Dec 3, 2009

UC Cuts Small Farm Program, Slashes Budgets

The University of California (UC) is shutting down its Small Farm Program, effective Jan. 1.

What’s that going to mean for California’s tens of thousands of small farms?

They’ll still get help from UC, but it won’t be from a single, centralized program.

“Growers probably won’t see a difference,” said Pam Kan-Rice, UC assistant director of news and information outreach.

She described it as more of a restructuring – consolidating administrative duties from several programs – than a closure.

“It sounds like we’re not helping small farms anymore, but that’s not the case,” Kan-Rice said. “We just won’t have a designated program with its own administration.”

Cuts

Thanks to an “unprecedented reduction in state funds,” UC’s Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources (ANR) – which oversees the university’s Cooperative Extension system, Small Farm Program and other agricultural institutions – has cut $9 million out of its annual budget. The cuts were announced by Daniel Dooley, vice president of ANR, who published a handful of letters between August and October describing the division’s restructuring plan.

“Although these cuts are severe, realistically they may not be our last,” he wrote.

Dooley eliminated two high-level administrative positions within ANR, and redistributed their responsibilities. He also closed down several programs and reduced the budgets of others. Besides the Small Farm Program, the Center for Water Resources, the Integrated Hardwood Range Management Program and the California Communities Program will be eliminated. Other programs, including Statewide Integrated Pest Management, the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program, the Agricultural Issues Center and the 4H Statewide Office, have had their budgets slashed by 20 percent.

Many of the responsibilities of the closed programs will be shifted as part of the restructuring plan. For example, the Sustainable Food Systems initiative will take on many of the functions of the Small Farm Program, according to Dooley.

Helping small farmers

The Small Farm Program (SFP) celebrated its 30th anniversary this year. According to its Web site: “For many new farmers, immigrant farmers and small-scale growers, the Small Farm Program’s advisers are the trusted first links to university research in a food system often more conducive to large-scale production.”

USDA defines a “small farm” as a farm with annual revenues of less than $250,000. According to USDA’s 2007 Census, California has 68,536 small farms – about 85 percent of the state total. Not all of those farms get help from SFP, but many do, said Shermain Hardesty, SFP’s director.

SFP is housed in a small office in the ANR building in Davis, Calif. Five people work there: Hardesty, an administrative officer, a communication coordinator, a grant coordinator and an agritourism coordinator. When the closure occurs, Hardesty will be reassigned to another department. The administrative officer was offered another position but opted to retire instead. The three coordinators will lose their jobs, along with a field assistant. SFP’s Web site will be eliminated, Hardesty said.

Hardesty was surprised by the decision to close SFP. It will save the university $140,000 per year (plus a one-time savings of $268,000), but the program has generated $2.2 million in grant funds since 2000. It’s going to be tough to raise that kind of money without key coordinators and a program specifically dedicated to small farms, she said.

Besides the office personnel, SFP has five field advisers based in various agricultural regions around the state. They’ll keep their jobs, and Hardesty will do her best to stay in touch with them.

“We all agreed it’s important for us to continue to work together,” she said. “We want to keep as much of the program going as possible.”

SFP’s field advisers focus on specialty crop research, especially for blueberries. Many growers have profited from that research, but holding meetings and doing the other things necessary to spread that information costs money. SFP has paid for much of that work with grants, Hardesty said.

SFP has a strong outreach program for ethnic minorities, many of whom grow exotic crops like guava, papaya, lemongrass, gai choy, Chinese spinach, lychee, longan, mango, mamey sapote, jujube, gooseberry – niche items that don’t get outside financial support and rely on UC research, she said.

There’s still a sliver of hope for the program’s survival. SFP has an advisory board that is looking at ways to preserve it, perhaps with funding from outside sources.

“We’re keeping our fingers crossed,” Hardesty said. “We believe, in the long run, they can develop some funding sources for small farm research.”

Originally posted Dec. 2.

— Matt Milkovich