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On Lincoln's 200th birthday, Feb. 12, 2009, the new Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack "broke pavement" on The People's Garden during a ceremony on the grounds of U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) commemorating Lincoln's birthday.

Green for Watershed Protection

Secretary Vilsack declared the stretch of pavement permanently closed and returned back to green, and encouraged other Administration officials and the general public to join in to protect the Chesapeake watershed.

"It is essential for the federal government to lead the way in enhancing and conserving our land and water resources," said Vilsack. "President Obama has expressed his commitment to responsible stewardship of our land, water and other natural resources, and one way of restoring the land to its natural condition is what we are doing here today - "breaking pavement" for The People's Garden."

The dedication comes on the 200th anniversary of the birth of the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln founded the Department of Agriculture in 1862 and referred to it as "The People's Department" in his last annual message to Congress.

Green for Beneficial Gardening Promotion

Secretary Vilsack announced a goal of creating a community garden at each USDA facility worldwide. The USDA community garden project will include a wide variety of garden activities including Embassy window boxes, tree planting, and field office plots.

The gardens will be designed to promote "going green" concepts, including landscaping and building design to retain water and reduce runoff; roof gardens for energy efficiency; utilizing native plantings and using sound conservation practices.

Green Space for Runoff Reduction

The USDA People's Garden will eliminate 1,250 square feet of unnecessary paved surface at the USDA headquarters and return the landscape to grass. The changes signal a removal of impervious surfaces and improvement in water management that is needed throughout the Chesapeake Bay Watershed.

Demonstration Habitat for Backyard and Green Space Applications

The new garden will add 612 square feet of planted space to showcase conservation practices that all Americans can implement in their own backyards and green spaces.

As a component of the garden, pollinator-friendly plantings will not only provide important habitat for bees and butterflies, but can serve as an educational opportunity to help people understand the vital role pollinators play in our food, forage and all agriculture. The garden plot is adjacent to the site of the USDA Farmer's Market.

Watershed Protection of the Chesapeake Watershed

About 100,000 streams and rivers thread through the Chesapeake's 64,000-square-mile watershed, which is home to almost 17 million people in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Delaware, New York and the District of Columbia. The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in North America, with a length of 200 miles and 11,684 miles of tidal shoreline, more than the entire U.S. West Coast.

The Chesapeake Bay supports more than 3,600 species of plants, fish and animals.

Reduce Pollution on Wildlife Habitat, Forests and Water Resources...and Improve Community Natural Resources

USDA leads efforts on public and private lands to help reduce the impact of nutrient and sediment pollution on wildlife habitat, forest lands and water quality, as well as supporting community involvement in managing natural resources, urban green space and land stewardship. For more information about USDA, the People's Garden, the Chesapeake Bay Watershed and other conservation and agriculture related programs available in local communities, visit a USDA Service Center or go to the USDA Web page at www.usda.gov.

Complementary education materials such as the distance-learning project MonarchLIVE and partnerships with schools and the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign which will extend the impact and reach of the USDA garden initiative are available at na.fs.fed.us. Backyard conservation and other materials also can be obtained by dialing 1-888-LANDCARE.

Trade associations are taking a leadership role in developing sustainability standards for their member companies and often leading the charge with their own association operations. One such association is the OFA.

OFA is an Association of Floriculture Professionals -- a national organization of greenhouse growers, garden center operators, nurseries, retail and wholesale florists, interior plantscapers, green industry suppliers, students, and educators.

They have implemented sustainable methods in their own offices, promoted the topic in education courses and cosponsored a national conference on sustainability.  

On October 29-30, 2007, the Leonardo Academy and Scientific Certification Systems (SCS) co-hosted a meeting to start soliciting stakeholder input on SCS-drafted language to create a national standard for producers and handlers (including retailers) who want to make a claim of engaging in sustainable agriculture (includes ALL crops, including greenhouse and nursery crops) practices.  The intent of SCS is to get these draft standards adopted by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) no later than April 2010. However, plans sometimes go awry.  The US Department of Agriculture has challenged the process undertaken by Leonardo Academy. 

OFA's website also provides a wealth of information about sustainable practices for their member companies.

And the OFA Short Course, July 11-14, 2009 has a theme of "Make It Your Business". The Monday sustainability sessions will cover everything from the proposed sustainability standard to methods for marketing sustainability to practical ideas for becoming more sustainable.

Trade associations are taking a leadership role in developing sustainability standards for their member companies and often leading the charge with their own association operations. One such association is the OFA.

OFA is an Association of Floriculture Professionals -- a national organization of greenhouse growers, garden center operators, nurseries, retail and wholesale florists, interior plantscapers, green industry suppliers, students, and educators.

They have implemented sustainable methods in their own offices, promoted the topic in education courses and cosponsored a national conference on sustainability.  

On October 29-30, 2007, the Leonardo Academy and Scientific Certification Systems (SCS) co-hosted a meeting to start soliciting stakeholder input on SCS-drafted language to create a national standard for producers and handlers (including retailers) who want to make a claim of engaging in sustainable agriculture (includes ALL crops, including greenhouse and nursery crops) practices.  The intent of SCS is to get these draft standards adopted by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) no later than April 2010. However, plans sometimes go awry.  The US Department of Agriculture has challenged the process undertaken by Leonardo Academy. 

OFA's website also provides a wealth of information about sustainable practices for their member companies.

And the OFA Short Course, July 11-14, 2009 has a theme of "Make It Your Business". The Monday sustainability sessions will cover everything from the proposed sustainability standard to methods for marketing sustainability to practical ideas for becoming more sustainable.

Caucasian (dark-colored) bee originates from the Caucasus region that separates Europe from Asia.

Italian bee is the most common bee in the United States. Its origin: Italy.

This is one of Susan Cobey's New World Carniolan bees.The Carniolans originate from the Northern Balkans, Slovenia and Caucasian mountains.(Photos by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

The California State Beekeepers’ Association and the Turkish Foundation for Combating Soil Erosion for Reforestation and the Protection of Natural Habitats (TEMA), are cooperating in research and exchange of bees to strengthen the honeybee populations around the world.

Susan Cobey is internationally known for her expertise in honey bee breeding and instrumental insemination. She teaches classes that draw students from throughout the world. A bee breeder and geneticist for more than 30 years, she developed and maintains the world-renowned New World Carniolan stock.

“Researchers are still collecting more samples from collapsing colonies and trying very hard to process those and previous samples to see what may be causing the problem,” said UC Davis Extension apiculturist Eric Mussen, who believes that CCD is not caused by one single factor, but multiple factors, including malnutrition, pesticides, diseases, parasites and stress.

“Nearly every state in the U.S. has some to many beekeepers who are having difficulty with losses that appear to be CCD,” said Mussen, Extension apiculturist at UC Davis since 1976 and a former state and national beekeeper of the year. “Many countries are encountering similar bee losses.  Since we don't know what is causing ours, or theirs, we cannot say that the cause(s) is the same, but it is likely.”

In CCD, nearly all adult worker bees unexpectedly fly away from the hive, abandoning the stored honey, pollen, larvae and pupae. Usually they leave in less than a week, and only the queen and a few young workers remain, Mussen said.

CCD  is not a new occurrence, Mussen said. “Similar phenomena have been observed since 1869. It persisted in 1963, 1964 and 1965 and was called Spring Dwindling, Fall Collapse and Autumn Collapse. Then in 1975, it was called Disappearing Disease. But the disease wasn’t disappearing—the bees were.”

Can we surmise what the future holds for bees? “No, we cannot,” Mussen said. “We hope that this episode will just be one in a number that have occurred, and resolved themselves, in the past.”

At the House Agriculture Subcommittee on Horticulture and Organic Agriculture hearing on June 26 to review the status of pollinator health and CCD, subcommittee chair Cong. Dennis Cardoza of California’s 18th District, said that the “importance of bees and other pollinators cannot be underestimated. Nearly 130 different crops—totaling over $15 billion in annual farm gate value—depend on pollination to grow.”

Testimony revealed that the lack of pollinators could further increase food prices. Said Cardoza:  “USDA desperately needs to better coordinate their research and response to this ongoing crisis, and more clearly define their needs so that Congress can adequately respond.”

“Should the CCD crisis continue unchecked, pollinated ingredients such as strawberries, cherries and almonds could become scarce or too expensive to obtain, forcing us to evaluate whether we can continue offering popular flavors that depend on pollinated ingredients because of higher production costs,” Pien said.

Those interested in making online donations to UC Davis to help save the honey bees can access the UC Davis Department of Entomology Web page. Or, checks may be made out to “UC Regents” and mailed to the UC Davis Department of Entomology, One Shields Ave., Davis, CA 95616.

University of California Davis bee breeder-geneticist Susan Cobey and Steve Sheppard, a professor and apiculturist at Washington State University, Pullman, Wash., are investigating several races of the Western or European honey bee (Apis mellifera), which European settlers brought to America in 1622.
 
The Cobey-Sheppard research team has received semen from the Italian bee, shipped from Italy; the Carniolan bee, from Germany; and the Caucasian bee, from the Caucasus region of Eurasia. The Italian bee is a honey-colored bee that's the most common honey bee in the United States. The Carniolan and the Caucasian bees are darker in color.
 
The semen from the three races will be used to inseminate queens that will be kept in an APHIS-approved quarantine until determined safe to release, Cobey said. APHIS, the Animal and Plant Protection Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is charged with protecting and promoting U.S. agricultural health.

Monoculture Doesn't Work with Insects, Either!

"As well as enhancing genetic diversity, known to increase fitness in honey bees, we're hoping this will result in an increased level of resistance to the exotic and introduced pests and diseases of our honey bees," Cobey said.
 
America's beekeepers reported losing 36.1 percent of their bees over the last year, up from 32 percent the previous year. The survey, commissioned by the Apiary Inspectors of America, showed that the beekeepers attributed 29 percent of the recent loss to colony collapse disorder, in which bees mysteriously abandon their hives.
 

The declining bee population crisis is particularly troubling, Cobey said, because bees pollinate about one-third of the food we eat, including fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds.

 
The bee research is funded by the California State Beekeepers' Association and the Turkish Foundation for Combating Soil Erosion for Reforestation and the Protection of Natural Habitats (TEMA), founded in 1992.
 
Cobey will be in Turkey Aug. 1 to 14 to participate in the TEMA Bee Project. "One aspect of this is the preservation of Turkey's native Caucasian honey bee," she said.
 
The UC Davis geneticist will teach a honey bee instrumental insemination class, Aug. 16 to 19 at the Middle East Technical University, Department of Biology, Ankara, Turkey.
 
Cobey is internationally known for her expertise in honey bee breeding and instrumental insemination. She teaches classes that draw students from throughout the world. A bee breeder and geneticist for more than 30 years, she developed and maintains the world-renowned New World Carniolan stock.
 
At their request, Cobey will confer with officials on native bee races at the Bee Selection and Artificial Insemination Center at Camili of Artvin Province. The Camili region of six villages is where apiculturists discovered pure Caucasian bees thought to be extinct. They then began queen bee breeding, selection work and artificial insemination. The center officials seek Cobey's impressions and advice in connection with their work.
 
A "bee safari" is also planned to look at the five native races of honey bees in Turkey.
 
Prior to heading for Turkey, Cobey will guest-lecture at the Federation of Irish Beekeepers' Association summer course, July 21-26 in Gormanston, Ireland.
 
Those interested in making online donations to UC Davis to help save the honey bees can go to the UC Davis Department of Entomology Web page, http://entomology.ucdavis.edu/news/howtodonatetobeebiology.html. Or, checks may be made out to "UC Regents" and mailed to the UC Davis Department of Entomology, One Shields Ave., Davis, CA 95616.

Susan Cobey with queen bee cells. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)