One of the biggest hurdles facing local farmers is the rising cost of doing business.
However, some innovative solutions are in the works, as highlighted at the Central Valley Rural Energy Systems Workshop at UC Merced in early December.
Kevin Arrieta got into robotics to avoid getting into trouble.
Arrieta said he joined the robotics club at his Compton high school after the teacher who ran it gave him an ultimatum.
"I had gotten in with the wrong crowd," he said. "I had a physics teacher who told me, 'Join my robotics club or I'm calling your mom.'"
In the club, Arrieta found he loved working with sensors and doing programming, and he was good at it.
"You have an engineering mind and you don't even know it," his teacher said.
The Small Farm Tech Expo brought researchers, farmers, university students and even a group from a Modesto elementary school to UC Merced to talk about agriculture technology and how it can best help those who grow the world's food.
Sponsored by the Community Alliance with Family Farmers, also known as CAFF, for the fifth year, the expo featured equipment demonstrations, educational sessions on hardware and software, panel discussions, and support organizations to highlight what's available for small farmers.
An expo at UC Merced next week will bring together farmers, ranchers, researchers and community organizers to highlight what's possible when agriculture technology is designed for small farms.
The Small Farm Tech Expo, scheduled for 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 2, will include hands-on demonstrations and panel discussions about the latest in ag tech innovations. There is no admission charge. Parking will be available in the Bellevue lot.
UC Merced has long been a place where students can thrive.
Now the university has been recognized for its commitment to increase the abundance of native and other pollinators.
The campus has become an affiliate of the Bee Campus USA program, joining other cities and campuses across the country in a united effort to improve their landscapes for pollinators.
BioSCape, a multinational research project co-led by UC Merced, the University at Buffalo and the University of Cape Town, which monitored Earth’s biodiversity from the air, has received a Group Achievement Award as part of the 2024-25 NASA Honor Awards.
A new documentary also showcases the project’s impressive results.
In the United States, 20 percent of the population is Latino. By 2050, it’s expected that one in three people will identify as Latino. But less than 7 percent of doctors come from a similar background.
Dr. Michael Galvez, a board-certified pediatric hand surgeon at Valley Children’s Hospital in Madera County, is on a mission to change that number. In 2022, he cofounded National Latino Physician Day, which is aimed at raising awareness and is part of an effort to increase the minority health care workforce.
Fifteen years ago, UC Merced was designated as a Hispanic-serving institution. And though recent developments at the federal government have left what that designation means in limbo, the mission of serving the university’s largest demographic has remained unchanged.
More than 53 percent of undergraduate students are Hispanic, and 71 percent of enrolled students identify as first-generation (a student whose parents did not complete four-year college degrees).
Nearly half of the world’s worst wildfire disasters have occurred in just the past decade, new research from UC Merced’s Fire Resilience Center shows.
An almond orchard in Parlier provides a look into the future of farming.
Researchers at UC Merced and the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources installed an irrigation system powered by artificial intelligence to deliver the precise amount of water needed and measure the results.
