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While pursuing a doctorate at Penn State University, Hinds joined an ongoing research project with his advisor Mary Barbercheck and a team of researchers who wanted to compare the benefits of growing more diverse cover crop mixtures in a wheat-corn-soy rotation. “We were excited to see if we could take advantage of the unique traits of different cover crops, especially in mixtures, in order to help build soil, manage weeds and regulate pests,” said Hinds.

When farmers plant cover crops, they often have to terminate it before it can reach peak bloom, thus losing the opportunity to provide natural enemies and pollinators with early-season nectar and pollen. While the research team was at first challenged by the idea of delaying termination of the cover crop to allow for bloom time, Hinds began to think of ways they could reintroduce floral diversity into the landscape without compromising management of the crop.

“We decided that we could partially terminate the cover crop and leave behind a border made up of diverse flowering cover crops that would reach peak bloom and would support beneficial insects later into the season.”

With support from a 2014 SARE Graduate Student grant, Hinds was able to further his research into using flowering cover crops to support natural enemies. Wanting to take advantage of the unique benefits offered by different cover crop species, he decided to test buckwheat and cowpeas to see how effectively they could support natural enemies in a nearby corn crop.

Through his research, Hinds found that important natural enemies, like the pink-spotted lady beetle and insidious flower bug, were more common in fields with a neighboring flowering cover crop. Although the research team could not reliably establish cowpeas due to wet spring field conditions, their laboratory studies also yielded some interesting results.

In the lab, they found that insidious flower bugs, which are important predators in many cropping systems, survive longer and lay more eggs when given plant nectar and pollen from either buckwheat or cowpeas. “When we raised insects on both plant species together, they survived even longer and laid even more eggs,” Hinds noted. “This kind of research can help us think about the particular plants we can use to bolster important natural enemies and about how to design cropping systems and rotations where we can take advantage of the services provided by beneficial insects.” The team shared their research with enthusiastic growers at farmer field days and garnered a lot of interest in flowering mixtures and how they can support natural enemies in different cropping systems.

“Looking back, I think it was great that Mary encouraged all of her students to apply for SARE grants,” Hinds remarked. “The process definitely challenged us, and it was an excellent source of professional development. With my funded grant, I was able to expand my research, gain grant-writing and budget-management experience, as well as engage in networking and even collaborative research with the USDA.”

Recently, Hinds joined the team at SARE Outreach, where he uses his expertise to develop accessible and practical outreach materials for agricultural audiences and professionals. “I think it’s wonderful to have the opportunity to support a program that was so critical to my professional development and success in my graduate career.”

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They collected video footage of various tools in action, and recorded interviews of farmers and manufacturers describing the best use of these tools. They tested some of the European tools and techniques on-farm, and demonstrated them locally at their Midwest Mechanical Weed Control field day held in Holt, Michigan in September 2017, which had 140 participants, 100 of whom were farmers. They focused their demonstrations on in-row mechanical cultivation with torsion weeders, flex tine cultivators, and finger weeders:

• The torsion weeder is an in-row cultivation tool that can be set up to be used on multiple or single row systems. It can be used in a variety of systems.

• The flex tine cultivator is a blind and in-between-row cultivation tool (blind cultivation occurs before a crop emerges). It was traditionally designed to be used in small grains but can be used in a wide range of crops to control small weeds.

• The finger weeder is an in-row cultivation implement that can be used for multiple row systems and walk behind tractors. It can be used in direct seeded or transplanted crops.

“The consensus from both on-farm and research-farm trials was that the finger weeder and flex tine weeders are versatile tools that work well on a wide range of transplanted and large-seeded direct-seeded crops,” said Brainard. “Although the torsion weeder can also work extremely well under the right conditions, it is more difficult to calibrate and integrate into diverse farming systems, and works well under a narrower set of soil and environmental conditions.”

The project is ongoing, but thus far Brainard and his team have created videos demonstrating each of the tools in the field.

View Brainard's presentation on this project, from the 2018 Farmer's Forum through NCR-Sare's Youtube playlist. Visit www.youtube.com/NCRSAREvideo for this and other videos. 

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Like Maria Ana Reyes, new and beginning farmers often need technical assistance and training, land, and capital investments.  To offer this support during the critical early years of start-up, incubator farm programs have popped up around the country. These incubator farms provide opportunities to beginning farmers, many of whom are immigrants or refugees, by providing access to land for a reduced fee and helping them develop both the skills needed to run a successful farm and a create a business plan. After graduation, these trained farmers have an increased chance of obtaining capital and land and in reaching their farm business goals.

However, three times as many farmer training programs exist than there were just six years ago, with over 100 known programs in the U.S. Over 50% of them serve immigrant and/or refugee populations. These new organizations are also struggling to secure land and funding and to develop a framework for their programs, according to Nathan Harkleroad of one of the older farmer training programs “ALBA.”

With Western SARE funding, the Agriculture Land-Based and Training Program (ALBA) contracted with the National Incubator Farm Training Initiative (NIFTI) to increase agricultural professionals’ ability to initiate, support, and develop farmer training programs through targeted training and collaboration.  Originally aiming to train 50 agricultural professionals, ALBA directly reached more than 200 professionals in an astounding 24 organizations, including 14 based in Western States such as Washington, Hawaii, Oregon, Arizona, Montana, California, and New Mexico. They accomplished this through conferences, direct technical assistance, and webinars.

Javier Zamora completed ALBA’s Farmer Education Course in 2012 and is now the successful owner of the 25-acre JSM Organics. As a past participant and now an ALBA board member, Zamora sees the importance to newer programs learning from the experiences of more established organizations.

“I have met other non-profits who see ALBA as an organization to follow. We have our challenges as well, but the training allows other farmers a chance at success.” 

Incubator projects benefitted from ALBA’s accomplishments through a strengthened network with new relationships that will likely continue. Harkleroad notes that now there is a framework to support future collaboration.

An example of such collaboration, and an unexpected outcome of the project, was ALBA’s connecting with the California Center for Cooperative Development (CCCD). Harkleroad states, “While ALBA was carrying out its work, the CCCD was organizing a “best-practices in farmer education” training for the International Rescue Committee (IRC). ALBA shared its experience in holding a mini-conference, which was important in the CCCD developing the agenda for their summit.” Importantly, ALBA and the CCCD have leveraged resources and experience to support each other’s work.

Beginning farmers will benefit from ALBA’s project through the increased ability of agricultural professionals to initiate, support and develop farmer training programs. ALBA’s Executive Director, Christopher Brown, says that the project “made me feel that we need to do even more of these trainings.”

After graduation, Reyes said “I have a goal...I’m not scared anymore. I will keep growing, with tidy rows and beautiful results.”

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Yet, NRCS staff, as well as other ag professionals such as organic certifiers, need an improved understanding of natural resource conservation on organic and transitioning farms in Oregon and California, according to Oregon Tilth and the Wild Farm Alliance. In answer to a survey administered by the two organizations, the majority of organic certifiers stated that they did not work with NRCS.

Oregon Tilth and Wild Farm Alliance, through their project  Growing the Field for Organic Conservation, expanded NRCS’ knowledge of soil health and conservation on organic and transitioning farms with the goal of reducing  the barriers to organic certification and increasing organic and transitioning farmers' participation in conservation programs.

As the project leaders developed a toolkit to advance knowledge of organic conservation practices and how certification and conservation programs work together, a thirty-page resource was developed to support NRCS conservation planners and other agricultural professionals as they work with organic producers. The National Organic Farming Handbook describes organic systems and identifies key resources to guide conservation planning and implementation on organic farms. The handbook was developed with a team comprised of NRCS staff and partner organizations from across the country and from a range of disciplines. Producers and other audiences may also find the handbook useful, particularly the resources listed in various sections.

Sarah Brown, Oregon Tilth, was pleased with the results. “We are incredibly pleased to have supported the development of the National Organic Handbook. This document provides the first comprehensive resource focused on the intersect of conservation and organic agriculture. It serves as a guide for conservation professionals, farmers, and others interested in supporting conservation on organic lands.”

In addition to the handbook, resources for organic certifiers were also developed. The Biodiversity Conservation: An Organic Farmer’s and Certifier’s Guide was created to clarify the National Organic Program’s new Natural Resources and Biodiversity Conservation Guidance. This guide gives farmers and certifiers practical and effective information to not only be in compliance but also to take advantage of the ecosystem benefits related to biodiversity. According to Jo Ann Baumgartner, Wild Farm Alliance, “The Biodiversity Conservation: An Organic Farmer’s and Certifier’s Guide has been well received by organic certifiers and is stimulating many to update their Organic System Plans.”

One clear outcome of the project, according to Al Kurki, Western SARE PDP Associate Coordinator, was that it catalyzed institutional change. “Not only did the project reach a lot of ag professionals and farmers, it also helped spur more frequent, regular dialogue and interaction between the National Organic Program and NRCS,” states  Kurki.  

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During the project, hundreds of Pacific Northwest farmers and scientists learned of OFoot or were trained in its use. Adewale believes that the information learned from his project now provides necessary information and tools to farmers so that they may make changes in behaviors to reduce their GHG emissions. Farmers now have the ability to identify and reduce GHG hotspots, partake in the carbon trading industry, and educate their consumers.

On one farm alone, the use of a lower GHG form of energy lowered the farm’s total CF by over 30%.

While Adewale found that each of the studied four organic farms had different sources of GHG and hotspots in their carbon footprint (CF), it became clear that fuel and energy use was a large CF contributor on all operations. Adewale says that the farmers engaged in his project “are switching or considering switches to alternative energy sources.” The research and use of the improved OFoot established that switching to biodiesel and solar energy are approaches that can reduce footprints, yet do not overly complicate daily operations.

Use of the calculator showed that tillage and related fuel use contributed 32% of the total footprint on one farm. Irrigation contributed over 18% on this farm. In every case where irrigation was used, water pumping was a large use of on-farm energy.

Other patterns emerged as well. Scale of farming operations affects contributors to farm CF. For example, large scale field equipment and irrigation systems use more fuel and energy than small equipment and irrigation systems, yet they can be more efficient on a per area and/or per unit product basis.

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But some cows never got that memo.

“I’ve been watching cattle for years, and there are always some cows that just take off for the hills, like they didn’t know they weren’t elk,” said Derek Bailey, a professor of range science at New Mexico State University. “They could be belly-deep in green grass, and just bolt for the hills. They like it up there.”

That got Bailey thinking.

“We can breed for other traits,” he said. “Why not select for hill climbing?”

If ranchers could select for the hill-climbing trait, the same way they select for any number of other genetic traits, it could have huge implications throughout the rugged West. They could graze more cows on mountainous ranches. Rangeland would be more productive and more evenly utilized. Riparian areas could be more easily protected.

“We think this could make a big difference on the ground,” Bailey said. “In agriculture, if you can get a three to five percent improvement, it’s huge. We think if ranchers can get more use and grazing on slopes, they could increase stocking rates by as much as a third – and do it sustainably. In other places, it’ll solve riparian problems. There’s a lot of upside if we get it done.”

Bailey is working with a team of scientists located across the  West to investigate this opportunity, including Milt Thomas, Scott Speidel and Mark Enns at Colorado State University, Juan Medrano at UC Davis, and Larry Howery at University of Arizona.  They turned to the Western Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program to fund the basic research that could soon turn into a cheap breeding test that would allow ranchers to select for hill-climbing traits.

“It’s very exciting research,” said Juan Medrano, a UC Davis animal geneticist. “DNA technology makes it relatively easy to test and breed for production traits like milk yield and growth rate. But it’s brand new to identify genetic markers linked to animal behavior. This could have a huge impact on food security and rangeland management.” 

Gathering the Data

To identify hill-climbing cattle, Bailey and his crew put Global Positioning System collars on cows on ranches in several Western states and took measurements every 10 minutes for months at a time. They tracked each cow’s movements and habits – their slope use, elevation gain and distance traveled from water.

“The secret to this is more data,” Bailey said. “So we’ve been tracking cows all over.”

They also take blood samples from all the collared cows that Medrano and his team analyzed for chromosomal commonalities. Medrano found overlap in genes linked to locomotion, motivation and spatial learning.

Dick and Erin Evans have the kind of spread where this research matters. They ranch on 24,000 acres in the Big Burro Mountains in Southwest New Mexico. It’s rough country and more than half of it is federal land or state land. To be profitable, the Evans’ cattle have to be efficient, and even before connecting with Bailey they were thinking along similar lines.

“We have one pasture that has one source of water,” Dick Evans said. “We started tracking how often the cows there visited water, and for some it was every day, for some it was every other day and for some it was every four or five days.”

They theorized that cows going several days without water were more efficient – water and grazing are linked – and that those cows were likely grazing further afield. But once they started working with Bailey, the GPS data told a different story.

“We had one cow we knew to be efficient and it would come to water every four or five days,” Dick Evans said. “But it never traveled more than a half-mile away from water.”

Like the Evans’ ranch, much Western rangeland is mountainous or hilly and managed for livestock production. Grazing on rangeland feeds livestock and also offers many environmental benefits such as keeping weeds and other invasive species in check, providing water storage and carbon sequestration, and supporting habitat for animals and plants found nowhere else in the world.

Problems arise, though, when rangeland is overgrazed and cattle spend too much time near running water where manure and calving can create water-quality risks for people downstream.

Researchers have been working for decades with ranchers to keep cattle from overgrazing and congregating by creeks. They build strategic fencing, for example, and provide water and salt licks on ridgetops away from running water. Cowboys often herd cattle from low-lying pastures, but all of those management practices are labor-intensive and only a temporary fix. Breeding for the behavior would be much more efficient.

But breeding for one trait can sometimes produce unintended consequences in others. The researchers are looking closely at that possibility, and have so far found no correlation between hill-climbing behavior and undesired traits.

“We’ve looked at calf-weaning weights, pregnancy rates, blood pressure, even disposition,” Bailey said. “We had one theory that hill-climbing cows tended toward the meaner end of the scale, but that’s not the case.

“Some cows just prefer to climb more than other cows,” he said. “And if breeding can move the bell curve in that direction, management tools like fencing and herding will be much more effective.”

Dick and Erin Evans said they would happily add those genetic traits to their carefully selected herd, and not even to increase the numbers they could graze. They’re excited for the benefits widely distributed grazing could bring to the land itself.

“A lot of people talk about range and a lot of people take about livestock,” said Erin Evans, who has gone back to school to get a Master’s degree in range science at New Mexico State University. “Those and habitat for wildlife are all tied together. It’s all connected. If you’re creating a better environment, it works for the plant community, it works for your cattle and it works for the wildlife the land supports.”

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Plants – at least in part – also develop based on temperature, so a team in Oregon is adapting a degree-day modeling system built for pest management to make a tool for vegetable growers to better plan their planting and harvesting dates.

“The problem is when you’re trying to schedule a harvest, seed catalogs all give an expected maturity date in calendar days,” explained Oregon State University Small Farms Extension Agent Nick Andrews, who is spearheading the project. “Calendar days are pretty inaccurate, and growers recognize that.”

One seed catalog for example might say a broccoli variety needs 65 days to mature, while another claims the same variety requires 90 days. That range makes it tough to pick a planting day in May to hit a desired harvest date in August. And using calendar days ignores local temperature, which is a huge factor in how fast plants mature.

“Lots of things influence vegetable development rates so degree-day models aren’t perfect,”Andrews said. “But they seem to be more accurate than calendar days, and degree-day models are especially useful when crops are planted early or late, or when the weather is unusual.”

With a $203,000 grant from the Western Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program – Western SARE – the Oregon team created a website called Croptimeto predict the time-to-maturity for a number of vegetable varieties important to Willamette Valley growers. Croptime was built on the backbone of the USPest.org pest-management degree-day modeling site, which was itself supported by another U.S. Department of Agriculture regional program, the Western Integrated Pest Management Center.

The combination is not a stretch, explained Len Coop, the associate director of the Integrated Plant Protection Center at Oregon State and architect of USPest.

“Temperature integrates everything. It drives the development of everything,” said Coop, who is a contributor to the new project. “It was never a foreign idea to merge crop models with degree-day models.” 

Maximizing Profits

Here’s why it matters. For fresh vegetable growers, harvest timing is critical. Processors want a consistent supply of produce throughout a growing season, not a glut followed by a shortage then another glut. And growers want to time their harvest when labor is available and demand is high so they can maximize profits.Harvest-timing helps ensure a consistent supply of fresh produce for local restaurants and for community-supported agriculture operations that deliver fresh produce to customers.

“We plan for each week's (CSA) share very carefully,”said Tanya Murray from Sauvie Island Organics in Oregon. “The dramatically different weather we’ve had this spring, and last, makes it hard to know what to expect. Using degree days to predict days to maturity would be very helpful.”

Crop timing can also be a way growers avoid pests, an important integrated pest management principle. In fact, the Croptime model includes certain weed species to help growers – especially organic producers – pick varieties and planting dates to minimize weed issues.

Grower workshops identified the initial varieties to include in the Croptime system: 34 varieties of fruiting crops like beans, squash and sweet corn, seven varieties of carrots and parsnips, 15 varieties of broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower and kale, and seven varieties of spinach and lettuce.

The team has more than a dozen of those models up on the Croptime site now, and plans to have 50 loaded by spring 2017. The number of models it will take for the site to become widely used is an open question.

“Vegetable growers typically grow several varieties of the same crop, so we might have to get close to 200 models for it to really be noticed,” Coop said. “It’ll take a lot of effort to get to that.”

One way the system might be most useful is helping growers choose unfamiliar varieties to meet unexpected needs.

“When we have a couple weeks of wet weather in spring, we could use Croptime to choose varieties we might not be familiar with but that would help keep our production up,” explained Bob Egger of the Pumpkin Patch farm in Sauvie Island, Oregon.

To help build the number of models, the team is looking at the idea of developing a standard for each crop, then indexing individual varieties to that standard, Coop said. So one carrot variety might develop 10 percent faster than the standard carrot and another 10 percent slower, and Croptime could automatically make the adjustment.

Local Conditions

The whole system is based on using local weather conditions and forecasts, so growers can select the weather station nearest their farm. They then select from a number of different forecasts, including the 30-year historical average, 10-year historical average, last year’s weather, two years ago’s weather, and a new forecast by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration built from several different climate models.

“The default is the NOAA model, but if a grower thinks conditions are a lot like last year, or two years ago, they can select those instead,” Andrews said.

Once they’ve chosen a weather station and forecast to use, growers select the vegetable variety they are interested in and enter up to four different planting dates. Croptime then displays a report showing the dates that crop will go through critical stages – first leaves, flowering and reaching maturity for harvest.

Growers testing the site quickly pointed out a way to make it more useful.

“They want to enter a harvest date and have it display the planting date,” Andrews said. “It’s a really good feature and we thought, ‘Huh, we should have thought of that.’”

The team is also looking to add resources to the system, such as an irrigation scheduler developed by Washington State University. They also want to share Croptime models with other states and verify models indifferent climate zones to expand its usefulness beyond the Willamette Valley.

“It’s a long-term project,” Coop said. “We need to keep finding funding, and then we can expand it regionally, expand the database of varieties and focus on different crop types, such as winter vegetables and cover crops.”

Learn more on the Croptime website

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Improving soil health without understanding the soil's condition is not easy and traditional soil tests, though important management tools, don't provide information on the physical structure or microbial life living in the soil. That is why a multidisciplinary team at Cornell University created a soil health assessment, which measures physical, chemical and biological indicators as well as pH and nutrient levels in the soil. The soil health assessment received early funding from multiple SARE grants as well as other sources.

The need for the assessment was born out of a survey of Northeastern farmers, many of whom used traditional soil tests but “felt there was something more going on with their soils,” says Bianca Moebius-Clune, director of the soil health division at USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service. “There were erosion issues, they had weed issues, they had decreasing yields even though they needed to irrigate more, put on more fertilizer, more pesticides. And they really didn’t have good diagnostic tools for all of these issues.”

The Cornell lab currently receives about 2,000 samples per year, and interest in the assessment continues to grow in the Northeast and across the country.

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Cochise County, Arizona, where Aaron Cardona’s Arevalos Farm is located, is classified by the USDA as a food desert with high poverty rates, as well as high rates of diabetes and obesity. To help confront these problems, Cardona decided to look into aquaponics, which had not been experimented with in the desert regions of the Southwest or in areas with low-income populations. He designed his Western SARE Farmer/Rancher project, “Integrating Traditional Foods with Aquaponics in the Desert Southwest (project number FW13-142)” to research building a more affordable aquaponic system on his farm, which could be replicated by others in the region, creating an economic opportunity. The system would also produce culturally relevant food as a means of bringing back traditional foods into the local population’s diet; thus, improving the health of the community.

Searching for a Solution

Through the life of the project, Cardona looked to build a more economically viable aquaponic system for people of low income and integrate two traditional greens, verdolagas (purslane) and berros (watercress) with tilapia, while cooling the greenhouse from the harsh Arizona sun solar power. His objectives were:

• explore the viability of aquaponics in the Desert Southwest;
• increase the availability of traditional foods locally;
• construct a more economically viable aquaponics system;
• make a greenhouse operation truly sustainable by using solar energy;
• serve as an example of sustainable agriculture for the local agriculture community.

Outcomes

Cardona claims the project has proved to be a success, stating “knowledge of fish grown in a greenhouse has spread far and wide, bringing many to come and ask how to set up their own system. By fulfilling one of the project goals of constructing an aquaponics system for half of the cost of a pre-manufactured system, it is now more accessible to a wider range of people of different backgrounds and income.”

Purslane did not develop in the system but watercress was a success. Due to the publicity of the project and availability of watercress, Cardona estimates that nearly 40% of his sales at the farmers’ market were to people of Hispanic descent, typically a much lower percentage of farmers’ market customers. He believes that integrating more traditional foods can increase the participation of the Hispanic community at farmers’ markets.

As far as the fresh water tilapia, Cardona says “it’s virtually an unexplored world with colossal potential. Although my fish are barely getting to the point to eat, I have been approached by many at farmers markets asking to buy them and was sought out by a popular four-star restaurant salivating over the potential to serve locally grown tilapia.”

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