KUSP Reports: Environment

Grassy drainage ditches like this one have been shown to clean pesticides and fertilizers from agricultural runoff. Vegetable shippers, though, often demand that farms have no plants other than crops. Photo: Danielle Venton

By Danielle Venton | KUSP News

Between strict new regulations and demands from food buyers, farmers are caught in a tug between reducing pollution and food safety. Bringing both sides together will be difficult, but not impossible, say researchers.

Dirk Giannini is a vegetable grower in Salinas. On his farm is an old pond.

“This is part of the regulation, as far as trying to keep all this water on your ranch, if possible,” he says.

Solving an Old, Growing Problem

The regulation he’s talking about, the “Agricultural Order” was renewed with new conditions last fall. It’ll phase into full effect over the next few months and years. It’s part of the regional water board’s attempt to limit pollution.

The pollution that is targeted has already caused widespread trouble. It’s a likely culprit in some deaths of marine life. And it’s gotten into wells, causing health problems and forcing some people to buy bottled drinking water.

The biggest problems are from pesticides, sediment and excess nutrients, like nitrogen and phosphorous. One of the best ways to keep pollution out of streams and rivers? It’s an old idea — keep as much water as possible on site, with a catch basin, like Giannini’s.

“This pond has been up on here by our ancestors and we use it for watering our roads during the spring and summer time,” he says.

Legacy of 2006 E. Coli Outbreak

While it’s not used to water produce, it can go on cover crops or for preparing fields before planting. This catch basin is staying put. But Giannini doesn’t expect the new runoff rules to result in many new basins along the Central Coast. That’s because food brokers and food buyers also place demands on farmers. They want fresh produce, free from contamination by animals or bacteria. The difficulty for farmers is that food safety demands don’t always jive with anti-pollution strategies.

“As far as more catch ponds going in, I think they’re combative to the food safety world,” Ginannini says. “It’s interesting to see the ag order and food safety go head to head with each other. And the farmers are just sitting here saying, ‘OK, we’ll follow the food safety,’ but it’s contradicting water quality, so we go back and forth. That’s frustrating too.”

Some food safety inspectors worry catch basins might shelter frogs or attract other wildlife. They’re afraid those animals could, potentially bring bacteria into the fields or even get caught in machines that clip bagged lettuce.

That’s the same reason why inspectors don’t like to see grassy, crop-free areas on a farm. These vegetated areas can filter water and prevent erosion. But, after the E.coli outbreak of 2006, some food buyers rejected crops from farmers if they had these areas.

Scott Horsfall of the Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement says the organization encourages farmers to manage for both water quality and food safety. Cases of crop rejection can be down to the preferences of the individual buyer or inspector. This is frustrating researchers for like John Hunt, a toxicologist who studies the effects of pesticides in the region’s water.

“A lot of the systems that are effective in removing pesticides from run off involve vegetation. There has been a push recently by the large food brokers to remove all non-crop vegetation on farms,” Hunt says. “There’s a sense that that harbors perhaps rodents, perhaps amphibians that could get into the crops and cause food safety issues. I don’t think there’s real good data to support that. So that’s a big problem that a lot of people are working on right now is to resolve the pesticide treatment use of vegetation with the concerns of brokers for food safety.”

Cleaning Runoff in the Ditch

Farmer Dirk Giannini points out irrigation installed on a seeded lettuce bed. New regulations put greater pressure on farmers to limit pollution running off their fields. Photo: Danielle Venton

Michael Cahn, at the UC Cooperative Extension in Salinas, is one of those people. He’s interested in how water can be cleaned as it moves across a farm through wide, grass-filled ditches.

“And the idea is, can we treat this run off as it moves through either by slowing it down and holding it and let the biological processes break down the pesticide,” Cahn Says, “or by providing enough organic material where it will absorb the pesticide and hold it.”

In a preliminary trial, plantings of native red fescue, a common lawn grass, was shown to reduce pesticide load by 70 percent, compared with 14 percent in bare ditches. The grass doesn’t have a lot of seeds, so animals aren’t very attracted to it. He says, even though there’s little evidence non-crop vegetation is an actual food safety hazard, he understands why farmers are cautious. It’s just too risky. 10 acres of lettuce can be worth $100,000 dollars to a farmer.

“Would you take a chance of loosing $100,00 just to have some vegetation out there?” Cahn says. “That’s the type of business decision farmers have to make.”

But Cahn doesn’t believe the situation is hopeless. He’s seeking funding for follow up studies, and he believes that with more research, and a greater understanding among growers, regulators, food buyers and environmentalists, we can have cleaner water and safe food too.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Maria Nuño’s taps pours nitrate-contaminated water into her sink. She drives 8 miles to get bottled drinking water. Photo: Danielle Venton

By Danielle Venton | KUSP News

Water quality on the Central Coast is fraught with problems. After decades of intensive farming, chemical fertilizers have trickled through the soil into underground aquifers, polluting many of the wells rural areas rely upon. As part of our series on agriculture and water.

Maria Socorro Nuño lives eight miles outside of Salinas, near a plant nursery greenhouse where her husband works. She welcomes visitors into her trailer, past a porch filled with pet parakeets and offers them water.

For people like the Nuños with contaminated water, water becomes a significant expense. Photo: Danielle Venton

If you say yes, she’ll handle you a plastic water bottle. That’s what they drink around here. Nuño is one of the quarter million people in the Salinas Valley and Tulare Lake Basin living with nitrate-contaminated water. University of California toxicologist John Hunt says this contamination affects many Californians.

“The main problems on the Central Coast with regard to water pollution start with nitrate,” he says, “which is in fertilizers that is used in agriculture and it’s also in fertilizers that people put on their laws and their gardens. It’s very water soluble, so it moves around with water. It’s very difficult to remove from water.”

Farms are the Main Source of the Pollution

A 2012 report by U.C. Davis concluded 96% of nitrate pollution comes from agriculture. Most of that begins as synthetic fertilizer applied to crops. Nitrate pollution is a danger because it can lead to brain damage and death in infants, through a condition known as blue baby syndrome. In adults nitrate contamination is linked with skin rashes, thyroid troubles and stomach cancer. As of last year the Central Coast Regional Water Board placed farmers under a new set of guidelines for monitoring and controlling their runoff, including nitrates. The board wants to slow the rate of pollution, but no one thinks it’s going to be easy.

“Some of the nitrate coming down into the groundwater now may have been applied over 50 years ago,” Hunt says. “So it’s a problem that’s going to take along time to solve.”

In fact, authorities expect the pollution to get a lot worse before it gets better. The U.C. Davis report estimated that more than half of residents in Tulare Lakes Basin and Salinas Valley were using public water systems that recently registered unsafe levels of nitrate. By 2050 they estimate 80 percent of the population will be affected.

For people like Maria Socoro Nuño, that means long drives to the store. Nitrate can’t be removed through counter top water filters, so she buys bottled. Before it became contaminated 15 years ago, she used this water for everything. Community worker Jeanette Pantojas joined me as a translator so I could ask what nitrate contamination has meant to Maria.

Cruel Irony: An Expensive Problem for Low-Income People

“It’s meant a lot, a lot,” Pantojas translates. “She used to be able to comfortably use her water for everything and now she can only use it for washing dishes and clothes. There are times when she’s fully stocked on everything else and they have to drive the 8 or 9 miles into Salinas so she can cook that day or have drinking water that day.”

And it’s a big slice of her monthly budget. Ideally, according to EPA guidelines, people wouldn’t spend more than 1.5% of their monthly income on water. But nitrate-affected communities often spend five to 10% of their income on bottled water. Michael Marsh, the directing attorney at California Rural Legal Assistance in Salinas calls this an unfortunate irony.

“The people who can least afford to buy bottled water are the exact communities that are being forced to buy bottled water,” he Marsh says. “They didn’t contribute to this problem of nitrates in the groundwater. What makes the ag order so important is that it’s the first time the regional board has really tried to put teeth into their ordinance, into their regulation.”

While the farming community, regulators and even some academics are deeply divided over how to best address the problem, everyone agrees something must be done. Closely monitoring the nitrates coming off farms seems like a good start to some, but for residents like Maria, her tap water will remain undrinkable for many years to come.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Farmer Dirk Giannini points out irrigation installed on a seeded lettuce bed. New regulations put greater pressure on farmers to limit pollution running off their fields. Photo: Danielle Venton

By Danielle Venton | KUSP News

A new law is phasing into effect that changes how farmers manage water on their farms. It’s designed to cut down on water pollution from fertilizers, pesticides and nutrients. But, while farmers say they want to be good environmental stewards, they claim the new regulations go too far.

Dirk Giannini is a prominent Central Coast farmer. It seems everything in his life is big. He’s tall, he has a large truck, he grows 3500 acres of carrots, onions, and other crops.

He sells to some of the biggest buyers in the country. Last year he was one of McDonald’s featured farmers, and appeared in a national TV add.

Hot Topic

Giannini’s crops are irrigated with well water. Water that’s not absorbed by crops or the ground is mostly caught in a pond, where it can be pumped and re-used. But during heavy rains, some of water inevitably leaves his fields and enters local streams and rivers. That water is the focus of tough new regulations aimed at stemming water pollution.

“It’s the most rigorous law that our region is facing right now,” Giannini says. “And it’s the hot topic.”

The rules, known as the “Agricultural Order,” guide how farmers manage and reports water quality on his farms. The regulations are renewed every five years, and allow farmers to legally comply with the Clean Water Act. It’s an important piece of legislation since, according to the EPA, agriculture is the nation’s biggest source of water pollution. are slowly phasing into effect. While most farmers are complying, almost all of them are unhappy about it. Some academics are too, including Marc Los Huertos, an environmental studies professor at California State University, Monterey Bay

“It’s a little bit like putting your trash out in the front yard and then having someone decide they were going to investigate it all and put it on the web,” Los Huertos says. “It just seemed pretty intrusive.”

Rules May Punish Those Who’ve Done the Most to Clean Runoff

Los Huertos helped growers propose an alternate plan to the water board, one that emphasized collective monitoring and allowed reporting information to remain private. The requirement for some farmers to publicly report pollution levels is a key point of the new regulations and possibly it’s most controversial.

Growers worry that if members of the public can access pollution records, farmers will become targets of unjust criticism. It’s the larger growers who, Los Huertos says, tend to be doing the most to improve water quality who’ll bear the brunt of this.

“Now they have to do all this extra reporting that likely is going to show significant amounts of pollution without any kind of context of their farm,” he says. “Yet they’ve been spending the most money to improve water quality in the last 10 years.”

But regulators say the law had to change. Central Coast streams and rivers are some of the most impaired in the nation and they want to protect water for people and wildlife. The previous order, they say, just didn’t give them enough information. Lisa McCann is overseeing the new order’s implementation. She says there was anecdotal evidence that many people were doing good things, but says, “our evidence for what level, where, how effectively, was absent.”

Many parts of the growers’ proposal were accepted, not all. As for the key point of contention – public reporting – it’s already state law, a relatively recent one.

“Ultimately the main reason it still wasn’t ripe is it wasn’t consistent with some aspect of the California water code and the state’s policy on non-point pollution
control,” McCann says.

Regs Aim for Improvement, not Perfection

She says that some farmers are over-worried about the new regulations. Regulators want to see pollution improving overtime, they’re not expecting that water leaving farms will be drinkable. But the new requirements still seem heavy handed to farmers like Giannini.

“I agree with regulations and checks and balances, but usually regs are for low hanging fruit, the people who are not complying. This is affecting every farmer in the region.”

Some of the Agricultural Order has begun taking effect, including, as of March, a requirement that growers install devices preventing contaminated water from backflowing into their fresh water supply.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

By Melissae Fellet

Part 2 (see part 1)

Ned Conwell and his former business partner moved to old cattle ranch in Pescadero about seven years ago.

“It had basically fallen into a state of disrepair,” Conwell says. “It was pretty derelict. Some of the outbuildings, a barn, are still falling over. But there was a house and fields and a creek.”

Ned Conwell hopes creative lease agreements will help open space remain in agriculture for future generations of farmers Photo: Melissae Fellet

Now he lives there with his wife. The couple leases the land from the Peninsula Open Space Trust, a Palo Alto-based nonprofit organization that protects land from being developed. Besides leasing land directly to their partners, the land trust also holds conservation rights on other properties to prevent people from building on that land.

While conserving land for agriculture is important, Conwell says, it’s more important to ensure farming continues on these lands through lease agreements that are favorable to the farmer for the long term.

Land trusts conserve land in the public’s interest, so some groups refer to it as public land even though some of that land is not publically accessible like a state park.

“Public lands can be a really good option for farmers,” says Reggie Knox, executive director for California FarmLink, a Santa Cruz-based nonprofit that helps beginning farmers statewide find land and develop business plans. “Where land values are really high, like in California and coastal California in particular, it may be really more strategically wise for the business to lease than to own.”

Farmers often have other expenses to consider when leasing too. Conwell says that his barn is falling over and probably needs to be rebuilt.

“It’s central to our packing and our washing and our cooling and where we house equipment,” he says. “There’s really no incentive for us to fix it up if we don’t have some way to actually build equity in these investments.”

Land trusts are starting to address the issue.

“We have had a shift recently in our thinking about what it means to protect agriculture and what is necessary to protect agriculture,” says Paul Ringgold, vice president for Stewardship at POST.

The land trust has always worked to protect agricultural land from development, but not worked to ensure that farming continues on protected lands, he adds. Now that’s becoming more of a concern. More people are able to purchase conserved land, though they may not have the intention to farm it, Ringgold says.

“We would like to address that and somehow increase the level of protection so that we can be assured that productive row crop farmland remains in farming and available to farmers for use,” he says.

The land trust is looking at two ways to do that. They could continue to own the land and write long-term leases to farmers. These new leases would separate the value of the land from the value of the improvements to the land.

When farmers lease land, it’s hard for them to build equity when they build a fence, water system or repair a barn. This new way to write a lease transfers the value of these improvements to the farmer while assuring that the land remains protected from development.

The land trust could also add additional restrictions to the land requiring it to be used for agriculture. Some of these ideas have been tested in Massachusetts, Vermont, and New York. And, farmer Ned Conwell says: “There’s good work now starting to happen in California. We’re starting to see open space trust organizations and other entities that own this land really looking at new models to allow for long term security, affordability, and agricultural land staying in farming in perpetuity.”

And using these new models, Conwell hopes leasing conserved land will be sustainable for the next generation of family farmers and beyond. “So that when we leave this earth, so that our family or whoever the next generation is takes over, they have access to a farm, they can afford it and the community knows that this farm will continue to produce food for the population,” he says.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

By Melissae Fellet

Part 1 (see part 2)

Nestled in a forested valley in Pescadero and surrounded by 20,000 acres of open space and parkland, Ned Conwell’s farm looks more like a park than agricultural land.

“We don’t have many agricultural neighbors,” Conwell says. “We’re certified organic, so we don’t haven any drift issues or contamination issues. It’s a very, very clean place to grow food, which is pretty cool.”

Much of the land along the coast of the San Francisco Peninsula is protected as state parks and open spaces. Often this land is conserved by private nonprofit organizations called land trusts.

Ned Conwell's farm in Pescadero is surrounded by open space and parkland. Photo by Melissae Fellet

It’s common to think of these land trusts as preserving natural resources like habitats, pristine rivers and endangered species. But many groups also conserve land for another purpose: agriculture. And in doing so, these organizations are creating new ways for humans to interact with nature.

“The food that we eat is a natural resource,” says Paul Ringold, vice president for stewardship at Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST). “It’s something that comes from the land.”

POST, a land trust based in Palo Alto, has protected more than 70,000 acres of land along the San Francisco Peninsula and Santa Cruz Mountains since 1977.

“We think that keeping local farms in business is part and parcel of a smart conservation ethic,” Ringgold says. “For that reason, we’ve always had agriculture as part of our mission and now are looking to really bolster that and to make it a real active part of our mission.”

Peninsula Open Space Trust currently leases land to seven farmers, including Conwell, and four ranchers. The organization also holds conservation rights to other agricultural land that prevents the fields from being covered with condos or other development.

Looking back at the history of Silicon Valley, we can see how agricultural land ended up in the hands of these conservation organizations. Before it earned the nickname Silicon Valley, the rich agricultural region was known as the Valley of Heart’s Delight. Orchards there were paved over to support the growing population, and conservation organizations rushed to purchase remaining undeveloped land along the coast. Some of those parcels were wilderness, others were historic grazing lands or farming lands.

Fast forward to the local and organic food movement today, says Conwell. There’s a resurgence of farming as a viable lifestyle, and a recognition that local food systems can feed adjacent urban populations, he adds.

Conservation organizations are welcoming farmers onto their land. Some state parks, like Wilder Ranch in Santa Cruz, have leased land to farmers for more than a decade. And Conwell says that increasingly land trusts and other state organizations are doing the same.

They are beginning to recognize that their conservation goals and maybe even their recreation goals are compatible with, and possibly enhance, their agricultural goals, he says.

And the land trusts that are doing this well are able to engage the public in a whole new way, says Jessy Beckett, who serves on the board of Sacred Community Land Trust, a new land trust in Silicon Valley. If you think of a park as a fenced off area, she says, people only experience wilderness based on what they see from a hiking trail.

“But when you have agriculture, you have people who are intimately working with that landscape everyday,” Beckett says. “I think that’s a much bigger teaching moment, when you can have people go out and taste part of what that land is, or have a dinner that overlooks a field.”

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Kent Hibino explains how a wider tractor tool reduces fuel use. Photo Danielle Venton

If you’re traveling through the Salinas Valley, especially ahead of planting season, you might see a machine that can do what three machines did previously. It’s a wild looking piece of equipment. With metal parts twisted like corkscrews, rotating blades, claws that dig into the ground and extensive hydraulics, its a farm tool for the new millennium.

Kent Hibino: In the front you have these disk blades that chop things up, in the back this roller thing that mulches up the dirt, so we’re accomplishing two or three different things with this one piece of equipment, it costs a lot of money but we’re making fewer passes through the field.

By investing in machinery like this Kent Hibino, a vegetable grower in the Salinas Valley, can reduce the number of times his machines pass through the fields. His motivation? Saving on fuel. Gas prices have risen sharply for farmers, like they have for all of us. But with thousands of acres to work, and machines that use 12 to 15 gallons per hour, farmers look to cut their fuel consumption by all means possible.

Hibino: We have purchased new equipment, wider equipment, we make less passes through the field.

Some of Kent’s tractors also have GPS on board. The drivers know where they’ve passed through the field to an accuracy of seven inches. They can make sure they don’t miss sections of a field, or pass over the same area twice, saving on time, money and energy.

He’s also switched from diesel-powered water pumps to electrically-powered ones, with help from a program through his electrical utility.

Hibino: They give us  discounted rate for a couple years, we’re saving a lot more money when we’re going to these new systems, we’re saving money on electricity, water and inputs.

Norm Groot: Everyone is becoming much more conscious of the effect, how it’s grown in the footprint, trying to conserve as much as they possibly can.

That’s Norm Groot, Executive Director of the Monterey County Farm Bureau. The Salinas Valley, he says, is at the forefront of using new technology and techniques for growing. Norm says farmers trying to save money, and reduce their impact on the earth in lots of ways. Their use of chemicals, their affect on water and their carbon footprint.

Groot: There is a lot more consciousness. There are a lot of farmers that are actively embracing these new concepts to who are trying to conserve as much as possible.

Hibino: Land is expensive right? Some of the most expensive dirt in the world: we have to make sure we get every efficiency down, to make sure we have a good yield.

Minimizing his footprint by conserving energy, water and chemical inputs, says Kent, is good for business, and good for the planet. For KUSP, I’m Danielle Venton.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

By Danielle Venton

Science has made it increasingly clear that agricultural runoff harms the environment. Regulation and techniques for controlling that runoff have followed. In Monterey County, growers use satellite and other 21st century technologies along with a bit of just giving nature some room to work. KUSP’s Danielle Venton reports.

This broccoli seedling is watered first by sprinklers then by drip tape. Photo Danielle Venton.

April Mackie: Hola, buenos dias, OK.

April Mackie works at Martin Jefferson and Sons, a large, family-run farm in the Salinas Valley. It’s her job to make sure the farm complies with food safety and environmental regulations. From the height of her Truck, she looks out over two water basins that collect runoff from the farm. The ponds contain a few cat tails, and maybe a bird here or there.

Mackie: All of the water on this ranch gets collected into these two basins instead of getting up into a water way  On this farm, and on many others in Monterey County, growers are becoming more aware of their water. Environmental scientists have developed an increasing understanding that when fertilizers, pesticides and topsoil leaves farmlands and enters waterways it harms the health of life downstream. As this understanding grows, regulations are following.   Benny Jefferson, of Martin, Jefferson and Sons is a fifth generation family farmer, he says the change is for the better.

Jefferson: So much more conscious than we were a couple generations ago. We are creating our own ecosystem, earthworms coming back, ducks, hawks, proof is in the visual as well as the measuring.

Norm Groot: Everyone thought weeds are bad, now we think weeds are good, engineered wetlands.

That’s Norm Groot, executive director of the Monterey County Farm Bureau. Water management will continue to improve, Norm believes, as new technologies come online. For example, soil moisture can now be tracked by automated sensors and GPS technology, translating into less waste and runoff. This is the sort of advancement that he hopes will appeal to the next generation of farmers.

Groot: And that will allow more computerization of irrigation schedules based, not putting thumbs in the air. Computer modeling may becoming part of that solution in the near future.   On Kent Hibino’s lands they haven’t started consulting satellites or computers yet, but in the past 10 years they have installed acres of drip tape, better sprinkler heads, and they check the fields before deciding to water.

Hibino: I’ve been in business since 95, in the past 10 years there has been a lot of chance in terms of technology, (more drip, more efficient ways to lay the drip, tractors, higher tech tractors, and implements). to find the moisture.

Farming accounts for 70 percent of all water used worldwide, according to the UN. In the face of a California water supply already stretched to its limit, farmers like Kent will keep looking for ways to get the most out of their water use. For KUSP, I’m Danielle Venton.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Workers prepare a Salinas area field for planting. As methods have grown more sophisticated, this process has involved less pesticide application. Photo: Danielle Venton

By Danielle Venton

The fields of Henry Hibino Farms are empty. Neat rows of raised dirt stretch along the fields, ready for the next planting. Farmer Kent Hibino said, “this is more of clay loam, it’s got a higher organic matter, as you get to the river it’s a sandy loam”. Kent looks out on his fields from his Chevy truck. “They’re bare now, but a few weeks ago they held lettuce, romaine, celery, broccoli and cauliflower”. Kent is a third generation farmer in the Salinas Valley, managing about 1,000 acres. And while these fields grow many of the same crops Kent knew as a child, he’s seen some big changes since then.

Modern farming, he says, uses new techniques that let farmers apply fewer chemicals to their land. Take, for example, the soil tests they do before a planting. Kent sends dirt samples from each field to a lab. The lab tests for nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium and a host of other elements. The results inform him exactly what to apply.

Hibino: so we’ll take a hard look at that before pre-plant and sometimes we don’t even pre-plant because we feel everything is there, so that’s definitely a change from my dad’s time where they were just on program, now we look at everything field by field, what does that field need to survive.

Kent sees a slow, steady movement among farmers. Acre for acre, they’re having less of an environmental impact now than they did 10 years ago. Regulations are strict and pesticides and fertilizers have become expensive. Maximizing their efficiency is all a matter of staying competitive.

According to the California Department of Pesticide Regulation, this trend is real, and dramatic. Between 1998 and 2009 the total pounds used of the broad-based, more highly-regulated and generally more toxic pesticides — things like organophosphates, for example, declined 66 percent.

Growers now use licensed pest control officers to issue spray orders. They’ll only recommend a spray if pests are present above certain thresholds. Many farmers now use drip irrigation as well. This waters the plants at the roots, and reduces the chance of mildew. Using drip irrigation, by some estimates, allows farmers to cut fungicide use by half, and their pesticide use by a quarter.

Hibino: when you’re using drip irrigation, your spray bills will be a lot less when you use drip irrigation, and and you can fertilize through them, not using creating a mildewy microclimate overhead.

Farmers are also fertilizing through the drip systems. By targeting the application they can apply less overall. And farmers switch plantings to put organic matter back in the soil, and reduce the chance their crops will catch a disease.

April Mackie: that’s one reason we rotate crops, if you grow lettuce, that’s why we rotate with strawberries, reduce the number of bacteria and viruses in the soil

April Mackie is the Food Safety Manager for Martin Jefferson and Sons a large, family-run operation in Castroville. Spraying costs a couple of hundred dollars per acre so, April says, they’d rather not do it all.

Mackie: we don’t spray just to spray, we have a guy walking the fields if he sees a certain amount an area then he’ll know he needs to apply, it’s so expensive, they try not to spray if they can get away with it, that’ll eat you alive.

In this way, simply watching the bottom line is helping farmers have a smaller footprint.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Not all farmers market vegetables are organic, so what difference dos that label make? Photo: Sean Rameswaram

By Sean Rameswaram

Local, natural, sustainable, and organic are all terms we see on our food labels, but only one is explicitly defined. KUSP’s Sean Rameswaram spends an afternoon at the Farmers’ Market and New Leaf Community Market in downtown Santa Cruz to clear up some of the confusion surrounding “organic.” He’s joined by Amy Lamendella from California Certified Organic Farmers.

Find out more about California Certified Organic Farmers

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Freewheelin' Farm builds a business around bike delivered CSA. Photo courtesy of Freewheelin’ Farm

By Sean Rameswaram

Americans are trying to eat more locally and sustainably – a trend that’s easy to spot at your grocery store or farmer’s market. Yet one of the most local and sustainable food options has struggled to win over consumers.

A Community Supported Agriculture or “CSA” share cuts out the middleman and sometimes even the travel, getting subscribers a hand picked assortment of fruits and vegetables delivered directly from the farm. The content of the share can typically feed a family of four and is determined by the farm producing the food.

While the CSA model hasn’t exactly taken-off nationwide, one local farm is making a go of it. Freewheelin’ Farm in Santa Cruz has built a successful business around CSA and it’s seeking more converts.