Blogging the staff meeting

Gary West, reporting live from the Capital Press editorial staff meeting. I'm showing our staff how quick and easy it is to make a post to our blog site. Do you think any of them will sign on?

Stay tuned.

Agriculture

Giving field reporters a whole new meaning

In most newspaper operations, the home office is where the bulk of the reporting staff is located.

But the Capital Press is not the typical newspaper operation.

Many newspapers cover a place -- a city or a county or in some cases a state. They may have some "bureau" offices that cover secondary markets of interest outside their home territory, but the bureaus supplement the main operation.

Capital Press covers an industry and a way of life, agriculture, in four states. From the Canadian to the Mexican borders, from the Pacific Coast to the intermountain West, our staff works to bring news on hundreds of commodities, all manner of livestock, international trade and issues large and small home to the farm, ranch, vineyard, nursery, implement dealership and farmer's market to the people who need it.

Our staff is not centrally located. Most of our news staff is spread out in rural communities and farming areas in Washington, Idaho, Oregon and California. Our office mailing address is Salem, Ore., but the Capital Press newspaper and website would not exist without a cadre of people who live and work far from Salem.

But for the next two days, our editorial staff is gathering at the "home base" in Salem to conduct some training, do some planning and talk about issues of common interest in carrying out our mission to remain the most important source of information for agriculture news on the West Coast.

So, to the bulk of the Capital Press staff, who makes the newspapers production of four separate editions each week, I say welcome -- to the Salem bureau. I hope you enjoy your stay until you can return to our various home offices from Washington's Inland Empire to California's San Joaquin Valley, from Idaho's Treasure Valley to Oregon's Rogue River Valley and all the mountains, plains and valleys in between.

Agriculture
News
Staff retreat

Technical glitches at CapitalPress.com

We are experiencing some technical difficulties over on the CapitalPress.com website today. Server issues with our Internet service provider are making it difficult to access the site and are also affecting our ability to make updates.

One of the updates I had hoped to post over there today was about President Bush's announcement to temporarily suspend environmental rules for refining gasoline in an attempt to address the latest spike in fuel prices. Read the Associated Press story about the suspension here.

Our service provider assures us they are working on the problem and hope to have the situation resolved soon. So thank you for your patience and understanding.

Agriculture
News
Gas prices
President Bush

Makin' hay while the sun shines

I'm going to try to squeeze in a quick post here. Blogger has a scheduled outage pending here shortly, so I won't get too carried away. I just wanted to say sorry there haven't been posts in a few days. I had the opportunity to take a few days off last weeks, so I grabbed at it.

And I was fortunate to time those days off with some of the best weather the Willamette Valley has had in a while.

One other oddity cropped up today when reviewing visitors stats for our capitalpress.com website. It seems a story over there about farmers making their own biodiesel has been pretty popular. So far this month, that article has been printed 4,627 times. So either a lot of people are interested in that topic, or someone is printing out enough copies to mail them to all their friends, family, customers, vendors and anyone else who passes by.

More later.

Agriculture
Biodiesel
Vacation

A look at what's making news in California agriculture

The following is a look at some of the headlines in agriculture news from around California today.

This list was compiled by Bob Krauter, the Capital Press' California editor in Sacramento. Bob put this list together for our California staffers, but I thought I would post it here too. This could become a regular feature if it proves useful to our staff or for our readers.

Capital Press NewScan - Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Desert - $3.5M to help ag businesses

An arm of the Imperial Irrigation District will spend $3.5 million to aid agricultural businesses hurt by a water conservation program that has left farmland idle. The decision Wednesday may be both the first and last time the so-called Local Entity is able to distribute money as its future is in question. (imperial Valley Press)
Click here for the link to the story.

South Coast - Affordable homes for farmworkers to be focus of tour

Few affordable, quality homes are available for the more than 30,000 farmworkers who live in Ventura County, housing advocates say. On Thursday, the public will have a chance to tour some of those locations and gain an understanding of the issue. (Ventura Star)
Click here for the link to the story.

Wine grapes buoy mixed year for agriculture

Led by a huge increase for wine grapes, Santa Barbara County crops yielded $997.6 million in gross value in 2005, a 10-percent increase over 2004, according to numbers released Monday. But while the data appears to be glowing news for local agriculture, officials are classifying 2005 as fair to poor for individual commodities and growers. (Santa Maria Times)
Click here for the link to the story.

Central Coast - Small lettuce crop could raise prices

Though the rain has stopped, the problems it's caused for growers have not. Many Salinas Valley growers say their lettuce-harvesting schedules, delayed by waterlogged soil that prevented work crews from getting to crops, are behind by at least a week. (Salinas Californian)
Click here for the link to the story.

San Joaquin Valley - Tulare County farmer's recollection of the great quake

Editor's note: Ray Pritchard was a Tulare County farmer and landowner for most of his life. But in 1906, he was 10 years old and living in Middle River, a branch of the San Joaquin River west of Stockton. His father was employed by the Santa Fe Railway as a ticket agent, freight agent, Wells Fargo agent and bridge tender. (Visalia Times Delta)

Preserving a way of life

Arturo Vigil recalled his first job at a Tri Valley Growers cannery in Modesto, cleaning floors for about $3.50 an hour for just a few months a year. He has stayed for 33 years at the plant, now owned by Signature Fruit Co., and today makes about $20 an hour plus benefits as a year-round warehouse supervisor. (Modesto Bee)
Click here for the link to the story.

Rain's Toll Hits Hard - Strawberry grower says much of his crop is ruined.

A rainy March and early April has destroyed some crops and delayed the planting of several others. It's also reason for farmers to take extra precaution to protect their crops from disease. Strawberry farmers between Atwater and Merced said the heavy rain and flooding has wiped out part of their planting. (Mcerd Sun Star)
Click here for the link to the story.

Farmers ready to nurture crops

Forecasts of generally good weather this week have San Joaquin County farmers looking forward to catching up on three weeks to a month of tilling, planting, spraying and other chores delayed by the long stint of spring rains. And even with skies clear Monday over Stockton, most area growers may need another seven to 10 days of dry weather before they use tractors and other heavy equipment on the sodden fields, said Mick Canevari, county director for University of California Cooperative Extension. (Stockton Record)
Click here for the link to the story.

Agriculture
News
California
Links

Mia culpa to Orblogs

Thanks go out to Orblogs for adding Blogriculture to the listing over there. And thanks for taking the time to let us know that as well. We got a very nice note from Paul over there, who is Orblogs, letting us know we were in the listing and that Orblogs has nothing against anything geared toward ranches or farming. So thanks Paul.

If you haven't checked out Orblogs before, but have any interest in issues big or smal, happening in Oregon state, it is worth exploring. There are a number of RSS feeds you can monitor to keep track of what's hot or what's new or what's happening in the Oregon blogosphere in particular locales.

So, thanks to Orblogs for adding us to the listing featuring Blogriculture, at least for now, as the "Recently Added" site of the moment.

And thanks too to B!x for pointing out my paranoia.

I blame it on tax season.

Blogging
Orblogs
Blog directory