Conservation agriculture news

GOOGLE Food Lab tours Pinnacle Organically Grown Produce with Phil and Katherine Foster in Hollister, CA!

April 25, 2023

Phil and Katherine Foster host GOOGLE Food Lab for tour of Pinnacle Organically Grown Produce!

About 53 folks who were part of the GOOGLE Food Lab out of Mountain View, CA were treated to a half-day walking tour and lunch at the beautiful organic farm of Phil and Katherine just east of Hollister, CA on April 25, 2023.  The GOOGLE Food Lab describes itself as "an invitation-only community of food leaders, change agents and visionaries, creating positive change across food systems."  Pinnacle Organically Grown Produce was chosen to host part of the group's 2023 tour because of the farm's long-term leadership and pioneering progress on organic vegetable production systems that use a wide range of beneficial practices that contribute to the farm's diversity, soil health, employee welfare, and economic success.  The multitude of the Fosters' practices including use of 'single-line' cover crops to conserve water, on-farm composting and routine field application of compost, hedgerows, and reduced disturbance tillage, were on display during the two-hour walking tours that Phil Foster along with Jeff Mitchell took the visitors on.  The tour was coordinated by Eva Antczak of GOOGLE following an earlier visit to the farm by Michiel Bakker, GOOGLE's Vice President of Global Workplace Programs in 2022.  

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Strip-till Operation Thrives in Face of Heavy Regulation and High Costs

February 28, 2023

Strip-till Operation Thrives in Face of Heavy Regulation and High Costs

Tipton, CA dairyman and long-time CASI farmer member, Tom Barcellos, was featured in the Winter 2023 issue of Strip-till Farmer, a quarterly publication of the National No-till Farmer Association and Lessiter Publications.  The article details Tom's 23-year history as a strip-till trailblazer right here in California's San Joaquin Valley and describes how he came to find how strip-tillage "made everything a lot easier" at his 2,000 cow dairy just east of Highway 99 in Tulare County.  The Strip-till Farmer magazine article was written by Noah Newman when he came to California recently to interview Tom.  A copy of the article is attached below.

 

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Recent article about Tom Barcellos in Strip-till Farmer magazine, Winter 2023 edition.

Tom Willey presents CIG Project's reduced disturbance organic vegetable production project in You Tube video

August 21, 2022

Madera, CA long-time organic farmer and key farmer member of California's CIG reduced disturbance organic vegetable project, provided a recorded copy of the presentation that he gave at the 2022 Annual Conference of the Soil and Water Conservation Society in Denver, CO on August 2nd.  The video can be viewed at the You Tube link 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfiaJYuu1WU&t=6s 

Tom's video presentation goes into the history of the CIG effort and summarizes challenges that the group has faced.  

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CIG's Willey and Foster conducting pressurized air injection study in peppers in Hollister, CA in 2022!

August 13, 2022

The national NRCS Conservation Innovation Grant Program CA organic reduced disturbance vegetable project has a new research component this year at the Hollister, CA farm of Phil Foster.  Both he and CIG Project partner, Tom Willey, along with John Petrosso, of the Mazzei Company in Fresno, CA have set up an elaborate trial in one of Foster's 2022 bell pepper fields to test the potential of using pressurized air injection into drip irrigation water as a means of adding oxygen to the crop's root zone.  One of the suspected challenges in increasingly reduced soil disturbance production systems is thought to be lack of oxygen and this method may be a means for overcoming this issue.  On August 10th, the three of these study partners, along with Jeff Mitchell, met out in the pepper field to take stock of things and to make observations about crop growth and development in the four experimental treatments that Phil has established - reduced till (strip-tillage) without injected air, reduced till (strip-tillage) with air injection, spader-till without injected air, and spader-till with injected air.  To date, drone images have not shown striking differences in growth.  Phil's harvest is coming up soon and he intends to very carefully weigh each plot's productivity through his several hand harvests.  Stay tuned for more conclusive information coming from this innovative approach to vegetable production.

Shown in photo:  Left to right:  John Petrosso, Phil Foster, and Tom Willey

Air Injection August 10, 2022 Phil Foster's Hollister, CA

CASI honored with SWCS 2022 Conservation Innovation Award - August 2, 2022

CASI honored with SWCS 2022 Conservation Innovation Award - August 2, 2022

August 4, 2022

California's Conservation Agriculture Systems Innovation (CASI) Center was recognized as the recipient of the 2022 Conservation Innovation Award by the Soil and Water Conservation Society at their Annual Conference held in Denver, CO from July 31 through August 3rd 2022.  Tom Willey, retired organic farmer in Madera, CA and long-time CASI member received the award on behalf of our entire group and also presented a summary of work currently being done by a group of California organic farmers on reduced disturbance systems.  The 2022 Award recognizes many years of dedicated service that CASI members have provided in extending information and increasing the adoption of improved performance production systems in California since 1998 when the organization was founded.  Tom also had the opportunity to meet USDA NRCS national Chief Tom Cosby at the Denver conference and he invited the Chief to meet with CA CIG Project organic farmers when he is coming to the state in September 2022.

Tom Willey receiving SWCS recognition in Denver CO 2022

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