Operations assistant Thomas Wittman has become something of a local expert in this field; here he shares his tips for taking on gophers at the small-farm level . Environmentalists as well as growers are concerned about the potential impacts of genetically modified crop plants on wild crop relatives. Center faculty affiliate Deborah Letourneau of the UCSC Environmental Studies Department, graduate student Joy Hagen, and UCSC biology professor Ingrid Parker, are examining this topic for Brassica family crops along California’s central coast . Farther afield, our community supported agriculture manager Nancy Vail attended the first international conference on the CSA movement, where she had a chance to share experiences with others from around the world who are developing this unique approach to organic farming and community building. She reports that the Center’s university-based training program in CSA farming operations was of particular interest to those attending this inaugural event .This past February, I attended the first International Symposium on Local Contracts between Farmers and Consumers, held in Aubagne, southern France. The symposium was organized by an international organization called Urgenci, drainage collection pot which seeks to be a worldwide network for information about consumer/producer and urban/rural relationships .

The meeting’s goal was to provide a forum for sharing information and experiences among all the participating countries with the ultimate aim of creating an interactive international network for community supported agriculture partnerships. Conference sponsors included local municipalities in Provence and the Council of Europe. The conference attracted approximately 500 participants from 15 countries. Four of us from the United States—Annie Main, organic farmer from Good Humus Produce in California’s Capay Valley; Jered Lawson from the Community Alliance with Family Farmers; Karen Heisler, a community member of Live Power Community Farm’s CSA; and myself, Nancy Vail, CSA Manager for the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food System’s UCSC Farm—made presentations on the history and current status of the CSA movement in the U.S. as well as on land tenure issues and educational programs. Others shared stories about their experiences with farmer-consumer partnerships in France, Japan, Morocco, Demark, Brazil, Belgium, Switzerland, Quebec, Lebanon, and Great Britain, among other countries.Although Community Supported Agriculture has been growing in popularity in the U.S. since the mid 1980s, it’s a relatively new concept in France. There it’s known as AMAP, le Association pour le Maintien d’Agriculture Paysanne .

AMAP’s origins can be traced to 1992, when local councils of French farmers, consumers, and politicians formed to stop land speculation and to help new, young farmers by providing information about irrigation and soil quality. But it wasn’t until 2001 that the first AMAP began at Le Gardin De Olividades in Aubagne, Provence. Farmers Denise and Daniel Vuillon first heard about the concept from their daughter, who had met CSA farmers on the east coast of the U.S. They often remarked that they wished they’d known about the AMAP concept sooner. Daniel and Denise displayed photographs of the first meeting with their AMAP members and subsequent pictures in which the number of community members doubled, then tripled. One of the most heartening stories we heard was about the way their community members rallied to save the farm from being taken over by the local municipality, which wanted to install a tramway through the land. Encouraged by the success of their own AMAP community, Denise and Daniel have joined with a group of local organic farmers in the area and, financed by a local council, formed an organization called Alliance Provence, which develops AMAP relationships between farmers and consumers. Since 2001 they have helped create 25 AMAPs in southern France and hope to initiate another 10–15 more by next season. Before and after presentations and workshops we toured various AMAP farms in the Provence region, and were amazed by the diversity and beauty of the mixed orchards and cover cropped fields surrounded by old stone buildings. What was so intriguing about these farms was that in most cases it was the community that rallied around the farmer to create a dedicated market for the farm’s products, rather than the more common model in the U.S. where a farmer solicits support and memberships from the community.

AMAP members are active participants in their farms, helping distribute membership shares, write newsletters, and organize to protect farmland. A number of initiatives—community supported agriculture, “fair trade” marketing labels, consumer education, “buy local” marketing campaigns, the promotion of organic food and agriculture, and farm-to-school programs—are part of a broader effort by consumers, farmers, and policymakers to create an agrifood system that is more ecologically sound, economically viable, and socially just. The Center’s social issues researchers are studying several of these strategies, looking at factors such as the extent to which these goals have been met, the challenges in implementation, and the opportunities for success. Current research topics include – Local Food Campaigns Local food systems have become increasingly popular in the last few years, and “buy local” promotions are a key strategy for developing these systems. The goal of this project, directed by the Center’s social issues specialist Patricia Allen, is to learn about the motivations, understandings, visions, and assumptions behind “local” as a strategy for addressing the problems in the food system. Center researchers are studying a number of buy-local campaigns in the U.S. and will examine in greater detail the efforts of Blackhawk County, Iowa and Santa Cruz County, California. Clare Hinrichs, associate professor at Iowa State University, is collaborating on the project. School Food Programs While school food programs have been in operation for decades, in recent years these programs have begun to place increased emphasis on providing fresh, local produce. The purpose of this project is to understand the types of school food programs in California and the decision-making processes by which schools come to adopt or not adopt innovative programs such as farm-to-school. Coordinating the project are Allen and UCSC Community Studies assistant professor Julie Guthman, a Center faculty affiliate. Consumer Perceptions about the Food System The purpose of this project, coordinated by Center postdoctoral researcher Phil Howard, is to better understand the priorities and concerns of consumers on California’s central coast. We asked consumers what they would like to know about the food system and examined consumer interest in food standards such as organic, humane, local, and fair trade. A survey was sent to 3,000 central coast households, about half of whom responded. We are currently tabulating and analyzing the responses. Farm Security and Food Security. This research builds on our earlier study of alternative agrifood initiatives in California to examine the ways in which the twin goals of farm security and food security are being met through these initiatives. In this project we are studying three different types of AFIs: farmers’ markets, CSAs, and farm-to-school programs. Allen and Guthman are currently analyzing data from surveys of CSAs and farmers’ markets conducted over the winter and spring and are conducting telephone interviews with a number of the managers of these institutions.Center researchers are continuing their study of land use and water quality impacts, examining sites throughout the Pajaro River and Elkhorn Slough watersheds in Santa Cruz, Monterey, and San Benito Counties. The research, developed by Center director Carol Shennan and research associate Marc Los Huertos, began in 2000 and has since expanded to target water sources of the Monterey Bay located in agricultural areas. The overarching goal of this work is to correlate land uses with water quality in local watersheds, round plastic pot and to work with growers to improve nutrient management practices on their land.

Funding for the work is provided by the US Department of Agriculture as part of the Central Coast Research Project. In addition to sampling at both upstream and downstream locations biweekly for nitrate and phosphorous levels, the research team that also includes Claire Phillips and Alex Fields sampled several agricultural sites more intensively through the rainy season to measure concentrations of nutrients in runoff generated during storms. They are also sampling nutrient concentrations in irrigation return flow ditches that receive pumped tile drain water. In addition, automatic samplers were installed at two locations to collect water samples at higher frequencies , and at higher intervals during the rainy season. The 2003–2004 monitoring effort will continue through the end of July. Los Huertos observes that the past several years of monitoring work have revealed an overall pattern of increased nitrogen and phosphorous loads in the Pajaro River andother waterways as they pass from upstream, relatively undeveloped land through agricultural lands. Says Los Huertos, “Demonstrating the changes in nitrate concentrations from upstream to downstream locations has increased grower interest in adopting practices to reduce nitrogen loss from farmland. In one area where agriculture clearly dominates the land use, growers have found our data compelling and are interested in developing strategies such as using drainage ditches as temporary treatment wetlands to address the problem.” To get a watershed-scale picture of how agricultural practices can affect nutrient losses, Center researchers recently partnered with Changsheng Li from the University of New Hampshire and William Salas of Applied Geosciences to develop a model of carbon and nitrogen dynamics for Elkhorn Slough. Li originally designed the computer model to estimate greenhouse gas emissions, then expanded it to include information on nitrate leaching levels. As Los Huertos explains, “There are three potential “sinks” or places that nitrogen and carbon can end up in a system: stored in the soil, released to the air in the form of gases via respiration or mineralization by soil organisms, or leached from the soil via runoff. This model predicts the amount of carbon and nitrogen that will end up in each “sink” based on a variety of parameters.” The model, called DNDC uses local weather data, soil organic matter levels, fertilizer applications, tillage frequency, and crop characteristics such as biomass to predict how much carbon and nitrogen will be lost from the soil via the flux of gases and through leaching . DNDC can also predict the potential for storing carbon in the soil in the form of organic matter—an important factor that affects levels of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Using information provided by Center researchers Joji Murimoto, Katie Monsen, and Los Huertos, Li and Salas will use the DNDC model to predict the amount of nitrogen lost from the soil due to gas flux and leaching for the Elkhorn Slough watershed. This modeling approach can be used to better understand the relationship between agricultural practices and nitrogen movement in the environment, generating important information for policy makers, growers, and others interested in water quality issues. Researchers, apprentices, and students working at the Center’s 25-acre organic farm at UC Santa Cruz have a new web-based resource available, thanks to the work of Environmental Studies undergraduate Leah Funk. Leah has created a compendium of information on plant pathogens and diseases occurring at the farm, including bacterial, viral, and fungal pathogens. The site’s URL is http://gis.ucsc. edu/disease/. “A compendium of plant diseases compiles information about the triangle formed within a defined location by the pathogen, host plant, and environment,” she writes in the introduction to her site. The site includes information on pathogen identification and life history, host plant range and symptoms, disease control measures that meet National Organic Program standards, and a list of selected references. Leah became interested in developing the compendium after taking several Environmental Studies classes, including Agroecology and Plant Disease Ecology, and observing diseases in field experiments. After finding out from UCSC farm manager Jim Leap that no central data base or resource on plant diseases found at the farm existed, she decided to create a compendium that provides a quick identification tool, information source, and a basis for further research on disease management options. The web site focuses on common fungal and bacterial diseases that occur at the Center’s farm and that confront both organic and conventional commercial growers, as well as backyard gardeners. These include apple scab , garlic rust, powdery mildew, Verticillium spp. and Phytophthora spp. Leah isolated many of the pathogens and diseases during field work at the farm and based other listings on reports from Leap, county extension agents, and plant pathology consultants. The site includes color microscopic and macroscopic photographs of the pathogens and of disease symptoms that are useful in identifying specific pathogens.