Each year, the California Department of Food and Agriculture hosts Healthy Soils Week to spotlight the state’s sustainable farming efforts and demonstrate how focusing on soil health fosters long-term land stewardship.
Why Soils?
California’s water system begins on the ground. Healthy soils capture and store more water, and can retain more nutrients to protect water quality. Understanding the specific ways water interacts with soil is vital to realizing a water-secure future.
Sustainable Conservation’s Solutions in our Soil program sits at the intersection of soil health and water. Our work strives to find, uplift, and scale solutions that improve our soils, long-term agricultural viability, and positive water quality and quantity outcomes.
California has invested really heavily in soil health because it’s a win for producers economically, a win for the communities around them in terms of environmental quality, and a win for the state in terms of our goals for carbon sequestration. Dr. Tawny Mata, Director of the Office of Agricultural Resilience and Sustainability at the California Department of Food and Agriculture
We envision a future where soil health practices foster biodiverse ecosystems, enable more sustainable agricultural production, and support thriving communities by improving air and water quality, increasing drought and flood resilience, and promoting overall ecological well-being.
Learn more about some of the current projects Solutions in our Soil is working on in 2026!
For this webinar discussing cover cropping in California’s water-scarce environments, Sustainable Conservation’s Dr. Sarah Castle was joined by Emily Ayala (Ecological Farming Specialist, Community Alliance with Family Farmers), Tom Johnson (Grower Relations Manager; Seeds for Bees, Project Apis m.), and Sarah Light (Agronomy Farm Advisor, UC Cooperative Extension).
Cover Crops
The Solutions in our Soil team is assembling on-the-ground trials, research coalitions, and more practical resources for resilient soils and water supplies across the state.
To better understand cover crops’ water-saving potential, Sustainable Conservation, along with CDFA, CARCD, NRCS, and UC ANR convened over 100 experts to develop a 2024 report, Cover Cropping in the SGMA Era, on cover crops’ net water impacts in California’s Central Valley. The report’s findings led in part to a win for farmers associated with the East Turlock Subbasin Groundwater Sustainability Agency, as the GSA became one of the first in California to formally credit the water benefits of cover crops.
Photos of cover-cropped orchards
Flood-MAR moves excess stormwater onto landscapes or agricultural fields during high-flow events and floods. Strategically diverting high flows can reduce flood risk while allowing water to percolate into the aquifers that provide as much as 60% of California’s water supply in drought years. The watershed studies released this winter offer regional-scale information on hydrology, infrastructure, and recharge potential so local partners can better coordinate diversions, improve public safety, and enhance long-term water supply reliability.
Learn more about why growers like Benina Montes and Andrew Carroll see cover crops as vital levers to unlock water and soil benefits in their orchards.
Now, the team is leading an exciting cross-program research initiative to examine how soil health practices like cover cropping can improve the quality of water returned to underground aquifers through on-farm recharge.
On the Central Coast, Sustainable Conservation partners with local Resource Conservation Districts (RCDs), USDA scientist Dr. Eric Brennan, and farmers, funded by the Fertilizer Research and Education Program, to promote cover cropping strategies that prevent nitrogen from leaching during the winter and keeps it in the soil for the subsequent crop. The team offers seed cost share, technical assistance, and educational events in addition to creating guidance documents and a simplified tool for growers to calculate the amount of nitrogen recovered in a cover crop.
By planting cover crops in late fall, farmers can recover leftover nitrogen from the previous growing season that might otherwise leach into groundwater during winter rains. By absorbing excess nitrogen, these cover crops help protect water quality and return nutrients to the soil when they decompose in spring. This process could prevent groundwater contamination and increase soil moisture retention year-round.
Sustainable Conservation promotes solutions that use surplus manure as a soil amendment to safely fertilize crops and to build soil health. Current projects include expanding manure compost and trialing different manure applications to improve soil structure, enhance nitrogen retention, build soil organic matter, and reduce the need for synthetic fertilizers.
High-Carbon Amendments
The Solutions in our Soil team is partnering with local researchers and experts to investigate how almond shells or other high-carbon vegetable byproducts can stimulate soil biology when applied to winter fallowed Central Coast fields. This process could help capture nitrogen left in the soil and keep it in the root zone until the next crop is planted, reducing nitrogen loss to groundwater. By applying high-carbon amendments, growers can help protect water quality while enhancing soil health and reducing the need for additional fertilizers in the following growing season.
I’m really excited by the potential high-carbon amendments pose as another tool for growers to boost their soil productivity and protect local water resources, while minimizing disruption to standard production cycles. We’re hoping continued research on high-carbon amendments will illuminate exactly how they can be integrated as a more common management practice for annuals on the Central Coast. Mobido Keita, Sustainable Conservation Central Coast Project Associate
