Project Update
SAREP funds expansion of winegrape, prune BIFS projects

Two groups of farmers, researchers and ag consultants in counties stretching from Tehama in the north to Santa Barbara in the south have received grants from UC SAREP to promote biologically integrated practices in Central Coast winegrape vineyards and Central Valley prune orchards. The farming practices, fine-tuned and evaluated by a team of growers, UC scientists and consultants, are designed to reduce off-farm movement of pollutants and soil, while enhancing natural processes.

The Central Coast Vineyard Team (CCVT) will be awarded $99,969 to fund the first year of their three-year project and the Integrated Prune Farming Practices (IPFP) team will receive $80,000 to continue its project. Each will use the Biologically Integrated Farming Systems (BIFS) extension model whose main components include a team approach to project management, on-farm demonstrations, monitoring of key biological and economic variables, and farmer-to-farmer information flow.

Funding for this round of BIFS projects came from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 9 Agricultural Initiative, with funds made available to help California farmers with pest management challenges they face related to the implementation of the 1996 Food Quality Protection Act. SAREP administers the BIFS program.

“These two farmer-researcher partnerships have several years of experience in sustainable agriculture in California and are now ready to mainstream their efforts,” said Janet C. “Jenny” Broome, SAREP associate director. “These teams have a committed core of growers who can help other growers adopt biologically integrated farming practices and make a difference on a regional scale.”

Farmers involved in the BIFS projects integrate biological and cultural control of pests into their production systems; provide on-farm habitats for beneficial insects; use crops to provide all or part of the nitrogen needed by crops; and monitor pests, beneficials, and water and nitrogen needs to inform their farm management decisions. These biologically integrated farming practices, according to Broome, enable conventional farmers to maintain yields and quality while greatly reducing their reliance on agrichemicals.

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

“BIFS demonstration projects involve a high level of cooperation among individuals, public institutions and private companies,” said Sean L. Swezey, SAREP director. “Projects involving such diverse groups represent a new and innovative extension model, but we have accumulated seven years of experience in this grants program. 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.”

Through their outreach, the two projects promote practices that reduce environmental problems while simultaneously maintaining profitability.

Winegrape team

The vineyard team BIFS project addresses the main environmental challenges faced by Central Coast growers without compromising their economic viability. By promoting a system that integrates soil fertility, plant nutrition, and pest management decisions, the project will reduce sediments, pesticides and nutrients moving into bodies of water draining into the Monterey and Morro Bay estuaries.

“Growers participate in the project because they believe that it is an important process,” said Kris O’Connor, executive director of CCVT and coordinator of the vineyard BIFS project. “Many of our growers incorporate BIFS practices because it reduces their inputs and improves quality. It is critical to communicate their successes to other mainstream growers in the region.”

Dana Merrill, winegrape grower, vineyard manager and president of the Central Coast Vineyard Team said the winegrape BIFS project will allow growers to work with Cooperative Extension to spotlight the sustainable practices many of them use.

“We believe if we can get a group of growers who are perceived as respected and committed operators to share their successful practices, others will adopt and adapt the practices,” he said.

Merrill noted that the Central Coast Vineyard Team growing area encompasses a diverse region, including parts of Monterey, San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties.

“We have growers in rural areas, near population centers, in cool areas and in warmer climates,” he said. “There is no one system that will work the best for everyone. In the BIFS project, we are trying to come up with tools and guidelines that can arm growers to move toward sustainable growing systems. The growers are the best ones to adapt these to individual growing situations.”

He said field days might show growers that one vineyard is able to use leaf pulling efficiently to avoid some insecticides, while other vineyards may benefit from cover crops or compost.

“The BIFS project helps us in our mission to adopt more sustainable techniques by allowing individual growers to zero in on the whole farming system. It’s a logical next step in what we’re trying to do,” he said. “It allows us to set up a biological system where we can get good data.”

Merrill manages several thousand acres of winegrapes in Monterey, San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties, and is a founding member of the Central Coast Vineyard Team.

The typical farming practices and the slopes associated with Central Coast vineyards make these particularly susceptible to erosion and run-off, a major cause of watershed degradation in that region. In addition to the above practices, the CCVT gives special attention to reducing off-site movement of water and soil through the promotion of various cover-cropping strategies.

Prune team

The prune team addresses the main environmental challenges faced by California’s 1,400 prune growers in the Central Valley. According to Gary Obenauf, project manager for the California Dried Plum (formerly “Prune”) Board and coordinator of the prune BIFS project, runoff of both pesticides and fertilizers into the stream and river systems as well as leaching into ground water must be mitigated by prune farmers if they are to farm effectively. In addition, water is no longer an unlimited resource to California prune growers.

Dan Aguair, a BIFS prune grower, said he has learned useful information that has given him confidence to reduce inputs.

“Monitoring insects and irrigation needs has been very helpful,” Aguair said. “Since the BIFS team has been helping us monitor the predatory [good] bugs and seeing when there’s a good buildup, we’ve been able to cut back on some sprays, and we’re getting close to maybe eliminating a dormant spray. There are 10 acres adjacent [to the BIFS block] that we haven’t dormant-sprayed in four years. We’re still in the early stages, but we’re definitely getting results from the project.”

Aguair, who manages Simonich Farms, Inc., a family operation in Tulare, has enrolled 40 of his 320 acres of prunes in the BIFS project.

“We’re also now doing pressure bomb readings, which tests the stress on trees,” he said. Pressure bomb readings show when the trees need water and allow him to irrigate at optimum times only, rather than on a set irrigation schedule. BIFS growers often save on the amounts of water used in irrigation, which in turn, decreases the likelihood of nutrient leaching.

“Water analysis has also helped,” he said. “By knowing how much nitrogen is in our well water we’ve been able to cut back on fertilizer inputs. Tulare County farm advisor [emeritus] Steve Sibbett has been great to work with on the project.”

“Monitoring requires us to manage more intensively, be a lot more ‘hands-on,’ and know what insects are out there, but it is definitely a cost-saving tool,” he said. “Monitoring the insects is the biggest change we’ve made, and it has given us more confidence.”

Aguair said he is looking forward to finding out what the long-term effects of the BIFS-recommended practices will be.

Past prune profitability has resulted in substantial new plantings that are now beginning to bear fruit. The resulting crop has presented the industry with an oversupply and low grower prices.

“California prune growers must cut costs and improve fruit quality to be profitable,” said Obenauf. “Costly inputs such as insecticide and fertilizer materials that may only be marginally effective must be reduced.”

Both projects are extending a pest management decision-making system based on monitoring of pests, beneficials and weather data that results in fewer pesticide applications with less-toxic materials. With this system, for example, wintertime sprays of diazinon—an organophosphate insecticide that has contaminated California rivers—was eliminated on 877 acres farmed by 33 prune growers statewide.

A “nitrogen budgeting tool” has been successfully used in the prune farming systems that permits the most efficient synthetic nitrogen applications. By taking into account nitrogen inputs from all possible sources, including irrigation water and ground cover, and by analyzing leaf nitrogen content, this approach usually results in significant reductions in applications of purchased nitrogen. A similar approach also makes more efficient use of irrigation water possible.

With intensive outreach programs that include newsletters, field days, tailgate meetings, grower breakfasts, a sustainability rating system, and Web sites, these two projects can influence practices in 14 counties. At stake is the long-term interest of growers farming 100,000 acres of winegrape and 81,000 acres of prune, and the health of major watersheds in California.