Program Notes
Staff Activities
Sean L. Swezey, SAREP director, made a July presentation in Point Reyes Station at "Organic Strawberry Production," the third in a series of farm diversification workshops sponsored by UC Cooperative Extension, the Marin Agricultural Land Trust and Marin Organic. Other presenters included Carolee Bull, a USDA plant pathologist who was a principal investigator of a SAREP-funded strawberry methyl bromide alternatives project, and berry farmers Vanessa Bogenholm and Brandon Ross.
Swezey presented a paper on organic cotton production in the Northern San Joaquin Valley at the 14th International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) in Victoria, British Columbia in August. SAREP Associate Director Jenny Broome also attended the IFOAM conference as well as the Organic Wine Conference held just prior to IFOAM. Swezey and SAREP education coordinator David Chaney attended the third annual National Small Farm Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico in September. In association with that conference, Swezey chaired the plenary meeting of the USDA's SARE program's Western Coordinating Committee for Sustainable Agriculture and made a presentation on organic farming practices and materials. In October, Swezey made a presentation on "Concepts and Growth of Organic Agriculture in California" to a meeting of the Central Valley chapter of the California Association of Pest Control Advisers (CAPCA) in Modesto. He also made a presentation in October to the statewide UC Cooperative Extension Master Gardeners conference in Asilomar on the principles of biointensive and organic pest management in the home garden.
In October, Broome made a presentation on SAREP's Biologically Integrated Farming Systems (BIFS) program at the statewide CAPCA conference in Anaheim.
David Chaney serves as co-chair of the steering committee of the USDA-SARE program's Sustainable Agriculture Network. He and Gail Feenstra, SAREP food systems analyst, facilitated a short-course on direct marketing at the November California Farm Conference in Ventura.
Feenstra and Jeri Ohmart of SAREP attended the first national farm-to-cafeteria conference in Seattle in October and the national Community Food Security Coalition annual conference. In November Feenstra attended the first technical committee meeting of the federally funded national research project "Sustaining Local Food Systems in a Globalizing Environment (NE-1012)" in Minneapolis. SAREP is launching a local project in Stanislaus County as part of NE-1012.
Feenstra and Robert L. Bugg, SAREP senior analyst, gave presentations during a series of agriculture seminars for Knight Journalism Fellows at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism in September. Feenstra participated in a panel on "Food and the Family." Bugg was on the panel "Agro-forestry and Farming with the Wild."
Additionally Bugg made presentations for the Auburn Department of Recreation; at UC Davis on sustainable vineyard management with Richard Hoenisch, UCD viticulture and enology department; for a group of Chinese agriculturalists organized by Michael Miller, state Department of Water Resources; on cover crops for San Mateo County growers organized by Tim Frahm, Farm Bureau and Ann King, UC Cooperative Extension; for Monterey County growers with Richard Smith, UC Cooperative Extension; to Patty Kiehl's pest management class at Sierra College, Auburn; on ecological crop management for an IPM continuing education seminar organized by Richard Dodson, Merced College; on salmon-friendly farming at the Nimbus Fish Hatchery in Citrus Heights organized by Dwight Harvey, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; and for UCD professor Bruce Jaffee's soil science class at Dixon Ridge Farms.
Bev Ransom, SAREP BIFS coordinator/grants manager, gave a presentation on the walnut BIFS project at the UC BIFS Workgroup meeting in October (see page 4 for a complete report.)
Visitors
Marco Barzman, former SAREP biologically integrated farming systems (BIFS) coordinator, hosted William Mgcoyi, an agricultural technician with the Agricultural Research Council in Elsenburg, South Africa in August. Barzman and Mgcoyi toured organic farms and institutions with information on organic agriculture. Mgcoyi was interested in specific information on organic production and management to take back to his farmer-clients. The USDA sponsored his visit to California.
In September, SAREP staff members Lyra Halprin and Jeri Ohmart hosted Shoji Shinkai, assistant professor of farm management from the Department of Agriculture and Resource Economics at Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Japan. Shinkai was in California doing research on farmers markets, and toured the Davis farmers market with manager Randii MacNear, a SAREP program advisory committee member. In Japan there are both privately run and public farmers markets. At the larger markets, local farmers pay approximately 15 percent of their gross sales to participate, while outsiders are charged 20 percent. Shinkai's family runs a private farmers market.
Jenny Broome and Desmond Jolly, UC Small Farm Center director, met with visitors from South Africa interested in rural development and the way Cooperative Extension-the university link with county government-can work to further community development. UC Cooperative Extension Fresno County agriculture labor management advisor Steve Sutter also attended the October meeting.
