Steps Towards Sustainable Agriculture, Summer 2005

Agriculture and Land-Based Training Association (ALBA)

Located in Monterey County, ALBA is a nonprofit organization that provides training for farmers and farm workers. Formerly the Rural Development Center, ALBA operates two programs. One is the Small Farmer Education Program (Programa Educativo para Peguenos Agricultores, PEPA), which teaches farm workers about organic farming, business planning, and marketing so that they can get better paying jobs and/or become independent small farmers. The Farm Training and Research Center, near Elk Horn Slough, offers a demonstration farm and workshops so that farm workers, farmers, and the community can learn about environmentally sustainable farming methods.

CalMAX interviewed Patrick Troy, Agronomist and Coordinator of PEPA, in May 2005 at ALBA’s 112-acre farm near Salinas. Troy, who studied plant biology and plant breeding at UC Davis, worked with subsistence farmers abroad for seven years with the Peace Corps and Catholic Relief Services.

Helping New Farmers

There are currently 27 farmers enrolled in the three-year PEPA program. PEPA is designed to give the participants increasing responsibility as they get more training and experience, explained Troy. “We have a careful incubator model. When you are trying to start a business, it is very difficult to take it on all at once. We walk along with these farmers as they become more confident in running their own business.

“The participants start by working a half acre of land to raise produce which they sell through our Community Supported Agriculture program. Cash flow is often a challenge, as they do have to pay for the land, water, seeds, fertilizer, supplies, tools, or equipment. In the second year, they can get up to 3 acres, which they lease from us at increasing prices. In their third year, they can lease even more land at market rates.

Not all participants stay for three years, notes Troy, and there are a few who have been in the program longer. “Many do not become independent farmers because it is so expensive to buy land. Some go back to Mexico to farm. Many get higher-paying jobs, often with their current or previous employers. Our program is tailored to serve farm workers who want to improve their career options. And employers come to us with job announcements because they know they can find qualified people here.”

ALBA is partnering with other groups that can help beginning farmers obtain land. One is California FarmLink, a nonprofit that connects new farmers and retiring family farmers who want to keep their land in agriculture. The California Coastal Rural Development Corporation provides loans to farmers. Other groups work with establishing farm easements that restrict land use to farming or open space, thereby reducing the sales price.

ALBA participants are primarily Spanish-speaking immigrants, mostly from Mexico. “PEPA is about socially responsible investing,” notes Troy. “The people in the program have histories of farming, of working their own farms in Mexico. They have the spirit but they need more of the know-how to make a business work in the United States. Social justice is about working for permanent solutions with people who are economically disadvantaged. Our effort is to advance farm workers from limited, minimum wage and temporary jobs with no health benefits to something that is more rewarding and independent.”

About 500 families have gone through the farmer training program. Troy estimates that about half of those families are still in farming and about 10% have their own farms.
ALBA is currently working with California Institute for Rural Studies to document the progress of current and former students.

Sustainable Approach

“We have a basic sustainable approach,” explains Troy, “which applies to all aspects of farming, including the tools and equipment. We want people to think about taking care of things, to steward them. We teach the farmers how to weld, fix and modify equipment and how to store it properly and safely.”

Troy pointed out lockers which had recently been donated to ALBA by a local high school. “We are trying to get the farmers to store their chemicals and fertilizers in safe space, not just leave them in the field where they can spill or leak out. Proper storage avoids waste and possible contamination.”

“We also want to have equipment parked on top of a pan or other surface so that they can see if it is leaking and containerize any spills. If equipment is leaking they need to fix that so that they aren’t polluting and also aren’t wasting costly materials, like oil. We are working to translate the mentality of care into what the farmers do while they are here so that they will take these practices with them.”

The care focus also applies to supplies, like the plastic irrigation drip tape and row covers. “If the tape is rolled up and properly stored, it can be used a few seasons. Good tape can last for four seasons, cheaper tape won’t last as long and it also breaks up and blows around, creating pollution. We teach the farmers to amortize the cost of the tape over the length of use, so they can see whether it makes economic sense to buy the more expensive tape because it will last longer.”

Although ALBA’s farm is organic certified, they teach practices that are applicable to both organic and non-organic farming, like cover cropping. They plant summer and winter cover crops which they disc under to improve the soil structure and nutrients. Cover crops also help reduce leaching of nutrients, including nitrogen, into the water table.

ALBA also encourages the use of compost to add fertility and build the soil. They don’t produce their own compost, explains Troy. “To make the amount of compost we need would require significantly more animal and vegetable waste than our 112 acres produce. It is more economical to buy it from nearby commercial producers of organic compost.”

Organic and non-organic farmers also both use supplementary fertilizers. Non-organic farming tends to use synthetic chemical fertilizers which feed the plant, while organic practices utilize slow-release fertilizers that feed the soil, Troy explained. Organic fertilizers are made from naturally occurring chemicals. When soils are built up with cover cropping, composting, and other practices, short-term crops do not necessarily need supplementary fertilizer. However, crops with longer seasons of 80 days or more will need supplements, he explained.

Deciding which and how much fertilizer to use is also part of the educational process for the new farmers. “They have to look at the balance,” noted Troy, “and calculate if a particular input pays off in the longer term, as increased crop yield, reduced disease incidence, or market acceptance for flavor. Both organic and non-organic farmers can over fertilize because of poor math, choose less effective products because of cost concerns, or pollute waterways with poor application methods.”

Both organic and non-organic farmers use synthetic products for pest control. Organic farmers use plastic floating covers; non-organic farmers use chemical pesticides and herbicides.

While there are a few organic pesticides certified for use in organic farming, organic farmers try to carefully monitor for pests and use preventive methods before using any purchased chemicals. Preventative measures would include crop rotations, improving soil health, planting to encourage beneficial insects, and releases of beneficial insects. ALBA has insect hedge rows every 300 feet, which provide a more diverse ecological base habitat for beneficials as well as reducing soil erosion from wind.

Non-organic farmers often use chemically-based, broad spectrum pesticides as prescriptive applications in lower doses until an outbreak forces higher applications. In contrast, when organic farmers do use chemicals, they are plant-based or softer chemistries that are specifically targeted to the pest so that they don’t kill beneficial insects like syrfid flies, ladybugs, earthworms, or predatory wasps. Non-organic farmers can also make use of beneficial insects, Troy notes, if they use softer and specifically targeted chemistries that allow beneficials to survive.

“In situations where there is a heavy infestation, an organic farmer might plough crops under to break the reproductive cycle of the pest, explained Troy. “We are about to do that with some broccoli which is infested with aphids. If we can kill the adult aphids before they reproduce, we will have much less [of a] problem with the next crop.”

The certified organic ALBA farm is surrounded by non-organic farmers, which gives ALBA the opportunity to model more sustainable practices for their neighbors, Troy explains. He thinks ALBA’s practices are being noticed because, for example some of the neighboring farmers have started planting cover crops and hedgerows.

Community

In addition to building connections among farmers, working with the local community is important to ALBA, explained Troy. “We want people to connect food to the farm. We host regular half-day workshops for local school children. We also have a pumpkin patch on our farm in the fall for the nearby Chualar elementary school.” Currently ALBA, which operates on a limited budget, does not get funding from the school district to cover the cost of the workshops. ALBA also attends farm worker events and nutrition fairs in the community.

“We also want to expose people to a more natural form of agriculture,” explained Troy. “Before World War II, farmers were not using the level of chemical pesticides and fertilizers that they do today. The relationship between farms and cities has become more strained over the years as housing development has encroached on agricultural land. For example, communities object to the spraying of chemicals that drift into residential areas. In this context, it is easier for organic farmers to be community friendly.”

Energy

ALBA’s main building utilizes straw bale construction, which provides insulation in both summer and winter, reducing the need for heating or cooling. Because solar is so capital intensive, ALBA has not pursued it. They are in the process of getting an anemometer to see if there is enough wind on site to provide wind power.

They will refurbish their old barn rather than tear it down and build a new one. They will try to do this with reused materials.

At the 112-acre site, there are two tractors than run on petroleum-based diesel, the rest of the equipment and vehicles run on gasoline. At the Elkhorn Slough site, there is one tractor that runs on biodiesel. Staff at that site has been experimenting with making biodiesel by using used vegetable oil from local restaurants.

Water

Eighty percent of their crops are irrigated by drip tape. “We don’t do scheduled irrigation,” he explained. “Not many places have CIMIS stations to check the evaporation rate, although we do. A water-efficient farmer is conscious of what quantity is needed. Small farmers can check soils by hand before irrigating, something that would be more difficult on a large farm. We have been using less and less water over the years.” (CIMIS stands for California Irrigation Management Information System.)

ALBA is interested in storing and using rain water as a way to educate farmers and the children who visit the site about water conservation. “We could set up showers and sinks with the rain water and then reuse the grey water from that also,” noted Troy.

In addressing water pollution, Deborah Nares, former ALBA staff, explained that while agriculture has not been regulated, there are a number of things that farmers can do to reduce water pollution. “Sediment control is one. Sediment transports contaminants, pesticides, and nutrients that adhere to sediment particles,” she explained, “so farmers can filter it using vegetation buffers. Farmers can also use containment by letting water run to a corner where they have a big basin pad that will capture it. During the dry season, they can take the dried sentiment off and put it back on fields.”

Controlling soil erosion is important, she noted. This includes not leaving bare soil that can wash off. Tilling practices can affect soil erosion as well as soil percolation. If the water table is shallow, less deep tilling could be advisable.

“Irrigation management is also important; especially not over-irrigating. And making sure the system is running optimally, by checking pumps, forcing the system, making sure it is uniformly distributing the water. You need to make sure the emitters aren’t clogged. Also, don’t use overhead sprinklers on windy days.

“And pest and nutrient management is crucial, not over using pesticides or fertilizer, including compost. Farmers need to do nitrogen budgeting, looking at what nutrients they already have in the soil, what is coming in, the rate and times at which plants can take up nutrients, and what is going out.” Nares explained that organic farming doesn’t necessarily produce less nitrates, which can get into the water table.

Best management practices don’t apply uniformly, Nares noted. It is important that practices reflect the specifics of each farm.

Reducing Waste

As part of ALBA’s modeling for their students how to deal responsibly with waste, they pay the local hauler extra to have recycling containers that would not typically be found on a farm, Troy explained.

Like most other farmers, they have not been able to recycle their plastic waste such as worn-out drip tape and parts or plastic mulch. They use the mulch for the strawberries to keep the shallow roots moist and warm in their sandy soils.

For packing produce to deliver to market, ALBA has waxed cardboard boxes which are used 6-7 times before they are landfilled. They would be open to more sustainable forms of packaging, like boxes made of cornstarch, but these are not yet available. There are pallet companies in the area, Troy noted, if those companies were to make alternative packaging, farmers would use it. “There are a couple of plants in Fresno making boxes out of cornstarch, but transportation to the Salinas area is a limiting factor.”

Supporting Organic Farming

Organic food sales are increasing at about 20% annually, accounting for about 2% of national food sales, noted Troy. “Still, non-organic farmers are the biggest lobbyists, so they are able to get a lot more institutional support. In many areas, farm extension services lack specific information about organic production methods. The university system struggles to incorporate complex ecological data into current curricula. Certifying organizations like California Certified Organic Farmers just don’t have the resources of bigger state agencies. A monetary dedication to charge agricultural scientists with the task of developing sustainable and systems approaches would do a lot more to benefit organic farmers than the current USDA commodity-based system.”

“A good example are seeds,” Troy notes, while looking through an organic seed catalog. “The seeds may have been produced through organic methods, but that does not mean the plants will do well in organic conditions. What we need are breeders selecting for organic conditions. Part of the flavor of plants is related to their natural resistance. What we have done over time is to select away from natural fitness. Darwin would be horrified. We have reduced genetic diversity and not allowed for survival of the fittest.”

Supporting sustainable production is also something that could be more encouraged, notes Troy. “I would love to see a Farm Bill that gave tax breaks for farmers to develop and use more sustainable innovations and practices.”

One also has to look at the food distribution system, Troy notes. “If produce is fresh and not transported, it has better flavor. People can buy fresh, buy local and support sustainability by supporting local businesses. It uses a lot of energy to import food. Instead, people could use that money to support their neighbor.”

Contact information:

Patrick Troy
Agriculture and Land-Based Training Association (ALBA)
PO Box 6264
Salinas, CA 93912
831-758-1469
831-758-3665 (fax)
alba@albafarmers.org
www.albafarmers.org

Last updated: August 01, 2008