“We’re starting from the ground up,” California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) Secretary Karen Ross told the state-federal-private-sector summit Building Partnerships on Healthy Soil on Wednesday, Jan. 11, in Sacramento. She noted Gov. Jerry Brown has provided $7.5 million funding in the 2017-18 state budget released the day before.
The money, finally, after two years of bureaucratic birthing, launches the Healthy Soils Initiative (HSI — it’s a thing) and puts “soils back into the forefront of agriculture,” said Carlos Suarez, U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) conservationist for California. “Feeding the people is the real issue,” he added. “We have to take care of our soils.”
(There are more than 200 types of soil, not to be confused with dirt. And in California, there are more than 400 commodities grown in that soil on 25 million acres by 75,000 farms. So dishing dirt is indeed an ag tech niche.)
Given the funding, high-profile regulatory status, essentiality and complexity, ag tech developers need to get their hands dirty … er … into the soil.
Consider the soil-borne ag tech issues: mechanics (like compaction and porosity), increasing water retention and groundwater percolation rates, understanding precisely the mobility of nutrients (especially fertilizers), finding and harnessing the organic chemical interactions with plant roots, understanding and enabling decomposition, reducing salinity, improving carbon retention, integrating sustainable soil best management practices like cover-cropping, no-till … the list is limited only by your imagination and creative product development.
The conference of decision-makers will act for soil health, driving your market development. They were chartered: “You are the ‘ground-roots’ organization,” Suarez told the standing-room-only audience at the CDFA Auditorium.
Jenny Lester Moffitt, CDFA deputy secretary and walnut farmer, is the point person for the Governor’s Healthy Soils Initiative, which formally starts Jan. 19. She walked the audience through the connection between soil conservation and meeting climate change goals. This is another market-driver that I won’t belabor here — trust me, climate change resiliency is a regulatory motivator.
The $7.5 million also will fund research and demonstration projects (look for grant solicitations in June), she said, so the UC Ag and Natural Resources engine will rev up. Stay in touch with the output at UC Davis, Berkeley and Riverside, which are the federally chartered land grant ag tech universities in California, and related nonprofits.
NRCS has even created a Soils Health Division, which effectively makes the ag tech market nationwide, according to Tony Rolfes, the NRCS state scientist. Carbon absorption, for example, is now monitored nationally, along with the best management practices, he said.
The Healthy Soils Initiative plan is here:
https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/oefi/healthysoils/docs/CA-HealthySoilsActionPlan.pdf
And be sure to follow Amrith Gunasekara, the CDFA chief scientist who is the hands-on manager of HSI.
There are local partners to approach too, aside from your farmer clients and prospects — obscure agencies called Resource Conservation Districts (RCD). Find one near you to tap for product development guidance and trends as a nexus with farmers, researchers and ag product makers (seeds, equipment, chemicals, etc.).
Jeff Borum from the East Stanislaus RCD said he and his colleagues statewide welcome networking and coordinating field trials — read “marketing intel and targeted early adopters.” They REALLY enjoy talking shop and connecting new friends.
Dig in!
