
A three-acre organic vegetable farm on the California State University, Chico campus is doing more than feeding growing minds. It’s feeding hungry students.
Scott Grist, program manager for the university’s organic vegetable project, says some of the food grown on the campus farm is provided free to students in need through a grant program that pays the farm for the produce it grows.
“The demand has gone way up because of food insecurity,” Grist said.
Grist calls it a “win-win” as grant programs pay for the food, helping sustain the financial needs of the farm, while providing healthy food without cost to students.
The organic vegetable farm is one of two certified organic programs on the Chico State farm in Northern California that provide teaching and research opportunities. More than 50 different organic crops are grown there, with organic silage corn produced to provide additional forage needs for an 80-head organic dairy herd that provides learning opportunities for animal science majors.
CCOF Certified
The campus farm has CCOF certification, meaning the farm is certified under the USDA’s National Organic Program. CCOF is a nonprofit organization founded over 50 years ago to promote organic agriculture.
The farm is pending approval for its mushroom production to be organically certified.
Because the farm is small and space for crops is a premium, part of it provides a no-till project to evaluate the long-term soil health impacts related to that practice. Peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, and other crops are grown in that area.
Weed control is a challenge, though Grist says some weeds are not as troublesome as others as they can provide ground cover while not choking out the crops.
“I just know what weeds that I need to tackle,” he said.
Among those weeds high on his list for concern are lambsquarter and pigweed.
“When they get large, there’s no turning back on those weeds because they have millions of seeds,” he continued. “That’s when I get five or ten students together and pull every lambsquarter out of the beds. That’s just how you must do it.”
Grist is a proponent of good soil health, and the farm’s organic system and no-till practices are critical to this. The lack of soil tillage and managing weeds through mowing or roguing does not negatively disturb the soil. These practices leave the soil rich in microorganisms and better able to manage moisture, he said.
Native bees
While several native plants foster and attract honeybee populations, Grist is working with a student to encourage native bees to nest on the farm. Unlike the European honeybee, which is widely used in U.S. agriculture to pollinate crops, native bees are solitary; they do not reside in highly populated hives, but rather will nest in solitary holes in trees, or in the soil. Habitat was created on the farm to encourage these solitary bees to nest.
The variety of native bees aids in plant pollination, he said. Tomato flowers, for instance, appear to pollinate better with native bees. Moreover, health issues with the native bees seem to be better as honeybees can be susceptible to mites, which can lead to colony collapse.
Grist admits that the university’s 70-acre almond farm, with its 30-acre variety trial, does pollinates better with honeybee colonies. Conversely, the solitary, native bees tend to do well pollinating crops on the vegetable farm.
“It’s a little different over here because we’re doing so many different varieties of vegetables in such a small location.
Seed collection on those organic crops where seeds are readily available is critical, he said, to protect specific genetics from open pollination.
Strawberries are grown in an aquaponics greenhouse, where water from various fish tanks is used to irrigate and fertilize the crops. He said the use of beneficial bacteria converts the ammonium in fish waste to nitrogen that the plants can use.
Pesticide use
While there are approved pesticides for organic crops, Grist doesn’t use them.
“Most people that buy organic produce want to know that it wasn’t sprayed at all,” he said.
That can mean promoting beneficial insects in native plants and other nearby vegetation.
“I let the son of a friend one time bring out praying mantis eggs for a school project,” he said. “I let them release them out in our broccoli because they can eat all those pests. Turns out they can also eat the beneficial insects too.”
Grist plans a solar project for the farm that will not only power parts of the farm that are currently not connected to the grid but will provide shade that he will use to study the impacts of shading certain crops that can succumb to sun damage.
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