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Sacramento Agriculture Ripe for Global Opportunities
At Chase, we take pride in understanding the unique needs of our clients and have a rich history of supporting agribusiness companies. For more than 200 years, we have been dedicated to cultivating positive client experiences, and as a result, we report an average 20-year client relationship.
Startup of the Month: Brown Lawn Green
In dry times, the grass can be greener with paint
Short on water for your grass? Just add paint, says Bill Schaffer, owner of Brown Lawn Green in Dixon. The idea for his business started as a joke. With California in the midst of a historic drought, Schaffer commented to his girlfriend that people would have to start painting their lawns if they wanted them to be green again. When the state introduced strict new rules concerning water use, he realized he might be onto something.
Head in the Clouds
California State Senate pro Tem Kevin de León has an aggressive plan to curb climate change
Senate pro Tem Kevin de León is California’s first Latino Senate leader in more than 130 years. He has championed an aggressive agenda centered on transitioning the state away from fossil fuels and toward a low-carbon, high renewable energy economy. We sat down with him recently to discuss that transition.
Survival of the Fishes
California depends on hatcheries to maintain the state’s salmon population, but the cost is genetically inferior fish
Every spring and summer, Chinook salmon gather in vast schools along the central coast of California, fattening up on krill and small fish before their autumn spawning migration into the Central Valley. Fishermen in commercial boats, private skiffs and kayaks take to the water, and most summers, the fleet catches several hundred thousand Chinook weighing somewhere between five and 30 pounds. California’s bounty of salmon, however, does not reflect a thriving fish population.
The Flip-Side of Fish Hatcheries
Originally intended to preserve salmon, are hatcheries harming the species?
In 2009, fewer fall-run Chinook salmon returned to spawn in the Central Valley than have ever been recorded before. Just 50,000 adult fish spawned that autumn in the entire Sacramento-San Joaquin river system — a tenth of how many Chinook migrate inland in a good year. The event was an ecological and economic disaster that prompted officials to shut down California’s ocean fishing season for two years.
6 Farm-to-Fork Events You Might Miss (but Shouldn’t!)
Get your foodie on, off the grid
Here’s the beat on six unique events that will get you out of traditional city spaces for a combination of farm and urban culinary experiences, beginning in Farm-to-Fork Month and extending into the fall harvest season.
Go With the Grain
Elk Grove Milling pursues international markets, but the success rates are stacked against them
After a slow start piecing his way through El Salvador’s business regulations in 2008, Robert Lent began distributing Stable Mix throughout that country in 2012. Now the milling company — which employs 50 workers, makes $12 million in gross sales a year and, as Lent likes to say, feeds 17,000 horses a day — is poised to expand its distribution network in Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Mexico.
Status Check: Bonney Plumbing
New CEO Laurie Johnson picks up where Jimmy Crabbé left off
Where Crabbé left off in the development of departmental training and service protocols, Johnson will be connecting the dots in the larger picture for the company.
Something Fishy in Sacramento
Community-supported fishery opens pick-up site in Oak Park
The next big splash in local food is coming from the ocean. Anna Larsen’s subscription fish box company, Siren Fish Co. keeps an eye on sustainability.
Burn Notice
Biomass is coming under fire for polluting the air and threatening wild forests. But is the controversy warranted?
Much of the 8 million tons of woody debris that facilities burn each year is material that would probably burn in open fields if there wasn’t an energy-producing alternative. Since the smokestacks on a biomass plant include filtering apparatuses that can remove some pollutants from the emissions, the industry — which has helped to phase out open burning of agricultural waste — has been credited as an overall boon to California’s air quality.