Fall, 1996 (v8n4)

From the Director

Scarcity and Abundance

we have all experienced the feelings of scarcity and abundance. I experienced scarcity the first time I was in a sail boat. I was sailing in a small boat and went about two miles up a lake with a good strong breeze at my back. When I got to the end of the lake, I suddenly realized I could not return because I could not sail into the wind the way I had gone up the lake. After some struggle and thinking about my predicament, I experimented with doing things differently and in about 10 minutes I was headed back down the lake. It was not straight and direct but rather a zig zag tacking course which took longer, but I made it back home. In this example I experienced both an abundance of wind in one direction and scarcity of wind in the other direction. I needed to change my behavior to make a round trip if I was going to use the boat as it was meant to be used.
Both individuals and organizations run into scarcity and abundance. How can we adapt and adjust to these changes in resource availability? The survival of an organization, and indeed, California in the long-term will most likely be determined by what we do when times are hard. It is during those times that we need to change our behavior. Civilizations that have not made adjustments, such as those that ignored soil salinity, no longer exist.

Due to the state of California's fiscal problems, the University of California suffered severe budgetary shortfalls in the 1990s. The legislature cut UC's allocation by approximately 20 percent of the 1989-90 budget through 1994- 95. SAREP's response to scarcity might have been to scale back our efforts in proportion to our declining budget: lay off staff, cancel some kinds of grants, etc. Instead, we tried another tack: We maintained all of our competitive grant categories (although the average size of individual awards was reduced) and our staff looked for opportunities to form partnerships with other individuals and organizations inside and outside the university. One of these partnerships, with the Community Alliance with Family Farmers Foundation, UC Cooperative Extension Merced County Farm Advisor Lonnie Hendricks and others, was the Biologically Integrated Orchard Systems (BIOS) project for almonds which has since expanded into walnuts and other crops. This program started with the idea that there are many players who can come to the table with ideas about how to solve agricultural problems. The heart of this work involves participatory management teams of farmers, consultants, UC farm advisors and researchers, and independent pest control advisers. Approximately 20 farmers per area work with the participatory teams to develop whole systems on their farms that are more biologically based and therefore need fewer chemicals. In 1994 the state legislature passed AB 3383 which authorized a new program of competitive grants for projects modeled after BIOS. In this new Biologically Integrated Farming Systems (BIFS) program, we are supporting two collaborative projects in grapes and row crops (see Sustainable Agriculture Vol. 7, No. 4, "SAREP Awards BIFS Grants to San Joaquin Valley Growers, Scientists")-with more to come. Similar projects are underway around the state, with funding from US-EPA, California Department of Pesticide Regulation and private foundations. Instead of shrinking programs with a mentality of scarcity, we have expanding programs with new partners and new sources of funding.
In this issue of Sustainable Agriculture (page 3, "Marin Coastal Watershed Project: Part 2") we present another example of collaborative work used to adapt to "changing winds." Ellen Rilla, UC Cooperative Extension director in Marin and Sonoma counties and Stephanie Larson, UC Cooperative Extension livestock and range management advisor, Marin/Sonoma counties have written about the Marin Coastal Watershed Enhancement Project. This collaborative project evolved from elements similar to those faced in BIOS and BIFS projects-public perceptions of agricultural practices and resultant criticism of farmers, threats of an increasingly restrictive regulatory environment in agriculture (in this case related to nonpoint source pollution or NSP), and a lack of understanding of practices that contribute to this problem. The issues were and are potentially contentious and yet this group of people, including UC Cooperative Extension personnel, farmers and ranchers, natural resources agencies, and environmental groups came together to work out solutions that will benefit individuals and the larger communities. They coordinated information on all aspects of NSP and encouraged farmers and ranchers to take a proactive stance in planning for NSP regulations. The Marin project is an example of how cooperation and creativity can bridge the gap that exists between a large and complex job to be done, and the limited resources any single organization can bring to the table.

Bill Liebhardt, director, University of California Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program.