Progress report for WCA21-001
Project Information
In order to streamline the execution of the PDP program in California, used the PDP award to fund mini-grants. We have an established advisory committee that prioritized funding criteria (see below) and reviewed the submitted proposals for this proposal’s funding cycle. We also continue to use assistance available to us through the UC Agriculture and Natural Resources division to manage the mini-grant application and funding processes. We plan to funded 4 mini-grants ranging from $8,777 to $18,164 that were awarded in 2022.
The incredible diversity of California’s agriculture creates an equally diverse need for educational and professional development. Current high-priority topics identified by the advisory committee and advertised during the RFP were:
- Climate change
- Fire: Wild and Prescribed
- Nutrient management practices to minimize environmental impairments
- Water use efficiency
- Integrated Pest Management
- Alternative marketing approaches
- Succession planning
- Community-based food systems
- Agricultural community disaster preparedness
These identified topics helped to prioritize projects during the review of PDP mini-grant proposals. The topics of the 4 mini-grant proposals that were successfully funded are as follows:
- Responding to growing trends: Increasing capacity for California aquaponic agriculture through targeted education
- Nitrate optimization methods with California certified crop advisors
- Building equitable community-based food systems in Silicon Valley
- Marin County agriculture professional development program
The overall goal of this project is to increase the capacity of Cooperative Extension personnel, NRCS field staff, and other agricultural professionals to apply the principals of sustainable agriculture while working with their clientele (Farmers, ranchers, consumers, youth, businesses, government, and communities). The four funded projects will 1) extend emerging sustainable agricultural practices to extension educators and agricultural professionals, and 2) bring together extension educators and university faculty working on sustainable agriculture to develop collaborative priorities, goals, and strategies for researching and extending sustainable agriculture issues. Predicting precise outputs from future workshops whose location and attendance make it difficult to estimate specific outputs.
The advisory committee decided to prioritize projects that meet the aforementioned topic needs and projects that reach the largest number of participants. Additionally, projects that produce outputs that have a longer shelf-life and continue to be a source for increasing knowledge into the future were also favored. We are excited that both project size and duration increased with these larger grants. We are hopeful that deeper knowledge and skill can be gained through educational programs with longer duration. We have an expectation is that each mini-grant will train between 15 and 100 extension educators or agriculture professionals. Grant recipients are be required to use participant evaluations in each educational event so that feedback can be provided to the California PDP advisory panel on the acquisition of learning objectives for each project. The advisory panel will use workshop evaluations and general knowledge within their professional cadres to develop ideas and priorities for future PDP activities in California.
Each mini-grant has their own timeline and the PIs of those projects are responsible to meet their timelines and spend their funds according to their agreement with UCANR's contracts and grants office.
Advisors
- (Educator)
- (Educator)
Education & Outreach Initiatives
This project aims to provide agricultural professionals, community-based organizations, food access providers, and local government staff with training on the historical inequities in the Silicon Valley food system to support deeper engagement with underserved urban farmers and associated urban communities and identify obstacles and opportunities for enhancing equity in today’s urban agricultural and community-based food systems. These trainings will help participants better deliver on shared goals for improved quality of life through equitable urban agriculture and food initiatives and stronger food justice and food sovereignty. We will work with a community of practice, the South Bay Food Justice Collaborative, to develop and offer a series of 5 workshops on topics related to the root causes of inequities in the food system, which will be accompanied by local case studies and a summary white paper to reinforce and extend workshop learning.
We will hold a series of 4 online educational workshops on food justice and historical inequities in the food system. Final topic selection will be made in consultation with the South Bay Food Justice Collaborative, but potential topics include: the history of local farmland ownership and access; the roots of uneven neighborhood food access; applying an equity lens to food assistance programming; urban agriculture and equitable community development; and recognizing and addressing implicit biases to form stronger community partnerships. Webinars will include a historical overview of the issue; examples of agricultural organizations who are addressing these issues in ways that advance food system sustainability and equity; and dialogue between presenters and attendees. In Spring 2023 we will hold a fifth, in-person workshop, in which attendees will visit a local farm and have a structured discussion about what they have learned from these workshops and how they can apply it in their work. We anticipate that 50-70 people will attend
• Participants will gain knowledge of the historical roots of inequity in the Santa Clara and San Mateo County food system
• Participants will develop a shared knowledge base and interest in making the regional food system more sustainable and equitable.
• Participants will increase their understanding of strategies for promoting equity and food justice in their programming and in their outreach to farmers and associated communities.
2022 Progress:
Our Building Equity in the Silicon Valley Food System professional development webinar series is off to a good start. We have a planning committee made up of representatives from four community-based organizations and the Santa Clara County Department of Public Health, all of whom are part of the South Bay Food Justice Collaborative. We've been meeting regularly and it's been a very productive collaboration.
Thus far, we've completed two webinars. Our first webinar -- Food Systems and Equity: An Introduction -- was held on January 25th and attended by ~94 people. Of the 33 people who completed the webinar evaluation, 96% improved their awareness of the topics covered, 90% gained new knowledge, 62% gained new skills, and 76% changed their opinions and/or attitudes. Speakers included a small farmer, a community promotor, and the head of a farmworker support organization.
Our second webinar -- Roots of Inequity: Farms and Housing -- was held on February 16 and attended by ~90 people. One speaker presented about the role of Asian immigrants in Silicon Valley's agricultural history and the other spoke about the legacy of discriminatory housing practices for contemporary communities. We're still compiling the results of the evaluation survey.
We've also worked with two research assistants to put together materials to accompany the webinars. I'm attaching a flyer, which shows the titles and dates for the two remaining webinars and the final in-person gathering in May. Recordings of the first two webinars are available on La Mesa Verde's YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsZiSRmQa1o7bWDxFpUq3Pw
Webinar 1 has been viewed 88 times and webinar 2 has been viewed 46 times.
The project would help train PCAs and CCAs in hands-on methods required to gather appropriate field data for a nitrogen optimization webtool/model that has already been developed by UC ANR/ UC Davis. Trainings would occur throughout northern and central California. Trainings would cover field sampling techniques such as soil nitrate quick tests, representative sampling, as well as drone and satellite image processing (canopy reflectance). Trainings would utilize collaborator demonstration sites where possible and leverage case studies from different grower collaborator experiences to teach participants how to interpret data and model outputs appropriately.
Educational workshops and webinars that will be held in person but will also be recorded and archived for later access. Locations would include 7 UCCE offices throughout California that would cover most of the primary wheat growing regions in California: Tehama, Glen, Shasta, Colusa, San Joaquin, Yolo, and Stanislaus counties.
Participants will generally be expected to
1) Be capable of independently collecting soil nitrate and canopy reflectance data
2) Be capable of using the Nitrogen Fertilizer Management Tool for California Wheat in a variety of scenarios and understand the general mechanics of the webtool.
3) Be capable of interpreting the results of the webtool to make recommendations to growers
This project aims to prepare California agricultural professionals with the tools necessary to increase statewide
capacity in aquaponics, which combines two of California’s most rapidly growing agriculture sectors:
aquaculture and hydroponics. 10-20 agriculture professionals from around the state will be selected to
participate in a collaborative learning experience consisting of six 90-minute remote learning sessions,
followed by a 3-day in person workshop hosted at the UC Davis Aquaponic Greenhouse. Curriculum will cover
terminology, scientific principles, systems design, equipment and vendors, farm tours and Q&A sessions with
USDA specialty crop producers and educators in the Sacramento area utilizing aquaponics commercially and
in STEM education.
Activities include six 90-minute remote online classes to be held weekly, followed by a 3 day in-person
workshop hosted at the UC Davis Aquaponics Greenhouse and the Center for Aquatic Biology and
Aquaculture.
Remote learning sessions will cover: Recirculating Aquaculture, Hydroponic Systems, Controlled Environment
Agriculture, Aquaculture Effluent as a Fertilizer, Fish Selection for CA (regulations by county), Growing Media
and Substrates, STEM Applications, Urban Ag Applications, Water and Nutrient Conservation, Organic
Aquaponics and Certification, Food Safety and Marketing. Remote sessions will feature case studies on
schools, non-profits, and commercial farms across the U.S. utilizing aquaponics to meet their individual goals.
Supplemental video and print materials will be emailed to participants each week.
The 3-day in-person workshop provides the tangible hands-on experiences to cement the learning from the
previous remote learning sessions. Participants will experience aquaponics to gain an understanding of the
realistic benefits and challenges aquaponic farmers face at differing scales. Participants will see multiple
configurations of aquaculture and aquaponic systems across the UC Davis Campus. We will travel to Luther
Burbank High School in Sacramento to see how they have incorporated aquaponics into their campus’ urban
agriculture academy. At Tsar Nicoulai Caviar in Wilton, CA participants will tour a commercial sturgeon
aquaculture farm utilizing aquaponics for sustainability and profit. Participants will have the chance to learn
and speak directly with the farmers and representatives from the California Aquaculture Association,
Aquaponics Association, Black Urban Farmers Association, Edible Schoolyard, CDFA and CDFW. Supplemental videos and print materials be made available for use by participants and the general public.
Participants will gain an understanding and appreciation for the benefits and challenges of aquaponics. They
will be comfortable discussing these topics with students, clients, or relevant agencies and have a
understanding of the growing methods and technologies utilized to produce a large variety of California
Specialty Crops. We expect participants will become, adopt commercial aquaponic production techniques
and/or aquaponic based curriculum to increase amongst participants or stakeholders. By “teaching the
teachers” we hope to create a widespread increase in the awareness and receptivity around aquaponic
agriculture.
2022 Progress:
We had a successful seminar series for the project Responding to Growing Trends: Increasing Capacity for California Aquaponic Agriculture Through Targeted Education. We hosted Five 1.5h seminars with good repeat attendance. The enrollment for the program consisted of 26 agriculture professionals which were primarily from California. Since seminars were available offline to the participants. a number of people were able to review the content that were unable to attend that weeks program. Over the 5 weeks we also hosted 3 guest speakers, each speaking for 20-30 minutes. We had planned for an in person event but a number of participants including Dr. Gross got Covid in December. We are currently evaluating the ability to conduct that in person event in March.
Total weekly attendance: Wk1:26; Wk2:17; Wk3:12; Wk4:16; Wk5:12
This proposed project is intended to support UC Cooperative Extension, Marin County in developing, delivering and evaluating a professional development program for County of Marin employees to increase their capacity to apply the principles of sustainable agriculture and grasp the full implications of agricultural projects for climate change, local economies and the overall strength of local communities. The proposal consists of a 12-month program to ground a cohort of 16 key county permitting staff in the dynamics of the local agricultural industry in Marin County, providing them with context and a sense of shared purpose they can apply to permit applications related to environmental stewardship, worker housing, market diversification, and economic development within the ag community.
This cohort of county staff (known as the “Ag Team”) will participate in a 12-month series of explorations in topics that cover the agricultural industry from production, through processing, distribution and consumption. These encounters will take place at county offices in a “brownbag” format, via short 30-minute webinars, and in field trips to key locations around Marin County. Content delivery will be by UCCE Marin staff and advisors, other UC specialists, and various local producers, processors and marketing/distribution entities. The 16 members of the cohort will participate in four brown bags, ten mini-webinars and three field trips. Topics include:
•Exploration of three distinct sectors of Marin agriculture and their respective business models (dairy, livestock, fruit/vegetables)
•Peri-urban and urban agriculture – including community food production and community gardening
•Value-added production – who and how it adds to the strength of ag operations
•Marketing and distribution – how and where farmers and ranchers sell their products, how this has changed with time and where things are headed from here.
•Climate and agriculture – ag’s role as cause, victim and solution for climate change
•Natural resource management – ag producers as stewards of air, water and soil quality
•Agriculture and social justice – unaddressed issues within the food system including erasure of native communities from the landscape, the role of institutionalized racism at the USDA and CDFA on access to land,the economics of who has access to local, organic foods
•Ag workers – Employer and employee issues related to working on ag operations (emphasis on housing, wages, working conditions)
•Capstone encounters:
Case studies – cohort tackles permitting implications for real-life projects like changes to manure management systems, construction of ag worker housing and establishment of value-added enterprise
“Roadshow” – Ag Team members meet with ag-related organizations and groups of producers to share their own perspective as county staff, identify shared interests, build trust.
UCCE Marin, in collaboration with Marin County leadership has established four key objectives for the Ag Team, representing changes in knowledge, intensions, decision-making and actions.
•The cohort will develop an understanding of both the separate and shared interests of county staff and the agricultural community, enabling them to appreciate the needs and important contributions of the other
•The cohort will affirm the County’s commitment to identify and pursue improvements in specific permit processes that impact agricultural operations
•The cohort will apply consistent focus of review that is appropriate to the ag operators’ objectives, balancing this with the County’s interest in protecting public health and safety.
•The County will experience an increase in the total number of ag-related projects successfully submitted and approved.
2022 Progress:
The Marin County Agricultural Team has completed over eight months of learning through brown bag session, field trips, and other panel presentations to engage Marin Agriculture and explore ways in which Marin County Departments interact with producers and their agricultural diversification projects. This learning is now culminating through the Agricultural Team’s efforts to develop a set of recommendations for workflow processes and broader land use policies to improve agricultural project review and approval. The set of recommendations will be presented to respective departmental directors and incorporated into departmental processes in the coming year. Separately from this implementation, the approach and process for forming county based agricultural teams is being shared at the UC ANR Statewide Conference in April, 2023.