Project overview
Scaling up soil health and other climate-smart agricultural practices is essential to improve the resilience of farms to climate-related threats. Climate-smart agriculture is a systems-based approach that requires localized adaptation across the diverse conditions of California agriculture. This project will demonstrate a range of climate-smart practices, such as cover cropping, reduced tillage, compost and mulch use, hedgerow planting, and irrigation system optimization on commercial farms throughout California. Specfically, the project will:
- Extend the reach and capacity of the California Farm Demonstration Network (CFDN) to establish an enduring on-farm extension and research system that will help thousands of farmers adopt climate-smart practices and
- Develop a research baseline and grower-informed recommendations for soil health and resilience indicators, to understand the extent to which soil health practices are helping farms be more climate-smart.
Key Features
- Farmer-led discovery and extension approaches
- Hub-and-spoke network to share learning across the state
- Farmer input on soil health assessment methods and information needs
Contact
Sonja Brodt, sbbrodt@ucanr.edu
Vivian Wauters, vwauters@ucanr.edu
Funding for this work is provided by California Climate Action Seed Grant Award # R02CP6986.
