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Objective 2.L
Promote farming practices that increase the fertility of soil, improve water quality and support wildlife habitat.

Proposed Places to Start for 2008:
1.    Work with FDA or CA Dept. of Health Services to give farmers a seal of approval for those who conserve habitat that filters E. coli pathogens.
2.    Support and expand ecolabels that protect water quality, such as Salmon Safe throughout California.
3.    Create a taskforce of economists, farmers, conservationists, and nonprofits, to develop cost-effectiveness analyses for determining practices with the highest returns to water quality and wildlife habitat, giving incentive payments for implementation. Parameters to examine:
a.    Reduction of pesticide, nutrient, and sediment pollution,
b.    Support of beneficial pollinator, predatory and parasitic insects, and rodent-eating species,
c.    Creation of wildlife corridors, and
d.    Taking marginal lands that cost more to farm than what is returned, and put them into wildlife habitat (ex. Often soils next to rivers are too wet to farm, but by restoring riparian habitat water quality is protected and wildlife corridors re-established).

Potential Future Actions for 2009-2012:
1.    Publish regional reports on how to improve water quality and case studies of success, along with the degraded state of water quality due to agriculture’s use of fertilizers, pesticides and practices that cause erosion. Reports should both address surface waters and polluted wells in rural areas where farmers live.
2.    Modeled after UCCE San Luis Obispo’s Water Quality Short Course, develop similar teaching materials and trainings for other regions of the state, and give farmers incentives to attend, such as free assistance and materials from nonprofits to install habitat that protects water quality.
 
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