Summary of Funded Projects

The goal of the BIFS program in Lodi is to implement an area-wide BIFS program in Crush District #11. The program has been divided into two primary endeavors: 1) Grower outreach and 2) Implementation of practices. The entire Lodi-Woodbridge Winegrape Commission grower and pest control adviser (PCA) community is the target of the grower outreach program. There are approximately 650 growers who farm approximately 50,000 acres in the Lodi-Woodbridge district. A major emphasis of this component of the program has been to meet with each district grower and PCA and discuss the basic concepts of the BIFS approach so that everyone has the same understanding of BIFS. Another important aspect has been to present various BIFS techniques to growers which can be used in Lodi vineyards.

Randy Lange, LWWC BIFS mentor grower, at BIFS field day with hooded low-volume contact herbicide sprayer. (Photo by J.C. Broome)

Two vineyards, Twin Oaks farmed by Lange Twins Farm, and Field 1 farmed by John Kautz Farms, were designated as ‘prototype’ vineyards in the original grant proposal. A large number of BIFS strategies are being applied to each of these vineyards and offer other growers a chance to view these strategies being applied on a commercial scale. Twenty-nine additional grower-cooperators have participated in the first year of the program. Their vineyards can also be viewed as demonstration sites where BIFS techniques are being applied in varying degrees, and growers and PCAs can come and observe how these techniques are working on different sites.

The Winegrape BIFS program involves large amounts of information and record keeping. Virtually all of the information and data for the BIFS program, from attendance at the neighborhood grower meetings to data obtained from the weekly monitoring of each vineyard, has been incorporated into a computer database. Because of the volume of information involved in the project it is only possible to present representative data and summaries in this report. However, all of the data are accessible through the database and their retrieval is straightforward.

John Kautz, LWWC BIFS mentor
grower, speaking at a field day.
(Photo by J.C. Broome)

The goal of the Neighborhood Grower Meeting (NGM) program is to sit down with every grower and PCA in the Lodi district in small groups and discuss an IPM framework and how this framework can be used as a problem-solving tool in farm management decision making. Once this has been accomplished, putting IPM in the BIFS framework becomes a much easier task.

During the first three months of 1996, 23 NGM meetings were held. They were attended by 267 growers (about 40 percent of the Lodi-Woodbridge growers), 30 PCAs and 15 winery personnel. Over 300 complimentary copies of the University of California’s Grape Pest Management Manual (Flaherty et. al. 1992) and UC IPM’s University of California Pest Management Guidelines for Grapes have been given out at the NGMs to Lodi growers and PCAs. No NGMs were held from April to October 1996 because it was too difficult to get growers together during the growing season. The meetings resumed in November to reach the remainder of the Lodi-Woodbridge Winegrape Commission growers.

The NGM program will be used during 1997 as a format for presenting specific BIFS/IPM topics to growers and PCAs. The small groups provide a learning environment in which to present topics such as monitoring for specific pests, use of on-line computer models, and detailed presentations of the ecology of pests.

Breakfast meetings provide another format for presenting information on specific BIFS/IPM topics to Lodi-Woodbridge Winegrape Commission members. Usually an expert in the topic area is invited to give a talk and ample time is allowed for a question and answer period. Six breakfast meetings were held during the first year of the BIFS program. The following topics were addressed: cover crop establishment (10/11/95), rodent control in vineyards (11/20/95), the benefits of compost (12/12/95), new materials for the powdery mildew and leafhopper management (1/31/96), use of electrostatic sprayers (3/7/96) and integrated weed control (4/23/96). See page 3 in the Wine grape BIFS annual report for details of these events.

Workshops provide a format where growers and PCAs can explore BIFS/IPM topics using a ‘hands-on’ approach. A field day is organized so that growers can view BIFS/IPM techniques being used ‘on-site’ in the vineyard. Field days conducted during 1996 included a cover crop tour (2/26/96), a pest identification workshop for Spanish-speaking farm workers (5/21/96), a workshop on grape and variegated leafhoppers (6/12/96), and a workshop on the two important spider mite species on grapes in Lodi (7/6/96).

Three half-day research seminars were organized for Lodi growers and PCAs during the first year of the BIFS program. On January 10, 1996, seven speakers gave talks on a range of viticulture and integrated farming topics. On March 18, a half-day research seminar was presented on irrigation in vineyards. On June 25, six speakers presented talks on a range of topics including grape diseases, pest management, and nematode/cover crop interactions.

One feature event during the first year of the BIFS program was "Farming’s New Paradigm" a Winegrape BIFS project press day, held on April 11, where journalists from the Associated Press, American Fruit Grower, Practical Wines and Vines, Vineyard and Winery Management, Western Fruit Grower, the Lodi News Sentinel and KQED-Radio San Francisco, toured the Lodi district to see the BIFS/IPM program. Other guests represented the Community Alliance with Family Farmers, California Department of Pesticide Regulation, California Energy Commission, California Department of Food and Agriculture, UC Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program, and Natural Resources Defense Council.

Six Lodi-Woodbridge Winegrape Commission Research/IPM newsletters were published and sent out to all Lodi-Woodbridge growers, PCAs and winery personnel during the first year of the BIFS program. Each newsletter usually featured an article on recent research results pertaining to IPM/BIFS topics in viticulture as well as a ‘grower profile’ on a Lodi grower implementing BIFS strategies.

Central to implementation of the Winegrape BIFS project are the grower-cooperators who have agreed to place one or more of their vineyards in the BIFS program. Also important are the PCAs who monitor these vineyards. The Winegrape BIFS project staff work with these two groups on implementing as many BIFS strategies as possible in the demonstration vineyards. There are presently 31 grower-cooperators with 47 vineyards in the BIFS program. These 31 growers manage about 50 percent of the acreage of vineyards in the Lodi-Woodbridge Crush District #11 and have enrolled a total of 2023 acres in the BIFS program. Most of these growers have PCAs who monitor the fields for them. There are 15 PCAs involved in the BIFS program. Three of them are ‘in house’ employees of growers, three are ‘independent’ PCAs who charge a fee for the monitoring and advising service and do not sell any products, and nine are employees of companies which sell agrochemical products. Six BIFS grower-cooperators act as their own PCAs doing the monitoring themselves.

Vineyard management was divided into six main categories: vine nutrition; floor management between the vine rows; under the vine vegetation management; disease management; insect management; and mite management. The implementation program began with BIFS staff sitting down with the grower-cooperator and their PCA and sketching out a 12-month management plan for the vineyard for 1996.

Table 6 contains some of the basic management practices in the 47 BIFS vineyards. All of the major winegrape varieties grown in Lodi are represented in the BIFS program. The most important varieties—Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Zinfandel, and Merlot—make up the bulk of the BIFS vineyards. All but four of the vineyards grew cover crops during the first year of the BIFS program. Five of the BIFS growers opted for mechanical weed management and in nine other vineyards no pre-emergent herbicides were used, the weeds being managed with contact herbicides only. Glyphosate (Roundup) and paraquat are the primary contact herbicide used in these situations. Under-the-vine weed management in the remaining 33 BIFS vineyards was accomplished with a combination of pre-emergent and contact herbicide applications. Documentation of these first-year practices is important to future years’ evaluation of the changes in practices that take place during the course of the pilot demonstration projects.

Table 6. Categorization of Some Important Characteristics of the BIFS Vineyards (# vineyards in each category)

Furrow	Drip	Sprinkler
17	27	3

Cabernet Sauvignon	Chardonnay	Zinfandel	Merlot	Sauvignon Blanc
14	9	14	10	2

Muscat	Chenin Blanc	Tokay	French Colombard
1	2	1	1

Resident Vegetation	Grasses	Legumes
11	12	2

Forage Mix	Legume	Misc.
4	11	3

Contact Herbicide Only	Pre-emergent & Contact Herbicide	Mechanical Weeding
9	33	5

Synthetic Fertilizers	Synthetic and Organic Fertilizers	Organic Fertilizers Only
34	13	2

Research designed to improve understanding and success of BIFS management ("piggy-back research") is important to the continued success of the demonstration projects. Three piggy-back projects were begun in the first year of the Winegrape BIFS.

In October, the Winegrape BIFS project began a three-year collaborative project with the Bio-Integral Resource Center (BIRC) and the California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) to examine and test soil treatments that offer alternatives to methyl bromide use. BIRC is a Berkeley-based non-profit institution that conducts research and education in least-toxic methods for pest control. US-EPA is providing $150,000 over a three-year period for the project. A list of viable alternatives will be assembled and growers in Lodi will be surveyed as to their use of soil treatments prior to the establishment of a new vineyard. Growers interested in testing methyl bromide alternatives will be identified and decisions will be made, in consultation with BIRC and Winegrape BIFS project, on what specific alternatives will be tried. Trials will be established and monitored for results over a three-year period.

LWWC recently submitted a grant proposal to the University of California Statewide IPM Project as a part of the PestCast request for proposals. PestCast is a program of UC IPM, DPR, and US-EPA designed to expand the use of computer-based crop disease forecasting in California. The grant would provide for the purchase of three automated weather stations which would be incorporated into WEATHERNET, an automated pest phenology and weather information network in San Joaquin County, which is operated by University of California Cooperative Extension. WEATHERNET provides an on-line service to Lodi-Woodbridge growers where they can receive up-to-date meteorological, biometeorological, and crop water use data, as well as access to over 50 different pest and crop growth models. The grant would also provide funds to carry out a series of workshops to inform growers about WEATHERNET and help them learn how to access and use the system.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) has taken a keen interest in the Winegrape BIFS project. Several areas will be addressed by NRCS over the next two years of the Winegrape BIFS project. Firstly, NRCS soil quality laboratory is in the process of developing a soil testing kit that can be used in the field to ‘monitor’ soils for effects on soil quality by various management practices. NRCS staff will fine-tune the kit for use in vineyards and then will begin comparing the quality of soils under different management practices such as cover cropped vineyards vs. no cover cropping, vineyards receiving compost vs. those receiving nitrate fertilizers, vineyard soils with no herbicide usage vs. vineyards receiving pre-emergent herbicides and those receiving contact herbicides alone. Secondly, an NRCS staff person who recently completed a workshop on measuring soil microbe populations in soils will use these techniques to measure microbe populations in soils under the above management strategies. The overall goal of this piggy-back project is to demonstrate to Lodi-Woodbridge growers that the various soil building BIFS strategies are beneficial to important soil characteristics.

This section summarizes the West Side BIFS project using excerpts from the West Side BIFS annual report.

The West Side of the San Joaquin Valley is one of the most productive agricultural regions in the world, extending more than 200 miles from Los Banos in the north to Bakersfield in the south. This region has undergone change in cropping rotations during the last 30 years, with an ever-increasing trend toward land planted to row crops of higher value like cotton and vegetables. A number of farmers in the region feel that this intensification of cropping has led to a decline in soil quality and increased pest management problems.

In 1995, 13 West Side farmers, in cooperation with research and extension advisors from University of California and other private and public agency consultants, initiated the West Side On-Farm Demonstration Project (West Side BIFS) to address these concerns and to begin to evaluate biologically integrated soil building and pest management practices within a participatory and on-farm demonstration context.

Implementation of Practices

The twelve farms participating in the West Side BIFS farm a total of approximately 90,000 acres. Each farm has dedicated one or more field sites of 80 acres or more for the BIFS on-farm demonstrations—a total of 1,653 acres in 16 field sites. Most of these farms are within a 20-mile radius of the University of California West Side Research and Extension Center at Five Points, which serves as the center for the project’s various activities. Project participation by farm varies in number and includes owners, managers, technical staff and consultants, and represents a broad and dynamic group with varying levels of skills and experience in biologically integrated farming system practices. This mix of participants reflects both the diversity and specialization of West Side row crop farms. Information outreach approaches take this factor in consideration.

Cotton
(Photo by J. Mitchell)

Processing Tomatoes
(Photo by J. Mitchell)

The project has a support team and several technical advisors and consultants who provide direct farmer assistance or guide the research and extension aspects of the project. The interdisciplinary management/extension team initiates the outreach program and serves as a resource for participating farms and other interested individuals. There are 20 support staff representing various public and private institutions and disciplines. The project is currently housed at the University of California West Side Research and Extension Center at Five Points.

The project is principally based on the Biologically Integrated Orchard Systems (BIOS) projects model developed for almond- and walnut- producing areas of Central California. Unlike the BIOS projects however, the cropping systems of the West Side region are generally dynamic rotations or sequences of annual crops including cotton, processing tomatoes, garlic, onions, melons and lettuce. In addition, the farming community of the West Side area is different in several ways from the communities where BIOS began. For example, farmer participants represent a diverse group with a broad range of technical and managerial skills and experience with biologically integrated farming principles and practices. Furthermore, the West Side agricultural community culture, farm organizational structure as well as decision channels within a farm unit have required a modified approach to information source and exchange channels. The extension model modified here for the West Side conditions, however, embraces the BIOS spirit of participatory research and extension with on-farm demonstrations being the center of efforts aimed at extending biologically integrated farm practices and information exchange.

Harvesting Garlic
(Photo by J. Mitchell)

Lettuce
(Photo by J. Mitchell)

BIFS field day at J&J Ranch.
(Photo by J. Mitchell)

The West Side BIFS management team meets each month to update project developments, address current issues and prepare plans for succeeding months. The management team is composed of seven technical/extension staff from UC and two farmer participants. Both farmers provide candid input that significantly impacts the direction, agenda and activities of the group at large.

John Diener, West Side BIFS mentor grower
(Photo by J. Mitchell)

Tim O'Neill, West Side BIFS mentor grower.
(Photo by J. Mitchell)

Table 7. Highlights of the West Side BIFS project first year accomplishments

Because of the diversity in cropping patterns, management styles among farms, the size of individual farms and the vast distances separating farms in this region, three types of meetings occurred: (1) management team meetings - held every month with the minutes and/or developments sent to each participant, (2) general meetings - scheduled at least four or more times a year for group discussion of major project topics, general action plans and project results and observations, and (3) individual farm meetings with participating growers - at least once within each crop season for continuity in information exchange. Other outreach activities such as field days and introduction of the project to other audiences are also part of the program.

The following general group meetings/seminars were held during the 1995-96 season:

(1) September 18, 1995. Presented project status to the group, reviewed proposed on-farm demonstration rotations, evaluated current project objectives, structures and implementation plans for fall/winter of 1995 activities (sampling, baseline soil quality survey, information gathering on 1995 season).

(2) October - November 1995. Individual farm meetings with participating farmers to cover site selection/farm maps/baseline soil sampling.

(3) December 15, 1995. Discussions of fertility issues when using organic amendments with presentations by UC SAREP director, two UC Extension Specialists, and one farmer.

(4) January 18, 1996. Discussion of additional management options of interest within the West Side on-farm demo project, and developed more specific information sharing and compiling mechanisms.

(5) February 2, 1996. Discussed evaluating the effectiveness and utility of various "farmscaping" approaches to insect pest management including trap cropping, insectary cover crops and perennial buffer cropping areas, evaluation of various cover crop species that might serve these roles, and consideration of how best to coordinate discussions and share information on 1996 management options.

(6) March 11, 1996. Introduction of information sources. Two staff from UC SAREP presented information sources of particular interest to project participants.

(7) June 18, 1996. Meeting focus was on cover cropping methods and strategies for BIFS growers addressing the varied planting time frames specific to each farm. A general discussion on the current pest management concerns/options for the West Side was included. A field visit of selected sites followed for interested participants.

(8) August 13, 1996. This meeting was held to establish specific objectives for on-farm demonstration comparison plots for 1996-97; draw individual farm plans; and update participants on data compilation and information sharing efforts.

March 18, 1996. An informal field day or visit was held to showcase a cover-cropped field at Farming "D" Ranch. Discussions included post-cotton cover crop growth at three participating farms, presentation of data on cover crop water use, and early season insect pest sweeps. Also featured were other cover crops growing at the West Side Research and Extension Center. John Diener led a field discussion of various biological soil building practices he uses on his farm.

A wide range of adjunct projects are either underway or being proposed for the West Side BIFS projects. These include: Effects of Organic Compost on Cotton Nitrogen and Soil Physical Properties, Sustainable Methods to Control Soilborne Diseases of Tomatoes, Integrated Management of Soilborne Diseases and Aphid Transmitted Viruses in California Vegetable Crops--An On-Farm Demonstration, Using Buffer Crops to Protect Cotton from Lygus, Survey of Arthropod Fauna in San Joaquin Valley Cotton, Planting Date Evaluations of Prospective Late Summer Cover Crops for the San Joaquin Valley Row Crop Systems, Nitrogen Mineralization from Organic Amendments, Use of Cover Crop Mulches in Tomato Production Systems, and Applying Variable Rates of Treflan at Layby in Tomatoes.