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The Sills' main crop is organic rice, but they also grow wheat,
beans, popcorn and almonds. Photo by Tom Gettings. |
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Ed
and Wynette Sills
Pleasant Grove Farms
Pleasant Grove, California
Updated in 2005
Summary of Operation
Rice, popcorn, wheat, dry beans, cover crop seed on 3,000 acres,
grown organically or in transition
100 acres of almonds grown organically
Problem Addressed
Pest pressure and poor fertility.
For 40 years, the Sills raised rice and a variety of other crops
in California’s Sutter County using conventional practices.
As the years passed, Ed Sills began to notice that pest pressures
were increasing while fertility seemed to be dropping.
“We were really not improving any of our land,” Sills
says. “The weeds were becoming resistant to the expensive
rice herbicides, and I didn’t feel we could be successful
in the conventional farming arena.”
Background
Sills’ father, Thomas, began growing rice — and wheat,
oats, and grain sorghum — in 1946 near Pleasant Grove, Calif.
After Ed Sills joined his father in the farming operation, they
grew their first organic crop, 45 acres of popcorn, in 1985. They
planted an organic rice crop in 1986. After that, Ed Sills began
to aggressively transition his land to organic. The last year that
any crops were raised with purchased chemicals was in 1995.
Today, Sills manages pests and improves soil fertility through rotation,
cover crops, applications of poultry bedding manure and incorporating
all crop residues.
Focal Point of Operation —
Organic production
The Sills farm is divided into several fields for crop rotation.
Organic rice is their primary crop, grown on about 1,100 acres each
year. Sills also plants organic popcorn, yellow corn, wheat, dry
beans and some oats. He manages the fields with two-, three- and
four-year rotations, depending on soil type and condition.
Sills devised a simple, two-year rotation for his soils that are
poorly suited for crops other than rice: a year of rice followed
by a year of vetch. He plants purple vetch in the fall after the
rice harvest, and it grows throughout the winter. In the spring,
he either grows the vetch for seed or incorporates it into the soil
to help fix nitrogen. He sells most of the vetch seed to seed companies
and other farmers, but also retains enough for his cover crop needs.
Sills then lets the field lay fallow, depending on the amount of
weeds or the quality of the vetch stand. In the fall, the fallow
fields are re-seeded with vetch and the harvested fields re-seed
naturally from shattering during the harvest. The vetch is plowed
under the following spring and Sills once again plants rice.
The three-year rotation, used on poor soils, includes a rice year
followed by a vetch seed/fallow year. During the second fall, oats
are planted with the vetch and grow through the third year until
Sills harvests their seed. Vetch is again planted in the fall, then
incorporated in the spring before rice planting.
The four-year rotation is reserved for the better quality soils.
Sills follows rice with dry beans, wheat and popcorn. Purple vetch
is planted in the fall and incorporated in the spring before each
new crop except the fall-planted wheat.
Sills uses a limited amount of turkey manure as a fertilizer on
his fields, mostly because of the expense. He applies manure prior
to planting the summer crop each spring and sometimes re-applies
before planting wheat in the fall.
Sills planted his first almond orchard in 1985 and has grown it
without purchased chemicals since 1987. Sills has found fewer and
fewer problems from insect pests and diseases since eliminating
agri-chemicals. He plants vetch and allows native annual grasses
to grow between the rows, tilling the center to provide a quicker
nitrogen release from the vetch. Sills speculates that the mowed
rows help control pests like peach twig borer and navel orange worm,
as they no longer harm the almond crop.
“We’ve got tremendous predation on all our insect problems,”
he says. In fact, he stopped using copper and sulfur materials for
disease control, finding they weren’t needed. “I believe
the nutrition provided by the cover crop plowdown and application
of turkey manure creates a tree that is less susceptible to disease,”
he says.
Economics and Profitability
The Sills take advantage of organic premiums that range from 25
percent to 100 percent above conventional prices. Using their own
processing equipment, they clean and bag popcorn, wheat and beans
for direct sale to the organic wholesale market. They sell primarily
to natural food distributors and processors, customers gained through
referrals and the old National Organic Directory, which is no longer
published. They sell all of their wheat to organic flour millers.
Sills says they have been fortunate to find markets for their additional
crops. “We have good organic wheat markets and dry bean markets,
and the popcorn market we’ve sort of built ourselves.”
It’s difficult to compare the cost of production and profits
between organic farming and conventional farming, Sills says. When
he was farming conventionally, there was a continuous production
of rice each year, so it was easy to figure costs, which were consistent
in fertilizer, chemicals, rent or land. Today, his costs to raise
rice organically are similar, and perhaps lower because he no longer
purchases herbicides. Using vetch and turkey manure in the almond
orchard eliminated his need for commercial fertilizer. The key,
he says, is that the costs now are spread throughout the rotation.
Labor costs remain. Sills hires a hoeing crew through a labor contractor,
although the rotations ensure the dry beans are relatively clean.
Sills incurs a tillage cost because he incorporates all of his straw
into the soil, and also purchases turkey manure.
The farm went through a period of economic difficulties in the late
1980s when they began producing organic crops on a large scale.
“We were aggressive in transitioning land,” he says.
“We were able to grow more organic grain than the market could
bear and we sold quite a bit of our production at conventional prices.
That was either at a loss or break even.”
During most of the 1990s, the organic market grew. “Pricing
has continued to be fairly strong, with some dips, but overall nothing
compares with the conventional market where they are mostly below
the cost of production,” he says.
Environmental Benefits
Sills’ organic farming system has improved the fertility and
quality of his soil and, in a large part, controlled insects and
weeds. This all has been accomplished through his rotational methods
and by abandoning the use of conventional fertilizers and chemicals.
Sills credits his cover crops and rotations with effective weed
control. “There are a lot of weed problems in rice production
and I don’t see where conventional growers are reducing any
herbicide usage,” says Sills. “Many of my organic fields,
especially the ones in my long rotation, are as clean as some conventional
fields.”
The cover crops help in other ways, too. Cover crops on the orchard
floor help to improve soil quality by increasing organic matter
and water infiltration rates. The clover also helps establish populations
of beneficial organisms to control unwanted almond insects, while
the vetch helps fix nitrogen.
Finally, Sills has focused on soil health through rotations and
residue management. “The rice straw and the other crop residues
are a very important part of our organic program,” he says.
“They’re just as important as the vetch for returning
organic matter and nutrients back into the soil.”
Community and Quality of Life Benefits
Sills worked with a group from the University of California-Davis
and Butte and Sutter county farm advisers, with support from University
of California’s Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education
Program (SAREP), to examine the benefits of on-farm residue. They
set up a 25-acre plot to investigate the best mix of residues to
break down in the soil, provide nitrogen and improve soil tilth.
Since then, Sills has hosted tours for farmers and researchers from
all over the world.
Sills believes that he provides a service to consumers, who have
few sources for products such as those he grows. With the advent
of biotechnology, some consumers are asking for guarantees that
some products do not contain genetically modified foods.
“With all the controversy surrounding it, and the demands
from consumers, I have to write letters to my buyers guaranteeing
my product is certified organic. They even want to make sure the
seed I use does not have biotechnology origins.
“One of the things farmers forget is that you have to grow
something people want to buy,” he says. “And that’s
one of things we learned right away in the organic movement. We’re
producing something that people are asking for.”
Transition Advice
Sills recommends that farmers who wish to transition to organic
production go slowly to spread out the risk.
“I’ve seen some farmers go too fast and try to do too
much with too many acres and get into a situation where maybe the
yields during transition were lower than expected,” says Sills.
Sills suggests that farmers seek information on organic growing
from their county extension offices. He, too, is happy to offer
advice to anyone who writes to him.
The Future
To continue to improve fertility management and his soils and to
better understand weed ecology, Sills hired a full-time researcher.
The researcher is helping Sills investigate ways to alleviate soil
compaction, for example, using research plots, yield monitors and
global positioning system (GPS) mapping.
As for the future of organic farming, Sills believes that most
tools farmers are offered today are conventionally based, including
the new varieties of rice being developed. Those varieties are high
yielding and offer disease resistance, but are short-growing and
are, therefore, not competitive with weeds.
“Most seed breeders figure farmers have herbicides to take
care of the weeds, so they do all of their testing with a zero weed
population,” he says. “Many of us in the organic or
sustainable movement would like varieties that are more competitive
when not using chemicals, so maybe even a conventional farmer could
get by without using as many chemicals as they do now.”
Profile
written by Mary Friesen
For more information:
Ed and Wynette Sills
Pleasant Grove Farms
5072 Pacific Ave.
Pleasant Grove, CA 95668
esills@earthlink.net
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