Conservation agriculture news

CIG Project Organic Reduced Disturbance Farmers Phil Foster and Tom Willey Plan 2022 Air Injection Project in Peppers with John Petrosso of Mazzei Injector Company

January 19, 2022

On a foggy morning at the Santa Ana Ranch of Phil Foster's Pinnacle Organically Grown Produce farm nearHollister, CA, he along with fellowCIG Project farmer, Tom Willey, met with JohnPetrosso, the Sales Engineer forMazzei Injector Company to plan a study aimed at evaluating the effectiveness ofMazzei's air injection equipment as a possible means for increasing oxygen availability for soilmicrorganisms and thereby get higher vegetable crop yields.  The air injection technique has had positive results in a variety of earlier studies with vegetables, but has not taken off as a mainstream practice of vegetable farmers to date.  Foster and Willey are particularly keen to see if air injection might overcome some of the yield declines that they've been seeing in recent years as Phil's farm has tried to rely on less and less soil disturbance with tillage implements.  The project has been in the planning stages for several months and is now shaping up in terms of more detailed field implementation.  The study crop in 2022 at Foster's farm will be peppers.  Three articles describing previous work on the air injection technique as well as a short video with Petrosso's predictions for what will be seen in the 2022 pepper crop are available below and at th You Tube link

https://youtu.be/UcfCuE0QPHk

 

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CASI's Mitchell helps with interview on KVPR's Valley Report - January 14, 2022

CASI's Mitchell helps with KVPR interview on climate change

January 16, 2022

CASI's very own Jeff Mitchell, along with UC ANR colleagues Mae Culumber, George Zhuang, Karl Lund, and Bob Hutmacher, helped with information on their research that is related to climate change in an interview with KVPR reporter, Kerry Klein, at the UC West Side field station on January 14^th 2022.  The segment was part of the Valley Report on KVPR and was titled, “Climate change resilience begins with water say these UC ag researchers.”  An audio recording and a copy of the report written by Klein are available at https://www.kvpr.org/environment/2022-01-14/climate-change-resilience-begins-with-water-say-these-uc-ag-researchers

 

Capture KVPR January 14, 2022JPG

CIG Project Organic Reduced Disturbance Farmers Phil Foster and Tom Willey Plan 2022 Air Injection Project in Peppers with John Petrosso of Mazzei Injector Company

January 19, 2022

On a foggy morning at the Santa Ana Ranch CIG Project farmer, Tom Willey, met with John Petrosso, the Sales Engineer for Mazzei Injector Company to plan a study aimed at evaluating the effectiveness of Mazzei's air injection equipment as a possible means for increasing oxygen availability for soil microrganisms and thereby get higher vegetable crop yields.  The air injection technique has had positive results in a variety of earlier studies with vegetables, but has not taken off as a mainstream practice of vegetable farmers to date.  Foster and Willey are particularly keen to see if air injection might overcome some of the yield declines that they've been seeing in recent years as Phil's farm has tried to rely on less and less soil disturbance with tillage implements.  The project has been in the planning stages for several months and is now shaping up in terms of more detailed field implementation.  The study crop in 2022 at Foster's farm will be peppers.  Three articles describing previous work on the air injection technique as well as a short video withPetrosso's prediction for what will be seen in 2022 are available below.  The 56-second video is also available at

https://youtu.be/UcfCuE0QPHk

 

Top 15 No-till and Conservation Agriculture Research Articles Selected by Panel at National No-till Farmer Association!

Top 15 No-till and Conservation Agriculture Research Articles Selected by Panel at National No-till Farmer Association!

January 9, 2022

During the past couple of months, Randall Reeder, retired Extension Agricultural Engineer with the Ohio State University, (and legendary professional speaker who “brings to life the warmth and humor of Will Rogers as he speaks to business and agriculture audiences, and a variety of other groups”), who is also a recognized No-till Research and Education Innovator by the National No-till Farmer Association, and Don Reicosky, retired USDA ARS soil scientist from Morris, MN, who many of you in CA already know from our having hosted him here on at least a couple of occasions in the past (Don is also a past No-till Research and Education Innovator recognized by NNTFA),  worked on a survey and compilation of the top 15 research articles of all time in no-till and in conservation agriculture.  A committee was created and voting took place to come up with the final lists of works that were announced at the annual meeting of NNTFA last week in Louisville, KY.  Both Randall and Don are pretty amazing folks in terms of their decades-long dedicated service to the fields of no-till and conservation agriculture.  I think the idea for the lists came from the organizers of the NNTFA and they then asked Randall and Don to coordinate things.

The lists are attached.  Perhaps you'll recognize some of the titles as they are pretty well-known and highly respected items.

All the best,

Jeff

Capture NNTFA 2022

DeVincentis and Mitchell talk “cover crop water use” with KMJ580’s Don York on morning Ag Report

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 28^th, 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.

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