Conservation agriculture news

Farm Demonstration Network’s Soil Health Farm Visits

 

KMJ 580 radio's early-morning Ag Report which is produced by ag reporter, Don York, featured a short audio segment on the upcoming California farm demonstration network's series of farm visits featuring innovative soil care farmers.  You can hear the audio of the interview that York conducted with CASI's Jeff Mitchell about the farm visits here.

 

 

 

CASI's Monte Bottens and Rob Roy featured in Central Valley Farmland Trust article on conservation agriculture

 

Thanks to Emeritus UCCE Advisor, Maxwell Norton, of Merced County, CASI was invited to prepare an article for the Central Valley Farmland Trust's LEGACY newsletter that has now been printed.  The article includes a nice photo of Rob Roy, Monte Bottens, and Richie and Shannon Iest at one of their very early strip-till corn fields in Chowchilla and it also mentions our goal of creating the California farm demonstration evaluation network that is being worked on now by many of you. 

 http://valleyfarmland.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/CVFT_SPR16_WEB.pdf

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spanish tomato researchers tour NRI Project field in Five Points

Spanish tomato researchers, Pedro Garcia of Transformaciones Agricolas de Badajoz in Spain, and farmer Francisco Carapeto, along with Westside Equipment's Abraham Quiroga, and Oxnard, CA vegetable crop consultant, Jesus Valencia, visited the longstanding NRI Project conservation agriculture field in Five Points, CA on April 27^th as part of their whirlwind tour of innovative tomato production efforts underway in California. The tour was organized and sponsored by founding CASI private sector partners, Juan Trujillo and Alan Wilcox of Wilcox Agriproducts in Walnut Grove, CA. Wilcox Agriproducts provides a vast array of minimum tillage equipment to row crop farmers worldwide. The visitors also met with Jesse Sanchez of Sano Farms in

Firebaugh and learned about the work that he and Alan Sano have been conducting with cover crops and minimum tillage for tomatoes.

This visit was also a reunion for Valencia and Mitchell who hadn't seen each other since they toiled together more than twenty years ago hoeing weeds and putting together irrigation systems under the tutelage of University of California Fresno County Cooperative Extension Emeritus Advisor, Don May.

California Farm Demonstration Network - CASI Video of Strip-Till Field Day at Marty Poldevarrt MTSJ Dairy in Orland, CA April 20, 2016

A video of last Wednesday's Strip-till Field Day at Marty Poldevarrt's MTSJ Dairy in Orland, CA is now available at You Tube and also at the CASI website.

https://youtu.be/Jbeehf0zfOQ 

 

No-till Garbanzo Field Day Video Available at CASI Website and You Tube

Following the public field day that took place at the UC Field Station in Five Points, CA on Monday, April 18^th, Station Superintendent, Merf Solorio, provided a field interview in which he provided observations of the no-till garbanzo study early in the 2016 season.  The video interview may be seen at the CASI website or at the You Tube link provided below.

A summary of the field day will appear in the California Farm Bureau Federation's AG ALERT in an upcoming issue.

https://youtu.be/9NE3a_gYyaM

 

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