Pollinators: Project Background

Insectaries for Pollinators and Farm Biodiversity
This project is a pilot effort to enhance pollinator habitat on seven working farms, including two organic crop farms, one organic and one conventional vineyard, two ranches, and an organic orchard, through a collaborative effort of the Gold Ridge Resource Conservation District, the Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF), and Farm Stewards. The partners will work in close collaboration with EQIP-eligible landowners to develop and implement Farm Pollinator Plans specific to each property with a particular focus on enhancing native bee habitat, while working to improve yields and farm profits.

The plans may include a variety of measures such as the creation of hedgerows, field borders, nesting structures, appropriate flowering cover crop mixes, contour buffer strips and drift barriers, critical area planting, filter strips, and riparian and farm pond revegetation. A suite of at least 6,340 appropriate, primarily native plant species will be tailored to each site depending on secondary objectives and site conditions, providing habitat throughout over 130 acres of farmland and a 210-acre ranch.

While several of these techniques alone are recognized practices covered under EQIP funding, the proposed project is looking to expand their standard applications in several innovative ways, including: specific focus on enhancing habitat for pollinators, particularly native California bee species; the expansion of pollinator habitat into water-scarce rangeland; and emphasis on non-Pierce's disease host plants for vineyards. In addition, the project partners will receive training from the Xerces Society, an international leader in invertebrate conservation, to monitor sites for their effectiveness in supporting native bee species.

Farm Pollinator Plans will be completed and approved by landowners by November 2009, then implemented with the onset of rains that winter. Landowners' contributions may include irrigation installation and maintenance, weeding, and mulch provision. To ensure project effectiveness and success, landowners will be required to sign twenty year maintenance and monitoring agreements. Sites will be monitored for survival rates and pollinator populations by project partners for a minimum of three years, with results included in bi-annual progress reports and a final report in 2012. Project sites will be used as demonstration sites for a 2011 workshop addressing on-farm pollinator habitat, facilitated in conjunction with NRCS and the Xerces Society.

The three partners are ideally suited to initiate this pilot project. The Gold Ridge RCD has worked with landowners throughout western Sonoma County for over sixty years to promote conservation and land stewardship, and will serve as the grant administrator, providing landowner outreach, contract management, project monitoring, and reporting. CAFF, a nonprofit that works to foster sustainable, family-scale agriculture, will assist with local outreach efforts and technical expertise, and will spearhead subsequent farm tours and workshops. Farm Pollinator Plan design and installation oversight will be conducted by Farm Stewards, a local small, woman-owned business that works with farmers to improve natural resource management while diversifying production systems. Matching funds will be sought as cost-share for the proposed project, and to promote and expand the program to foster pollinator health and agricultural sustainability throughout western Sonoma County.

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