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Posts Tagged: Jeff Mitchell
UC conservation ag specialist is no-till farming's 'Johnny Appleseed'
Mitchell, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Plant Sciences at UC Davis, took Johnson to research fields and farms to show progress being made toward more sustainable production practices in California row-crop farming. Johnson turned the visit into a 1,300-word feature that included links to conservation agriculture research Mitchell has published in California Agriculture journal.
"There's a soil scientist at Berkeley, Garrison Sposito, who says it may be just once or twice in a century that agriculture has an opportunity to re-create itself in a revolutionary way," Mitchell said. "... I think that's what's happening with conservation agriculture. It's energizing for me to wake up to that every day.”
Mitchell and his colleagues are proponents of four tenants of conservation farming:
- Don't disturb the soil
- Maximize the diversity of plants, insects, fungi and microbiota
- Keep living roots in the soil
- Keep the ground covered with plant residues
Mitchell took the writer to the UC West Side Research and Extension Center in Five Points to see research plots that have been farmed continuously with conservation techniques. The beds "have not been worked in 15 years," Mitchell said. “There's more organic material going into the soil, more carbon and more nitrogen. There's more capture of water, and the shade and residue reduces soil water evaporation.”
As the years passed, the soil improved. Instead of the farm equipment needing to break up clots of compacted soil, the researchers found they were planting into soft, fine-grained earth, continuously tilled by worms and roots and microorganisms.
Mitchell learned that residues and no-till practices can reduce irrigation water needs by 16 percent, as well as cut down dust emissions and store extra carbon in the soil.
'Thought for food' chews on conservation agriculture
Blogger Nathanael Johnson, who writes 'Thought for food' on the Grist website, recently contemplated the impacts of reduced soil tillage on the use of chemical herbicides and crops genetically engineered to tolerate herbicide applications.
He noted that the practice of tillage in farming does not mimic nature.
"Nature only rarely turns the land upside down — only during disasters," Johnson wrote. "This ecosystem (soil) responds to being turned upside-down the same way a rainforest would: It falls apart."
However, the author wondered whether the development of herbicide-tolerant crops has led farmers to adopt conservation tillage. For an answer, he turned to Jeff Mitchell, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Plant Sciences at UC Davis.
“I’ve heard farmers here in California say that Roundup resistant crops effectively allowed some people to start doing conservation tillage,” Mitchell said. “But you have to remember, the vast majority of farmers in the U.S. using Roundup Ready seed don’t do conservation tillage.”
Garrison Sposito, professor in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at UC Berkeley, said genetically modified crops and herbicide use aren't required for conservation agriculture, but without them, yields go down.
"You never solve problems by making changes,” Sposito said. “What you do by making changes is exchange one set of problems for another set of problems.”
Have GMOs triggered conservation-minded agriculture? In the U.S., just a little bit, Johnson concluded.
Conservation leaders honored at UC Twilight Field Day
Three conservation agriculture pioneers were honored at the UC Conservation Agriculture Systems Innovation Twilight Field Day at the UC West Side Research and Extension Center yesterday, reported Patrick Cavanaugh in the California Ag Today blog.
CASI chair Jeff Mitchell, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Plant Sciences at UC Davis, presented the awards before the conclusion of an event that included tours of three local farms and three sites at the field station.
Ron Harben, project director at the California Association of Resource Conservation Districts, was recognized for outstanding service to CASI. Ralph Cesena, Sr., president of Cesena Distributing in Stockton, received the CASI Industry Innovator Award. Danny Ramos, manager of Morning Star company's Lucero Farmers, was presented the Conservation Tillage Farmer Innovator Award.
Twilight Field Day participants view a center pivot irrigation system.
'On the road' reporter visits with UC Cooperative Extension advisor
The topic of his conversation with Blake was water, or more specifically, the lack thereof.
Battany said local groundwater levels in the Paso Robles area continue to decline. He is conducting research as part of a two-state project (California and Washington) to improve water efficiency in wine-grape production.
Farm's experiment with no-till cotton shows promise
Cecelia Parsons, AgAlert
Danny Ramos, the innovative manager of Lucero Farms near Dos Palos, welcomed growers and researchers to view no-till cotton being cultivated at the ranch.
"No one else in California has done no-till cotton on this scale, and done it successfully," said Jeff Mitchell, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Plant Sciences at UC Davis.
The crop follows four years of tomatoes and dry farmed wheat that was planted last winter. Without rain, the wheat failed. He decided to shred the plants and plant cotton into the residue.
The no-till field is using less water than an adjacent tilled field, Ramos said.
"With high water costs, no-till is the way to go," he said.
'Conservation agriculture' gaining favor with California farmers
A desire to reduce fuel and water use is leading some farmers in the Central Valley to operate in new, more sustainable ways, reported Alice Daniel on KQED's The California Report this morning.
For the five-minute story, Daniel interviewed Jeff Mitchell, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Plant Sciences at UC Davis, and Dino Giacomazzi, a Hanford dairy farmer. These new farming systems, they said, aren't straight forward and require a steep learning curve.
Sometimes they find themselves wondering, "What is happening out here?" Mitchell says. "And all your built-up experience base flies out the window."
In the last seven years, Giacomazzi has dramatically changed the way he grows cattle feed. He has reduced the number of times he tills the field from 14 to just 2 times a year. Despite documented savings in fuel and reduction in dust emission, conservation agriculture has not been implemented widely in the Central Valley. Farmers like innovation, Giacomazzi notes, but many are reluctant to take the risk associated with changing long-held farming practices.
"It's very difficult to make money farming," Giacomazzi said. "You're only going to get one shot each year to make it."
Those interested in learning more about conservation agriculture systems are invited to the annual Twilight Conservation Agriculture field day, 4 p.m. Sept. 13 at the UC West Side Research and Extension Center. For more information, see the meeting announcement. Register for the free event here: http://ucanr.edu/TwilightReservation.
Farmers can reduce fuel and water use and cut down on dust emissions using conservation agriculture practices.
