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Posts Tagged: sustainable
Lawn-pocalypse! Surviving Drought
Ah, summer! The season of sunburns, pool parties, and… lawn droughts. If your once lush, green carpet now looks like a crunchy brown doormat, you're not alone. Let's dive into why your yard is staging a dramatic death scene and what you can do to...
Bermuda grass and weeds overtaking drought stressed turf grass.
UC SAREP funds 8 sustainable food and farming projects
Projects will support socially disadvantaged farmers, increase urban access to healthy food and more
The UC Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education Program (SAREP) is pleased to announce the recipients of the Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems 2024-25 Small Grants Program. This grant program will fund planning, research and education projects that support the development of sustainable community food systems and environmentally sound and economically viable farming enterprises.
Of the 33 eligible applications, eight applicants were selected to receive approximately $80,000 in combined funding to support their work. Individual grants are limited to $10,000. “The Small Grants Program is an important part of our mission,” said Ruth Dahlquist-Willard, interim director of UC SAREP. “By facilitating these grants, SAREP is able to support ANR in engaging a wide range of food systems stakeholders, outcomes show that a small financial investment can have a large impact in improving the lives of Californians.”
The eight recipients of this year's grants are:
Planning
Building Capacity and Resiliency Among Networks of Socially Disadvantaged California Farmers
Fresh Approach will establish a network of pooled learning and technical support that will aid emerging food-aggregation businesses in accessing sustainable market channels, including emergency food distribution. As part of the project, they will enhance an interactive GIS mapping tool of value chains to streamline market opportunities for socially disadvantaged farmers and aggregators. (Project lead: Andy Ollove, Fresh Approach)
Sustainable Urban Resident Food Gardens Expansion Planning Project
Growing Hope Gardens will systematize the process of outreach, discovery, design, planning and implementation in creating new urban resident food gardens. The project will document Growing Hope Gardens' garden development process into a training and implementation manual to more effectively duplicate food garden programs in more low-income urban communities. (Project lead: Carolyn Day, Growing Hope Gardens)
Research
Evaluating Best Management Practices for Cover Crops to Minimize Nitrogen Losses in California's Salinas Valley
This project will quantify the effectiveness of cover cropping at different planting times and termination dates to scavenge excess nitrogen in the soil and reduce nitrate leaching in a Salinas vegetable cropping system. The results will inform Ag Order 4.0 for cover crop credits and help stakeholders in the Salinas Valley better understand crop management for efficient nutrient cycling. (Project lead: Scott Fendorf, Stanford University)
Implications of American Kestrel Diet, Dispersal and Migration on Pest Control in Northern California Farming Systems
Investigators will study how the diet, post-breeding dispersal, and migration of nesting kestrels influences biological pest control on Northern California farms. The project will generate management recommendations for using the predatory bird for biological pest control in sustainable agriculture programs across California. (Project lead: Breanna Martinico, UC Cooperative Extension)
Education and Outreach
EAT! Community Farms Market Access and Promotion Project
This project helps socially disadvantaged and indigenous farmers in Riverside County create pathways for realizing economic return. EAT! will provide mentoring for marketing strategy development, connect farmers to buyers, promote the farmers market so it's more profitable for farmers, and provide a cooperative farm stand in the city of Norco for farmers to sell produce directly to consumers. (Project lead: Patrick Mitchell, Ecological Agricultural Training Cultural Center [EAT!])
Cultivating Cooperative Education, Stewardship and Connection at the Agroecology Commons Cooperative Incubator Farm
Agroecology Commons aims to address challenges faced by young, first-generation, BIPOC, queer and femme farmers at the Agroecology Commons Cooperative Incubator Farm in the Bay Area. The project will focus on education and outreach, providing technical assistance and training in regenerative agriculture practices such as soil health, pest management and crop diversification to socially disadvantaged farmers. (Project lead: Jeneba Kilgore, Agroecology Commons)
Signage and Mural Refurbishment for Southeast Asian Farmers to Improve Direct-to-Consumer Marketing
This project will build new, long-lasting farm signs for Southeast Asian farmers growing diversified vegetables and berries in the Sacramento region. Improving the appeal and durability of farm signs will increase the profitability of the farm stands as these resource-limited farmers rely on direct-to-consumer marketing strategies to promote their businesses. (Project lead: Margaret Lloyd, UC Cooperative Extension)
Community Nutrition Security and Education Program
Farm Discovery at Live Earth will increase access to organic produce for individuals and families experiencing food and nutrition insecurity in the Santa Cruz and Monterey Bay area. This will be accomplished through farming, outdoor education and nutrition education programs focusing on regenerative agricultural practices to connect youth and families to their regional agricultural and ecological systems. (Project Lead: Jessica Ridgeway, Farm Discovery at Live Earth)
The UC SAREP Small Grants Program has a big impact! Help us fund more projects that support sustainable community food systems and environmentally sound, economically viable farming enterprises. To support this program, please donate here. Choose SAREP Small Grants Program for the designation.
Sowerwine named SFS Strategic Initiative leader
In Northern California, she has collaborated with Karuk, Yurok and Klamath tribal leaders and community members to restore their food security. In the Central Valley, she spent years working with Southeast Asian farmers. More recently, Jennifer has been studying how community farms and gardens improve food security among at-risk people in the urban East Bay.
Jennifer's experience in designing community-led food systems projects with under-represented Californians will be informative as we strive to solve new food-related challenges. We are fortunate to have her lead us in this role.
Jennifer succeeds Rachel Surls, who has led the Sustainable Food Systems Strategic Initiative for the past 18 months and is retiring this month from her 35-year career.
UC ANR's Strategic Initiative leaders work with their respective strategic initiative panels to improve communication, highlight research/extension gaps, and conduct detailed panel meetings. SI Leaders represent their panels, program teams and statewide programs/institutes at Program Council, providing programmatic input into resource allocation recommendations.
Jennifer joins SI leaders Helen Dahlke for Water Quality, Quantity and Security; Josh Davy for Sustainable Natural Ecosystems; Tom Turini for Endemic and Invasive Pests; and Steven Worker for Healthy Families & Communities.
Brent Hales
Associate Vice President
No-till annual wheat better for soil health in California’s climate
One more reason to adopt sustainable cultivation
California wheat farmers could both maintain their yields and improve soil health by growing annual wheat without tilling the soil year after year.
This could be one more encouragement to farmers to adopt a sustainable practice commonly called conservation tillage, no-till or minimum-till cultivation, impacting how we grow a grain that supplies about 20 percent of the calories and protein for people around the world.
A new study, by a team led by Mark Lundy, University of California Cooperative Extension specialist in UC Davis' Department of Plant Sciences, offers new insight for decades-long discussions around soil conservation, sustainable agriculture and climate-warming emissions related to growing our food. The study has been published in the journal Soil and Tillage Research. For the first time, researchers have shown that annual wheat that is not tilled each year is better for stashing carbon in the soil than perennial wheatgrass, while still yielding more crop in Central California.
Previous studies have looked at annual wheat that is tilled each year, annual wheat that is not tilled, and a cousin species, perennial intermediate wheatgrass (trademarked Kernza), which also is not tilled. But until now, no one has looked at all of the benefits and trade-offs together. Most importantly, “no one has ever controlled for tillage,” Lundy said. “And, no one has compared annual wheat to perennial intermediate wheatgrass over multiple years in a Mediterranean climate, which is what we have in California.”
This study also is unique because it delves into the deeper question of what is going on in the soil that drives the different results for carbon there. Soil carbon reflects various processes linked to plant activity and soil health. Measuring the different forms of soil carbon may also signal whether a farming system is accumulating carbon in the soil over time – a plus for reducing climate-warming gases in the atmosphere.
“Measuring soil carbon is complex and nuanced,” said Kalyn Taylor, the lead author on the paper. “We started this experiment because we wanted to know whether and how plant activity and tilling or not tilling would affect the carbon story belowground in California's climate.”
“When we started this study, we thought the crop being perennial or annual would drive the differences in carbon storage in the soil,” Lundy added. Specifically, they had expected perennial wheatgrass would lead to more carbon in the soil because of its deeper, better-established root system. “But that's not what we found,” he went on. “What we found was, it was the lack of tillage, plus the level of productivity of common annual wheat, that made the difference in soil carbon here in California.”
Soil carbon in annual vs. perennial grain
In 2017, Lundy, then-graduate-student Taylor, UC Davis Professor Emeritus Kate Scow and others on the team started measuring different forms of soil carbon in test plots at Russell Ranch, west of campus. Plots were planted with annual wheat that was tilled each spring, annual wheat that was not tilled and perennial intermediate wheatgrass (Kernza) that also was not tilled.
Each year, the researchers measured the carbon present in the soil, the amount of soil organisms (which have carbon in their bodies) and the amount of material the plants created.
At the end of three growing seasons, they found that land planted with no-till, common, annual wheat had the highest amount of soil organisms, measured as biomass, of the three treatments.
The researchers also found soil carbon is more likely to remain stable in the no-till, annual plots, compared to both tilled wheat and wheatgrass.
In addition, the no-till, annual wheat produced plant material more consistently than the perennial wheatgrass across the three years, which saw variation in rainfall.
“Overall, annual wheat grown without soil disturbance or tillage had both higher productivity and higher potential for storing carbon in the topsoil than perennial wheatgrass in our Mediterranean climate,” Lundy said.
Related research
“No-till annual wheat increases plant productivity, soil microbial biomass, and soil carbon stabilization relative to intermediate wheatgrass in a Mediterranean climate,” is online now and will be published in the January 2024 edition of Soil and Tillage Research.
The team also found that tilled annual wheat vs. Kernza stores total carbon at different depths in the soil profile and hosts distinct soil fungal communities, primarily in the root zone and topsoil: Taylor, K., Samaddar, S., Schmidt, R., Lundy, M. and Scow, K., 2023. Soil carbon storage and compositional responses of soil microbial communities under perennial grain IWG vs. annual wheat. Soil Biology and Biochemistry, p.109111.
Previous work comparing the perennial grain known as intermediate wheatgrass (trademarked Kernza) to annual wheat had not distinguished the extent to which soil health benefits are a function of the perennial nature of the crop. Read the story here.
This story was originally published on the UC Davis News site.
Winter season: A time for food safety systems re-evaluation and education for food hubs
The holiday meal season is often a busy time for food hubs – entities that handle the aggregation, distribution and/or marketing of source-identified regional food – as restaurants, retailers and consumers fill their tables and shelves with an abundance of fresh, local products. However, the subsequent winter months can provide a valuable time for reflection and re-evaluation of a food hub's systems and processes. In this spirit, it may be helpful to remind people working at food hubs that University of California Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (UC SAREP) offers a suite of food-safety resources – in English and in Spanish – on its website.
- A step-by-step guide for food hubs on how to pursue a third-party food safety audit with guidance on how to navigate buyers' questions.
- Two sample food-safety plans intended as a starting point to be adapted to a food hub's specific operations and practices.
- Example standard operating procedure, or SOP, documents related to 11 common tasks carried out by food hubs.
“We hope these resources can play a role in helping food hubs to adopt best practices and control risks related to food safety,” says Gwenael Engelskirchen, sustainable food and farming coordinator with UC SAREP, who led the development of these educational tools.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately, 1 in 6 Americans (or 48 million people) gets sick and 3,000 die of foodborne diseases annually. In 2011, to help prevent the occurrence of foodborne illness, the federal government enacted the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), designed to outline actions to be taken at various points along the supply chain for both human and animal food.
UC SAREP's Food Safety Resources for Food Hubs are intended to help food hubs navigate these food-safety regulations and accompanying best practices. Resources are also available in Spanish at Recursos de seguridad alimentaria para los centros de distribución de alimentos.
Food safety certification guide
Some buyers verify a supplier's food safety program by requiring an audit performed by a third-party certification body or auditing company. This Guide to Food Safety Certification offers key considerations before deciding to pursue a food safety audit and helps users navigate the food safety certification process.
Food safety plan
Food hubs that meet the criteria for full compliance with FSMA's Preventive Controls for Human Food Rule are required to have a food-safety plan in place. And for all food hubs, having a shared document describing the facility's operations and how potential risks of food contamination are managed is a good idea. Two sample food safety plans, inspired by the operations of food hubs in California, provide a starting point and can be adapted to a hub's own operations.
Standard operating procedures
Standard operating procedures provide detailed step-by-step instructions for how to carry out operational tasks within a food facility. The standard operating procedure samples cover common topics such as handwashing, facility cleaning and more, and are intended to be adapted to a food hub's specific operations and practices.
Jacob Weiss from Spork Food Hub in Davis said, “the templates were a great starting place for us to build the framework of our food safety plan. It helped us figure out what we needed to (and didn't) need to include. I think the SOPs are also really useful because they are broad enough to get you started but flexible enough to add the specific practices of your business or hub.”
For additional information, visit UC SAREP's webpages on Food Safety Resources for Food Hubs or Recursos de seguridad alimentaria para los centros de distribución de alimentos.
These resources and tools were developed in collaboration with various project partners, including Department of Food Science and Technology at UC Davis, Department of Population Health and Reproduction at UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, Center for Precision Medicine and Data Science at UC Davis Health, and Community Alliance with Family Farmers.
