Agriculture

California's Department of Food and Agriculture plans to continue efforts to eliminate an invasive moth that it says poses a risk to fruit and ornamental plants, despite protests from scientists and environmentalists who say the measures are unnecessary. Moth detection has led to quarantines in 3,500 square miles in 15 counties, including Los Angeles, causing millions of dollars in lost revenue, said Michael Jarvis, deputy secretary for public affairs at the California Department of Food and Agriculture.

James Hatano turns off one of the Palos Verdes Peninsula's oceanfront drives and onto a hidden dirt road, just as he has for more than 50 years. He guides his Buick LaCrosse up a gentle hill to the fields where he raises cacti and flowers. While he works, Hatano can look out at the Pacific and see whales and dolphins. As he chops off a beavertail cactus paddle, he gazes across Palos Verdes Drive West to where construction crews are putting the finishing touches on the 582-room Terranea resort with its nine-hole golf course, 25,000-square-foot spa and three pools.

Strolling through emerald groves of orange trees, Tulare County citrus grower Allen Ishida said he reckons he'll have to sell some of his 270 acres to pay higher property taxes should his county pull out of a threatened farmland preservation program. Thirty miles down California 99, third-generation almond grower Don Davis was making similar calculations. Davis figures he could rip out rows of almond trees stretching over 480 acres near McFarland in Kern County and sell the land, if necessary.

Santa Paula grower Bob Pinkerton was certain the young man he saw walking down a street was the one who had been drinking beer and smoking pot in his large avocado orchard in recent days. Worried that he was a thief, Pinkerton used his cellphone to snap a photo and e-mailed it to Sgt. Tim Hagel of Farm Watch, an agricultural version of the Neighborhood Watch crime prevention program. Within four hours, a sheriff's deputy had detained the man and arrested him on suspicion of vandalism and trespassing on Pinkerton's property.

Foodies take note: State lawmakers are angling to protect your pomegranate juice, ensure the sanctity of the honey harvest, promote organic agriculture and get bullish on blueberries. There may be a recession raging and bigger issues aplenty, but the California Legislature has nevertheless been busy plowing through some of the more esoteric corners of the state's agricultural bounty. State Sen. Roderick Wright (D-Inglewood) has taken on the cause of a Beverly Hills billionaire to ensure consumers seeking 100% pomegranate juice aren't getting watered-down and sugar-sweetened knockoffs.

Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) has decided against succeeding his close friend and mentor, the late Edward M. Kennedy, as chairman of the Senate's health committee, a senior Senate aide said Tuesday. The decision sets in motion a game of musical chairs involving committee chairmanships after Kennedy's death. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) is next in line after Dodd to assume the chairmanship of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Multiple sources, who requested anonymity when discussing internal deliberations, said Harkin was sure to take over the post.

In a bow to a summer of angry complaints about water cutbacks to Central Valley farms, the Obama administration said Wednesday it would invite the National Academy of Sciences to examine the environmental measures restricting some water shipments from Northern California. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said he would ask the academy to conduct an independent review of the science underpinning federal pumping limits imposed under the Endangered Species Act to protect smelt and salmon in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

When officials at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo scheduled a free lecture by bestselling author Michael Pollan, they envisioned a lively talk about sustainable food, along with Pollan's customary critiques of agribusiness. What they didn't expect was a wave of denunciations from angry farming and ranching alumni who rank Pollan as a force only slightly less damaging to agriculture than the Mediterranean fruit fly. Threatening to pull his donations, the head of one of California's biggest ranching operations succeeded in turning today's planned lecture into a panel discussion involving Pollan, a meat-science expert, and a major grower of organic lettuce.

As the autumn air grows crisp and the groves of maple and oak trees warm this stretch of eastern Indiana with streaks of red and burnt gold, Maureen "Mo" Jester prepares for her favorite time of year: getting lost in the corn. Eight years ago, Jester decided that she and her family needed to make a bit of extra cash to support their 65-acre farm. So she and business partner Darren Coulter sat down at her kitchen table with graph paper and felt-tip pens and figured out how to transform some land into an agrarian take on the hedge mazes found on English manors.

A tiny insect that threatens California's $1.6-billion citrus industry has been found near one of the state's commercial citrus growing regions. The Asian citrus psyllid, which has ravaged orchards in Florida as well as overseas, was found in Valley Center in rural San Diego County, the closest the bug has come to a major concentration of citrus groves. Northern San Diego County has about 2,500 acres of commercial citrus trees and is home to the largest concentration of organic citrus farmers in the nation, which will complicate efforts to control the insect, said Ted Batkin, president of the Citrus Research Board.