- 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
January 20, 2022
Undergraduate student, Jennifer Valdez-Herrera, took home the first prize award in this year's student poster competition of the California Weed Science Society that was held January 19th - 21st at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Sacramento, CA. Her poster titled, Potential of roller-crimper technology for weed suppression in annual crops, reported on the first four years of a study that has been conducted on the Fresno State campus under a center pivot irrigation system. The rolled cover crops are followed by strip-tillage planted silage corn. Five mixes, rye, an ultra high diversity mix from Green Cover Seed in Bladen, NE, a multiplex mix from Lockwood Seed and Grain in Chowchilla, CA, a faba bean and Phacelia combination, and a three-way mix of rye, peas, and purple vetch are replicated three times in about 300 foot strips throughout the field. A copy of Valdez-Herrera's poster is provided below and a short 56-second video showing the current stage of growth of the 2021 - 2022 cover crops may be seen at
- Author: Jeffrey P. Mitchell
January 20, 2022
Year 5 of a major cover crop roller crimper study is underway on the Fresno State campus in the school's center pivot field under the monitoring supervision of Dr. Anil Shrestha and his undergraduate student research assistant, Jennifer Valdez-Herrera and graduate student, Robert Wilmott. The project repeats five cover crop mix treatments (rye, an ultra high diversity mix provided by Green Cover Seed of Bladen, NE, a Multiplex mix of Lockwood Seed and Grain in Chowchilla, CA, a two-species mix of faba bean and Phacelia, and a three-way mix of rye, peas, and purple vetch. A short, 49-second video showing Valdez-Herrera and Wilmott and the stage of growth of the cover crops on January 20, 2022 can be viewed at the You Tube link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_E42GAg5Fzs
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- Author: Jeffrey P. Mitchell
December 28, 2021
KMJ580's Don York, who produces the daily “Ag Report” on the Fresno-based radio station, interviewed Alyssa DeVincentis and Jeff Mitchell about work they and a larger team of researchers at UC Davis conducted on water-related impacts of winter cover crops throughout the Central Valley. The interview aired at 5:05 AM on York's Tuesday, December 28th, broadcast and can be heard by clicking on the link here below.
The work that DeVincentis and Mitchell summarized with York involved ten almond orchard and tomato field sites in which side-by-side comparisons of soil water content during the winter cover cropping period from November through March were conducted from 2017 through 2019. The study sites spanned San Joaquin Valley sites in Arvin, Shafter, Five Points, and Merced, as well as Sacramento Valley locations in Davis, Durham, Orland, and Chico. Basic conclusions stemming from the work include the finding that cover crops grown in the winter growing window do not lose more soil water than fallow bare ground despite considerable dogma about the likelihood that they deplete soil water reserves during the winter growing period.
This finding adds important information that may help local Groundwater Sustainability Agencies (GSAs) create groundwater management plans that are required for compliance with SGMA, the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. If remote-sensed imagery is used to determine a farm's overall water use, winter cover crop vegetation may appear on satellite images as a net water loss, while in actuality, because cover crops perform other functions such as improving soil water infiltration from rain, increasing soil aggregation and water holding capacity, and reducing the energy available at the soil surface by providing shade by the cover crop canopy, the net effect tends to be no additional water loss relative to a bare soil surface during the winter period.
The team that worked together on this research included then UC Davis PhD student, DeVincentis, her major professor, Samuel Sandoval-Solis, Daniele Zaccaria, Anna Gomes, then an undergraduate student at Davis and now a PhD student at Stanford University, and CASI's Mitchell.
The project is summarized in a manuscript that will be published in an upcoming issue of UC's quarterly peer-reviewed journal, California Agriculture, in 2022. A pdf copy of the research article is also available below.
- Author: Jeffrey P. Mitchell
A group of relatively new NRCS hires including Kareem Adeleke, Elena De La Torre, Breana Garcia, Jacob Wright, and Mikhael Kazzi received an exceptionally valuable introduction to state-of-the-art regenerative agriculture orchard management systems in a tour that was organized by Area 3 Agronomist, Rob Roy on December 21 at a pistachio orchard of Inbleby Farms near the tiny San Joaquin Valley town of Burrell. The tour was very graciously hosted by Gary Smith, General Manager of Ingleby along with Steven Strong, the Agronomist who works with Smith. Together, the two of them laid out the remarkable story and history of Ingleby Farms worldwide (https://inglebyfarms.com/) as well as the specific and principle-guided goals and approaches that are being pursued in Ingleby's California farming operations. To say that the new NRCS conservationists received a wonderful and information-packed orientation to soil health and sustainable orchard management would be a great understatement as Smith and Strong stayed with the eager group of NRCSers for over two full hours and showed them the many innovations that are being implemented at Ingleby. These include the use of carefully planned cover crop mixes at various planting times throughout the year that serve multiple purposes including adding carbon to the soil, capturing and cycling nitrogen in the crop's rootzone, improving soil function, and providing a trap crop for aboveground pests. Ingleby Farms is a true leader in the development of improved performance crop production systems here in California and this they provided a generous, once-in-a-lifetime introduction to their approaches. Kudos to Rob Roy for coordinating the tour and special thanks to Gary Smith and Steven Strong for so graciously hosting this group of new NRCS conservationists!
Recently hired Area 3 NRCS Conservationists along with Area 3 Agronomist, Rob Roy, and Gary Smith and Steven Strong of Ingleby Farms in pistachio orchard near Burrell, CA. From left to right, Kareem Adeleke, NRCS Conservation Agronomist, Hanford Service Center; Gary Smith, Ingleby Farms; Elena De La Torre, Soil Conservationist, Visalia Service Center; Breana Garcia, Soil Conservationist, Bakersfield Service Center; Rob Roy, Conservation Agronomist, Fresno Area Office; Jacob Wright, Soil Conservationist, Fresno Service Center; Mikhael Kazzi, Soil Conservationist, Fresno Service Center; and Steven Strong, Ingleby Farms.