The 2024 Summit farm tours offered a firsthand look at the innovative practices and pressing challenges faced by four Yolo County farmers. Each stop provided invaluable insights, inspiring discussions about the future of farming and the critical role of collaboration and policy. To read about our reflections on the conference portion of the Summit, see this blog.
No-till grain farming with Fritz Durst
One group of tour participants started the day with Fritz Durst, who farms organic and conventional no-till grains near Dunnigan Hills. “The only constant is change,” said Fritz, whose family has farmed that land for six generations. He remembers spitting on the soil as a kid and watching it run off. Rain would run off the compacted soil and pool in lower areas where the tractor would get stuck repeatedly. Returning to the farm after college, Fritz started experimenting with no-till and cover cropping on small parcels and comparing the soil to the adjacent land his father farmed. It took him 14 years to scale up no-till because he couldn’t source the right drill. NRCS provided five years of cost-sharing assistance for no-till equipment, but Fritz had to pay the other nine years out of pocket. “We need to invest in those early adopters.”
A sea of recently planted almond orchards rises all around Fritz’s grain fields. “My goal is resilience,” he says, “because I know the weather is changing.” Fritz thinks wildly variable precipitation can promote a comeback in dryland wheat farming in California. “If I can raise wheat on eight inches of [average annual] rain, maybe the guy down in Five Points who just lost his water can too.” Fritz continues to innovate, experimenting with cover cropping and the amount of plant residue left on the ground to promote soil health, prevent erosion, and increase water infiltration. Fritz emphasized the importance of stacking multiple healthy soils practices. “A lot of farmers just try one practice, don’t see any benefit, and give up.” The soil he farms now is much healthier than the soil he knew as a kid; he’s tripled his soil organic matter since he started sampling.He says, using a practical metric that other farmers would understand, that his tractor has only been stuck in mud once in the last 15 years when water pooled on the surface rather than absorbed into the soil.
Rangeland management with Adam Cline
Adam Cline practices holistic rangeland management on land he leases from Fritz Durst, grazing cattle to promote grassland ecosystem health and resilience. Adam has developed conservation and grazing management plans for each of the pastures he leases in partnership with the landowner. This helps him manage his cattle to achieve multiple objectives, including soil health, drought resilience, wildlife habitat, and financial viability. Adam was joined by Matt Allshouse (Bobcat Ranch, Audubon Society), who spoke about the decline in grassland birds in North America and the critical role of protecting and managing grazed landscapes in California for those birds. Adam is one of a growing number of ranchers who have been certified by Audubon’s Bird-Friendly Conservation Ranching Program.
Active management for conservation purposes requires frequent monitoring and equipment to move, fence, and water cows. Adam spoke about how he’s improved the resiliency of the ranch by investing in solar-powered wells, water tanks, troughs, and cross-fencing. Many ranchers are experimenting with technology like drones and virtual fencing to monitor and manage cattle and reduce human labor. Adam has experimented with using a drone, but says there’s no substitute for time spent in the field. “I’m open to technology, but complex ecosystems don’t fit into ones and zeros… We will always need human knowledge.”
Scaling up native seed production at Hedgerow Farms
Farm tour participants also toured Hedgerow Farms. Started in 1988, Hedgerow is a unique 300-acre operation in Winters dedicated entirely to growing native seeds. Groups were hosted by Julia Michaels, VP of Scientific and Public Affairs, and Joshua Scoggin, Associate Ecologist. Hedgerow Farms works with federal, state, and local agencies, as well as NGOs and commercial entities, to provide native seeds for conservation and habitat restoration projects, often helping to restore lands after wildfires, floods, or other climate impacts. Hedgerow Farms is a major supplier of native seed in California, and there is much more demand than they can meet. None of their seeds are sourced from a nursery; Hedgerow Farms harvests small amounts of seeds from across the state and then propagates them on their farm. Their sources change yearly depending on the weather and climate, and the needs of their partners.
The tour started at the farm’s water source, a canal that comes from Clearlake. Hedgerow Farms has planted vegetation on their side of the canal, creating riparian habitat and preventing erosion. Julia shared that in the evening, you can hear frogs. Groups walked along the canal to see the riparian habitat and shaded area that provides habitat for native plants and grasses before heading to the fields to see Hedgerow’s seed operation and the seed cleaning process and equipment. Julia and Michael emphasized the importance of ecosystem disturbance, which wild plants need in order to seed. They spoke to the balance and art of cultivating wild plants, who thrive on disturbance and have different needs from cultivated plants.
The wild seeds that Hedgerow Farms provides also find their way onto other farms, in hedgerows or other edge-of-field plantings, where they help increase on-farm biodiversity both above and below ground, sequester carbon, prevent erosion, and increase water infiltration. These benefits both increase farm climate resilience and help mitigate climate impacts by sequestering carbon.
Diversified farming and water governance at Good Humus Farm
One of the tour groups ended the day at Good Humus Farm, a small organic farm 20 miles north of Winters. About 50 years ago, there was nothing there but bare, open fields as far as the eye could see when Jeff and Annie Main arrived to start their farm. Now, it’s an oasis of 200 varieties of fruits and vegetables grown in small blocks surrounded by hedgerows that serve as windbreaks and pollinator habitats. The tour was led by the entire farming partnership: Jeff and Annie and their two daughters, Claire and Ali, who returned to the farm a few years ago.
The biodiversity and sense of abundance that was obvious everywhere belied some very difficult challenges facing these and many other small farmers. Jeff and Ali talked about how increasingly intense windstorms can shred and beat up their crops (a climate change impact that Jeff believes is not discussed enough). Their hedgerows act as windbreaks and provide some shelter. Ali also noted that, because they plant small amounts of many crops, it’s easy to replant and their losses are minimized by their biodiversity strategy.
The day ended on a very poignant note when Annie told us about the threats to their access to groundwater. She explained that the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, passed in 2014, requires locally organized “groundwater sustainability agencies” (GSA) to plan to curb groundwater overdrafts by 2040. However, the long timeline to achieve sustainability in the regulation has had the unintended effect of causing a drastic increase in well drilling by large corporate farms that are developing massive acreages of orchards in a rush to beat the limitations that will be imposed in the future.
Alarmed by the precipitous drop in their groundwater table, Annie and Ali have been organizing small farmers in the region to participate in GSA meetings to try to protect their access to groundwater and to make their voices heard in the implementation of the sustainability plans. Annie tearfully told us that just the day before, she learned that a farming corporation had just purchased another 1,000 acres nearby, with plans to plant more almonds and drill deeper wells. She ended the tour by emphasizing the importance of organizing small farmers to get involved in policy at the regional scale, saying “We have to shift from living in a community to living with a community.”
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