Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
established the Center for Agricultural Partnerships (CAP), which has
initiated eight partnerships across the United States. Two of them were
in California: one with Salinas Valley lettuce growers and another pro-
moting pheromone technologies among Central Valley walnut growers.
Partnerships with Washington pear growers and Michigan apple grow-
ers extended pheromone technologies (described further in chapter 6).
The Center for Agricultural Partnerships has been an active advocate
for the partnership model across the country, and as a private extension
service has had served groups of farmers in several states. CAP partner-
ships with Minnesota and North Carolina field crop growers addressed
nutrient and herbicide management. The Neuse River estuary in North
Carolina suffered a series of major fish kills in the 1990s, and the state
legislature passed regulations to reduce agricultural nutrient runoff in the
watershed. In 1998, CAP launched the Neuse Crop Management Project
to help farmers “identify and implement economically sound farming
practices to sustain productivity while meeting environmental obliga-
tions.”
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CAP convened farmers, crop consultants, grower organizations,
and North Carolina State University researchers and extensionists, and
the Neuse partnership pulled together one of the largest collections of
institutional and individual partners (growers). It created more than
105,000 acres of nutrient management plans, a 23 percent basin-wide
reduction in nitrogen fertilizer use, and a 40 percent reduction in pre-
emergent herbicides. It was also one of the best funded partnerships,
pulling together more than $1.25 million in funding from six founda-
tions and agencies.
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CAP sees its partnerships as providing additional
technical support to a group of growers as they attempt to reduce their
reliance on pesticides, and stepping into the gap left behind by the LGU
extension system's declining support for production agriculture. In recent
years, CAP has facilitated agroecological initiatives with growers groups
in Michigan, Florida, New England, Oregon, and Wisconsin, leveraging
USEPA dollars to fund alternative, semi-privatized extension efforts. In
Florida, Glades Crop Care Inc. has developed agroecological initiatives
very similar to the California partnership model.
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Other private foundations contributed too. The Kellogg Foundation
funded an Integrated Farming System initiative from 1993 to 2003.
25
It
funded more than 40 local initiatives for more than $30 million, chiefly
in states along the East Coast but also in the Great Lakes Region.
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