Building on Farmer Experience to Increase Cover Crops Adoption in Orchards and Vineyards

View the project final report

Commodities

• Fruits: grapes, peaches, plums
• Nuts: almonds, pistachios, walnuts

Practices

• Crop Production: cover crops
• Education and Training: farmer to farmer

Cover crops provide important agroecosystem and farm resilience benefits. However, many growers in California either do not use them at all, plant them in strips too narrow, or terminate them too early (due to perceived risks) to gain full benefits, even in perennial systems that appear ideally suited for cover cropping between tree and vine rows. Successful implementation typically involves a steep, multi-year learning curve that can easily be derailed by one bad experience, as evidenced by a recent WSARE-funded almond grower survey that found that many growers had tried cover crops at least once but were not currently using them. While many publications and websites provide general information about cover crop species, they typically lack key details about management approaches required for success in specific climates, crop and soil types, enterprise management strategies, and economic circumstances.

This project will address these shortcomings by creating region and crop-specific information platforms based on experienced farmers’ best management practices for specific contexts in orchard and vineyard systems in northern California. Specifically, it will create an online searchable database of best management practices as implemented in the southern Sacramento Valley and North Coast regions. Curated by UC SAREP, the database will provide for user entry, allowing farmers to add new information to keep the database relevant and adaptive over time. We will also organize two field tours of successful cover cropping operations.

This project will also 1) refine and pilot test a new cover crop species selection tool recently developed by Cooperative Extension, for California conditions, and 2) link the selection tool to UC SAREP’s Cover Crops Database, updated with information from at least two previous WSARE projects. These new resources will be publicized to growers throughout the project regions through existing networks, field days, newsletters, and social media of partners.

1. Increase the circulation among farmers and agricultural professionals of regionally-relevant, grower-generated information on best management practices for cover cropping in orchard and vineyard systems in the southern Sacramento Valley/Delta region, and North Coast viticulture region.
2. Increase the confidence, skill-level, and sophistication of orchard and vineyard managers in implementing cover crops in these regions.
3. Increase the accessibility of accurate, science-based information about cover crop species relevant to these regions and production systems.
4. Increase understanding among growers and agricultural professionals of the characteristics of relevant cover crops species and how they can meet orchard and vineyard growers’ farm management goals.