Speakers - AFHWC2025

Abstract

California’s San Joaquin Valley is the backbone of the state's agricultural sector and a home to producers of diverse ethnic groups including African Americans, Japanese Americans, Latino and Southeast Asians, who engage mostly in small-scale and diversified farming. Although these producers have the awareness and knowledge of benefits from soil health practices, there are burdens to adapt these practices on their own due to socioeconomic disparities such as economic barriers, lack of access to farm machinery and equipment, language barriers, and environmental challenges. Thus, our team developed a project to provide materials such as cover crop seeds, compost, mulch, hedgerow and windbreak plants, equipment needed to utilize these resources, technical and educational assistance in multiple languages (English, Hmong, Spanish), and incentive payments made directly to the producers. The goal of the project is to reduce these barriers for small-scale producers, so they are able to adapt these practices to their own operations and to assess combined practices to determine the best combination and fit for their individual situations. From 2022, small-scale producers in San Joaquin Valley (approximately 10 farmers) practicing diversified vegetables crop production were recruited and on-farm trials were conducted. These trials included providing the materials and services mentioned above as well as collecting soil and plant tissues samples for analysis of soil health improvements, if any, during the implementation of soil health practices. Additionally, the project included conducting outreach trainings and farm tours, creating soil health conservation multilingual fact sheets and peer-to-peer videos. The latter were distributed as educational resources. At the end of the project, feedback and discussion from participating producers, soil health analysis data as well as economic data will be analysed and interpreted. Research-based recommendations and lessons learned will be shared with the wider audience of California’s small-scale producers to determine if this is an effective means of reducing barriers and enhancing adoption of combined soil health practices.

References:

Myrna Martinez Nateras (2024). Stewarding the land in California’s Central Valley. https://afsc.org/news/stewarding-land-californias-central-valley

NRCS Conservation Innovation Grant -NR223A750013G013