The UC Conservation Agriculture Systems Initiative challenges Californians to look 100 years, or even 500 years, into the future and imagine how today’s common agricultural practices will have impacted the environment and society.

The United Nations estimates world population in 2300 will be about 9 billion. There is likely to be significant development in the ensuing 300 years that reduces the amount of land for farming.

“We have to be able to do more with less,” said Jeff Mitchell, UC Cooperative Extension cropping systems specialist, echoing a common theme repeated by speakers at the launch of the UC Conservation Agriculture Systems Initiative (CASI) Jan. 27. “The global demand for food will be immense.”

An overflow crowd of 125 farmers, equipment providers, public agency representatives and long-time conservation agriculture supporters participated in the launch. The meeting provided information about the evolution of the Institute, its recent research and development work on conservation agriculture systems, and its new capacity-building initiatives to increase the adoption of competitive and sustainable production systems in California’s San Joaquin Valley.

Mitchell, other researchers and many innovative farmers have documented in more than 14 years of field research that changes in traditional farming practices – employing such technologies as precision irrigation, integrated pest management and conservation tillage – cut costs $75 to $150 per acre, reduce dust and diesel fuel emissions 60 to 80 percent, and prevent evaporation of about 4 inches of water per season from the soil surface.

This sort of objective data, plus favorable economic analyses and access to high-technology conservation equipment, are important factors in motivating farmers to change their practices, but they are not the only factors, Mitchell said. The Institute is committed to not only demonstrating and communicating the documented benefits of conservation agriculture but also identifying the drivers behind behavior change. The goal is converting 50 percent of California crop acreage to conservation practices by 2028.

“The cornerstone of sustainability is behavior change,” said Ron Harben of the California Association of Resource Conservation Districts, one of the Initiative’s founders. “Simply providing information has little or no effect on what people do.”

In parts of the U.S. and the world, conservation agriculture is common practice. World leaders in conservation agriculture include Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay, Western Australia and Canada.  Within the next ten years, Mitchell reported, more than 85 percent of the cropland in the three South American countries is expected to be converted to conservation agriculture. Adoption rates are also quite high in parts of South Dakota, Nebraska, the Pacific Northwest, and areas throughout Alabama and Georgia.   Yet implementation in California is still low.

In 2010, conservation tillage systems accounted for about 14 percent of the acreage in silage and grain corn, small grains for hay, silage and grain, tomatoes, cotton, dry beans, and melons in the nine-county Central Valley region. This was an increase from about 10 percent in 2008. Minimum tillage practices were used on about 33 percent of crop acreage in 2010, up from about 21 percent in 2008.

Mitchell said the implementation trends around the world, in the U.S. and in California “lend a certain inevitability” to its wide adoption in the San Joaquin Valley.

“This is not just about making a profit and optimizing yields,” Mitchell said. “By minimizing soil disturbance, preserving surface residue and including a greater diversity of crops in the rotation we are improving the soil resources and deepening the soil in an improved condition.”

The keynote speaker at the CASI launch was Hanford dairy farmer Dino Giacomazzi, a long-time innovator in conservation agriculture. Giacomazzi discovered conservation agriculture not long after taking over day-to-day operations of the Giacomazzi dairy from his father.

“It’s less work for more money,” Giacomazzi said. “Why aren’t people doing it? What’s the holdup?”

Perhaps in answer to his own question, Giacomazzi shared the reaction of his father to the new system being used on their farm. In their last conversation, the elder Giacomazzi lamented that, “Everything I’ve ever done, you’ve undone,” his son related at the meeting.

Dino Giacomazzi said many farmers’ tendency to be “enthralled” with tradition, their fierce independence, aversion to risk and fear of derision from neighbors contribute to their resistance to change. But accepting change is what is needed to adapt to a rapidly changing world.

Giacomazzi said the new Institute will play an important role in supporting farmers as they convert to conservation practices.

“This can’t be just a launch,” Giacomazzi said. “We must make this happen. Stay in touch.”

A video of the complete CASI January 27 launch meeting will soon be available at the Institute’s website http://ucanr.org/CASI. 

Congratulations to Joy Hollingsworth, a first-year graduate student working with Dr. Anil Shrestha in the Department of Plant Science at CSU Fresno, for having been awarded the 2012 Student Paper and Poster Contest Award from the California Weed Science Society at their recent annual meeting. Joy’s paper, ‘Weed population dynamics in overhead and sub-surface drip irrigated conservation tillage cropping systems,’ received the Society’s award at their January 23 – 25 meeting in Santa Barbara. 

Now, she’s off to Hawaii this week for a poster presentation at the 2012 annual meeting of the Weed Science Society of America in Waikoloa, Hawaii.

Way to go, Joy!

A diverse group of public and private sector agricultural professionals are joining the University of California to form the Conservation Agriculture Systems Initiative (CASI), an organization that will be formally launched at a public meeting Jan. 27 in Clovis, Calif.

“This is the agronomic and ecological equivalent of the ‘moon race’ back in the early 1960s,” said CASI coordinator Jeff Mitchell, a UC Cooperative Extension cropping systems specialist.

The Initiative merges two existing University programs – the Conservation Tillage and Cropping Systems Workgroup and the California Overhead Irrigation Alliance – into a single, broad-based initiative. The launch and informational meeting takes place from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Friday, Jan. 27, at the Veterans’ Memorial Building, 808 Fourth St., Clovis. (Map)

CASI’s aim is to bring together farmers, business leaders, public agency representatives, university, USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service and environmental group membership to chart long-term goals for sustainable agriculture in the San Joaquin Valley and to develop appropriate conservation agriculture production systems that will achieve these goals.

The term ‘conservation agriculture’ enjoys broad recognition and understanding in other parts of the U.S. and internationally, but it is a relatively new addition to California’s ag lexicon. In general, conservation agriculture aims to achieve profitable and sustainable agricultural systems and improve the livelihoods of farmers while conserving natural resources. These goals are met through the application of general principles that have been widely documented and demonstrated by research and experience as effective features of sustainable production systems.

These principles include:

• Minimum soil disturbance
• Preservation of residues that provide permanent soil cover
• Diverse crop rotations
• Use of cover crops
• Integrated pest management
• Reliance on precision, highly-efficient irrigation
• Controlled or limited mechanical traffic over agricultural soils

Together, these practices, when optimally employed within a given cropping context or environment, provide a basis for long-term sustainability and are gaining acceptance in many parts of the world as an alternative to both conventional and organic agriculture.

Because conservation tillage and other soil conservation practices are the cornerstones of conservation agriculture, there are both challenges as well as opportunities for California systems to be developed in the San Joaquin Valley, a historically tillage-intensive production region.  Information on recent research and farmer innovation toward the broad goals of conservation agriculture will be part of the program at the January 27th meeting.

“CASI extends an invitation to all who would like to be a part of this major effort to actively take part with its founders on Jan. 27 and help with the development of improved agricultural production systems for the San Joaquin Valley,” Mitchell said.

Media contact: Jeff Mitchell, (559) 303-9689, Mitchell@uckac.edu

In 2005, the University of California and NRCS Conservation Tillage Workgroup established the Conservation Tillage Farmer Innovator Award as a means for providing greater visibility to CT pioneers in California. The criteria for this award are demonstrated innovation and leadership in the development, refinement and use of conservation tillage systems within the California crop production environment. Nominations are received and carefully reviewed by a workgroup panel and recipients are announced in annual meetings held in both Five Points and Davis.

The recipients of the 2011 CT Farmer Innovator Awards are Michael Crowell of Turlock, Fred Leavitt and Steve Fortner of Firebaugh, and Fritz Durst of Zamora in Yolo County.

The award to Michael Crowell of Bar Vee Dairy acknowledges the outstanding and pioneering work he has done to develop and expand no-till dairy forage production systems at his dairy and also recognizes the very generous contributions he has made to California’s Conservation Cropping Systems Workgroup. Over the past several years, Michael has acquired and mastered tremendous knowledge and experience related to no-till production and he is now a true pioneer of these systems in California. His entire dairy is now completely no-till, including no-till twin row corn, no-till drilled sorghum sudan, followed by no-till wheat or triticale.

Michael began his no-till work very strategically. Recognizing that the edges of his field presented compaction issues, he ripped them before starting his no-till planting systems.  He also took part in the 2007 CT Workgroup Tour back to Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming and Colorado with his wife, Jonette, and has been a very tenacious and supportive participant and mentor for other California farmers and Workgroup members interested in CT.

The thing that sets Michael apart from others is his sheer persistence and commitment to no-till  He is, as he has said, committed to making it work and the successes he has had with it to date bear well for his being able to continue down the no-till path. As he mentioned to a UC Davis student tour group, he “loves the dirt,” and loves working on ways to improve his soils.

2011 CT Farmer Innovator Awards also go to Steve Fortner and Fred Leavitt of Sun Pacific Farming in Exeter, Calif. Together, they have developed and successfully refined state-of-the-art tomato production systems that employ strip-tillage with winter cover crops.  Their farms throughout California now employ aspects of these practices and their main production fields in the Firebaugh area, have now been using these approaches for over 8 years.  Their production efficiencies have been increased through the use of these systems and they serve today as pioneering models of conservation and economic success for the entire vegetable industry in California.

The essence of Sun Pacific’s CT system is the use of off-season barley or triticale cover crops, strip-tillage ahead of tomato transplanting, and subsurface drip irrigation. Together, these practices have created an economically viable and resource-conserving system that is simply state-of-the-art. They have hosted several CT Workgroup events at their Firebaugh farm fields and recently, in July of 2010, took three tomato farmers from up in the Tracy, Calif., area on a full tour of Sun Pacific’s fields.

Steve and Fred were THE original pioneers in terms of trying the strip-till cover crop tomato system. Their actual first efforts with this system occurred in a small section of one of their Firebaugh fresh market tomato fields back in 2003.  This initial attempt was a very bold initiative on their part and it involved considerable planning, careful observation and trouble shooting.  They worked on refining the basic strip-tiller and were the first in California to attempt to use a rotary tiller model that they fabricated themselves.  They then were also the first to use a ground-driver “Yetter” strip-tiller at their farm.

Their tomato fields are not only typically quite immaculate, but also extremely productive.

This year’s last CT Innovator Award goes to Fritz Durst, owner of Tule Farms in the Dunnigan Hills in Yolo County. 

Fritz is truly a conservation tillage pioneer in an area of the State that in the early 1980’s was subject to massive sheet and rill erosion that resulted from conventional tillage practices that relied on moldboard plowing and left little or no residues to protect the soil from the impacts of rain.

Fritz has always enjoyed the challenges of agriculture and began accompanying his father around their ranchland and fields by age five. Not long after graduating from UC Davis with a degree in agricultural economics, Fritz and his father turned their attention toward the problem of persistent soil erosion occurring on the uplands of the Capay Hills and the foothills near Dunnigan.  They investigated no-till techniques for their small grain crops that involved planting directly into the residue of the previous crop.

The most immediate benefit Fritz realized was a significant reduction in soil erosion. In 1985, after one year of no-till wheat production Durst reported a reduction in annual soil loss from six tons/acre using conventional tillage to two tons/acre in his no-till fields. Additionally, the large six foot deep gullies that appeared after winter storms were not seen the year following their change to no-till and he also has been quoted as not having seen one erosion gully in his wheat and barley fields since he quit tilling the soil. During the next few years, Fritz reported on his experiences at several no-till workshops, and received the RCD “Cooperator of the Year Award” in 1986 for being a pioneer of no-till cultivation in Yolo County.

Awards to Crowell, Fortner and Leavitt were presented at the Workgroup’s Twilight CT and Overhead Irrigation event on Sept. 8 in Five Points and Durst was recognized at a meeting in Davis on Dec. 16. The pioneering accomplishments of each of these innovators make them quite fitting recipients of this year’s CT Farmer Innovator Awards.

More information and photos are available from Jeff Mitchell at mitchell@uckac.edu or (559) 303-9689.