Posts Tagged: no-tillage

Mitchell interviewed on Tom Willey's "Down on the farm" KFCF 88.1 FM radio program

July 5, 2024

CASI's Jeff Mitchell was a "three-peater" July 5th on Tom Willey's "Down on the farm" radio program on KFCF's 88.1 FM station on July 5, 2024. He shared information from the recently published article, No-tillage, surface residue retention, and cover crops improved San Joaquin Valley soil health in the long term, that was published in the May 2024 issue of California Agriculture.  Willey was a co-author on the work and he talked with Mitchell about how the work came about, what its study goals were, how it was conducted, and what its findings were.  Willey's program airs every first Friday of the month and has a loyal following that includes a great diversity of folks who greatly enjoy his 'on the front porch' conversations with his guests.  A video of the radio interview is available at the You Tube link 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXoyBLlImUo

 

 

Down on fhe farm July 5, 2024

CASI's Mitchell on MyAgLife podcast, June 28, 2024

CASI's Mitchell on MyAgLife podcast June 28, 2024

 July 1, 2024

Jeff Mitchell, CASI member and Professor and Cropping Systems Cooperative Extension Specialist in the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of California, Davis, appeared in a 39-minute podcast with host Taylor Chalstrom on June 28, 2024 to talk about conservation agriculture in general and the recently-published article in California Agriculture on the 20-year study  in Five Points, CA.  The podcast is available at

https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/JuQ7qakGSKb

You may need the podcast platform, Spotify, to listen to it. 

MyAgLife June 28, 2024 Image

CASI’s Mitchell announces long-term NRI Project publication in Cal Ag on Don York’s KMJ580 AM morning “Ag Report” radio program, May 23, June 4, and June 6, 2024

In an effort to extend information on CASI's twenty-year conservation agriculture study that has been conducted at the University field station in Five Points, CA and that has been recently published in the journal, California Agriculture, Jeff Mitchell provided three radio interviews on the morning Ag Report that Don York produces for KMJ580 AM each morning out of Fresno.  The segments aired on May 23rd and on June 4^th and 6th, 2024 and are available below.  Mitchell shared findings of the long-term “NRI Project” that since 1998 has examined four production systems – standard tillage without cover crop, standard tillage with cover crop, no-till without cover crop, and no-till with cover crop. 

The NRI Project started as an effort to determine the potential of reduced disturbance tillage in terms of generating or producing less dust and in the early 2000s found that dust can be significantly reduced by as much as 80% with a variety of reduced tillage practices relative to standard tillage techniques that have been widely used in annual crop fields throughout the San Joaquin Valley since the early 1930s.   The recent findings from the unique long-term study have shown that several soil health indicators including aggregation, water infiltration, biodiversity, and surface carbon were improved through the long-term use of cover crops with reduced disturbance tillage. 

In the interviews, Mitchell points out that the systems that were evaluated and developed in the NRI Project were not at all easy to implement and required considerable trial-and-error effort to achieve.  Yields, for instance, of cotton in the early years under the high residue, no-till cover crop system lagged behind the standard tillage, however once effective planting techniques were learned to establish the cotton crop. There were no yield differences between the two tillage systems for the next several years. 

The results of this study that included 18 coauthors can be seen at  https://doi.org/10.3733/001c.94714

Screenshot 2024-06-07 090600 Cal Ag Screenshot Cal Ag

20-year summary of soil health research in Five Points, CA published in California Agriculture!

May 17, 2024

Findings from twenty years of soil health research in Five Points, CA have been published in the University of California's California Agriculture peer-reviewed journal's May 1, 2024 issue.  https://doi.org/10.3733/001c.94714. 

This work has been a large collaborative effort involving twenty-one UC and non-UC coauthors.  It began in 1998 initially as an effort to evaluate the potential of reduced disturbance tillage systems to reduce dust emissions from annual cropping systems that are common in California's San Joaquin Valley.  It long-term nature however, allowed it to become a unique site for also monitoring changes in soil properties and function under four experimental systems:  conventional tillage with no cover crop, conventional tillage with cover crop, no-till with no cover crop, and no-till with cover crop.  Crops rotated between tomato and cotton initially, but later during the study, the rotation was diversified to include melons, sorghum, and garbanzo beans.  

The work involved the Soil Health Institute's Shannon Cappellazzi, who sampled at the site in 2019.  That sampling event led to the site becoming part of a multiple-publication series of articles that reported on soil health impacts in 124 long-term study sites across North America.  

https://soilhealthinstitute.org/news-events/a-minimum-suite-of-soil-health-indicators-for-north-american-agriculture/ 

 

 

 

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Climate-Change Resources

University of California UC ANR Green Blog (Climate Change and Other Topics) https://ucanr.edu/blogs/Green/index.cfm?tagname=climate%20change (full index)

Examples:

     -  Save Trees First: Tips to Keep Them Alive Under Drought https://ucanr.edu/b/~CdD 

     - Landscaping with Fire Exposure in Mind: https://ucanr.edu/b/~G4D

     - Cities in California Inland Areas Must Make Street Tree Changes to adapt to Future Climate  https://ucanr.edu/b/~oF7

Drought, Climate Change and California Water Management Ted Grantham, UC Cooperative Extension specialist (23 minutes) https://youtu.be/dlimj75Wn9Q

Climate Variability and Change: Trends and Impacts on CA Agriculture Tapan Pathak, UC Cooperative Extension specialist (24 minutes) https://youtu.be/bIHI0yqqQJc

California Institute for Water Resources (links to blogs, talks, podcasts, water experts, etc.) https://ciwr.ucanr.edu/California_Drought_Expertise/

UC ANR Wildfire Resources (publications, videos, etc.) https://ucanr.edu/News/For_the_media/Press_kits/Wildfire/ (main website)

      -UC ANR Fire Resources and Information https://ucanr.edu/sites/fire/ (main website)

            -Preparing Home Landscaping https://ucanr.edu/sites/fire/Prepare/Landscaping/

UC ANR Free Publications https://anrcatalog.ucanr.edu/ (main website)

- Benefits of Plants to Humans and Urban Ecosystems: https://anrcatalog.ucanr.edu/pdf/8726.pdf

 -Keeping Plants Alive Under Drought and Water Restrictions (English version) https://anrcatalog.ucanr.edu/pdf/8553.pdf

  (Spanish version) https://anrcatalog.ucanr.edu/pdf/8628.pdf

-  Use of Graywater in Urban Landscapes https://anrcatalog.ucanr.edu/pdf/8536.pdf

-  Sustainable Landscaping in California https://anrcatalog.ucanr.edu/pdf/8504.pdf

 

Other (Non-UC) Climate Change Resources

Urban Forests and Climate Change. Urban forests play an important role in climate change mitigation and adaptation. Active stewardship of a community's forestry assets can strengthen local resilience to climate change while creating more sustainable and desirable places to live. https://www.fs.usda.gov/ccrc/topics/urban-forests

Examining the Viability of Planting Trees to Mitigate Climate Change (plausible at the forest level) https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2927/examining-the-viability-of-planting-trees-to-help-mitigate-climate-change/

Reports and other information resources coordinated under the auspices of the United Nations and produced through the collaboration of thousands of international scientists to provide a clear and up to date view of the current state of scientific knowledge relevant to climate change. United Nations Climate Action

Scientific reports, programs, action movements and events related to climate change. National Center for Atmospheric Research (National Science Foundation)

Find useful reports, program information and other documents resulting from federally funded research and development into the behavior of the atmosphere and related physical, biological and social systems. Search and find climate data from prehistory through to an hour ago in the world's largest climate data archive. (Formerly the "Climatic Data Center") National Centers for Environmental Information (NOAA)

Think tank providing information, analysis, policy and solution development for addressing climate change and energy issues (formerly known as the: "Pew Center on Global Climate Change"). Center for Climate & Energy Solutions (C2ES)

Mapping Resilience: A Blueprint for Thriving in the Face of Climate Disaster. The Climate Adaptation Knowledge Exchange (CAKE) was launched in July 2010 and is managed by EcoAdapt, a non-profit with a singular mission: to create a robust future in the face of climate change by bringing together diverse players to reshape planning and management in response to rapid climate change. https://www.cakex.org/documents/mapping-resilience-blueprint-thriving-face-climate-disaster

Cal-Adapt provides a way to explore peer-reviewed data that portrays how climate change might affect California at the state and local level. We make this data available through downloads, visualizations, and the Cal-Adapt API for your research, outreach, and adaptation planning needs. Cal-Adapt is a collaboration between state agency funding programs, university and private sector researchers https://cal-adapt.org/

Find reports, maps, data and other resources produced through a confederation of the research arms of 13 Federal departments and agencies that carry out research and develop and maintain capabilities that support the Nation's response to global change. Global Change (U.S. Global Change Research Program)

The Pacific Institute is a global water think tank that combines science-based thought leadership with active outreach to influence local, national, and international efforts to develop sustainable water policies. https://pacinst.org/our-approach/

Making equity real in climate adaptation and community resilience policies and programs: a guidebook. https://greenlining.org/publications/2019/making-equity-real-in-climate-adaption-and-community-resilience-policies-and-programs-a-guidebook/ 

Quarterly CA Climate Updates and CA Drought Monitor Maps (updated each Thursday) https://www.drought.gov/documents/quarterly-climate-impacts-and-outlook-western-region-june-2022

 

 

 

 

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