BIFS Workgroup Plenary Session
May 17, 2005
Rec Pool Lodge, UC Davis
The following is a summary of the BIFS Workgroup meeting, including question/answer periods and discussions following each session. (Slide presentations can be viewed in PDF format by clicking on the links below)
Welcome and update on BIFS workgroup
Jenny Broome, UC SAREP and current BIFS workgroup chair, welcomed everyone and announced that the workgroup submitted a proposal for another year of operational support and we should hear in June or July 2005 about funding. Because she is on leave right now and out of the country, we need some one new to become Chair and she encouraged people to think about volunteering.
Introductions
50 workgroup members signed in today and attended the meeting. Everyone introduced themselves and provided one item of potential interest and/or information from a current project to share with the group.
Brief overview of SAREP and the BIFS program's future including possible
linkages with new Agricultural Sustainability
Institute (ASI) at UC Davis
UC ANR AVP Rick Standiford and UC Davis CAES Associate Dean Michael Parella,
Calvin Qualset, Interim Director, ASI, CAES, UC Davis
Rick Standiford - SAREP and the new Agricultural Sustainability Institute (ASI):
ANR leadership is looking at its approach to sustainable agriculture. At the recent listening sessions held in fall 2003, they heard stakeholders (both internal and external to ANR) feel ANR needs to be more visible in its role in sustainable agriculture. There are a few initiatives at ANR. The Program Council (which oversees statewide planning activities for CE & AES) includes the 4 program leaders, 4 associate executive deans from the ag schools, and regional directors has discussed the issues raised on sustainable agriculture. They have a white paper on sustainable agriculture and resources in ANR which has been advanced to the ANR Executive Council. He says they can circulate to workgroup in the next few weeks.
Sustainability is one of 6 initiatives of ANR. SAREP and BIFS workgroup strong underpinnings of where ANR needs to be going.
There will be a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between ANR and UC Davis CAES about the proposed joint director position for SAREP and ASI.
SAREP will continue statewide focus which will be spelled out in the MOU. The 3 regions and 3 ag campuses are actively involved with SAREP and this will be maintained and enhanced.
Rick has personal experience with a similar set up as he was director of an ANR statewide program, the Integrate Hardwood Range Management Program, which interfaced with several ANR workgroups and he is a faculty member at UC Berkeley. There are periodic reviews to make sure mission is being fulfilled and that statewide activity continues.
He is hopeful that having ASI activities at UCD campus will lead to exciting new programs and areas for cooperation.
Cal Qualset, Interim Director of UC Davis CAES ASI:
For UC Davis, CAES the ASI will work to focus and present UC Davis work as relevant to sustainability. For example, Cal is currently working on introducing asparagus to Lithuania and feels this is the kind of effort that ASI could support.
Institute vs. Center (Institute - can have centers within the institute). Institutes have to be accepted by the Dean.
CAES is in the process of establishing ASI and will be instituting a search for new director. Hope to have decision on endowed chair within next 2 months as well as a national symposium. They have asked Kellogg foundation to support the chair and the symposium. The idea is to create a world-class institute.
Questions (Q), Comments (C), Answers (A):
Q1. Will there be teaching opportunities for the director?
A. Yes, we expect director to be well known in the area of agriculture.
A. Teaching will be no more than 10% of the director's time.
Q2. Must this person be a senior tenure track faculty person?
A. Yes. We assume they'll want professor title.
Q. But you're restricting the applicants.
A. We could certainly offer an extension appointment. Dominant interest might
be professorial.
C. This academic focus might raise ego issues. Maybe that's not what you want in this position.
C. You could bring in others from other systems with the academic senate split.
A. Good and relevant candidate could be a professor here, even if hasn't been a professor before.
Q3. What will be size of staff of the ASI and where will it be?
A. Space is allocated at the Bowley Center. Anticipate the program will need
an administrative assistant and then will get grants and add professional staff.
A. SAREP budget stays the same - staff at SAREP won't change.
C. We will ask ASI to house curriculum support staff as well.
Q4. What kind of individual for director are you looking for and what will
be hiring criteria?
A. That should be opened up for discussion as someone very good for this may
not fit the role that is envisioned.
A. UC CAES is looking to the Mondavi Institute as a model. There will be committees to advise the director and to bring more money into the effort. The director is getting a "hunting license" to make this thing better.
Q5. How to ensure not duplicating SAREP?
A. There will be one director but separate advisory committees. Program leader
for Ag Productivity in ANR (Maxwell Norton) will oversee that SAREP goals are
still being met. ANR will maintain 5-year review cycle to check in on intent
of SAREP program. Feedback loop on seeing how this will work - co-location will
also help.
From Architects to Privy
Carpenters: The Decline of the Land-grants and Extension
George McDowell, Emeritus Professor of Agricultural and
Applied Economics, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
In its relation to society the university's function is, in the first instance,
to provide
the means to ends which society has chosen for itself. But it is a lame architect
who houses an activity without civilizing it. You do not sensitively house the
life of a man by providing only for
the movement of his bowels, and if in seeking to serve his needs you search
out only the known
needs which he declares and will think to define, that he needs a kitchen and
a place to lay
his head, you will serve him very ill indeed. He buys the services of an architect;
you give him the services of a privy-carpenter.
(Taylor 1966, The Masks of Society, p 228).
Questions/Comments:
C. At UC there is strong faculty governance on tenure decisions so I disagree
with your comment about undue influence of stakeholders on this aspect.
A. However, faculty make recommendations then higher committees make final (up
or down) decisions about tenure case.
C. It seems you are being a bit self serving as you are an economist, and making a case for economists wanting more money/support within landgrants.
C. Have to have farmers as collaborators to garner political will.
A. I don't have an answer for how you win political support, but you have to have a positive benefit that is attributed to you from growers and people in society more broadly. And your growers have to stand with you.
C. Researchers have a distinct flavor - go after a topic...They can be good on a narrow topic, but sometimes they are not a good cheerleader for themselves. We need to pick up cheerleaders to garner support. Professors are more egotistic than county-based advisors. In the BIFS program, we've had real dilemma to be a farmer and look out and see that we really need. Lowly farmer feels that he is being shut down...I'm going to bring you the problems. Researchers are dedicated people, but don't necessarily have the skills make a case for their own value to the public at large.
A. Disciplinary researchers are caught up in system of rewards that they can't get out of...and are substantially ego driven. We all suggest to the world that we will know something about something that nobody else knows...Sometimes the piece (we know) is so small that it's almost irrelevant.
Extension specialists at UC are not considered professors and full faculty members; they appear to be treated as second class citizens.
C. Its important not to demonize and to have a vision.
A. We've lost public funding because they don't know what we do. All the flags, proud to be American, but don't make me pay for what I'm proud of.
C. Agree with marketing aspect. UC's unique niche is that we have so many Nobel laureates and we serve society with research and county advisors. We spent 4 hours out of an all day meeting recently talking about air quality with the dairy industry. So we are doing pretty well at integration of producers and needs of society. We're trying to deliver a broad based program. Need to be able to talk about what we're doing along these lines to the public. We're dealing with a critical air quality issues. Sometimes we move so fast that we're not telling our story. We have to market our own efforts.
C. Ego challenges, we work in a paradox...if you toot your own horn too much, you're like a peacock strutting. All cooperators bring their own talents. Reagan - "it's amazing what you can accomplish if you don't demand the credit."
A. Credit is a public good. You can give it away, and not lose it!
However, this is necessary but not sufficient - must be aggressive in telling about your impacts to the wider society.
C. Two faculty members at UCD said they were asked to enter into an MOU with a nonprofit advocate. They asked the office of research if they should do this, hoping to be told no they should not, and were told it is common. The wave of the future - public/private partnerships.
C. As a UC stakeholder I have experienced personal frustration as a farmer but also someone involved in conservation on never being able to collaborate with UC extension because of political issues. UC extension circles the wagon and acts like ag is under attack and we (UC) will protect ag. However, as a conservation entity, we will work with anybody that makes sense to make a particular project work. You can't shut out everybody who doesn't think like you. He suggests UC needs to be more like that.
A. It's scandalous how we've wasted the political capital by not working with environmentalists who have helped landgrants get programs like USDA supported IPM monies and centers over the years.
Enhancing Biologically Integrated
Farming Systems for Lettuce on the Central Coast of California
Hugh Smith, UCCE Monterey County
Q. Have you bumped into food safety concerns - rodents, snakes?
A. Interest in doing some monitoring for rodents...someone at UC Davis...maybe could collect data. That may prevent them.
Making Biocontrol
Work
Christy Getz, Assistant Cooperative Extension
Specialist, Environmental Science Policy and Management, UC Berkeley, and Keith
Douglass Warner, Environmental Studies Institute, Santa Clara University
Comments/Questions:
Q1. You have a pretty good view of the status of biocontrol on walnuts in your chart. Are you making the assumption that biocontrol works, or do you just want to know if people are adopting it?
A. Hard to see biocontrol working.
C1. In walnuts you'll never see biocontrol working.
A. Ecology slides behind the curtain because you can't see it. One of the challenges for how to talk about it, and policy...how do you find carrots instead of sticks for biocontrol adoption?
C. We do not have a program of biocontrol of codling moth in walnuts and apples.
C. This is an outgrowth of Keith's BIFS project and extending a look at top 14 crops and the effect of OPs in these crops. There were quite a large number of new chemicals released on the market stimulated by FQPA. So if you have a bunch of new soft chemistries now maybe we can do some biocontrol, or if we got pheromones to work, maybe biocontrol could work.
C. But we already know this...so not clear you need to pay for this study.
C. I think you need to phrase the project a little differently. It greatly depends on the commodity you're working with. There is a problem with saying you are trying to "make biocontrol work". You seem to be putting yourself as an analyst of the whole history of biocontrol; that is a rather large project.
C. Seems like you have to look at success stories of biocontrol. Where there has been the research on biocontrol you can study how successful it has been and where it has failed. Where it has failed, maybe no more research is needed.
US EPA funding opportunities
Cindy Wire, US EPA Region 9
2 more funding opportunities to announce:
1. 2nd call up to $92,000 for another project...we expect more from our grantees...so make the amount of $ avail.. early June 45 - 60 day call. Distributed via email
2. National EPA RFP - unique minor & specialty crops - critical pest issues
involving IPM. Broad in scope - but somewhat mimics FQPA. Up to $125,000 - only
$615,000 avail. nationally...region will be submitted locally...region
does initial screen...forwards 2 projects.
20 projects forwarded - 4-5 projects funded in the nation. Will be released
in next 2-3 weeks, with 45 day turn around.
Central Coast
Extension Programs with Hispanic Growers
Daniel
Mountjoy, USDA NRCS
C. Referring back to George McDowell's talk we need to build the privy, i.e respond to wants but also build towards needs....build the privy, then talk about septic systems.
Biologically Integrated Farming Systems for Table Grapes in the Southern
San Joaquin Valley
Walt Bentley, IPM Specialist, Kearney Ag Center, Statewide
UC IPM Program
We hope to engage all of the regional viticulture advisors in this project. The project will involve basic comparative programs - a BIFS program compared to a more conventional approach and will address a number of issues:
1. Sulfur dust use - it will be difficult to try to reduce it but there are drift and air quality and worker exposure issues we hope to address with new alternative materials and timing of applications based on weather and risk indexes.
2. Now that we have Provado, leafhoppers aren't the key grape pests they used to be. Chlorpyrifos in spring is a problem with runoff...we will try to demonstrate the effectiveness of other materials. Some growers are not even aware of Applaud.
Lessons Learned from BIFS projects - The
Central Coast Vineyard Team (CCVT), and Integrated
Prune Farming Practices (IPFP)
Kris O'Connor,
Executive Director, CCVT, and Gary Obenauf, Research Coordinator, CA Dried Plum
Board
The State Water Resources Control Board's (SWRCB) Agriculture and Water
Quality Grants Program (AWQGP)
New funds available and provide input
on granting process, Leslie Laudon, Division of Financial Assistance, SWRCB.
Over the past year we have established an agriculture and water quality grants program. There is still $45 million available. There were some concerns raised about the process and we are addressing them. The State board will approve the current round of recommended projects in June 2005. CCVT was one of the groups funded.
Many commodity organizations wanted just to see monitoring projects related to the ag wavier issues. The Board also wanted to see implementation projects where we could then have them add the monitoring.
She will distribute list via email to us.
They are working to revise their guidelines for the proposals, however they are constrained by legislation and also they don't have the staff to give out small grants. There was a lot of pressure to get the funds out and get them used, so they are trying to balance many issues.
So this fall they will run two simultaneous programs...ag and water quality (Prop 40 and 50) and watershed $$. On a fast track to get the $ out, again. They are revising guidelines by November 2005 and then will issue solicitations.
Want to identify needs. How can we better coordinate with the BIFS advisory board so that we hear from as many people as possible and get your perspective?
Comments/Questions
C. You need to protect your cooperators from lawsuits then people will participate in monitoring on their farms. Their reporting requirements show where it's happening. Unfortunately there are people looking to bring lawsuits...you won't get a dairymen. We need to protect them from others looking for people trying to sue them. (What will you pay me not to sue me?)
C. Yes you have to get rid of the harassers.
C. You should have alternate proportion of grants that are monitoring programs.
C. During the recent process it seemed like there were no active watershed scientists as reviewers, nor any growers as reviewers. It also seemed like there was regional board advocacy for particular projects even when technical limitations were raised about a project.
A. We hope this time around to announce regional priorities ahead of time, we might use pre-proposal process.
A. We are also trying to consider if we might provide large grants to other organizations to then distribute the money in a more focused approach.
C. My agency reviewed 30 proposals and it seemed like the review process was rather cumbersome and restrictive. It was hard to communicate what we knew was good and not good about each project.
A. Evaluation process will be looked at for the next round.
C. If you can give us the draft guidelines ahead of time on the review process as well as the content of proposals, we could make positive suggestions.
C. It's key that priorities are spelled out in selection process.
Next steps for the BIFS workgroup and BIFS program
Jenny Broome,
UC SAREP
For the BIFS workgroup:
- William Horwath may be interested in chairing the BIFS workgroup starting July 1. 2005, we will let you know in the next month or so.
- We will let you know about funding opportunities that come up this next year.
- SAREP can help coordinate proposals.
- Sorry that we did not get time to discuss potential new cooperative projects at the meeting but hope we can use the BIFS listserve to discuss ideas over the next year. There will be a fall ANR CORE proposal process and it would be good to see if BIFS workgroup might compete for some of that support as the BIFS workgroup addresses several of ANR priority issues.
- There were also EPA funds discussed today that might be appropriate to fund a new BIFS or BIFS like project.
- And then the SWRCB funds for ag and water quality request for proposals which will come out this fall.
BIFS Program:
We at SAREP will continue to work with the rest of UC, growers and consultants,
agricultural industry members, natural resource agencies, and federal and state
regulators to coordinate new BIFS projects in new crops and regions through
obtaining extramural funds from current and new partners. Because there are
no new State funds for the BIFS program, the BIFS Program Advisory Review Board
may no longer need to meet, as such, to review BIFS projects. However, members
are invited to continue as part of the BIFS workgroup where they can continue
to provide input and ideas on BIFS projects.
Adjourn/ Recognition of BIF Program Advisory Review Board members
Bev Ransom, BIFS Coordinator
Thanks to all BIFS Program Advisory Review Board members for their dedication and service over the past years. We look forward to continuing to work with you in the future.