Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Leading Lodi winegrape growers persuaded a majority of their fellow
growers in the region to self-tax to support an organization to conduct
place-specific research and extension (plus the marketing of Lodi wines).
These leading growers created an organization and became BIFS grow-
ers, hosting research and extension in their vineyards.
The BIOS partnerships fused populist ideals with agroecological prac-
tices, and tried to facilitate growers “taking control” of their orchard
operations. They emphasized the voluntary nature of the partnership
while providing educational materials to stoke growers' agroecological
imaginations. These diverse forms of enrollment will have implications for
how growers and other partners understand the scope of their activities.
The voluntary character of these partnerships is crucial to their appeal.
BIOS leaders emphasized this non-prescriptive approach, and enrolled
growers to set aside “BIOS blocks” in which growers themselves selected
practices from a menu and compared results with a “grower standard”
block of similar size. The grower was then able to decide which set of
practices he judged better by his or her own criteria. This general
approach has been copied—to varying degrees—by most California part-
nerships. Those partnerships focused only on pheromones did not use
the comparison-block technique.
Almond BIOS set out the most ambitious expectations of enrolled
growers, and its leaders sought to enroll a mix of growers who relied on
agriculture for their livelihood but were interested in making changes in
their farming system: some visible and respected, some smaller, and some
with high chemical use.
13
BIOS's expectations were formalized by the
grower signing an “Agreement of Understanding” that made the above
tasks explicit, detailed the technical support growers can expect from the
BIOS management team, and affirmed that farm-management guidelines
are suggestions, not official recommendations. Once that agreement was
signed, the management team conducted a farm visit to customize a man-
agement plan for the BIOS block.
In the pear and walnut partnerships, managing the codling moth is the
most important objective. Conducting applied research on codling moth
pheromones gave these partnerships a strong orientation toward eco-
rational technology, but also on the benefits and necessity of area-wide
cooperation. As the success of the Randall Island Project became known,
pear growers in other regions asked for partnerships because they
