve ever seen the adult moth, just the tracks.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Leaf miners rarely do enough damage to even come close to killing a plant, but they make individual leaves inedible. If given enough time, however, a leaf miner can be particularly damaging to vegetables that are harvested specifically for their leaves. But don’t worry if you mistakenly eat a larva — it won’t make you sick.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1973528\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_larva_tunnels_into_leaf_1.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1973528\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_larva_tunnels_into_leaf_1.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Munch, munch, munch … a fly larva begins tunneling into a leaf with its mouthparts. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For leafy greens, which can be grown during most of the year in the Bay Area, miners can show up anytime a plant has enough mature leaves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Among crops that will be ready to harvest in the summer, like tomatoes, beans, chard and squashes, leaf miner larvae may start appearing in late May. The same goes for ornamental plants like verbena, begonias and impatiens.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most backyard gardeners only need to remove the damaged leaves by hand. Farr warns against using insecticides on these pests. Since leaf miners are tucked inside the leaf, chemicals aren’t very effective and can hurt beneficial pest predators like wasps, spiders and ladybugs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gardeners with a greenhouse or large numbers of plants can use parasitic wasps to control the leaf miners. The female wasp will inject her eggs into the larvae. Once hatched, the young wasps feed on the leaf miners from the inside out, utterly wiping out a miner infestation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re voracious killers of larvae,” Farr said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One leaf miner that Bay Area gardeners might find in their arugula is the larva of a fly called \u003cem>Scaptomyza\u003c/em>. It’s related to — and looks a lot like — the fruit fly you might find buzzing around your ripe bananas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But where the common fruit fly in our kitchen sucks the vinegary liquid produced by decaying fruit and plants, \u003cem>Scaptomyza\u003c/em> flies feed on fresh, bitter-tasting leafy plants like arugula and kale.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1973525\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1921px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_fly_on_Arabidopsis_leaf_1920.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1973525\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_fly_on_Arabidopsis_leaf_1920.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1921\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_fly_on_Arabidopsis_leaf_1920.jpg 1921w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_fly_on_Arabidopsis_leaf_1920-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_fly_on_Arabidopsis_leaf_1920-1020x573.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_fly_on_Arabidopsis_leaf_1920-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_fly_on_Arabidopsis_leaf_1920-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_fly_on_Arabidopsis_leaf_1920-1536x864.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1921px) 100vw, 1921px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A \u003cem>Scaptomyza\u003c/em> fly sits on an \u003cem>Arabidopsis\u003c/em> leaf at UC Berkeley. Researchers there keep their flies on \u003cem>Arabidopsis\u003c/em> because it is a simple plant that has been studied in detail and is well suited for experiments. And the fly larvae love feeding on its small, soft leaves. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The chemicals that give these leafy greens their bitter taste are precisely their defense mechanism against insects. The characteristic peppery taste that some of us love in arugula is a result of compounds called isothiocyanates, which are toxic to most insects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1973527\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_larva_tunnels_inside_leaf.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1973527\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_larva_tunnels_inside_leaf.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Surrounded on all sides by its food, a \u003cem>Scaptomyza\u003c/em> larva crawls inside its mine. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Scaptomyza\u003c/em> flies have evolved to tolerate low levels of these toxic chemicals. As a result, they have the plants practically to themselves. But this comes at a cost. Over the past 14 million years, the flies have had to develop better and better defenses to thwart the plants’ stronger and stronger toxins. Flies and plants are in an “evolutionary arms race” with each other, said \u003ca href=\"http://www.noahwhiteman.org/\">Noah Whiteman\u003c/a>, a professor of evolutionary biology at UC Berkeley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Losing one’s footing in the battle means you go extinct,” he said, “so everyone’s running to stay in the same place.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whiteman and his colleagues are studying how \u003cem>Scaptomyza\u003c/em> larvae are able to survive inside leaves that are toxic to other insects. As a biology student at UC Berkeley in 2019, I helped maintain the \u003cem>Scaptomyza\u003c/em> fly colonies in Whiteman’s lab.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One way in which the flies deal with the plant’s toxic chemicals is by laying their eggs on the parts of the plant that are the least toxic. To do this, female flies perform a taste test.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1973524\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_fly_finishes_making_hole_w_ovipositor.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1973524\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_fly_finishes_making_hole_w_ovipositor.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Before she lays an egg in a leaf, a female \u003cem>Scaptomyza\u003c/em> fly digs a hole into it to taste the sap. \u003ccite>(Julianne Peláez/UC Berkeley)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>A female fly digs into a leaf using her saw-toothed reproductive organ, called an ovipositor, and makes a hole known as a stipple. Sap pools into the stipple and the fly sucks it up with her mouthparts. She is drinking to feed herself, but also to test how much toxin is in the leaf. If the concentration of toxin isn’t too high, she will lay a single egg in the leaf. If not, she’ll continue sampling on this leaf or move on to a new leaf until she finds one that is suitable for her offspring.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1973523\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_fly_drinks_sap_from_stipple.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1973523\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_fly_drinks_sap_from_stipple.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A female fly samples the sap that’s pooled in the hole she just dug, which is called a stipple. Researchers believe this taste test helps her find the least toxic spot for her offspring. \u003ccite>(Julianne Peláez/UC Berkeley)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>When Whiteman looked at which leaves the flies were laying eggs on, he found that the flies chose older leaves, which contain lower levels of toxins compared to new leaves. The plant puts more energy into protecting its new leaves from pests by pumping more toxins into them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Because the toxins are expensive to make,” Whiteman said, “the plant invests more in the new leaves.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since older leaves deteriorate with age, younger ones are especially valuable. They may become the primary leaves through which the plant transforms the rays of the sun into food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1973526\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_larva_on_top_of_leaf_1920.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1973526\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_larva_on_top_of_leaf_1920.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_larva_on_top_of_leaf_1920.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_larva_on_top_of_leaf_1920-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_larva_on_top_of_leaf_1920-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_larva_on_top_of_leaf_1920-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_larva_on_top_of_leaf_1920-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_larva_on_top_of_leaf_1920-1536x864.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">This larva will have to turn over a new leaf! Often when leaves are small and close to each other, a larva can move to a new one once it has eaten through the first one. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>A few days after an egg is laid, a larva hatches and begins to tunnel through the leaf. It munches on the abundant plant tissue surrounding it. It grows as it mines along the length of the leaf, eventually reaching the size of a sesame seed, leaving a hollowed-out trail in its path.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So it’s best to harvest your leafy greens early, lest the flies beat you to it — unless you’re looking for a little extra protein in your salad.\u003c/p>\n\n","blocks":[],"excerpt":"This fly’s larvae tunnel inside bitter-tasting greens like arugula and kale, leaving squiggly marks behind. The plants fight back with toxic chemicals. So before laying her eggs, the fly mom digs into a leaf and slurps its sap – a taste test to find the least toxic spot for her offspring.","status":"publish","parent":0,"modified":1704846687,"stats":{"hasAudio":false,"hasVideo":false,"hasChartOrMap":false,"iframeSrcs":[],"hasGoogleForm":false,"hasGallery":false,"hasHearkenModule":false,"hasPolis":false,"paragraphCount":28,"wordCount":1358},"headData":{"title":"Leaf Miner Fly Babies Scribble All Over Your Salad | KQED","description":"This fly’s larvae tunnel inside bitter-tasting greens like arugula and kale, leaving squiggly marks behind. The plants fight back with toxic chemicals. So before laying her eggs, the fly mom digs into a leaf and slurps its sap – a taste test to find the least toxic spot for her offspring.","ogTitle":"","ogDescription":"","ogImgId":"","twTitle":"","twDescription":"","twImgId":"","schema":{"@context":"http://schema.org","@type":"Article","headline":"Leaf Miner Fly Babies Scribble All Over Your Salad","datePublished":"2021-04-06T13:00:29.000Z","dateModified":"2024-01-10T00:31:27.000Z","image":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"}},"videoEmbed":"https://youtu.be/QtbjUB4AnLI","sticky":false,"path":"/science/1973500/leaf-miner-fly-babies-scribble-all-over-your-salad","audioTrackLength":null,"parsedContent":[{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"dl_subscribe","attributes":{"named":{"label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>If you have a green thumb, spring in the Bay Area marks the harvesting of lemons and oranges, onions and garlic, and greens like arugula, kale and mustard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But what are those squiggly marks crisscrossing your arugula and lemon tree leaves?\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1973522\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1919px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Mine_in_leaf_1920.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1973522\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Mine_in_leaf_1920.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1919\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Mine_in_leaf_1920.jpg 1919w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Mine_in_leaf_1920-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Mine_in_leaf_1920-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Mine_in_leaf_1920-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Mine_in_leaf_1920-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Mine_in_leaf_1920-1536x864.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1919px) 100vw, 1919px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The mining from a \u003cem>Scaptomyza\u003c/em> fly larva leaves a pattern of discoloration in a wild mustard leaf growing at UC Berkeley. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Those curlicues are the work of leaf miners, tiny insect larvae that tunnel through leaves. The mines they carve out might be a whitish tan or light gray. They can be neatly serpentine or converge and have a blotch-like appearance, depending on what insect made them. Many different flies, butterflies and moths lay eggs on the leaves of citrus, vegetables and ornamental plants that grow into leaf miners.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re ubiquitous in the Bay Area,” said James Farr, a \u003ca href=\"http://acmg.ucanr.edu/Contact_Us/\">master gardener\u003c/a> with Alameda County who answers residents’ home gardening questions. “Every year we have leaf miners on my citrus.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The mines that appear in May and June on the lemon, lime and orange trees he grows in his home near Pleasanton are created by the larvae of moths that lay their eggs on the citrus leaves. The trails can appear as early as April if the weather is warm enough.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1973581\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/Jack_Kelly_Clark_UC_I-LP-PCIT-LV.005_1920.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/Jack_Kelly_Clark_UC_I-LP-PCIT-LV.005_1920.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1973581\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/Jack_Kelly_Clark_UC_I-LP-PCIT-LV.005_1920.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/Jack_Kelly_Clark_UC_I-LP-PCIT-LV.005_1920-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/Jack_Kelly_Clark_UC_I-LP-PCIT-LV.005_1920-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/Jack_Kelly_Clark_UC_I-LP-PCIT-LV.005_1920-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/Jack_Kelly_Clark_UC_I-LP-PCIT-LV.005_1920-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/Jack_Kelly_Clark_UC_I-LP-PCIT-LV.005_1920-1536x864.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A citrus leaf miner left a trail of poop behind as it ate inside a lemon leaf. \u003ccite>(Jack Kelly Clark/UC Statewide IPM Program)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>If you were to pull back the outermost layer of a leaf, you’d see a translucent larva about a fourth of an inch long tunneling through the leaf’s spongy layer. Their mines, shiny films with a neat, dark stripe of poop inside, might be the best evidence that moths are living in a garden. Leaf miner adults can be infamously elusive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"fullwidth"},"numeric":["fullwidth"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve been growing for 20 years,” he said, “and I can’t say that I’ve ever seen the adult moth, just the tracks.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Leaf miners rarely do enough damage to even come close to killing a plant, but they make individual leaves inedible. If given enough time, however, a leaf miner can be particularly damaging to vegetables that are harvested specifically for their leaves. But don’t worry if you mistakenly eat a larva — it won’t make you sick.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1973528\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_larva_tunnels_into_leaf_1.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1973528\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_larva_tunnels_into_leaf_1.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Munch, munch, munch … a fly larva begins tunneling into a leaf with its mouthparts. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For leafy greens, which can be grown during most of the year in the Bay Area, miners can show up anytime a plant has enough mature leaves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Among crops that will be ready to harvest in the summer, like tomatoes, beans, chard and squashes, leaf miner larvae may start appearing in late May. The same goes for ornamental plants like verbena, begonias and impatiens.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most backyard gardeners only need to remove the damaged leaves by hand. Farr warns against using insecticides on these pests. Since leaf miners are tucked inside the leaf, chemicals aren’t very effective and can hurt beneficial pest predators like wasps, spiders and ladybugs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gardeners with a greenhouse or large numbers of plants can use parasitic wasps to control the leaf miners. The female wasp will inject her eggs into the larvae. Once hatched, the young wasps feed on the leaf miners from the inside out, utterly wiping out a miner infestation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re voracious killers of larvae,” Farr said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One leaf miner that Bay Area gardeners might find in their arugula is the larva of a fly called \u003cem>Scaptomyza\u003c/em>. It’s related to — and looks a lot like — the fruit fly you might find buzzing around your ripe bananas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But where the common fruit fly in our kitchen sucks the vinegary liquid produced by decaying fruit and plants, \u003cem>Scaptomyza\u003c/em> flies feed on fresh, bitter-tasting leafy plants like arugula and kale.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1973525\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1921px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_fly_on_Arabidopsis_leaf_1920.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1973525\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_fly_on_Arabidopsis_leaf_1920.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1921\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_fly_on_Arabidopsis_leaf_1920.jpg 1921w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_fly_on_Arabidopsis_leaf_1920-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_fly_on_Arabidopsis_leaf_1920-1020x573.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_fly_on_Arabidopsis_leaf_1920-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_fly_on_Arabidopsis_leaf_1920-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_fly_on_Arabidopsis_leaf_1920-1536x864.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1921px) 100vw, 1921px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A \u003cem>Scaptomyza\u003c/em> fly sits on an \u003cem>Arabidopsis\u003c/em> leaf at UC Berkeley. Researchers there keep their flies on \u003cem>Arabidopsis\u003c/em> because it is a simple plant that has been studied in detail and is well suited for experiments. And the fly larvae love feeding on its small, soft leaves. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The chemicals that give these leafy greens their bitter taste are precisely their defense mechanism against insects. The characteristic peppery taste that some of us love in arugula is a result of compounds called isothiocyanates, which are toxic to most insects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1973527\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_larva_tunnels_inside_leaf.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1973527\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_larva_tunnels_inside_leaf.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Surrounded on all sides by its food, a \u003cem>Scaptomyza\u003c/em> larva crawls inside its mine. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Scaptomyza\u003c/em> flies have evolved to tolerate low levels of these toxic chemicals. As a result, they have the plants practically to themselves. But this comes at a cost. Over the past 14 million years, the flies have had to develop better and better defenses to thwart the plants’ stronger and stronger toxins. Flies and plants are in an “evolutionary arms race” with each other, said \u003ca href=\"http://www.noahwhiteman.org/\">Noah Whiteman\u003c/a>, a professor of evolutionary biology at UC Berkeley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Losing one’s footing in the battle means you go extinct,” he said, “so everyone’s running to stay in the same place.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whiteman and his colleagues are studying how \u003cem>Scaptomyza\u003c/em> larvae are able to survive inside leaves that are toxic to other insects. As a biology student at UC Berkeley in 2019, I helped maintain the \u003cem>Scaptomyza\u003c/em> fly colonies in Whiteman’s lab.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One way in which the flies deal with the plant’s toxic chemicals is by laying their eggs on the parts of the plant that are the least toxic. To do this, female flies perform a taste test.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1973524\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_fly_finishes_making_hole_w_ovipositor.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1973524\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_fly_finishes_making_hole_w_ovipositor.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Before she lays an egg in a leaf, a female \u003cem>Scaptomyza\u003c/em> fly digs a hole into it to taste the sap. \u003ccite>(Julianne Peláez/UC Berkeley)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>A female fly digs into a leaf using her saw-toothed reproductive organ, called an ovipositor, and makes a hole known as a stipple. Sap pools into the stipple and the fly sucks it up with her mouthparts. She is drinking to feed herself, but also to test how much toxin is in the leaf. If the concentration of toxin isn’t too high, she will lay a single egg in the leaf. If not, she’ll continue sampling on this leaf or move on to a new leaf until she finds one that is suitable for her offspring.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1973523\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_fly_drinks_sap_from_stipple.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1973523\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_fly_drinks_sap_from_stipple.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A female fly samples the sap that’s pooled in the hole she just dug, which is called a stipple. Researchers believe this taste test helps her find the least toxic spot for her offspring. \u003ccite>(Julianne Peláez/UC Berkeley)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>When Whiteman looked at which leaves the flies were laying eggs on, he found that the flies chose older leaves, which contain lower levels of toxins compared to new leaves. The plant puts more energy into protecting its new leaves from pests by pumping more toxins into them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Because the toxins are expensive to make,” Whiteman said, “the plant invests more in the new leaves.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since older leaves deteriorate with age, younger ones are especially valuable. They may become the primary leaves through which the plant transforms the rays of the sun into food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1973526\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_larva_on_top_of_leaf_1920.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1973526\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_larva_on_top_of_leaf_1920.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_larva_on_top_of_leaf_1920.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_larva_on_top_of_leaf_1920-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_larva_on_top_of_leaf_1920-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_larva_on_top_of_leaf_1920-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_larva_on_top_of_leaf_1920-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/DL807_Scaptomyza_larva_on_top_of_leaf_1920-1536x864.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">This larva will have to turn over a new leaf! Often when leaves are small and close to each other, a larva can move to a new one once it has eaten through the first one. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>A few days after an egg is laid, a larva hatches and begins to tunnel through the leaf. It munches on the abundant plant tissue surrounding it. It grows as it mines along the length of the leaf, eventually reaching the size of a sesame seed, leaving a hollowed-out trail in its path.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"floatright"},"numeric":["floatright"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So it’s best to harvest your leafy greens early, lest the flies beat you to it — unless you’re looking for a little extra protein in your salad.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}}],"link":"/science/1973500/leaf-miner-fly-babies-scribble-all-over-your-salad","authors":["11744"],"series":["science_1935"],"categories":["science_2874","science_40","science_4450","science_86"],"tags":["science_392","science_1120","science_1970"],"featImg":"science_1973502","label":"science_1935"},"science_1967925":{"type":"posts","id":"science_1967925","meta":{"index":"posts_1591205157","site":"science","id":"1967925","score":null,"sort":[1596220199000]},"guestAuthors":[],"slug":"evs-are-coming-to-the-farm-in-californias-central-coast","title":"EVs Are Coming to the Farm in California's Central Coast","publishDate":1596220199,"format":"standard","headTitle":"EVs Are Coming to the Farm in California’s Central Coast | KQED","labelTerm":{},"content":"\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/Neq_CwpkPvsGmMG7hVOy7A?domain=insideclimatenews.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">InsideClimate News\u003c/a> is a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for the ICN newsletter \u003ca href=\"https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/pD-rCxklQwf1V61yTviMEq?domain=insideclimatenews.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">Monterey Bay Community Power is entering the world of agricultural electrification.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">The community-owned electricity provider launched its first \u003ca href=\"https://www.mbcommunitypower.org/ag-electrification-grant-program/\">agriculture-specific grant program\u003c/a> this week, an initiative that will fund the replacement of fossil fuel-powered farm equipment, like tractors and forklifts, with electric alternatives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">Funding will be allocated based on the number of customers that the electricity provider serves in each county. Of the $160,000 available — enough to fund at least eight grants of up to $20,000 each — half the money is earmarked for agricultural customers in Monterey County and a quarter for Santa Cruz County, with the remainder split between San Benito County and the cities of San Luis Obispo and Morro Bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">“The hope is to learn, establish ourselves as a trusted resource for the Ag sector, and then just build upon the success of this program,” said J.R. Killigrew, director of communications and outreach for Monterey Bay Community Power.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">The electricity provider’s leaders have said their goal is to electrify the Central Coast, and they want to ensure that agricultural customers are included in that transition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">The grant program would mean new customers for the small but growing array of companies that make electric farm equipment. One of those companies is \u003ca href=\"https://www.solectrac.com/\">Solectrac\u003c/a>, a startup based in Mendocino County, California, that makes compact electric tractors. Its eUtility model provides the equivalent of 40 horsepower for a base price of $45,000, which is roughly 50% more than an equivalent diesel tractor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I became converted that this is going to work, and this is coming,” said Roger Hoy, director of the University of Nebraska Tractor Test Laboratory, who has tested the Solectac model.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">He said he expects that the electric tractor market will start with small models and build from that niche, adding that there is not yet a viable electric alternative to the large tractors used for row crops.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">The grants from Monterey Bay Community Power would reduce or eliminate the cost difference between an electric model and a diesel one, which should make the EVs an attractive option.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">“At the end of the day, they’re trying to make a buck,” Killigrew said about the farmers that may apply. “They’re trying to make sure that they stay in business. So any way they could find means that could help support their operations, and if we can do it in a clean and sustainable way, then we’re meeting their goals and we’re also meeting our goals.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">Applications for the grant close at the end of August. The electricity provider plans to announce recipients by late September.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ci>\u003cem>Reporter Nicole Pollack contributed to this story.\u003c/em>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n","blocks":[],"excerpt":"Monterey Bay Community Power launched a grant program to pay for replacing gas-powered farm equipment with electric ones. ","status":"publish","parent":0,"modified":1704847134,"stats":{"hasAudio":false,"hasVideo":false,"hasChartOrMap":false,"iframeSrcs":[],"hasGoogleForm":false,"hasGallery":false,"hasHearkenModule":false,"hasPolis":false,"paragraphCount":3,"wordCount":488},"headData":{"title":"EVs Are Coming to the Farm in California's Central Coast | KQED","description":"Monterey Bay Community Power launched a grant program to pay for replacing gas-powered farm equipment with electric ones. ","ogTitle":"","ogDescription":"","ogImgId":"","twTitle":"","twDescription":"","twImgId":"","schema":{"@context":"http://schema.org","@type":"Article","headline":"EVs Are Coming to the Farm in California's Central Coast","datePublished":"2020-07-31T18:29:59.000Z","dateModified":"2024-01-10T00:38:54.000Z","image":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"}},"source":"InsideClimate News","sticky":false,"nprByline":"Dan Gearino \u003cbr />InsideClimate News\u003cbr>","path":"/science/1967925/evs-are-coming-to-the-farm-in-californias-central-coast","audioTrackLength":null,"parsedContent":[{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/Neq_CwpkPvsGmMG7hVOy7A?domain=insideclimatenews.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">InsideClimate News\u003c/a> is a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for the ICN newsletter \u003ca href=\"https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/pD-rCxklQwf1V61yTviMEq?domain=insideclimatenews.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">Monterey Bay Community Power is entering the world of agricultural electrification.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">The community-owned electricity provider launched its first \u003ca href=\"https://www.mbcommunitypower.org/ag-electrification-grant-program/\">agriculture-specific grant program\u003c/a> this week, an initiative that will fund the replacement of fossil fuel-powered farm equipment, like tractors and forklifts, with electric alternatives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">Funding will be allocated based on the number of customers that the electricity provider serves in each county. Of the $160,000 available — enough to fund at least eight grants of up to $20,000 each — half the money is earmarked for agricultural customers in Monterey County and a quarter for Santa Cruz County, with the remainder split between San Benito County and the cities of San Luis Obispo and Morro Bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">“The hope is to learn, establish ourselves as a trusted resource for the Ag sector, and then just build upon the success of this program,” said J.R. Killigrew, director of communications and outreach for Monterey Bay Community Power.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"fullwidth"},"numeric":["fullwidth"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">The electricity provider’s leaders have said their goal is to electrify the Central Coast, and they want to ensure that agricultural customers are included in that transition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">The grant program would mean new customers for the small but growing array of companies that make electric farm equipment. One of those companies is \u003ca href=\"https://www.solectrac.com/\">Solectrac\u003c/a>, a startup based in Mendocino County, California, that makes compact electric tractors. Its eUtility model provides the equivalent of 40 horsepower for a base price of $45,000, which is roughly 50% more than an equivalent diesel tractor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I became converted that this is going to work, and this is coming,” said Roger Hoy, director of the University of Nebraska Tractor Test Laboratory, who has tested the Solectac model.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">He said he expects that the electric tractor market will start with small models and build from that niche, adding that there is not yet a viable electric alternative to the large tractors used for row crops.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">The grants from Monterey Bay Community Power would reduce or eliminate the cost difference between an electric model and a diesel one, which should make the EVs an attractive option.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">“At the end of the day, they’re trying to make a buck,” Killigrew said about the farmers that may apply. “They’re trying to make sure that they stay in business. So any way they could find means that could help support their operations, and if we can do it in a clean and sustainable way, then we’re meeting their goals and we’re also meeting our goals.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">Applications for the grant close at the end of August. The electricity provider plans to announce recipients by late September.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ci>\u003cem>Reporter Nicole Pollack contributed to this story.\u003c/em>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}}],"link":"/science/1967925/evs-are-coming-to-the-farm-in-californias-central-coast","authors":["byline_science_1967925"],"categories":["science_33","science_36","science_39","science_40","science_4450"],"tags":["science_392","science_194","science_4122"],"featImg":"science_1967927","label":"source_science_1967925"},"science_1947260":{"type":"posts","id":"science_1947260","meta":{"index":"posts_1591205157","site":"science","id":"1947260","score":null,"sort":[1568206886000]},"guestAuthors":[],"slug":"hows-our-appetite-for-lab-grown-meat","title":"How About a Burger With Everything - Except the Animals?","publishDate":1568206886,"format":"audio","headTitle":"How About a Burger With Everything – Except the Animals? | KQED","labelTerm":{},"content":"\u003cp>Someday you could slice into a steak from a Petri dish, or savor sashimi from a test tube. By growing meat in labs, a slew of Bay Area startups promise a future of tasty dishes for carnivores without making billions of animals suffer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.ju.st/en-us\">Just Inc.\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://finlessfoods.com/\">Finless Foods\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.memphismeats.com/\">Memphis Meats\u003c/a> are making beef, pork, poultry and seafood by harvesting cells from muscle tissue instead of living animals. Others like \u003ca href=\"https://www.clarafoods.com/\">Clara Foods\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://geltor.com/\">Geltor\u003c/a> ferment yeast cells to make egg whites and collagen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Recently, teams from many of these companies gathered to discuss this trend at the \u003ca href=\"https://goodfoodconference.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Good Food Conference \u003c/a>in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The Process\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To make cultured meat, companies use techniques very similar to what doctors do to help burn victims heal. Physicians take skin grafts, replicate the cells outside the body and add the new cells back to the wound. The biggest difference with growing cultured meat is the result. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Scientists begin with a biopsy of animal muscle tissue. Technicians collect stem cells from the tissue, multiply them dramatically and allow them to differentiate into fibers that eventually bulk up and form muscle tissue. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Voila! Sirloin without a slaughterhouse. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, not yet.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For now, companies focus on ground products like chicken nuggets, sausages and hamburger. This first line of offerings will likely include fillers, flavors and additives to help lab grown meat look, taste and feel the way people expect it to. Before scientists can create pork chops and filet mignon, they must learn how to design and replicate blood vessels. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>From Yuck…to Yum!?!\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Customers’ aversion to genetic engineering and artificial flavors in food could make it tricky to market lab-grown meat. Cultured meat companies are quick to point out that labs allow much more control over flavor and food safety than farms do. Also, their products could save farm animals from enormous suffering and help the planet by reducing the number of methane-producing cattle and other livestock.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Farms generate a hefty carbon footprint. Raising animals in California \u003ca href=\"https://ww3.arb.ca.gov/cc/inventory/data/tables/ghg_inventory_sector_sum_2000-17.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">emits 8 percent\u003c/a> of the state’s total greenhouse gases. That’s more than all the state’s oil refineries combined.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In theory, lab-grown meat is a sensible solution because it removes the need for vast acres of land to grow cattle, chickens and pigs. Not to mention chemical fertilizers that pollute air and water. That said,\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> the environmental reality is much less certain. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2019.00005/full\"> new study\u003c/a> suggests lab-grown meat could accelerate climate change more than regular beef does. The claims, pro and con, are based on theoretical models. We won’t know what cultured meat on a commercial scale requires until labs are able to feed large populations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>When Can I Order a Lab-Grown Burger?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Area CEOs promise their products will be ready for public consumption in a year or two. Industry buzz suggests that’ll happen in Asia first. In countries like Singapore and Japan – where land is limited and meat imports are very expensive – excitement is brewing. Asian cultures tend to embrace, instead of scoff, novel foods.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the industry faces significant scientific, regulatory, manufacturing, economic and cultural hurdles before it catches on in the U.S.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s no proof that producing meat in labs could endanger human health, but the federal Food and Drug Administration would need to regulate an entirely new industry. There’s also pushback from traditional farmers and ranchers who argue vehemently against labeling these products as meat. Marketers will have to coax consumers past the gross-out factor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Finally, companies need to create a commercially viable product. Mark Post, the co-founder of Mosa Meat, developed the first lab-grown burger in 2013. That patty cost $300,000. Prices have dropped a lot since then, but not to a level that can compete with U.S. beef on the hoof. For all these reasons, food industry skeptics suggest it will be at least a decade or even two before diners can order cultured meat on local menus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\n","blocks":[],"excerpt":"Bay Area start-ups hope to replace slaughterhouses with Petri dishes by growing meat in a lab. ","status":"publish","parent":0,"modified":1704848337,"stats":{"hasAudio":false,"hasVideo":false,"hasChartOrMap":false,"iframeSrcs":[],"hasGoogleForm":false,"hasGallery":false,"hasHearkenModule":false,"hasPolis":false,"paragraphCount":21,"wordCount":689},"headData":{"title":"How About a Burger With Everything - Except the Animals? | KQED","description":"Bay Area start-ups hope to replace slaughterhouses with Petri dishes by growing meat in a lab. ","ogTitle":"","ogDescription":"","ogImgId":"","twTitle":"","twDescription":"","twImgId":"","schema":{"@context":"http://schema.org","@type":"Article","headline":"How About a Burger With Everything - Except the Animals?","datePublished":"2019-09-11T13:01:26.000Z","dateModified":"2024-01-10T00:58:57.000Z","image":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"}},"audioUrl":"https://www.kqed.org/.stream/anon/radio/RDnews/2019/09/McClurgCulturedMeat.mp3","sticky":false,"path":"/science/1947260/hows-our-appetite-for-lab-grown-meat","audioTrackLength":null,"parsedContent":[{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Someday you could slice into a steak from a Petri dish, or savor sashimi from a test tube. By growing meat in labs, a slew of Bay Area startups promise a future of tasty dishes for carnivores without making billions of animals suffer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.ju.st/en-us\">Just Inc.\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://finlessfoods.com/\">Finless Foods\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.memphismeats.com/\">Memphis Meats\u003c/a> are making beef, pork, poultry and seafood by harvesting cells from muscle tissue instead of living animals. Others like \u003ca href=\"https://www.clarafoods.com/\">Clara Foods\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://geltor.com/\">Geltor\u003c/a> ferment yeast cells to make egg whites and collagen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Recently, teams from many of these companies gathered to discuss this trend at the \u003ca href=\"https://goodfoodconference.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Good Food Conference \u003c/a>in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The Process\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To make cultured meat, companies use techniques very similar to what doctors do to help burn victims heal. Physicians take skin grafts, replicate the cells outside the body and add the new cells back to the wound. The biggest difference with growing cultured meat is the result. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"fullwidth"},"numeric":["fullwidth"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Scientists begin with a biopsy of animal muscle tissue. Technicians collect stem cells from the tissue, multiply them dramatically and allow them to differentiate into fibers that eventually bulk up and form muscle tissue. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Voila! Sirloin without a slaughterhouse. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, not yet.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For now, companies focus on ground products like chicken nuggets, sausages and hamburger. This first line of offerings will likely include fillers, flavors and additives to help lab grown meat look, taste and feel the way people expect it to. Before scientists can create pork chops and filet mignon, they must learn how to design and replicate blood vessels. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>From Yuck…to Yum!?!\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Customers’ aversion to genetic engineering and artificial flavors in food could make it tricky to market lab-grown meat. Cultured meat companies are quick to point out that labs allow much more control over flavor and food safety than farms do. Also, their products could save farm animals from enormous suffering and help the planet by reducing the number of methane-producing cattle and other livestock.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Farms generate a hefty carbon footprint. Raising animals in California \u003ca href=\"https://ww3.arb.ca.gov/cc/inventory/data/tables/ghg_inventory_sector_sum_2000-17.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">emits 8 percent\u003c/a> of the state’s total greenhouse gases. That’s more than all the state’s oil refineries combined.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In theory, lab-grown meat is a sensible solution because it removes the need for vast acres of land to grow cattle, chickens and pigs. Not to mention chemical fertilizers that pollute air and water. That said,\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> the environmental reality is much less certain. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2019.00005/full\"> new study\u003c/a> suggests lab-grown meat could accelerate climate change more than regular beef does. The claims, pro and con, are based on theoretical models. We won’t know what cultured meat on a commercial scale requires until labs are able to feed large populations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>When Can I Order a Lab-Grown Burger?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Area CEOs promise their products will be ready for public consumption in a year or two. Industry buzz suggests that’ll happen in Asia first. In countries like Singapore and Japan – where land is limited and meat imports are very expensive – excitement is brewing. Asian cultures tend to embrace, instead of scoff, novel foods.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the industry faces significant scientific, regulatory, manufacturing, economic and cultural hurdles before it catches on in the U.S.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s no proof that producing meat in labs could endanger human health, but the federal Food and Drug Administration would need to regulate an entirely new industry. There’s also pushback from traditional farmers and ranchers who argue vehemently against labeling these products as meat. Marketers will have to coax consumers past the gross-out factor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Finally, companies need to create a commercially viable product. Mark Post, the co-founder of Mosa Meat, developed the first lab-grown burger in 2013. That patty cost $300,000. Prices have dropped a lot since then, but not to a level that can compete with U.S. beef on the hoof. For all these reasons, food industry skeptics suggest it will be at least a decade or even two before diners can order cultured meat on local menus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}}],"link":"/science/1947260/hows-our-appetite-for-lab-grown-meat","authors":["11229"],"categories":["science_2874","science_30","science_29","science_33","science_35","science_36"],"tags":["science_392","science_194","science_3370"],"featImg":"science_1947263","label":"science"},"science_1946996":{"type":"posts","id":"science_1946996","meta":{"index":"posts_1591205157","site":"science","id":"1946996","score":null,"sort":[1568120428000]},"guestAuthors":[],"slug":"this-bee-gets-punched-by-flowers-for-your-ice-cream","title":"This Bee Gets Punched by Flowers for Your Ice Cream","publishDate":1568120428,"format":"video","headTitle":"This Bee Gets Punched by Flowers for Your Ice Cream | KQED","labelTerm":{},"content":"\u003cp>[dl_subscribe]Sure, cows are important. But next time you eat ice cream, thank a bee. Without them, there would be no cones, milkshakes or sundaes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Every summer, alfalfa leafcutting bees pollinate alfalfa in an intricate process that gets them thwacked by the flowers when they release the pollen that allows the plants to make seeds. The bees’ hard work came to fruition last week when growers in California’s Kings, Fresno and Imperial counties finished harvesting the alfalfa seeds that will be grown to make nutritious hay for dairy cows.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1947154\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_ALFALFA_LEAFCUTTING_BEE_LANDS_ON_ALFALFA_FLOWER_500.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1947154\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_ALFALFA_LEAFCUTTING_BEE_LANDS_ON_ALFALFA_FLOWER_500.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An alfalfa leafcutting bee lands on a cluster of alfalfa flowers in a field in Fresno County, California. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The bees’ work “is ice cream in the making,” said Shannon Mueller, who helped introduce the pollinators to California in the early 1990s and recently retired as director of the University of California Cooperative Extension in Fresno and Madera counties. “A vast majority of the forage goes to dairy cows.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alfalfa hay is also fed to beef cattle, sheep, goats and horses. California is the top alfalfa hay and dairy producer in the U.S., as well as the country’s top alfalfa seed grower. This year’s crop of approximately 18 million pounds of seeds will be sold in California and Arizona and to countries such as Saudi Arabia, Mexico and Argentina, which have similar climates to the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1947155\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_ALFALFA_LEAFCUTTING_BEE_AT_NEST_HOLE_500.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1947155\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_ALFALFA_LEAFCUTTING_BEE_AT_NEST_HOLE_500.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An alfalfa leafcutting bee peeks out from her nest hole in a field in Fresno County. Farmers provide the bees with nesting holes in Styrofoam boards. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Alfalfa leafcutting bees are second only to honeybees in their value as crop pollinators, said biologist Theresa Pitts-Singer, who studies the bees at the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Logan, Utah. And when it comes to pollinating alfalfa, they leave honeybees in the dust.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is how it works.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To produce alfalfa seeds, farmers let their plants grow until they bloom. They need help pollinating the tiny purple flowers, so that the female and male parts of the flower can come together and produce fertile seeds. That’s where the grayish, easygoing alfalfa leafcutting bees come in. Seed growers in California release the bees – known simply as cutters – in June and they work hard for a month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alfalfa’s flowers keep their reproductive organs hidden away inside a boat-shaped bottom petal called the keel petal, which is held closed by a thin membrane that creates a spring mechanism.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1947156\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_KEEL_PETAL_1080.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1947156\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_KEEL_PETAL_1080.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_KEEL_PETAL_1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_KEEL_PETAL_1080-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_KEEL_PETAL_1080-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_KEEL_PETAL_1080-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_KEEL_PETAL_1080-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_KEEL_PETAL_1080-1200x675.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Alfalfa flowers hide their reproductive organs in a boat-shaped keel petal sealed by a thin membrane. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Cutter bees come up to the flower looking for nectar and pollen to feed on. When they land on the flower, the membrane holding the keel petal breaks and the long reproductive structure pops right up and smacks the upper petal or the bee, releasing its yellow pollen. This process is called “tripping the flower.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1947161\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_TRIPPING_THE_BLOOM_Edwards_500.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1947161\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_TRIPPING_THE_BLOOM_Edwards_500.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">When an alfalfa flower is tripped, a column holding its reproductive organs pops up and pollen sprays out as it hits the upper petal. \u003ccite>(Joan Edwards and Nora Mitchell/Williams College)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>When the flower is tripped, pollen falls on its female reproductive organ and fertilizes it; bees also carry pollen away on their hairy bodies and help fertilize other flowers. In a few weeks, each flower turns into a curly pod with seven to 10 seeds growing inside.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cutters were “game changers” in the alfalfa seed business because they’re much better at pollinating alfalfa than honeybees are, Mueller said. Cutters trip 80 percent of flowers they visit, compared to honeybees, which only trip about 10 percent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Honeybees don’t like to be flipped in the face, but it doesn’t bother the leafcutter bees,” said Chuck Deatherage, a grower who uses both kinds of bees to pollinate about 1,000 acres of alfalfa seed fields that he farms with two business partners in the Fresno area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Honeybees sip nectar from the side of the flower rather than from the front, where they would trigger the keel petal, said Pitts-Singer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1947168\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615-AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_HONEY_BEE_ON_ALFALFA_FLOWER2_1080.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1947168\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615-AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_HONEY_BEE_ON_ALFALFA_FLOWER2_1080.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615-AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_HONEY_BEE_ON_ALFALFA_FLOWER2_1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615-AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_HONEY_BEE_ON_ALFALFA_FLOWER2_1080-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615-AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_HONEY_BEE_ON_ALFALFA_FLOWER2_1080-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615-AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_HONEY_BEE_ON_ALFALFA_FLOWER2_1080-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615-AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_HONEY_BEE_ON_ALFALFA_FLOWER2_1080-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615-AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_HONEY_BEE_ON_ALFALFA_FLOWER2_1080-1200x675.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A honeybee drinks nectar from an alfalfa flower. Honeybees avoid getting thwacked by the blooms by sticking their mouthpart into the side of the flower, rather than the front. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>And honeybees will visit alfalfa flowers that have already been tripped by cutters; by doing this they help spread pollen around.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The honeybees follow the leafcutters to get the nectar,” said Deatherage. “That’s my theory.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because they work well together, growers release both honeybees and cutters. In an alfalfa seed field, you might see 10 to 20 honeybees and 20 to 50 cutters in a 3-foot radius, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Deatherage buys the bees in Styrofoam nests and keeps them refrigerated for most of the year so that they don’t fully develop. As his alfalfa fields get near to blooming, he warms up the developing bees in their nests to close to 85 degrees. When they start hatching two to three weeks later, he stacks the boards into rectangular structures that sit inside trailers in the alfalfa fields and have the appearance of bee apartment buildings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1947172\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_ALFALFA_LEAFCUTTING_BEES_FLY_AT_NEST_BOX_500.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1947172\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_ALFALFA_LEAFCUTTING_BEES_FLY_AT_NEST_BOX_500.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Alfalfa leafcutting bees fly at the entrance to a nest box. The patterns and textures on the box help them find their way back after collecting leaves and pollen. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Alfalfa leafcutting bees are solitary — each female builds its own nest. But unlike other solitary bees that like to work in isolation, cutters don’t mind working side by side with other bees, said Mueller.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1947170\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_BEE_BOXES_ON_TRAILER_1080.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1947170\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_BEE_BOXES_ON_TRAILER_1080.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_BEE_BOXES_ON_TRAILER_1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_BEE_BOXES_ON_TRAILER_1080-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_BEE_BOXES_ON_TRAILER_1080-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_BEE_BOXES_ON_TRAILER_1080-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_BEE_BOXES_ON_TRAILER_1080-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_BEE_BOXES_ON_TRAILER_1080-1200x675.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nest boxes made up of Styrofoam boards rest on a trailer in an alfalfa field in Fresno County. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“This is to our advantage,” she said. “We can put large populations of leafcutter bees together in the field.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bees carefully cut out discs of alfalfa leaves or other leaves or petals they can find nearby. They fly with the piece curled up under their abdomen, held between their legs, to a nest hole in one of the Styrofoam boards and maneuver their way in. But it’s tricky.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1947171\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_ALFALFA_LEAFCUTTING_BEE_ENTERS_NEST_HOLE_W_LEAF_PIECE_500.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1947171\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_ALFALFA_LEAFCUTTING_BEE_ENTERS_NEST_HOLE_W_LEAF_PIECE_500.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Tucked between its legs, an alfalfa leafcutting bee carries a leaf piece into its nest. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“You’ll see piles of debris in front of the nest opening where they’ve dropped a leaf piece,” said Mueller. “I used to think, ‘Oh, all the work that went into all these dropped leaf pieces.’ ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inside its nest hole, the bee shapes several leaf pieces into a cell, where she lays a single egg on a ball of pollen she has collected.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1947159\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_NEST_MADE_OF_LEAVES_1080.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1947159\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_NEST_MADE_OF_LEAVES_1080.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_NEST_MADE_OF_LEAVES_1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_NEST_MADE_OF_LEAVES_1080-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_NEST_MADE_OF_LEAVES_1080-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_NEST_MADE_OF_LEAVES_1080-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_NEST_MADE_OF_LEAVES_1080-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_NEST_MADE_OF_LEAVES_1080-1200x675.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A bee has shaped leaf pieces into two cells of its nest. The cells are connected by overlapping leaf bits. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They look like a medicine capsule made of leaf pieces,” said Mueller, “and inside each of those capsules there is a developing bee.”\u003c/p>\n\n","blocks":[],"excerpt":"Next time you eat a cone or sundae, thank an alfalfa leafcutting bee.","status":"publish","parent":0,"modified":1704848341,"stats":{"hasAudio":false,"hasVideo":false,"hasChartOrMap":false,"iframeSrcs":[],"hasGoogleForm":false,"hasGallery":false,"hasHearkenModule":false,"hasPolis":false,"paragraphCount":25,"wordCount":1194},"headData":{"title":"This Bee Gets Punched by Flowers for Your Ice Cream | KQED","description":"Next time you eat a cone or sundae, thank an alfalfa leafcutting bee.","ogTitle":"","ogDescription":"","ogImgId":"","twTitle":"","twDescription":"","twImgId":"","schema":{"@context":"http://schema.org","@type":"Article","headline":"This Bee Gets Punched by Flowers for Your Ice Cream","datePublished":"2019-09-10T13:00:28.000Z","dateModified":"2024-01-10T00:59:01.000Z","image":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"}},"videoEmbed":"https://youtu.be/rsUNxvXofgo","sticky":false,"path":"/science/1946996/this-bee-gets-punched-by-flowers-for-your-ice-cream","audioTrackLength":null,"parsedContent":[{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"dl_subscribe","attributes":{"named":{"label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Sure, cows are important. But next time you eat ice cream, thank a bee. Without them, there would be no cones, milkshakes or sundaes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Every summer, alfalfa leafcutting bees pollinate alfalfa in an intricate process that gets them thwacked by the flowers when they release the pollen that allows the plants to make seeds. The bees’ hard work came to fruition last week when growers in California’s Kings, Fresno and Imperial counties finished harvesting the alfalfa seeds that will be grown to make nutritious hay for dairy cows.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1947154\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_ALFALFA_LEAFCUTTING_BEE_LANDS_ON_ALFALFA_FLOWER_500.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1947154\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_ALFALFA_LEAFCUTTING_BEE_LANDS_ON_ALFALFA_FLOWER_500.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An alfalfa leafcutting bee lands on a cluster of alfalfa flowers in a field in Fresno County, California. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The bees’ work “is ice cream in the making,” said Shannon Mueller, who helped introduce the pollinators to California in the early 1990s and recently retired as director of the University of California Cooperative Extension in Fresno and Madera counties. “A vast majority of the forage goes to dairy cows.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alfalfa hay is also fed to beef cattle, sheep, goats and horses. California is the top alfalfa hay and dairy producer in the U.S., as well as the country’s top alfalfa seed grower. This year’s crop of approximately 18 million pounds of seeds will be sold in California and Arizona and to countries such as Saudi Arabia, Mexico and Argentina, which have similar climates to the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1947155\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_ALFALFA_LEAFCUTTING_BEE_AT_NEST_HOLE_500.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1947155\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_ALFALFA_LEAFCUTTING_BEE_AT_NEST_HOLE_500.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An alfalfa leafcutting bee peeks out from her nest hole in a field in Fresno County. Farmers provide the bees with nesting holes in Styrofoam boards. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Alfalfa leafcutting bees are second only to honeybees in their value as crop pollinators, said biologist Theresa Pitts-Singer, who studies the bees at the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Logan, Utah. And when it comes to pollinating alfalfa, they leave honeybees in the dust.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"fullwidth"},"numeric":["fullwidth"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is how it works.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To produce alfalfa seeds, farmers let their plants grow until they bloom. They need help pollinating the tiny purple flowers, so that the female and male parts of the flower can come together and produce fertile seeds. That’s where the grayish, easygoing alfalfa leafcutting bees come in. Seed growers in California release the bees – known simply as cutters – in June and they work hard for a month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alfalfa’s flowers keep their reproductive organs hidden away inside a boat-shaped bottom petal called the keel petal, which is held closed by a thin membrane that creates a spring mechanism.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1947156\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_KEEL_PETAL_1080.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1947156\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_KEEL_PETAL_1080.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_KEEL_PETAL_1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_KEEL_PETAL_1080-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_KEEL_PETAL_1080-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_KEEL_PETAL_1080-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_KEEL_PETAL_1080-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_KEEL_PETAL_1080-1200x675.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Alfalfa flowers hide their reproductive organs in a boat-shaped keel petal sealed by a thin membrane. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Cutter bees come up to the flower looking for nectar and pollen to feed on. When they land on the flower, the membrane holding the keel petal breaks and the long reproductive structure pops right up and smacks the upper petal or the bee, releasing its yellow pollen. This process is called “tripping the flower.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1947161\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_TRIPPING_THE_BLOOM_Edwards_500.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1947161\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_TRIPPING_THE_BLOOM_Edwards_500.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">When an alfalfa flower is tripped, a column holding its reproductive organs pops up and pollen sprays out as it hits the upper petal. \u003ccite>(Joan Edwards and Nora Mitchell/Williams College)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>When the flower is tripped, pollen falls on its female reproductive organ and fertilizes it; bees also carry pollen away on their hairy bodies and help fertilize other flowers. In a few weeks, each flower turns into a curly pod with seven to 10 seeds growing inside.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cutters were “game changers” in the alfalfa seed business because they’re much better at pollinating alfalfa than honeybees are, Mueller said. Cutters trip 80 percent of flowers they visit, compared to honeybees, which only trip about 10 percent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Honeybees don’t like to be flipped in the face, but it doesn’t bother the leafcutter bees,” said Chuck Deatherage, a grower who uses both kinds of bees to pollinate about 1,000 acres of alfalfa seed fields that he farms with two business partners in the Fresno area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Honeybees sip nectar from the side of the flower rather than from the front, where they would trigger the keel petal, said Pitts-Singer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1947168\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615-AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_HONEY_BEE_ON_ALFALFA_FLOWER2_1080.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1947168\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615-AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_HONEY_BEE_ON_ALFALFA_FLOWER2_1080.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615-AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_HONEY_BEE_ON_ALFALFA_FLOWER2_1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615-AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_HONEY_BEE_ON_ALFALFA_FLOWER2_1080-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615-AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_HONEY_BEE_ON_ALFALFA_FLOWER2_1080-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615-AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_HONEY_BEE_ON_ALFALFA_FLOWER2_1080-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615-AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_HONEY_BEE_ON_ALFALFA_FLOWER2_1080-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615-AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_HONEY_BEE_ON_ALFALFA_FLOWER2_1080-1200x675.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A honeybee drinks nectar from an alfalfa flower. Honeybees avoid getting thwacked by the blooms by sticking their mouthpart into the side of the flower, rather than the front. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>And honeybees will visit alfalfa flowers that have already been tripped by cutters; by doing this they help spread pollen around.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The honeybees follow the leafcutters to get the nectar,” said Deatherage. “That’s my theory.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because they work well together, growers release both honeybees and cutters. In an alfalfa seed field, you might see 10 to 20 honeybees and 20 to 50 cutters in a 3-foot radius, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Deatherage buys the bees in Styrofoam nests and keeps them refrigerated for most of the year so that they don’t fully develop. As his alfalfa fields get near to blooming, he warms up the developing bees in their nests to close to 85 degrees. When they start hatching two to three weeks later, he stacks the boards into rectangular structures that sit inside trailers in the alfalfa fields and have the appearance of bee apartment buildings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1947172\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_ALFALFA_LEAFCUTTING_BEES_FLY_AT_NEST_BOX_500.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1947172\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_ALFALFA_LEAFCUTTING_BEES_FLY_AT_NEST_BOX_500.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Alfalfa leafcutting bees fly at the entrance to a nest box. The patterns and textures on the box help them find their way back after collecting leaves and pollen. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Alfalfa leafcutting bees are solitary — each female builds its own nest. But unlike other solitary bees that like to work in isolation, cutters don’t mind working side by side with other bees, said Mueller.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1947170\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_BEE_BOXES_ON_TRAILER_1080.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1947170\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_BEE_BOXES_ON_TRAILER_1080.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_BEE_BOXES_ON_TRAILER_1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_BEE_BOXES_ON_TRAILER_1080-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_BEE_BOXES_ON_TRAILER_1080-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_BEE_BOXES_ON_TRAILER_1080-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_BEE_BOXES_ON_TRAILER_1080-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_BEE_BOXES_ON_TRAILER_1080-1200x675.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nest boxes made up of Styrofoam boards rest on a trailer in an alfalfa field in Fresno County. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“This is to our advantage,” she said. “We can put large populations of leafcutter bees together in the field.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bees carefully cut out discs of alfalfa leaves or other leaves or petals they can find nearby. They fly with the piece curled up under their abdomen, held between their legs, to a nest hole in one of the Styrofoam boards and maneuver their way in. But it’s tricky.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1947171\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_ALFALFA_LEAFCUTTING_BEE_ENTERS_NEST_HOLE_W_LEAF_PIECE_500.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1947171\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_ALFALFA_LEAFCUTTING_BEE_ENTERS_NEST_HOLE_W_LEAF_PIECE_500.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Tucked between its legs, an alfalfa leafcutting bee carries a leaf piece into its nest. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“You’ll see piles of debris in front of the nest opening where they’ve dropped a leaf piece,” said Mueller. “I used to think, ‘Oh, all the work that went into all these dropped leaf pieces.’ ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inside its nest hole, the bee shapes several leaf pieces into a cell, where she lays a single egg on a ball of pollen she has collected.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1947159\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_NEST_MADE_OF_LEAVES_1080.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1947159\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_NEST_MADE_OF_LEAVES_1080.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_NEST_MADE_OF_LEAVES_1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_NEST_MADE_OF_LEAVES_1080-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_NEST_MADE_OF_LEAVES_1080-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_NEST_MADE_OF_LEAVES_1080-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_NEST_MADE_OF_LEAVES_1080-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/DL_615AlfalfaLeafcuttingBees_NEST_MADE_OF_LEAVES_1080-1200x675.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A bee has shaped leaf pieces into two cells of its nest. The cells are connected by overlapping leaf bits. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"floatright"},"numeric":["floatright"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They look like a medicine capsule made of leaf pieces,” said Mueller, “and inside each of those capsules there is a developing bee.”\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}}],"link":"/science/1946996/this-bee-gets-punched-by-flowers-for-your-ice-cream","authors":["6186"],"series":["science_1935"],"categories":["science_2874","science_36","science_86"],"tags":["science_392","science_896","science_1970"],"featImg":"science_1947147","label":"science"}},"programsReducer":{"possible":{"id":"possible","title":"Possible","info":"Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.","airtime":"SUN 2pm","imageSrc":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Possible-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg","officialWebsiteLink":"https://www.possible.fm/","meta":{"site":"news","source":"Possible"},"link":"/radio/program/possible","subscribe":{"apple":"https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/possible/id1677184070","spotify":"https://open.spotify.com/show/730YpdUSNlMyPQwNnyjp4k"}},"1a":{"id":"1a","title":"1A","info":"1A is home to the national conversation. 1A brings on great guests and frames the best debate in ways that make you think, share and engage.","airtime":"MON-THU 11pm-12am","imageSrc":"https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/1a.jpg","officialWebsiteLink":"https://the1a.org/","meta":{"site":"news","source":"npr"},"link":"/radio/program/1a","subscribe":{"npr":"https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/RBrW","apple":"https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=1188724250&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory","tuneIn":"https://tunein.com/radio/1A-p947376/","rss":"https://feeds.npr.org/510316/podcast.xml"}},"all-things-considered":{"id":"all-things-considered","title":"All Things Considered","info":"Every weekday, \u003cem>All Things Considered\u003c/em> hosts Robert Siegel, Audie Cornish, Ari Shapiro, and Kelly McEvers present the program's trademark mix of news, interviews, commentaries, reviews, and offbeat features. Michel Martin hosts on the weekends.","airtime":"MON-FRI 1pm-2pm, 4:30pm-6:30pm\u003cbr />SAT-SUN 5pm-6pm","imageSrc":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/All-Things-Considered-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg","officialWebsiteLink":"https://www.npr.org/programs/all-things-considered/","meta":{"site":"news","source":"npr"},"link":"/radio/program/all-things-considered"},"american-suburb-podcast":{"id":"american-suburb-podcast","title":"American Suburb: The Podcast","tagline":"The flip side of gentrification, told through one town","info":"Gentrification is changing cities across America, forcing people from neighborhoods they have long called home. Call them the displaced. Now those priced out of the Bay Area are looking for a better life in an unlikely place. American Suburb follows this migration to one California town along the Delta, 45 miles from San Francisco. But is this once sleepy suburb ready for them?","imageSrc":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/American-Suburb-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg","officialWebsiteLink":"/news/series/american-suburb-podcast","meta":{"site":"news","source":"kqed","order":"13"},"link":"/news/series/american-suburb-podcast/","subscribe":{"npr":"https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/RBrW","apple":"https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?mt=2&id=1287748328","tuneIn":"https://tunein.com/radio/American-Suburb-p1086805/","rss":"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/series/american-suburb-podcast/feed/podcast","google":"https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkMzMDExODgxNjA5"}},"baycurious":{"id":"baycurious","title":"Bay Curious","tagline":"Exploring the Bay Area, one question at a time","info":"KQED’s new podcast, Bay Curious, gets to the bottom of the mysteries — both profound and peculiar — that give the Bay Area its unique identity. And we’ll do it with your help! You ask the questions. You decide what Bay Curious investigates. And you join us on the journey to find the answers.","imageSrc":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Bay-Curious-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg","imageAlt":"\"KQED Bay Curious","officialWebsiteLink":"/news/series/baycurious","meta":{"site":"news","source":"kqed","order":"4"},"link":"/podcasts/baycurious","subscribe":{"apple":"https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bay-curious/id1172473406","npr":"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/500557090/bay-curious","rss":"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/category/bay-curious-podcast/feed/podcast","google":"https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93dzIua3FlZC5vcmcvbmV3cy9jYXRlZ29yeS9iYXktY3VyaW91cy1wb2RjYXN0L2ZlZWQvcG9kY2FzdA","stitcher":"https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqed/bay-curious","spotify":"https://open.spotify.com/show/6O76IdmhixfijmhTZLIJ8k"}},"bbc-world-service":{"id":"bbc-world-service","title":"BBC World Service","info":"The day's top stories from BBC News compiled twice daily in the week, once at weekends.","airtime":"MON-FRI 9pm-10pm, TUE-FRI 1am-2am","imageSrc":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/BBC-World-Service-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg","officialWebsiteLink":"https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/live:bbc_world_service","meta":{"site":"news","source":"BBC World Service"},"link":"/radio/program/bbc-world-service","subscribe":{"apple":"https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/global-news-podcast/id135067274?mt=2","tuneIn":"https://tunein.com/radio/BBC-World-Service-p455581/","rss":"https://podcasts.files.bbci.co.uk/p02nq0gn.rss"}},"code-switch-life-kit":{"id":"code-switch-life-kit","title":"Code Switch / Life Kit","info":"\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />","airtime":"SUN 9pm-10pm","imageSrc":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Code-Switch-Life-Kit-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg","meta":{"site":"radio","source":"npr"},"link":"/radio/program/code-switch-life-kit","subscribe":{"apple":"https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/1112190608?mt=2&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory","google":"https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubnByLm9yZy9yc3MvcG9kY2FzdC5waHA_aWQ9NTEwMzEy","spotify":"https://open.spotify.com/show/3bExJ9JQpkwNhoHvaIIuyV","rss":"https://feeds.npr.org/510312/podcast.xml"}},"commonwealth-club":{"id":"commonwealth-club","title":"Commonwealth Club of California Podcast","info":"The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.","airtime":"THU 10pm, FRI 1am","imageSrc":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Commonwealth-Club-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg","officialWebsiteLink":"https://www.commonwealthclub.org/podcasts","meta":{"site":"news","source":"Commonwealth Club of California"},"link":"/radio/program/commonwealth-club","subscribe":{"apple":"https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/commonwealth-club-of-california-podcast/id976334034?mt=2","google":"https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5jb21tb253ZWFsdGhjbHViLm9yZy9hdWRpby9wb2RjYXN0L3dlZWtseS54bWw","tuneIn":"https://tunein.com/radio/Commonwealth-Club-of-California-p1060/"}},"considerthis":{"id":"considerthis","title":"Consider This","tagline":"Make sense of the day","info":"Make sense of the day. Every weekday afternoon, Consider This helps you consider the major stories of the day in less than 15 minutes, featuring the reporting and storytelling resources of NPR. Plus, KQED’s Bianca Taylor brings you the local KQED news you need to know.","imageSrc":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Consider-This-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg","imageAlt":"Consider This from NPR and KQED","officialWebsiteLink":"/podcasts/considerthis","meta":{"site":"news","source":"kqed","order":"7"},"link":"/podcasts/considerthis","subscribe":{"apple":"https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1503226625?mt=2&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory","npr":"https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/coronavirusdaily","google":"https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5ucHIub3JnLzUxMDM1NS9wb2RjYXN0LnhtbA","spotify":"https://open.spotify.com/show/3Z6JdCS2d0eFEpXHKI6WqH"}},"forum":{"id":"forum","title":"Forum","tagline":"The conversation starts here","info":"KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.","airtime":"MON-FRI 9am-11am, 10pm-11pm","imageSrc":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg","imageAlt":"KQED Forum with Mina Kim and Alexis Madrigal","officialWebsiteLink":"/forum","meta":{"site":"news","source":"kqed","order":"8"},"link":"/forum","subscribe":{"apple":"https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/kqeds-forum/id73329719","google":"https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM5NTU3MzgxNjMz","npr":"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/432307980/forum","stitcher":"https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqedfm-kqeds-forum-podcast","rss":"https://feeds.megaphone.fm/KQINC9557381633"}},"freakonomics-radio":{"id":"freakonomics-radio","title":"Freakonomics Radio","info":"Freakonomics Radio is a one-hour award-winning podcast and public-radio project hosted by Stephen Dubner, with co-author Steve Levitt as a regular guest. It is produced in partnership with WNYC.","imageSrc":"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/freakonomicsRadio.png","officialWebsiteLink":"http://freakonomics.com/","airtime":"SUN 1am-2am, SAT 3pm-4pm","meta":{"site":"radio","source":"WNYC"},"link":"/radio/program/freakonomics-radio","subscribe":{"npr":"https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/4s8b","apple":"https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354668519","tuneIn":"https://tunein.com/podcasts/WNYC-Podcasts/Freakonomics-Radio-p272293/","rss":"https://feeds.feedburner.com/freakonomicsradio"}},"fresh-air":{"id":"fresh-air","title":"Fresh Air","info":"Hosted by Terry Gross, \u003cem>Fresh Air from WHYY\u003c/em> is the Peabody Award-winning weekday magazine of contemporary arts and issues. 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