As part of the California Healthy Soils Week celebration, there were multiple events in Sacramento aimed at promoting healthy soil awareness, including a legislative staff briefing that included two discussion panels.
“The legislators and their staff are trying to find out a little bit more about what healthy soils mean throughout the state, as well as what folks are doing in terms of conservation,” said Jeff Borum, Soil Health Coordinator for the East Stanislaus Resource Conservation District, who was a participant in one of the panels. The panel served as a means to highlight “the different ways that we assist and facilitate growers and producers, whether that be helping them increase production or decrease inputs, things along those lines,” Borum said.
The discussion panels also featured University of California Cooperative Extension advisors, as well as United States Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service personnel and multiple farmers engaged in various conservation techniques.
The goal is to cultivate a positive outlook regarding conservation that extends beyond California Healthy Soils Week. Borum noted these types of events are important “so that we can take a lot of the scientific results that a lot of these folks have been finding out and disseminate that to the growers and producers and all their partners.”
As part of the conservation district, Borum operates as a “direct conduit between the growers and producers and these legislative folks as well as the agencies and regulatory boards, so that we can have just a better chance at more efficient and effective implementation of conservation practices.”
Listen to the interview below.
Jeff Borum