A rice team will be awarded $100,000, a walnut team will receive $53,720, and a prune team will receive $45,000 for the first year of their three-year projects. Each will use a farmer-to-farmer approach for information and technology exchange, emphasize science-based information, and will monitor key biological and economic variables.

Funding for this round of BIFS projects came from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources. The program is administered by UC SAREP. Original authorization for the program came from the 1994 California Assembly Bill 3383 with start-up funds from US-EPA and the state's Department of Pesticide Regulation, which funded projects in winegrapes and vegetable crops.

"We're delighted to award these grants to three voluntary researcher-farmer groups who have come together to address the long-term sustainability of California agriculture," said Jenny Broome, SAREP BIFS coordinator. "Similar projects have shown that using a team approach coupling innovative farmers with scientists is a very effective way of helping other growers adopt biologically integrated farming practices."

Farmers involved in the BIFS projects are integrating biological and cultural control of pests into their production systems; providing on-farm habitats for beneficial insects, mites and spiders; and emphasizing soil-building practices such as using cover crops to provide all or part of the nitrogen needed by crops. The intended result, according to Broome, is that biologically integrated farming systems will enable farmers to maintain yields and quality while greatly reducing their reliance on agrichemicals.

BIFS teams include farmers, pest control consultants, and University of California farm advisors and researchers. All three of the newest BIFS projects will be using successful working farms to demonstrate agricultural operations that have reduced pesticide use in high-value crops. Other area farmers have agreed to participate by adapting the methods demonstrated to sections of their own farms and then monitoring and comparing results with their normal practices.

"BIFS-style projects involve a high level of cooperation among individuals, public institutions and private companies," said Robert Reginato, SAREP interim director. "Projects involving such diverse groups are a challenge to plan and run, but we do have a better road map now than was the case three years ago. We are moving ahead to help new teams get started with BIFS, building on the experiences of the earlier projects, while retaining flexibility to respond to local conditions."

Priorities in the rice project are summer water depth management, winter flooding, and drill seeding according to Randall Mutters, Butte County farm advisor and member of the rice management team. Mutters is collaborating with UC Davis faculty and extension researchers, an agronomist/pest control advisor for the Butte County Rice Growers Association, and seven rice farmers, including Herbert Pierce of Chico and Bryce Lundberg of Richvale.

Farmers are eager to try new methods, Mutters said, for several reasons: increased weed resistance and more regulations have increased chemical costs, there is a need and a desire to improve water quality, and in 2003 the federal farm subsidy program will end and profit margins will shrink.

"We have gotten a resounding vote of confidence and encouragement from the growers who will be participating in the program. They realize the need to revisit some of the conventional cropping systems practices in order to minimize inputs and maintain profitability and long-term productivity," he said. "That kind of grower encouragement generates a lot of enthusiasm within the research community because the bottom line at Cooperative Extension has historically been to address problems of an applied nature with immediate benefits to the agricultural community. The exciting part of this program is that it addresses both the immediate and long-term issues of sustainability."

Drill seeding is one of the cropping practices that growers are experimenting with, Mutters said. He noted that the usual practice for planting rice is to flood the fields and seed them by airplane. An alternative practice is to drill seed the rice and carefully control the water level to kill weeds but nourish the rice seedlings. "Moving water onto the fields at different depths at the right time is very important with some alternative weed control methods," he said.

William Horwath, assistant professor in the UC Davis land, air and water resources department and a member of the BIFS rice management team, noted that Òthe BIFS project also gives us the opportunity to continue building bridges with other disciplines, such as wildlife interests.Ó He said winter flooding and residue incorporation in rice paddies has shown an increase in soil nitrogen availability and at the same time provided expanded habitat for waterfowl.

Gary Obenauf, coordinator of the prune BIFS project, is project manager for the California Prune Board and has been involved for several years with the Biological Prune Systems (BPS) program in the Upper Sacramento Valley. The BIFS prune project will incorporate biologically integrated farming methods that the BPS and a similar Environmentally Sound Prune Systems (ESPS) program has been promoting since 1996. Demonstration orchards will be established in each prune growing area including Butte, Colusa, Glenn, Merced, Sutter, Tehama and Tulare counties. Each orchard will be split, comparing the conventionally managed and biologically-based production systems. All plots will be monitored weekly by field scouts using proven monitoring methods.

"The BIFS prune project will bring more cooperation between the University of California and the Biological Prune Systems program," he said. Obenauf noted that the BIFS project will be combined with other support from several
different programs all with the same reduced pesticide thrust. The California Prune Board will be providing more than $250,000 in support of the combined efforts.

One of the prune orchards used as a demonstration site for the BIFS project is located at Abbey Ranch in Vina, Tehama County. Monks at Abbey's monastery are participating in the BPS and ESPS projects, and have hosted demonstrations in cover crop plantings and pruning techniques at their site, according to Fred Thomas of CERUS Consulting, a participant in the management teams of both the prune and walnut BIFS projects. Other BIFS prune demonstration orchards will include the farms of John Heier of Live Oak, Brad and Monte Johnson of Gridley, and Onstott Orchards of Gridley.

"These growers who are doing a lot of the BIFS work are taking risks with their orchards and their own bottom lines for their commodity and industry," said Thomas.

Joe Grant, San Joaquin County farm advisor and coordinator of the walnut BIFS project, said their focus will be on adapting concepts and practices from similarly constructed Biologically Integrated Orchard System (BIOS) projects in Yolo and Solano counties to the San Joaquin Valley, where more acres of walnuts are grown and where the pressure from codling moth is greater.

"Codling moth is a very serious pest here," Grant said. "The blueprint for codling moth management in this project will be to use a less disruptive pesticide in combination with pheromone mating disruption and biological control with Trichogramma wasps, which have really only been tried in isolation before. If we can make the combination work against codling moth here, we think it will work anywhere."

Grant said another unique aspect of the walnut project is the formal collaboration between UC and the Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF), a non-profit organization that was instrumental in starting the BIOS projects and in securing state funding for the BIFS projects.

"UC will coordinate orchard monitoring, management team activities, and other implementation aspects of the project," Grant said, "but CAFF will do the outreach components which they do so well, including producing a newsletter for the growers and organizing field days."

Grant said he is eager to work with the farmers enrolled in the walnut BIFS project. "The neat thing about our group of growers is that they cover the whole range---from small, limited-scale, part-time growers, to larger, more mainstream growers on big acreage," he said. Walnut demonstration orchards will be located at the farms of Garth Joliff of Modesto, Christopher Locke of Lockeford, Tom McGurk of Stockton, Jack and Diana Radavero of Linden, and eight other sites.

Grower Russell Lester, of Dixon Ridge Farms in Winters, said he hopes to be a link between the existing BIOS walnut project in Yolo and Solano counties and the new BIFS walnut project in the San Joaquin Valley. "We've learned a lot with the growers here about what works and what doesn't, and hopefully the San Joaquin Valley growers can start in a more advanced position. Having worked with BIOS projects over the last five years, it's very exciting for me to see the information
extended into that very important walnut growing region of the state."

The three BIFS pilot projects are funded for one year. Contingent upon demonstrated progress, the projects will be eligible for renewed funding.
The additional money recently provided by the California Legislature (see "New BIFS/Methyl Bromide Allocations," p. 2) will allow SAREP to fund more new projects as well as extend the funding of current projects.