We will continue the ability to sustain agriculture in Northern California, in part, because of the efforts of the College of Agriculture to meet critical research and information needs. Some examples of how the faculty, staff and students are helping to meet the needs of our agriculture industry include:
Faculty and staff host several producer field days each year in order to provide the local agriculture industry with up-to-date information about issues they are facing.
Many of our “senior research projects” are focused on production related issues and produce results that are shared with the agriculture community.
ARI sponsored research into problems such as almond mild union etch, cotton variety selection, mechanical harvesting of olives, control of invasive weed species, development of refined fertilizer models for orchard crops, improved composting methods for rice straw and manure, confined animal waste management, use of DNA fingerprinting to improve beef quality, evaluation of different feeding strategies on beef quality, and evaluation of alternate crops are all designed to help improve the sustainability of agriculture.
Collaboration with the US Bureau of Reclamation, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and CSU Fresno has led to the completion of a state-of-the-art irrigation training facility that is being used to demonstrate to the Northern California water users how water can be managed more efficiently.
Holistic Management workshops offered in collaboration with the USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service have provided financial planning assistance to farmers and ranchers around Northern California.
An annual Organic Farming and Food Conference, coordinated by the College of Agriculture in collaboration with California Certified Organic Farmers, has assisted farmers and consumers with production, marketing, and nutritional information.
The requirement that ARI funding must be matched dollar for dollar from non-CSU sources has helped to ensure we partner with industry and agencies to conduct applied research.For Chico State alone, in the past five years we have committed nearly $6M (both state and matching funds) to applied research directed at problems the agriculture community is facing. The matching funds for this research has come from variety of partners including agriculture, a number of commodity groups, food processors, livestock producers, Bureau of Land Management, California Department of Food and Agriculture, USDA Natural Resources Conservation District, California Public Utilities Commission, and county Resource Conservation Districts.
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