Public, private institutions expand organic research

California has seen a recent surge in organic research, much of it supported by the agricultural divisions of the University of California and California State University systems, as well as by private firms and nonprofits.

For example, in plots at a new Ventura County research facility, Rodale Institute researchers are looking at ways to make buried drip irrigation a viable alternative for organic vegetable crops.

Subsurface drip irrigation could reduce water use in organic production, and might also help manage weeds without the use of conventional herbicides, said Arianna Pozzolo, research director at Rodale's California Organic Center.

"I'd like to try underground irrigation of vegetable crop rotations or of permanent nut crops," Pozzolo said. "We need to reduce the use of water. On grapes, people have tried watering one side of the plant or the other; this might be useful for vegetables too."

In conventional drip systems, fertilizer can feed the crop through the drip lines; the challenge with drip in organic systems is that the entire root zone must be wet for the crop to take up nutrients from the soil.

"It's an evolving process," said Rodale's California organic crop consultant Nathanael Gonzales-Siemens. "With buried drip, you can use a fertigation method or you can use a combination of compost, cover crops and crop rotation."

One approach under study at the Rodale Center is to bury more than the usual number of drip lines in beds planted in both a vegetable cash crop and a legume cover crop that fixes nitrogen and puts it in the soil while it also competes with weeds.

"We've got four drip lines for two rows of broccoli and three rows of cover crop," Gonzales-Siemens said.

At Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, the campus is starting a new Center for Organic Production and Research, made possible by a $5 million donation by Bakersfield-based Grimmway Farms, the largest organic vegetable grower in the country.

"I am really excited about students learning from actual, hands-on organic farming and research," Grimmway Farms president Jeff Huckaby said.

Before becoming president of Grimmway Farms, Huckaby said he experienced the learning curve firsthand as the company's organic farm manager, then as general manager at Cal Organic after Grimmway acquired that operation.

"I grew up on a farm and I understood conventional farming, but I had to learn about soil health and how you build soil, how to use beneficial insects—and the fertilizer programs are so different," he said. "I probably spent five-plus years of trying to treat it like conventional."

The new center in San Luis Obispo comes as Cal Poly faculty and students have already increased on-campus organic farming research.

"The organic farm is used to host and support research done by graduate and undergraduate students," said Ashraf Tubeileh, the sustainable cropping systems director at the 9-acre Cal Poly organic farm.

Tubeileh has collaborated with Cal Poly students to produce peer-reviewed research the last two years on using composted plant soil amendments to reduce Verticillium and change soil chemistry for bell peppers, and on using olive mill byproducts as part of an organic weed-management program.

"We also have research ongoing that looks into nitrogen fixation in non-legumes, and the use of biological stimulants to improve plant nutrition and disease tolerance," Tubeileh said.

The recent surge in organic research and education comes in part because people in the produce business expect continued expansion of the organic sector.

"When I look at the growth of organic at mainstream retailers like Walmart, Kroger and Albertson's, the demand is there," Huckaby said. "They tell us they need more organic produce."

The UC system recently created an Organic Agriculture Institute, launched after a $500,000 donation from Clif Bar, which produces plant-based energy bars featuring nuts, grains and dried fruits.

"We think of the Organic Institute as more of a clearinghouse of information, rather than have our own specific researchers," said Houston Wilson, the UC Cooperative Extension farm advisor named as the first institute director. "We will bring together resources within UC and other shareholders. We want to do an assessment of the specific research needs for each of our four first crops: tree nuts, tree fruits, raisins and rice."

He said he expects the planning discussion to be complete in time to present a list of specific research projects for each of the four crop groups in the fall of 2022.

"The organic market has grown exponentially, and as that market expands, growers are getting more demands for organic crops from their processors," Wilson said in explaining the expansion of research efforts. "Recently, I've been hearing from growers who are not organic who are being asked to provide large acreages of organic commodities."

Rodale turned its attention to vegetables after a 40-year farming systems trial, which it said showed that over the long term, effectively managed organic soil can produce grain yields comparable to conventional systems.

"Our vegetable systems trial was started in 2015 and is designed to run for at least 20 years," Rodale Institute CEO Jeff Moyer said. "It compares organic and conventional management systems for crops like potatoes, lettuce, sweet corn and beans. The main focus of this trial is to track the degradation of soil and its impact on human health by comparing the nutrient density of organic and conventional produce grown on the site."

Pozzolo is experimenting at the Ventura County site with a roller crimper to provide weed control—a critical issue in organic production—and Rodale researchers are looking at other practices for organic vegetable weed control.

Gonzales-Siemens said the facility has done cover crop experiments and is establishing an experiment comparing living versus plastic mulch.

"We are using clover as a mulch and the cash crop is broccoli," he said. "Ideally, growers would be able to move away from plastic. The clover won't mitigate weeds as well as plastic, but there could be other benefits in terms of soil health."

(Bob Johnson is a reporter in Sacramento. He may be contacted at bjohn11135@gmail.com.)