Replenishing Groundwater

After five punishing years of drought, rain returned to California in 2017. Finally, the storms we had been waiting for, with the intensity climate change had predicted, were upon us. This was our moment to cache as much water as we could in our aquifers. Because even amid perceived years of plenty, our drops to drink and grow food with during dry times depend increasingly on subterranean savings afforded by the deluge.

Thanks to your support, Sustainable Conservation enacted our plan to channel and store the downpours. The method: routing floodwater that would otherwise be flushed out to the ocean onto farm fields and allowing it to seep down through soil and rock pores, replenishing groundwater basins deep in the earth. By adopting this cost-effective practice, farmers can help California manage our water supplies to better navigate our new weather norm of exceptionally arid periods punctuated with powerful storm years.

You enable Sustainable Conservation to develop environmental solutions in areas of California where the stakes are highest for getting it right – which is why we’re expanding on-farm groundwater recharge in the San Joaquin Valley. Working on water resilience in the agricultural heart of the state means we’re achieving benefits for all: reliable drinking water for rural communities, irrigation water for agricultural abundance that feeds the nation, flood protection for downstream towns, and healthy waterways that support fish and wildlife.

2017 progress your generosity made possible:

Refill Remedy

In partnership with individual farmers and two irrigation districts, Sustainable Conservation activated groundwater recharge on over 250 farm fields in the San Joaquin Valley. How much of a refill?

Well, while an “acre-foot” may sound like a reason to visit the podiatrist, it’s actually enough water to supply one-to-two California households for one year.

All told, our 2017 demonstration fields recharged over 7,000 acre-feet of groundwater, or the equivalent of enough to supply up to 14,000 families for 12 months.

Our workshops and irrigation district partnerships spurred over 100 farmers to offer up cropland growing everything from nuts and grains to stone fruit and citrus. On seven of these sites, we installed monitoring equipment to take a closer look at how quickly water infiltrated the soil, and whether or not the extra water posed any risks to crops. This information will be used to refine the guidance we can provide to additional farmers and water managers.

In addition to pistachios, crop diversity on our 2017 demonstration fields included almonds, grapes, cherries, peaches, oranges, wheat, corn, and squash.

Protecting Coastal Aquifers from Seawater and Fertilizer Pollution

California’s Central Coast is home to a wonderland of berries and lettuces, field upon field of healthy produce. Once plucked from the soil, those crisp heads of romaine and juicy strawberries make their way to many of our shopping carts. We’re lucky to have this bounty at our fingertips, but farms and communities in the region known as the “salad bowl of the world” are in jeopardy.

That’s due to the state of area aquifers, which have been compromised by years of over-pumping and imprecise fertilizer application. Your generosity supports a solution that addresses both.

The Pajaro and Salinas valleys, ground zero for Central Coast farming, are imperiled for two reasons. First, groundwater is the primary source of hydration for people and crops. When those underground sources are sucked dry of fresh water, the resulting vacuum draws in seawater from nearby Monterey Bay and renders pumped water unfit for drinking or irrigating. Second, when fertilizer isn’t measured to accurately meet crop needs, the excess can pass down through farm fields to taint groundwater basins below.

With your help, Sustainable Conservation unites a diverse group of partners to shepherd coastal aquifers back to health. Together, we work with farmers to encourage them to track water and nutrient use. By connecting growers with money-saving tools that make it easier to conserve water and improve water quality, we’re sowing seeds of resilience for Central Coast communities and local food production that nourishes so many of us.

2017 progress your generosity made possible:

Protecting Water and Bank Accounts

How do strawberry farmers know when their plants need water? In the past, plunging a hand into the soil to feel for moisture was considered a sufficient diagnostic. While there’s value in that tactile connection, we now have the means to take more accurate measurements. Technology, including in-field sensors tied to smart phone alerts, can bring berries to market with precisely calibrated amounts of water and fertilizer – and fewer dollars expended.

Growers who have adopted Sustainable Conservation’s “just right” protocols for tending their fields have seen great results. Since 2013, our partners at the Resource Conservation District of Santa Cruz County have been collecting data on a growing cohort of strawberry farms.

Our 2017 field results from nearly 300 acres averaged a remarkable 94% for water-use efficiency – down from the original baseline of 136%.

100% is the optimal ratio for efficiency – meaning plants are getting no more than exactly what they need – and we’re thrilled that crop yields on these demonstration sites have remained healthy with even less.

Sustainable Conservation’s collaboration with Driscoll’s, a major grower and purchaser of coastal fruit whose berries you’ll recognize from your grocery store, is helping to spur on greater adoption of these farming methods that simultaneously conserve fresh water and keep seawater and fertilizer pollution at bay. Our partnership with the Stewardship Index for Specialty Crops opened the farm gates for testing our water efficiency metric with lettuce growers in the Salinas Valley as well as introducing it to national food buyers and retailers.

With the continued support of our donors and partners, we can grow our program to give more Central Coast communities a chance at reviving and protecting their water lifelines. People and farms in other areas need help too, and we’re poised to expand our efforts in Monterey County and other coastal valleys.

Accelerating Habitat Restoration

California’s waterways and wildlife are in urgent need of our attention. Native fish and birds rely on rivers and streams, but many of their lifelines have been polluted and stripped of neighboring forests that provide shade and shelter. As a result, hundreds of our Golden State’s iconic species are on the path to extinction.

The good news? There’s a great deal that can be done to reverse the harm, while also supporting economic endeavors on working landscapes.

Landowners – including public land managers such as State Parks and land trusts – often want to tackle projects that will create habitat and improve water quality on their properties, but regulatory approval is an onerous, expensive, and sometimes deal-breaking process.

Sustainable Conservation partners with government, land managers, and others to simplify permitting while upholding strict, protective standards for the environment. Our strategy saves the time and resources of many individuals and groups, including state and federal agencies and project planners.

For restoration practitioners, they get to spend more time doing what they love and what our Golden State so desperately needs rather than pursuing a protracted approval process.

It’s a win for our land and waterways – and the people, fish, and wildlife who depend on them.

“Today’s conservation work MUST keep up with the scale and pace of threats facing our natural resources. Sustainable Conservation understands that predicament and is doing something about it.”

- Kellyx Nelson, Executive Director, San Mateo County Resource Conservation District

2017 PROGRESS YOUR GENEROSITY MADE POSSIBLE:

Adding Up: Projects to the Rescue

Sustainable Conservation’s simplified permitting tools helped break ground on nearly 40 restoration projects in 2017, with many more already underway or in the pipeline for 2018.

To date, we’re pleased to report the following:

• Through 2017, more than 140 projects have been approved under the National Marine Fisheries Service’s simplified permitting processes that Sustainable Conservation helped put in place for coastal California.
• 16 projects in the coastal zone have been approved under the simplified permitting process we helped establish with the California Coastal Commission.
• Usage of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Habitat Restoration and Enhancement Act (sponsored by Sustainable Conservation) has been steadily increasing every year since it was enacted at the beginning of 2015, with a total of 27 projects now approved in 18 counties around the state and more coming every month.

Transforming Dairy Waste from Contaminant to Valuable Resource

California leads the nation in milk production. With that comes fortifying cheese and yogurt, 50,000 Golden State jobs – and a mountain of manure.

If California is home to 1.8 million cows and each animal produces around 120 pounds of waste per day… well, you can do the math. That’s a whole lot of poop that dairies need to manage in order to prevent groundwater pollution and offset harmful methane emissions.

“Kern County’s groundwater is critically low, so finding new, precision technologies that help us save water and keep nitrates out of our aquifer while using our manure resources on-farm has the potential to make a big difference.”

- Guntar Vecpuisis, West Star Dairy

Dairy farmers and their neighbors also contend with threats to water supplies due to extreme climate shifts, including predicted droughts even worse than the landmark dry spell we most recently endured. The health of local communities and agriculture hangs in the balance.

For over 15 years, Sustainable Conservation has worked with Central Valley dairies to protect water and air quality while maintaining business viability. The technologies we’ve developed together enable farmers to grow feed crops with nutrients found right on the farm – offering up a double dose of resilience by not only avoiding the poop hitting the fan but turning it into “black gold.”

2017 PROGRESS YOUR GENEROSITY MADE POSSIBLE:

Mastering Manure Management for Clean Water

Think of manure as free and readily available natural fertilizer. Too much of it is problematic, but the right doses support crops that keep cows happy and healthy. Using a mixture of manure and water in underground drip irrigation tape pinpoints the ratio, saving farmers money on synthetic fertilizer and keeping nitrates out of groundwater.

We’ve pioneered a system with Netafim USA, a world leader in irrigation equipment, that targets water and nutrients directly to crop root zones in monitored quantities, ensuring plants get exactly what they need to flourish, and no more to leach into groundwater below.

Promising returns from our pilot project: growing 15% more crop with 50% less water and a 95% increase in nitrogen-use efficiency (that is, more crop per pound of nitrogen).

Water savings made visible: our pioneering system, which precisely applies water and manure-based fertilizer via drip irrigation (LEFT), vs. flood irrigation (RIGHT).

Last year, with your support and a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture*, we expanded our demonstration sites to three dairies covering more than 200 acres in the heart of the San Joaquin Valley. Doing so united a diverse group of leaders – agricultural, government, academic, business, and environmental – around shared conservation goals. We installed systems on all sites, including McRee Dairy (owner Mike McRee pictured at left in main photo with Sustainable Conservation Project Manager John Cardoza), and began monitoring corn and wheat grown with manure-based fertilizer delivered via subterranean tubing alongside control fields using flood irrigation. The visuals alone – precisely applied drips of water and nitrogen versus pools of standing water on fields – give you an idea of the water and nutrient savings achieved by the new system.

Given climate and allocation uncertainties, dairy farmers are looking for ways to continue producing milk using less water. Shifting irrigation practices offers the biggest opportunity for savings. If our pioneering system is adopted on just 25% of California dairies' corn silage (cow feed) acreage, dairies could grow up to 15% more corn with much less water. How much less? Enough water to fill 46,000 Olympic-size swimming pools every year. Combined with significant reductions in nitrate leaching and greenhouse gas emissions afforded by the system, we’re talking real impact in California.

Compost: Sharing the Wealth

When it comes to manure, dairies have too much of a good thing. What if they could share the wealth with other areas of the Central Valley?

Compost is a low-tech, economically sensible option for reducing manure concentration to protect drinking water and air quality. Composting dairy manure creates a high-quality soil amendment, kills pathogens, reduces nitrates that threaten water quality, and produces a more compact product that can be easily transported for use on food crops across California.

Sustainable Conservation leads a statewide coalition of agency and industry partners to inform smart regulations for dairy composting practices. Based on the findings of our 2017 report, we’re educating state lawmakers about the potential of composting manure to reduce farming’s water and climate impacts – and to keep dairies in California so they can be part of environmental solutions here at home.

Stopping Invasive Plant Introductions

California is one of the world’s great ecological treasures. We share our Golden State with an astounding array of plants and animals, many of which are found nowhere else on Earth. In flora alone, our home hosts more than any other state in the U.S.

Plants help us gauge the health of our wild lands. Many of them feed and shelter wildlife, provide shade and opportunity for reflection, and underpin and connect our ecosystems.

But some threaten California’s glorious abundance by crowding out native species and increasing fire and flood danger. Nearly 50% of invasive plants in California were introduced for ornamental purposes – meaning an innocent seedling purchase at your local nursery could be bad news for the landscapes beyond your yard.

That’s why Sustainable Conservation’s PlantRight initiative unites a diverse alliance of horticultural industry leaders to keep invasive plants off store shelves and out of the supply chain entirely. Our partners include “big-box” and independent garden centers, ornamental growers, nursery and landscape trade associations, and plant scientists – all of whom are committed to promoting non-invasive plants and preventing invasive plant threats from taking root.

Together, we’re protecting the irreplaceable biodiversity that makes California such a special place to live.

2017 PROGRESS YOUR GENEROSITY MADE POSSIBLE:

Big-Box Breakthrough

Big-box stores are responsible for approximately 70% of all retail plant sales in California. Accordingly, joining forces with these influential retailers to voluntarily remove invasive plants from their inventory makes a big difference. PlantRight’s list takes the guesswork out of answering What’s invasive? and helps our valued retail partners provide even better choices for customers in search of environmentally-friendly plants.

Each spring, to track the progress of PlantRight’s outreach and guide future efforts, we survey hundreds of garden centers across the state.

In 2017, the sale of invasive plants at big-box stores dropped down to a mere 3% – continuing the sharp decline we’ve seen since 2014’s 43%.

PlantRight’s retail partners include stores large and small, from California locations of The Home Depot, Lowe’s, and Orchard Supply Hardware, to regional chains like Sloat Garden Center, and veteran independents such as Roger’s Gardens, The Garden Company, and Yamagami’s.

Knowing Before Growing

While highway iceplant’s fuschia blooms may distract us with their beauty, the troublesome succulent’s stranglehold on mile after mile of coastal real estate threatens imperiled shore birds like the Western snowy plover.

Keeping California free of future plant invasions requires prevention. How we do that here can benefit landscapes and vulnerable wildlife all over the U.S.

PlantRight’s Plant Risk Evaluator (PRE™) helps the horticultural trade predict, with 95% accuracy, whether or not a plant poses a high invasive risk in a specific region – and prevent bringing to market those plants identified as problematic.

Through a 2017 Farm Bill grant, four botanic gardens across the nation commenced deployment of PRE. Each garden assessed 50 landscape plants of economic interest or contention within their region, for a total of 200 assessments. The year-long project significantly advanced the PRE tool and database – enhancing ease-of-use, adding more collaboration capabilities, growing the database beyond California-based inquiries (nearly 500 assessments and growing), and increasing national awareness of this new decision support tool for the nursery and landscape trade.

When we unite horticultural leaders to prevent invasive plants from being sold in the first place, we support thriving native habitats and landscapes.