Conversations

Has anybody leased farmland to solar energy developers?

Here is some info on how to determine how valuable your land is.

https://www.telkes.org/make-money-from-pv-land-lease

Reach out to telkes@telkes.org to tell us about your experience combining agriculture with solar energy.

Are you farming in a fire-prone area and overwhelmed by the “new normal” of wildfires? Wondering how to adapt?

Are you farming in a fire-prone area and overwhelmed by the “new normal” of wildfires? Wondering how to adapt?

This (free) online coursewas made for you.

Drawing on decades of training small-farmers amidst climate change, Farmer Campus in collaboration with the Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF), brings you a self-led online course that will give you the toolkit needed to reduce human, production, financial and legal risks from wildfires.

Create actionable solutions, deepen your knowledge of wildfire risk and emergency preparedness, and carry-out a hands-on fire resilience plan to help you and your farm face a future with fire.

Learn more and Enroll Here to start building fire resilience today.

Hi all,

Are you overwhelmed thinking about how to face a future of intensifying wildfires? Join our newest 7 week online course: “Farmers Build Fire Resilience, Feb 13-March 26 2020” to help you face a future of fires. Free to farmers and ranchers, though anyone interested may join as well. By the end of the course, you’ll have built your own Resilience Plan specific to your site that you can start applying right away.

Last Call - Sign up and Reserve your Space

Feel free to reach out with questions to fires@mesaprogram.org. We look forward to learning with you!

Topics Include: Land Management for Fire Preparedness & Mitigation Emergency Response Preparing Your Home, Farm Crew, Family & Livestock Community Preparedness & Organizing for Recovery Fires & Finances Health & Food Safety Understanding Fire Ecology

Katie Brimm and the Fires Resilience Team

Hi Folks,

Overwhelmed thinking about how to face a future of intensifying wildfires? Did October’s fires have you wondering if your farm, ranch and community know how to prepare, adapt or recover?

You’re not alone. With 65 years of combined experience working with farmers, MESA and CAFF/The Farmers Guild have worked hard to bring you an innovative, farmer-centered, holistic online course and network, “Farmers Build Fire Resilience, Feb 13-March 26 2020” to help farmers and ranchers face a future of fires.

By the end of the course, you’ll have built your own Resilience Plan that you can start applying right away. Free to farmers and ranchers in California.

Register Here and See Full Course Details Here

Feel free to reach out with questions to fires@mesaprogram.org. We look forward to learning with you!

Katie Brimm and the Fires Resilience Team

With the California wildfire season already heating up, the Multinational Exchange for Sustainable Agriculture is teaming up with CAFF & The Farmers Guild to host an online fire resilience course for farmers and ranchers in 2019.

Are you actively farming or ranching? We want to create a course that serves you and those threatened and impacted by fires, so we're seeking your feedback to help us best develop this program.

It takes less than 5 minutes! We take your feedback seriously - your responses will shape the content and design of this course.

Take the Needs Assessment Here

Thank you in advance for your support building fire resilience,

Katie and The MESA Team

Questions? Email katie@mesaprogram.org

We are pleased to announce that a new series of 26 instructional videos on vegetable production is being launched through the University of California’s Agricultural and Natural Resources You Tube channel beginning this coming Monday, May 13^th. We encourage you to sign up at the You Tube channel to begin receiving weekly reminders of new video “premieres” that will be released every Monday morning at 8 o’clock.

Professors from four California universities, UC Davis, Fresno State, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and Chico State, at which vegetable production courses are offered, teamed up to prepare and produce the videos. The series covers a full range of related topics and while primarily focusing on California, also includes topics from beyond the State as well.

We encourage your help in getting the word out about this series.
If I can be of further help, please call me at (559) 303-9689.

Farm

We are pleased to announce that a new series of 26 instructional videos on vegetable production is being launched through the University of California’s Agricultural and Natural Resources You Tube channel beginning this coming Monday, May 13^th. We encourage you to sign up at the You Tube channel to begin receiving weekly reminders of new video “premieres” that will be released every Monday morning at 8 o’clock.

Professors from four California universities, UC Davis, Fresno State, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and Chico State, at which vegetable production courses are offered, teamed up to prepare and produce the videos. The series covers a full range of related topics and while primarily focusing on California, also includes topics from beyond the State as well.

We encourage your help in getting the word out about this series.
If I can be of further help, please call me at (559) 303-9689.

Farm Progress article coverage: https://www.farmprogress.com/extension/uc-video-series-teach-about-vegetable-production?NL=WFP-01&Issue=WFP-01_20190510_WFP-01_37&sfvc4enews=42&cl=article_2&utm_rid=CPG020000030

Press release copy is below:

New video series to spark interest in vegetable production of the future

A 26-episode weekly video series will debut May 13 on YouTube to help train the next generation of vegetable crop workers and increase their use of effective stewardship practices in vegetable production.

Projections for near-future retirements of people working in California’s agricultural production, marketing and post-harvest handling sectors indicate severe re-staffing needs in the coming years. Technological advances have reduced manual labor in agriculture, but increased the need for skilled labor to maintain the sustainability of the vegetable industry.

“We already see it happening,” said Jeff Mitchell , UC Cooperative Extension vegetable crops specialist. “Robotic machines are now used for lettuce-thinning in Salinas, but these technologies must be serviced by an educated workforce with knowledge in both mechanics and science.”

Mitchell assembled a team of professors from California’s public universities with agricultural programs – UC Davis, Chico State, Fresno State and CalPoly San Luis Obispo - to pull together a series of videos designed to spark the interest and begin training future farmers and ag workers in sound agronomic, economic and environmental stewardship skills. The team received financial support from the California Department of Food and Agriculture Specialty Crops Block Grant Program.

“We know that maintaining California’s leading role in producing abundant, safe vegetables is critical not only to Americans’ health, but also to the state’s economy,” Mitchell said.

The video series is offered on the UC Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR) YouTube page on a playlist titled “Expanding the Capacity and Training of a New Generation of California Vegetable Producers.” UC ANR is the outreach arm of the University of California which, among other services, provides agricultural research, teaching and advising in all California counties.

Each Monday morning from May 13 through Nov. 4, a new video will premiere in the playlist. The video length ranges from 47 minutes to 7 minutes. The videos will also be made available to high school and college ag professors to use in the classroom.

“We believe that this series of videos on vegetable production will have broad interest beyond the classrooms,” Mitchell said. “The agricultural industry, students in other parts of the United States and the world, and the broader public all have an interest in understanding how the vegetables we eat are produced at the ever-increasing scale at which they are needed.”

The videos depict state-of-the-art technologies and techniques that are in use in many production regions of California today, vegetable farming systems used in other parts of the world, and increasingly popular cottage farming systems that are popping up in urban areas for easy access to healthful foods.

To receive a notification of each video premiere, follow the UC ANR Twitter feed at http://twitter.com/UCANR .

Hello everyone,

I work with an organization called Wild Farm Alliance. Our mission is to promote a healthy, viable agriculture that protects and restores wild nature. We just released a new resource to help farmers support beneficial birds and manage pest birds.

You can find the new resource here.

Birds can help on the farm to keep pest insects, rodents and pest birds at bay. When habitat is provided for beneficial birds, bringing them closer to crops, farmers may be able to reduce pest-control costs. Beneficial birds can help with production in the same way as beneficial insects. This new resource includes:

• Colorful Accounts of How Birds Can be Beneficial in Crops and on Pasture
• USDA’s Historic Economic Ornithology Division
• How Best to Manage and Co-exist with Pest Birds
• Why On-Farm Habitat and the Surrounding Landscape Influences Pest Control
• What Farmers Can Do to Make Farms More Bird-Friendly

Hello everyone,

I work with an organization called Wild Farm Alliance. Our mission is to promote a healthy, viable agriculture that protects and restores wild nature. We just released a new resource to help farmers support beneficial birds and manage pest birds.

You can find the new resource here.

Birds can help on the farm to keep pest insects, rodents and pest birds at bay. When habitat is provided for beneficial birds, bringing them closer to crops, farmers may be able to reduce pest-control costs. Beneficial birds can help with production in the same way as beneficial insects. This new resource includes:

• Colorful Accounts of How Birds Can be Beneficial in Crops and on Pasture
• USDA’s Historic Economic Ornithology Division
• How Best to Manage and Co-exist with Pest Birds
• Why On-Farm Habitat and the Surrounding Landscape Influences Pest Control
• What Farmers Can Do to Make Farms More Bird-Friendly and Resilient
• How Birds’ Diets, Foraging Strategies and Nesting Periods Affect the Farm
• Inspiring Stories from Ten Innovative Farmers

Not surprisingly, growers tend to know a lot more about the birds that cause damage than about those that are beneficial. Losses can be significant for some crops, but the benefits of the pest control services provided by birds have not often been measured. This new resource discusses the research behind both beneficial and pest birds, getting new information into the hands of farmers.

Jo Ann Baumgartner, WFA executive director explains that "in order to bring this resource to life, WFA reviewed more than 600 research articles, synthesizing them into readily accessible information that will assist farmers in implementing practices which benefit the farm and wild nature."

Today farmers who are masters at IPM—Integrated Pest Management—are using ecological pest-control strategies that include birds. They understand that the overwhelming majority of songbirds are beneficial during nesting season because they feed pest insects to their voracious nestlings. With this publication, we are spreading the knowledge of how all farmers can make the most of birds on their farms.

Jo Ann Baumgartner, explains that “by providing habitat for beneficial birds, farmers are improving the biodiversity of their operations which increases the resiliency of the farm. This new resource gives farmers practical and research-based information on the importance of specific birds to crops."

Click here to download your free copy!

Authors: Jo Ann Baumgartner, Wild Farm Alliance (WFA); Sara Kross, Columbia University; Sacha Heath, University of California, Davis; and Shelly Connor, WFA

Advisory Team: Rachael Long, UC Cooperative Extension; Helen Atthowe, Woodleaf Farm; and Peter Martinelli, Fresh Run Farm. Editorial Consultant: Karen Van Epen

Thanks,

Shelly Connor

Wild Farm Alliance

shellyconnor@wildfarmalliance.org

We’re excited and honored to share the last in our series featuring recently-retired, influential leaders in the CA sustainable agriculture movement: Tom Willey of T&D Willey Farms !

A long-time farmer, advocate and activist in the organic sector, Tom shares his reflections and ideas after 40 years of farming in California.

Topics include:

• Industry Reflections
• Opportunities & Advice for Smaller-Scale/Newer Farms
• Responsible Relationships Between Older & Younger Farmers
• Soil Management, Climate Change & AgTech
• The Food Commons
• Closing Remarks [to the next generation]

We posted both (meaty) Highlights as well as a full Transcript.

It’s always a treat to have a leisurely conversation with someone so knowledgable of the industry and steeped in the community. Thank you, Tom, for taking the time! We wish you all the best in your years of fun and discovery

We’re excited and honored to share the last in our series featuring recently-retired, influential leaders in the CA sustainable agriculture movement: Tom Willey of T&D Willey Farms !

A long-time farmer, advocate and activist in the organic sector, Tom shares his reflections and ideas after 40 years of farming in California.

Topics include:

• Industry Reflections
• Opportunities & Advice for Smaller-Scale/Newer Farms
• Responsible Relationships Between Older & Younger Farmers
• Soil Management, Climate Change & AgTech
• The Food Commons
• Closing Remarks [to the next generation]

We posted both (meaty) Highlights as well as a full Transcript.

It’s always a treat to have a leisurely conversation with someone so knowledgable of the industry and steeped in the community. Thank you, Tom, for taking the time! We wish you all the best in your years of fun and discovery ahead!

Read the full story:
Transitions: Tom Willey of T&D Willey Farms

Please also check out other posts in our series:

• Transitions: Shermain Hardesty, former Director of UC Small Farm Program
• Transitions: Ed Thompson, former CA State Director of American Farmland Trust

Greetings all,

Greetings all,

Hi all,

I'm reaching out to share that the Multinational Exchange for Sustainable Agriculture is now offering an online course called Climate Resilience - A Course for Farmers. We are specifically making this course available to new and experienced farmers in California and Oregon to create a thriving network, share skills, tools and knowledge, and to help you and your farm be more climate resilient.

I invite you to learn more here: https://learn.mesaprogram.org/climate/ or feel free to contact me with any questions or interest katie@mesaprogram.org . Thank you!