UC Santa Cruz

As climate change presents more and varied challenges for food production, there is a need for novel systems that can balance social and ecological outcomes. No till practices have shown incredible promise providing important ecological benefits, but these systems are still heavily reliant on chemical herbicides and fertilizers and have been limited in adoption to major commodity crops in humid regions without water limitations. Organic agriculture has proven to be a viable production system across a wide range of crops while excluding synthetic pesticides and chemicals that create downstream effects for human and non-human communities. There has been little success in developing the “holy grail” of organic no-till farming, especially for nutritionally important vegetable crop systems in California. I explore the history of organic no till research (Chapter 1), highlighting specific challenges and opportunities from regional syntheses of organic no till production in commodity crops as well as the slowly growing body of literature on organic no-till vegetable production. I then review the results of a 3-year field trial exploring a novel low-reside organic no till production system on yield and nutrient dynamics (Chapter 2). Finally, I explore the cooperative extension service (Chapter 3) and discuss why it has failed to support ecological innovations given its contested history. This work argues that while research on organic no till systems is still at a nascent stage, there are a number of meaningful research pathways to pursue: 1) a focus on basic agronomic challenges, 2) suitability of cover crops and specific cash crop/cover crop combinations, and 3) long-term studies without cash crops to assesses soil physical and chemical properties. Further, given the nature of highly commodified California vegetables, cooperative extension, despite its inconsistent track record, has an important role in supporting newer models of social learning, adaptive research and university/grower partnerships that are needed to support this and future endeavors.