- Author: Jeffrey P Mitchell
The recipient of the Conservation Agriculture Systems Innovation Center's Farmer Technical Support Innovator Award for 2016 is Mike Winemiller.
Mike Winemiller serves as the Customer Account Manager for California Ag Solutions, here in Madera, with a focus on the Faster Forage and Precision Planting Programs of CAS. He studied Agricultural Business and Agronomy at Colorado State University and he grew up on a family-owned farm and ranch where he learned early on about the complete range of day-to-day operations of the family business. He has been instrumental and highly successful in accelerating the adoption of greatly improved forage production systems in the FASTER FORAGE Program of California Ag Solutions that has helped over two dozen farmers successfully convert to strip-till corn production during the past three years. By combining strip-till and advanced planting equipment with targeted plant nutrition, the FASTER FORAGE program gets crops growing quicker and harvested sooner, using less water and with increased yields.
Mike Winemiller is an extremely knowledgeable and simply outstanding teacher when it comes to equipment and in particular, strip-tillage. He has incredible attention to detail and has overcome amazing challenges in having worked with farmers from Escalon in the north to Bakersfield in the south. His conservation agriculture equipment and farm management experienced combined with his High Plains strip-till experience, truly have made the adoption of strip-tillage a success with all California farmers he's worked with.
His role in the successful adoption of strip-tillage corn production among this new cadre of California farmers has been nothing short of monumental.
He is ever-ready to share his experiences and has done so with our Workgroup on a number of occasions. He has been a true farmer technical support innovator and a phenomenal contributor to efforts of the CASI Workgroup through his front-line efforts. for a number of years. We are honored to present the 2016 Conservation Agriculture Systems Innovation Center's Farmer Technical Support Innovator Award to Mike Winemiller.
Congratulations, Mike Winemiller!
- Author: Jeffrey P Mitchell
Winemiller is a very knowledgeable and outstanding teacher when it comes to equipment and in particular, strip-tillage. His conservation agriculture equipment and farm management experience combined with his High Plains strip-till background, have greatly helped enable the successful adoption of strip-tillage with all of the California farmers he's worked with.
In his work with Sustainable Conservation, Asgill has brought great value and recognition to this award-winning environmental organization in recent years. He has bulldogged a number of projects in their diverse portfolio that have been quite useful in terms of both farmer sustainability and environmental benefits. He worked on some of the early research and development related to conservation tillage options for Valley dairy farmers, the incentive-based “BMP Challenge” NRCS Conservation Innovation Grant project here in California with a group from the Midwest, the development of CASI's strategic plan, and the ongoing biennial conservation tillage acreage survey.
More information regarding Asgill and Winemiller, CASI's 2016 Farmer Support Innovator Awardees, is available at the CASI website http://casi.ucanr.edu/ . Two additional innovator award ceremonies will take place later this year in Orland and in Tulare.
- Author: Jeffrey P Mitchell
- Author: Jeffrey P Mitchell
July 24, 2016
CASI folks,
A final summary of the many lessons that surfaced during the five farm visits that were held back in May and June is now posted at the CASI website at http://ucanr.edu/?blogpost=21603&blogasset=85918.
Additional farm demonstration evaluations are being established and we hope to have more opportunities to share this work in the near future. If you are interested in becoming involved with the farm demonstration network, please contact us at (559) 303-9689.
http://ucanr.edu/?blogpost=21603&blogasset=85918
- Author: Jeffrey P Mitchell
A short video summarizing some of the information that was provided at the June 24th farm visit to Sano Farms in Firebaugh, CA is now available at You Tube (https://youtu.be/Qa5vVvmQjXU) or at our CASI website (http://casi.ucanr.edu/Video_updates/). We apologize that not more of the field day was captured, but we didn't do a very good job of audio capture that day and are sorry that we didn't collect better sound.
