Organic farmers face persistent barriers to adopting diversification practices in California’s Central Coast

Carlisle, Liz; Esquivel, Kenzo; Baur, Patrick; Ichikawa, Nina F.; Olimpi, Elissa M.; Ory, Joanna; Waterhouse, Hannah; Iles, Alastair; Karp, Daniel S.; Kremen, Claire; Bowles, Timothy M.

doi:10.1080/21683565.2022.2104420

Cited by 22 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…For instance, California's Central Coast Regional Water Board adopted Ag Order 4.0. This regulation places limits on N applications while offering incentives for sustainable agronomic practices such as cover cropping (Carlisle et al 2022). Under Ag Order 4.0, a C:N minimum limit of 20:1 has been set for cover crops, generally restricting the use of legume cover crops such as faba bean.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Potential of Faba Bean (Vicia faba L.) for Dual-purpose Vegetable Production and Cover Cropping

Brasier

Zaragoza

Knecht

et al. 2023

horts

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Cover cropping has been strongly promoted, but few growers have realized the benefits of this practice due to challenges linked to economic returns and whole-system management. In the western United States, winter legumes including faba bean have the potential to add economic value while offering soil health benefits compared with fallow fields. This experiment assessed the potential of five vegetable faba bean varieties for fresh pod yield, fresh pod quality, and biomass N return under a single and multiple pod harvest scheme. Vegetable faba bean varieties were further compared with two popular cover crop faba bean varieties, ‘Bell bean’ and ‘Sweet Lorane’ for cover crop and biomass N return benefits. The experiment revealed significant (P ≤ 0.05) genotypic variation for vegetable fresh pod yield, dry biomass, fresh pod quality, pod N removal, biomass N return, and C:N in three testing environments under the single and multiple harvest schemes. Finally, the vegetable variety ‘Vroma’ produced high average fresh pod yield under the single (16,178 kg·ha−1) and multiple (38,928 kg·ha−1) harvest schemes while maintaining high biomass N return under the single (119 kg·ha−1 N) and multiple harvests (97 kg·ha−1 N) compared with the cover crop varieties (128 kg·ha−1 N). This experiment demonstrated that a single fresh pod harvest on an early and high yielding faba bean variety can generate economic returns while also providing cover crop benefits that are comparable to termination of a faba bean cover crop on the same date.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Potential of Faba Bean (Vicia faba L.) for Dual-purpose Vegetable Production and Cover Cropping

Brasier

Zaragoza

Knecht

et al. 2023

horts

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“…With changes in decision-making required across multiple, interacting levels, from individual farms to irrigation water management districts to regional policymaking, driving transitions in both soil health systems and water resources management is complex and socialecological in nature. For example, structural factors like the degree of land tenure, access to values-based markets, and public and private policy all influence farmers' adoption of soil health practices (Carlisle, 2016;Carlisle et al, 2022), with motivation and other personal characteristics playing an important mediating role. Shifting to various deficit irrigation management strategies or less water-intensive alternative crops will likely be by necessity only, such as when water for irrigation is less available and/or becomes more expensive (Trout and Manning, 2019).…”

Section: Transitions To Integrated Soil Health-water Managementmentioning

confidence: 99%

How does building healthy soils impact sustainable use of water resources in irrigated agriculture?

Acevedo

Waterhouse

Barrios-Masias

et al. 2022

Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene

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As blue water resources become increasingly scarce with more frequent droughts and overuse, irrigated agriculture faces significant challenges to reduce its water footprint while maintaining high levels of crop production. Building soil health has been touted as an important means of enhancing the resilience of agroecosystems to drought, mainly with a focus in rainfed systems reliant on green water through increases in infiltration and soil water storage. Yet, green water often contributes only a small fraction of the total crop water budget in irrigated agricultural regions. To scope the potential for how soil health management could impact water resources in irrigated systems, we review how soil health affects soil water flows, plant–soil–microbe interactions, and plant water capture and productive use. We assess how these effects could interact with irrigation management to help make green and blue water use more sustainable. We show how soil health management could (1) optimize green water availability (e.g., by increasing infiltration and soil water storage), (2) maximize productive water flows (e.g., by reducing evaporation and supporting crop growth), and (3) reduce blue water withdrawals (e.g., by minimizing the impacts of water stress on crop productivity). Quantifying the potential of soil health to improve water resource management will require research that focuses on outcomes for green and blue water provisioning and crop production under different irrigation and crop management strategies. Such information could be used to improve and parameterize finer scale crop, soil, and hydraulic models, which in turn must be linked with larger scale hydrologic models to address critical water-resources management questions at watershed or regional scales. While integrated soil health-water management strategies have considerable potential to conserve water—especially compared to irrigation technologies that enhance field-level water use efficiency but often increase regional water use—transitions to these strategies will depend on more than technical understanding and must include addressing interrelated structural and institutional barriers. By scoping a range of ways enhancing soil health could improve resilience to water limitations and identifying key research directions, we inform research and policy priorities aimed at adapting irrigated agriculture to an increasingly challenging future.

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“…Cover crops have been grown on only ∼5% of farmland in recent years (Brennan, 2017; USDA United States Department of Agriculture, 2019), while statewide estimates for other non-crop vegetation practices, like hedgerows and windbreaks, do not even exist. Qualitative studies have documented significant barriers to adoption for hedgerows and cover crops, especially in California's Central Coast (Esquivel et al, 2021;Carlisle et al, 2022). This region produces mainly vegetables and fruits that are often consumed raw (e.g., lettuce and strawberries), and food safety concerns are paramount.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Nearly a decade after the incident, ∼45% of California produce growers still reported clearing vegetation to create or expand bare-ground buffers around their fields (Baur et al, 2016), despite evidence suggesting the practice is ineffective at mitigating food-safety risks (Karp et al, 2015;Sellers et al, 2018;Glaize et al, 2021;Weller et al, 2022). Thus, growers often perceive that hedgerows and windbreaks pose food safety risks in attracting and harboring wildlife, and additional supply chain requirements from processors or retailers may actually prohibit hedgerows in close proximity to crops like leafy greens (Carlisle et al, 2022). Other barriers to hedgerow adoption include high costs of initial installation and maintenance, and the relatively long time to mature and provide pest control or pollination benefits, unlike herbaceous non-crop vegetation like insectary strips (Long et al, 2017), not to mention the cost of taking land out of production for non-crop vegetation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The main obstacle to growing cover crops in the Central Coast is the high cost of land; Monterey and Santa Cruz counties have the 4th and 5th highest agricultural land rents of counties in California (NASS U.S. National Agricultural Statistics Service, 2020). Growing cover crops that could interfere with cash crop production is a major perceived opportunity cost (Carlisle et al, 2022;Chapman et al, 2022). Farms often grow multiple cash crops per year, which requires careful planning to stay on schedule, especially with highly variable weather (Brennan, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Remote sensing of hedgerows, windbreaks, and winter cover crops in California's Central Coast reveals low adoption but hotspots of use

Thompson

Symonds

Carlisle

et al. 2023

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.

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Non-crop vegetation, such as hedgerows and cover crops, are important on-farm diversification practices that support biodiversity and ecosystem services; however, information about their rates and patterns of adoption are scarce. We used satellite and aerial imagery coupled with machine learning classification to map the use of hedgerows/windbreaks and winter cover crops in California's Central Coast, a globally important agricultural area of intensive fresh produce production. We expected that adoption of both practices would be relatively low and unevenly distributed across the landscape, with higher levels of adoption found in marginal farmland and in less intensively cultivated areas where the pressure to remove non-crop vegetation may be lower. Our remote sensing classification revealed that only ~6% of farmland had winter cover crops in 2021 and 0.26% of farmland had hedgerows or windbreaks in 2018. Thirty-seven percent of ranch parcels had cover crops on at least 5% of the ranch while 22% of ranches had at least one hedgerow/windbreak. Nearly 16% of farmland had other annual winter crops, some of which could provide services similar to cover crops; however, 60% of farmland had bare soil over the winter study period, with the remainder of farmland classified as perennial crops or strawberries. Hotspot analysis showed significant areas of adoption of both practices in the hillier regions of all counties. Finally, qualitative interviews revealed that adoption patterns were likely driven by interrelated effects of topography, land values, and farming models, with organic, diversified farms implementing these practices in less ideal, lower-value farmland. This study demonstrates how remote sensing coupled with qualitative research can be used to map and interpret patterns of important diversification practices, with implications for tracking policy interventions and targeting resources to assist farmers motivated to expand adoption.

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Organic farmers face persistent barriers to adopting diversification practices in California’s Central Coast

Cited by 22 publications

References 51 publications

Potential of Faba Bean (Vicia faba L.) for Dual-purpose Vegetable Production and Cover Cropping

Potential of Faba Bean (Vicia faba L.) for Dual-purpose Vegetable Production and Cover Cropping

How does building healthy soils impact sustainable use of water resources in irrigated agriculture?

Remote sensing of hedgerows, windbreaks, and winter cover crops in California's Central Coast reveals low adoption but hotspots of use

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