The University of California Conservation Agriculture Systems Innovation Center (CASI) has named Darrell and Trevor Cordova of Denair recipients of the 2014 Conservation Tillage Farmer Innovator Award.

Jeff Mitchell, UC Cooperative Extension specialist and CASI chair, presented the award to the father-son team at a field day on their Denair farm Nov. 24.

“Darrell and his son Trevor are tenacious, committed and skilled farmers,” Mitchell said. “They have demonstrated innovation and leadership in development, refinement and use of conservation tillage systems that more than meet the criteria for this award.”

In July 2003, the Cordovas summoned a group of UC Cooperative Extension researchers to their farm, including Ron Vargas, emeritus agronomy and weed advisor in Madera and Merced counties; Anil Shrestha, then UC Integrated Pest Management weed ecologist; and Mitchell. They were farming an usual mixture of crops – including corn, wheat, triticale and other winter forage species, along with almonds – on a farm with rolling hills on the eastern edge of the San Joaquin Valley floor.

“They wanted to begin a dialogue about their interest in trying conservation tillage in an edible dry bean-wheat rotation,” Mitchell said. “Darrell and Trevor were inquisitive and eager to make reduced tillage work at their farm. They jumped into these early investigations with both feet.”

Darrell Cordova also consulted with Ralph Sesena, Sr., president of Cesena Distributing of Stockton, Calif., and recipient of CASI's 2013 Privater Sector Innovator Award. Sesena suggested the Cordovas try no-till bean seeding using a Buffalo slot seeder. He worked with them as they successfully planted no-till winter small grains following their summer beans.

During the early years, weed management was a serious challenge. Because of weed pressure in their beans and wheat, they developed a minimum-tillage approach that involved a shallow disking operation before crop changes.

Things changed again in 2007. The Cordovas invested in a 165-acre corner arm center pivot irrigation system and a dairy farm was established adjacent to their property, prompting them to grow dairy silage.

“With this new rotation scheme, Darrell and Trevor once again became interested in no-till production,” Mitchell said. “They developed no-till capabilities for both their summer silage corn and their winter forage mixes.”

When they saw their corn grow taller and greener under the new no-till management, the duo purchased a new eight-row planter and a 20-food no-till drill in 2014.

“Darrell and Trevor have made major strides in their ability to use conservation tillage practices at their farm and are now truly two of CASI's most outspoken champions for these innovative conservation agriculture systems,” Mitchell said. “They continue to serve as important advisors to our ongoing conservation agriculture and center pivot irrigation work.”

Following the award ceremony for the Cordovas, Dennis Chessman, state agronomist with the USDA NRCS; Margaret Smither-Kopperl, director of the NRCS Plant Materials Center; and Mitchell led a discussion and demonstration of some of the improvements in soil health that have been seen in fields where reduced disturbance techniques are used and where residues are maintained.

Mitchell noted the importance of these conservation agriculture practices that the Cordovas are using for increasing the water use efficiency of cropping systems by reducing soil evaporation and cooling surface soil temperatures. He told the gathered field day participants that longterm work in Five Points, Calif., has demonstrated that soil water evaporation losses can be reduced by as much as five inches during a routine summer crop season using these practices.

At the field day honoring the Cordovas for their progress with conservation agriculture practices coupled with precision overhead pivot irrigation, Mitchell said the team has implemented “quite significant strategies for producing more with less.”

“Not only have Darrell and Trevor Cordova been successful at significantly cutting their overall production costs, but they've also increased the water use efficiency of their production systems," Mitchell said.

California's Conservation Agriculture Systems Innovation (CASI) Center, in partnership with Sustainable Conservation and the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, has prepared its survey of tillage management acreage for 2012. This tillage survey was conducted as an ongoing comparison of annual row crop acreage that is farmed under different tillage systems throughout the Central Valley region of California. Over 35 local NRCS, University of California and private sector experts were surveyed and results were compared with 2012 County Agricultural Commissioner cropland acreage reports. Previous surveys have been conducted in 2004, 2006, 2008 and 2010.

Data in this survey were compiled for two general types of reduced tillage systems. Tillage practices such as no-till, strip-till, ridge-till and mulch-till, that leave at least 30% of the residue from previous crops in place on the soil surface are the typical forms of conservation tillage that are recognized throughout the world and that have historically been chronicled as one category of reduced tillage in our survey. In addition to these practices, “minimum tillage” practices that reduce the overall number of tillage passes by at least 40% relative to what was done in the year 2000, are also included in the tally of conservation tillage acreage.

A number of complicating factors, including changes in cropping acreage and rotational crop selections that were being implemented in 2012 as California's drought began to take hold and changes and turnover in the local expert reporters who have provided input for the survey estimates over the years, may be apparent in the 2012 survey results. These methodological challenges notwithstanding, the 2012 survey has been carefully checked and represents a useful view to the ‘big picture' trends that may be occurring in the region and that may warrant more detailed investigations to determine why certain patterns are being noted.

In 2012, conservation tillage systems accounted for about 17% of the total acreage for the crops that were surveyed including silage and grain corn, small grains for hay, silage and grain, tomatoes, cotton, dry beans, and melons throughout the nine-county Central Valley region. This was an increase from about 14% in 2010. Minimum tillage practices were used on about 15% of crop acreage in 2012, a reduction from about 24% in 2010.

The largest change in conservation tillage acreage from 2004 – 2012 is found in the amount of corn silage acreage that uses strip-tillage. In 2004, there were only about 490 acres of summer silage corn using strip-till, while in 2012 over 181,000 acres throughout the San Joaquin Valley region had adopted the use of this form of conservation tillage. Another major trend during this time has occurred with minimum tillage tomato acreage increasing from about 3% in 2004, to about 58% in both 2010 and 2012. Speculation as to why minimum tillage acreage overall tended to decline from 2010 to 2012 may relate to issues with herbicide application practices as well as soil salinity patterns that occur particularly with subsurface drip irrigation that have become concerns for farmers if broadcast, full-area tillage is not performed. A full and detailed report of CASI's tillage acreage survey is available at our website: http://casi.ucanr.edu

 

 

Recent investigations conducted by UC's Conservation Agriculture Systems Innovation (CASI) Center shed light on opportunities farmers have for cutting production costs in their cropping systems by reducing tillage. Founded in 1998, CASI is a large group of diverse members including UC researchers, farmers, private sector, NRCS and other public agency partners who work together to develop and spread information about production systems alternatives that aim to increase profitability and efficiencies, conserve resources and be readily adaptable to local marketing and environmental conditions.

Citing a number of studies the group has published over the past several years at a recent workgroup meeting in Five Points, Calif., CASI workgroup chair, Jeff Mitchell, summarized the potential savings that can be gained by a variety of reduced tillage approaches as being typically between $50 and $140 per acre per season depending on the particular crop and set of practices or equipment that are used.

“For a number of crops including tomato, cotton, silage corn, sorghum, and sugar beets, that we've run the numbers for, this seems to be the range of savings that can be achieved by using various minimum tillage implements that combine customary tillage operations into fewer passes, or more classic forms of conservation tillage such as strip-tillage or no-tillage," Mitchell said.

CASI Workgroup tomato farmers, Alan Sano, Jesse Sanchez and Steve Fortner of Firebaugh have all seen this range of cost reductions since moving to minimum tillage practices that they couple with subsurface drip irrigation and cover crops when water is available to improve their soil's tilth, water movement and storage.

“Our yields are actually higher now with about four inches less water than when we were furrow irrigating and using conventional tillage,” reports Jesse Sanchez in a recent survey that is available at the CASI website http://casi.ucanr.edu/

Tom Barcellos, a Tipton, Calif., dairy farmer and President of Western United Dairymen, calculates savings of about $70 per acre that he has accomplished with strip-till and no-till silage corn over his former conventional intercrop tillage practices. There are also savings in time as well as wear and tear on equipment that he has achieved since transitioning to these conservation tillage practices in 2003.

Alan Wilcox, another CASI workgroup founding member and minimum tillage equipment entrepreneur in Walnut Grove, Calif. has created a tillage cost calculator tool that he uses to determine savings that may result from reduced pass practices.

“Knowing the true costs of tillage is essential,” Wilcox says, “since tillage is one of the few things in their overall budgets that farmers can control.”

Mr. Al Ruozi of Interstate Manufacturing received the Conservation Tillage Workgroup's Award for Industry Innovation in 2005. He has made very significant contributions to conservation tillage in California through his inventions, his vision for a better way to manage the soil, and the sheer persistence and single-minded purpose that he has shown throughout his life.

Al was born in 1917 in Bakersfield, Calif. As a young boy, he learned, as he says, “That you have to walk the furrow to find out what the ground is like,” and early on he realized that “there was a better way to manage the soil” than was being done.

In the early 1950s, he made the precursors of his patented Shredder Bedder to help potato farmers who needed a way to have cotton roots dislodged and unearthed prior to planting potatoes.

In the late 1950s he had perfected the Shredded Bedder and the potential benefits of this machine for cotton stalk and soil management were quickly shown.

Al's company, Interstate Manufacturing, then went on to build 175 machines that were used throughout the southern San Joaquin Valley and even back at Auburn University in Alabama.

With Lyle Carter, a USDA ARS scientist at the Shafter, Calif., research facility, Al recognized quite early on the importance of trying to leave beds in the same place, and thereby effectively perform zone production.

In 1967, Al responded to a challenge by taking his machine down to Brawley, Calif., where it was compared to standard cotton stalk management approaches and it proved successful. This test subsequently helped alter CDFA's rule for pink bollworm management by acknowledging that a power-driven shredder performed successfully for postharvest cotton management.

Al has met and overcome many challenges in his life as a result of his vision, intellect and innovation.

“It has been a battle,” he says, “since he put his first two pieces of iron together.”

He developed systems that would save, again in his words, "oil, toil, and soil.”

Al has been fighting the battle to develop improved tillage management systems that most of us have only recently begun, for over six decades.

CASI is extremely proud to count Al Ruozi within our ranks and we greatly appreciate his dedication and outstanding accomplishments in the field of conservation tillage.

Congratulations, Al, on your retirement!