- Author: Jeffrey P. Mitchell
Soil health monitoring conducted at SJV reduced disturbance and cover cropped fields!
As part of the USDA NRCS Conservation Innovation Grant, Creating a no-till network in California, extensive baseline soil sampling has now been done at several San Joaquin Valley farms that are employing the soil health management practices of no-tillage, strip-tillage and/or cover crops. These farms include sites at the diversified permanent and annual crop farm of Eddie Sajian in Hanford, CA, the dairy silage fields of Rick Adams near Laton, CA, the grazing pasture lands of Paul Strojan in Farmington, CA, cotton fields at Bowles Farming in Los Banos, CA, and tomato acreage of Woolf Farming in Huron. Determinations of soil carbon, aggregation, infiltration, and % residue cover have been done at each site and findings have been discussed with partner farmers for each location. In addition, participating farmers have been encouraged to begin conducting their own ongoing monitoring by using the assay techniques shown here. They were also provided with a PVC meter square quadrat to use in sampling surface biomass and a set of sieves as shown below that are used for determinations of soil aggregate stability.
- Author: Jeffrey P Mitchell
April 12, 2024
The UC ANR CASI Center hosted five members of the Soil Health Institute's US Regenerative Ag Cotton Program in the San Joaquin Valley on April 11th and 12th, 2024. The Soil Health Institute (SHI) is a non-profit organization based in Morrisville, NC that conducts research and extension education related to soil health management. Five SHI members, Diana Bagnall, David Lamm, Jessica Kelton, Emily Ball, and Nate Looker, took part in the two-day tour of six San Joaquin Valley farms and the California Cotton Ginners and Growers Associations. San Joaquin Valley farmers who hosted the SHI members included Mark Borba of Borba Farms in Riverdale, CA, Mark McKean of McKean Farms also in Riverdale, Tony Azevedo of Stone Land Company in Stratford, CA, Cannon Michael and Derek Azevedo of Bowles Farming in Los Banos, Gary and Mari Martin of Pikalok Farms in Mendota, and Gary Smith of Ingleby Farms in Burrel. Roger Isom, President of the CCGGA in Fresno, also hosted the SHI guests.
SHI requested help from CASI with the cotton tour and discussions that took place as an effort to expand their national Regenerative Ag Cotton Program to California in 2024. The tour provided excellent opportunities for SHI to learn about California cotton and to make connections with leading cotton farmers in the San Joaquin Valley who may become part of the baseline soil sampling project that SHI is looking to conduct with cotton producers this year.
In addition to the farmers who generously hosted the SHI guests, several other local California folks including Cary Crum, Kimber Moreland, Rob Roy, Jacob Wright, and Olivia Peters helped CASI's Jeff Mitchell in sharing information about California cotton systems.
- Author: Jeffrey P. Mitchell
A unique - dare we say - "never before attempted in the region," effort to precede strip-tilled tomatoes with a mowed vigorous winter cover crop was conducted in one of the fieldsofWoolf Enterprises, a major tomato and other row crop farm just south of the small San Joaquin Valley town of Huron, CA in the spring of 2022. Several Woolf agronomists including Rick Blankenship and Shane Bickner, along with agronomy consultant,Cary Crum,of Agrotechnovation, oversaw the effort. The cover crop was a short-season mix that ended up being largely dominated by triticale, was mowed by a flail mower that had been fitted with a horizontally mounted circular chopper to fill in a 'skip' area in the flails behind the center of the unit. Then,an Orthman three-row 60" spacing strip-tiller followed the mowing ahead of tomato transplanting. Two short video files are linked here that show the mower and the strip-tiller in action. After this first year of trying the cover crop strip-till system, one agronomy manager at Woolf put it this way,
"There are a lot of extra management required, but worth the effort. The learning curve is steep and ridden with holes to fall into, but the soil changes behind the multispecies cover crops is impressive. I wouldn't recommend it to someone who doesn't tolerate some failure along the way. Less passes to get beautiful tomato beds behind it.
I'm not sure I've bought into the strip till on the flat tomato beds yet because of the necessary harvester adaptations or the strip till beds because of residue but I think with some more adaption we could make it work.
I really like the multi species cover crop as a rotation partner when it's green chopped early."
More to come from this exciting, innovative work soon!
