California Ag Network

Tag: SJV

  • American Farmland Trust to Expand SJV Land & Water Strategy with Conservation Grant

    American Farmland Trust, the organization behind the national movement No Farms No Food®, was recently awarded a Conservation Innovation Grant by the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service. The grant will be used to expand AFT’s San Joaquin Valley Land and Water Strategy, with a focus on increasing water infiltration and groundwater recharge in the San Joaquin Valley counties of Madera and Stanislaus.

    This project will provide a unique and innovative framework for decision-making — introducing a web-based mapping tool that, along with its associated manual, will help conservation organizations and agencies select projects that meet priority criteria and therefore have the greatest potential to effectively infiltrate and conserve water while also protecting the region’s most productive, versatile, and resilient farmland.

    “Water resources in California’s San Joaquin Valley are vital to food production for the nation and fundamental for the economy, producers, communities and livelihoods of thousands of people who work and reside in the region,” says Kara Heckert, AFT’s California state director.

    She continued, “Increasing groundwater infiltration is a critical tool in improving the long-term sustainability of farming in the region and complying with the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act.”

    AFT has worked on the ground in the San Joaquin Valley for 37 years, fighting to protect the region’s farmland and natural resources. AFT’s comprehensive San Joaquin Land and Water Strategy was developed from the insights gained through years working in the area. This recent expansion builds on AFT’s current work and knowledge, furthering the strategy’s aim to promote changes in both policies and practices that support conservation and sustainable use of water and land resources, improved soil health, and protection of farmland, while providing economic benefits to the economy, communities and the environment.

    AFT’s work in the San Joaquin Valley underscores the critical importance of protecting our most valuable farmland, not only for continued production of food and fiber, but also for carbon sequestration and groundwater recharge.

     

  • Public Invited to Visit SJV Soil Health Demo Site in Five Points

    UC Cooperative Extension cropping systems specialist Jeff Mitchell is issuing a standing invitation to the public to visit the site of an ongoing conservation agriculture research project and see for themselves the results of long-term soil-building practices.

    “Every Friday morning from 9 o’clock till noon, beginning in February and going through June, I invite folks to come to the project site to see up close and personal just what soil health means,” Mitchell said.

    The project, funded by the National Research Initiative, compares plots that have been managed for more than 20 years in an annual rotation of cotton, processing tomatoes and more recently sorghum, garbanzos, and melons, under four different treatments: no-tilled plus cover crops, no-tilled with no cover crops, conventionally tilled with cover crops and conventionally tilled without cover crops.

    “What we’ve got at this site is a very long-term example of exactly what implementation of a small set of soil care, or soil health, principles really means for soil function and management,” he said.

    Mitchell says that the study site in Five Points is a valuable resource for the people of California because of its dedicated adherence to principles that are widely touted to improve production efficiencies, reduce emissions, cycle nutrients more tightly, and reduce inputs over time.

    “I recently heard about the value of publicly showcasing long-term sites such as the one we’ve got in Five Points. It’s being done in several other places, including the Dakotas and in Europe,” Mitchell said. “It just seems to make sense to open up our field more widely to folks who might be interested in seeing the remarkable changes we’ve seen and monitored for a long time.”

    According to Mitchell, the NRI Project field is already “the most visited research field in the state,” but with this new invitation, he is hoping to have an even broader and wider impact.  “We’ve got a simply amazing resource here and I want folks to see it,” he says. The study has also been selected as one of the monitoring sites of the North American Project to Evaluate Soil Health Measurements that has been initiated by the Soil Health Institute of Morrisville, NC.

    More than 30 peer-reviewed scientific articles have been published based on work done in this study field.

    The NRI Project is located at the University of California’s West Side Research and Extension Center, 17353 W. Oakland Ave., in Five Points.

    “I promise to be out there every Friday morning from Feb. 15 through June 26,” he said.