Project Overview
Commodities
- Nuts: almonds
Practices
- Crop Production: cover crops, no-till, water storage
- Education and Training: on-farm/ranch research
- Farm Business Management: budgets/cost and returns
- Natural Resources/Environment: carbon sequestration, soil stabilization
- Soil Management: soil physics, soil quality/health
- Sustainable Communities: quality of life
Proposal abstract:
Academic researchers have demonstrated many benefits to cover cropping in almond orchards including better soil retention, soil structure, soil health, water utilization, pollinator activity, and yield. The Almond Board of California has invested in educating growers about the benefits of cover cropping and provided an incentive to try cover cropping through their Seeds for Bees program. Yet today 90-95% of almond orchard floors are managed as bare soil.
Growers perceive that winter annual cover crops are more complex and costly than a clean, bare orchard floor. Growers also worry that cover crops will interfere with harvest and sanitation operations, and reduce yields by competing for water and nutrients.
The recent debut of Oakville bluegrass enables a no-till cover cropping system for almond orchard floor management that has lower operating costs than the standard practice. Oakville bluegrass is a perennial, reverse season, drought tolerant grass. Because it is dormant while the cash crop is growing, it doesn’t compete for water or nutrients. It stays low so it does not impede operations. It can reseed, so the effective lifespan may be as long as the lifespan of the orchard.
The optimal cover cropping system would cover the entire floor with a combination of Oakville bluegrass and bee forage. Presently there is no information available about the business case for adopting this system. Our project aims to fill that void by conducting a cost-benefit study of the system relative to the standard practice and disseminating the information to growers.
Project objectives from proposal:
We will quantify the impact of a novel no-till cover cropping system for orchard floor management versus the standard practice of bare, clean soil in terms of management costs, impacts on harvest operations, and environmental benefits including soil retention, soil health, water utilization, pollinator activity and yield.