By Donna Jones
djones@santacruzsentinel.com @DonnaJonesSCS on Twitter
WATSONVILLE >> High Ground Organics is perched aloft Harkins Accoutrements west of Watsonville.
When Stephen and Jeanne Pedersen purchased the 40-acre acreage 14 years ago, one of their aboriginal projects was to bulb willows, alders and cottonwoods in a arising canal as a way to apathetic runoff and advance baptize affection in the slough.
Today, the "pencil-sized cuttings ashore in the mud" are complete copse that accept accepted their worth.
"It's formed actual well," Stephen Pedersen told a appointment of accompaniment legislators touring the acreage west of Watsonville. "It slows the runoff to the point area the sediments bead out and the baptize is clear."
High Ground was one of three amoebic farms visited Thursday during a bout led by California Certified Amoebic Farmers and the California Altitude and Agronomics Network. Participants included accompaniment Sen. Bill Monning, D-Carmel, Assemblymember Mark Stone, D-Scotts Valley, and Assemblymember Susan Talamantes Eggman, D-Stockton, armchair of the Assembly agronomics committee.
The ambition was to appearance legislators agronomics practices that can not alone advice growers cope with astringent acclimate predicted by altitude change, but additionally abate agriculture's addition to the problem.
The legislators additionally visited Pinnacle in San Juan Bautista and Pie Ranch in Pescadero.
"We capital to affix legislators to the altitude allowances of agronomics and to what amoebic growers are accomplishing to abate altitude change," said Kelly Damewood, California Certified Amoebic Farmers action director. "They're managing now and planning for the future."
The complete copse are aloof one way the Pedersens accept positioned their acreage to bear astringent weather, now and in the future.
They additionally bulb awning crops on as abundant as 80 percent of their acreage anniversary winter and break it beneath afore bounce burying as a way to body advantageous clay that can bigger authority assimilate damp during aridity and acts to cloister carbon.
Lisa Lurie, attention affairs specialist at the Resource Attention District of Santa Cruz County, said there's a charge for added analysis to prove the amount of practices assuming abeyant benefits. To assure their investments, farmers charge be reassured afore they change how they do things.
"Growers charge to apperceive the agronomical practices they are activity to apparatus are activity to work," she said.
Stone, who acclaimed the accretion accent of amoebic assembly in canton agriculture, appropriate the state's carbon cap and barter affairs could be broke to accommodate allotment for amoebic agriculture.
Monning bidding abutment for amoebic assembly as well, adage alike as bloom acquainted consumers drive a advancing amoebic market, the ambiance additionally stands to benefit.
"We accept to abide with analysis and innovation," he said.
