- Author: Jeffrey P Mitchell
We would like to let you know about the formation of the California Farm Demonstration Evaluation Network, - a grassroots, locally-based effort that has been developed by farmers throughout the State, the Conservation Agriculture Systems Innovation (CASI) Center, the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, the California Association of Resource Conservation Districts, the University of California Cooperative Extension, and a variety of private sector partners to address the simultaneous goals of better farm management, greater farm profits, and increased farm productivity and sustainability.
The California network is modeled after a number of other farm networks that have been created in several states around the country as a means for providing opportunities for progress, the development of improved systems, and greater efficiency in face of the many challenges that agriculture faces today. Key elements of the California farm demonstration network are 1) participatory learning and adaptive, improved management based on sound science- and experience-based principles, 2) the public, voluntary showcasing of innovative systems developed by experienced farmer leaders, 3) a program of farm demonstration evaluations that employ monitoring, data collection, and analysis of findings, and 4) the use of proven, creative methods for sharing, discussion and communicating results and findings so as to scale up broader adoption of improved systems.
The network has a broad array of goals that it is pursuing that include the development of water-, climate-, and nutrient-smart systems for the State's diverse crop production environments. An initial series of network-sponsored farm visits that showcase innovative soil health practices of five Central Valley farmers is being conducted in June of 2016.
Information for these visits and for ongoing activities and opportunities of the network is available at the CASI website http://casi.ucanr.edu/ or by emailing or calling, Jeff Mitchell, CASI Workgroup Chair, at jpmitchell@ucdavis.edu or (559) 303-9689.
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- Author: Jeffrey P Mitchell
An op-ed article prepared by Jeff Mitchell and Randy Southard that is in part related to California's soil health farm demonstration network that many CASI members and affiliates are involved with appeared in the Sacramento Bee newspaper on October 30.
Here is a link to that article...http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/soapbox/article41845533.html
- Author: G. Bradley Hooker
Mitchell, a UC Cooperative Extension cropping systems specialist, will work with through the Conservation Agriculture Systems Innovation (CASI) Center, which promotes the principles of conservation agriculture: reduced disturbance, diversity and year-round soil health improvement practices. The internationally recognized sustainability method is now making inroads to California, particularly as a low-input high-retention approach to dealing with drought conditions.
CASI has established a network throughout California's Central Valley of high school teachers committed to the upcoming pilot program. Farm training sessions will extend the classroom learning the students currently gain in their coursework, with CASI experts sharing their knowledge and excitement for agriculture and agricultural science.
“In my own class that I am teaching this fall at UC Davis, the students themselves have selected as the topic for their panel discussion ‘California's new farmers,'” says Mitchell, “which is, I think, a fitting testament to the sheer importance of young people and the need to educate and inspire this next generation of folks who'll be responsible for agricultural production systems in the future.”
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Mitchell, the chair of the UC Conservation Agriculture Systems Innovation Center, made the comment at the 6th World Congress on Conservation Agriculture in Winnipeg, Manitoba, last month.
After attending the congress, Mitchell said he is more strongly convinced that greater efficiencies and brighter economics in California agriculture could be achieved by employing conservation principles.
“Focusing on soil care will improve soil water intake and storage,” he said. “Reducing soil water evaporation can be achieved by preserving surface residues. Together these steps reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions – very important goals.”
The Manitoba congress drew more than 350 participants representing 47 countries. It was co-sponsored by the Conservation Agriculture Systems Alliance, the Conservation Technology Information Center, and the Canadian Soil and Water Conservation Society. California's CASI was represented by Mitchell and Monte Bottens, president of California Ag Solutions of Madera, a consulting and custom fertilizer support company.
Speakers at the conference suggested conservation agriculture principles are “transformative and not merely incremental means for achieving the kinds of change must be made to meet the global challenges of food production and natural resource conservation in the 21st Century,” Mitchell said. Modestly tweaking today's conventional agricultural systems, he said, “is not an option.”
Today conservation agriculture is used on about 11 percent of the world's total arable land. Implementation is increasing at an annual rate of about 7 to 8 million hectares, according to the U.N.'s Food and Agricultural Organization. Nearly half of the world's conservation agriculture acreage is found in the developing world. The South American countries of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay, where the movement had its beginnings as a farmer-led process dating back to the mid-1970s, has about 80 percent implementation.
During his keynote address at the conference, David Montgomery, University of Washington professor of geology and author of Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, issued a “call to action.”
“Global soil degradation,” he said, “is an under-appreciated environmental crisis that occurs because of how we farm. We need to be more creative in terms of how we're intensifying agriculture to feed the post-oil world without cheap, fertilizer-intensive agriculture.”
Congress speaker Dwayne Beck, agronomy professor at South Dakota State University, also sounded an alarm.
“Never in history has mankind knowingly faced this type of impending catastrophe,” Beck said. “It is time to stop doing incremental things and start doing transformative things. You do not cross a chasm in two steps. We need to focus on where we want to be and emphasize systems, not details; actions, not reactions; and commitment, not merely involvement.”
CASI members are working with foundations and granting agencies to better position the organization to support implementation of conservation agriculture in California. For more information, contact Mitchell at (559) 303-9689.
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Innovative soil enhancement practices are being researched and implemented around the world, but haven’t caught on yet in most of California. Free workshops at UC Davis and Five Points will feature new ways of managing soil that promise long-term sustainability, better crop quality and reduced use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
The Davis workshop is at 11 a.m. Dec. 10 in the Plant and Environmental Sciences Building 3001; the Five Points workshop is at 11 a.m. Dec. 11 at the UC West Side Research and Extension Center, 17353 W. Oakland Ave., Five Points.
The UC Conservation Agriculture Systems Innovation program (CASI) has invited nationally known proponents of soil health to share their experiences and knowledge about soil-supporting practices. Brendon Rockey of Rockey Farms in Center, Colo., will be talking about practices for which he has coined the term “biotic farming systems.”
Jeff Mitchell, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Plant Sciences at UC Davis, said Rockey is not an “organic” farmer, but an “extremely innovative” farmer. Rockey and his uncle grow 30 varieties of potatoes on 250 acres in the San Luis Valley of Colorado
“He’s somebody who is questioning and challenging the way things have always been done,” Mitchell said. “Rather than relying on heavy hammers like herbicides, fungicides, tillage and other inputs to solve problems, Rockey is helping people realize that there might be a more integrated, biological way to address problems and reduce inputs.”
For example, Rockey advocates the use of multi-species green manure, either as a winter cover crop or, in the case of his own farm, right alongside the crop during the growing season.
“We know that … diverse plant populations bring life to the soil,” Rockey shares on his website Soilguys.com. “They create an ideal environment for a variety of microbial populations, increase water uptake and retention, fix nitrogen and cycle nutrients and attract predatory insects to the field.”
“The principles of building healthy soils are the same everywhere — you have to stop tilling the soil and switch from a monoculture crop to a diversity of crops and rotations,” Fuhrer said. “But the path to soil health is different on each farm. Cover crop and cash crop selections and sequences are chosen to fit the farmer’s resource concerns and priorities, and the means available at that farm.”
For more information, contact Jeff Mitchell at jpmitchell@ucdavis.eduor (559) 303-9689.