Episode #205
Scott Park: A Normal CA Farm Farmed Abnormally

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Scott Park’s talk has been edited for clarity and readability.

Scott Park delivers his talk “A Normal California Farm Farmed Abnormally” to a group of farmers gathered at Churchtown Dairy for Farmer Friday September 27, 2024, the day before our event Real Organic: A World Movement:

Scott Park 0:00
This is that whole idea of keeping the system complete. Okay? Until about 2014 we really didn’t respect the borders. You know, they were just there. But we started realizing, look at the pollination, look at the flowering. Look at the cover that it’s giving. Most farmers in California don’t want to see one animal on their ground. Okay? They honestly don’t. And we do have an L boxes there. We probably have a few more gophers than we want. But for the most part, we feel our system is running right when we’re seeing foxes and deers and raccoons and possums and squirrels and gophers and rabbits, because now it’s this is the way it’s supposed to be, right? You don’t want to pull one I’m actually sort of the opposite of science. They want to pull one part out and look at it. I don’t want one part pulled out. I want to keep the whole system as close as possible to just being a complete system that runs on its own. I Linley,

Linley Dixon 1:06
welcome to the Real Organic Podcast. I’m Linley Dixon, co director of the Real Organic Project. We’re a grass roots farmer led movement with an add on organic food label to distinguish organic crops grown in healthy soils and organic livestock raised on well managed pasture, all without synthetic fertilizers and toxic chemicals. You just heard from California veggie grower Scott Park, who presented to a room full of Real Organic farmers this past fall on farm of Friday, the day before our larger event at churchtown dairy in Hudson, New York. As a prolific row crop farmer in California and someone who dedicates a lot of time, money, brain, space and land to experimenting with techniques that might better his soil and his farm’s bottom line, Scott shared a lot about what does and doesn’t work for him, especially when it comes to tillage and drastically limiting off farm inputs. As Scott said, the norm in California is bare, overworked soil, especially in the winter. In contrast, Scott’s Farm Park farming organics, uses cover crops and elaborate crop rotations. He says a mantra in winter in his area is brown is beautiful. Green is gross. If you’re watching this on our YouTube channel, you’ll get to see Scott’s entire presentation and all of his great slides, the audio only version of today’s episode has been shortened, and while we did include all of Scott’s bold opinions, we left out the nuts and bolts of his successful farming techniques. So encourage anyone who wants to learn more to head over to YouTube and see examples of a Real, Organic certified California row crop farmer who farms with natural systems at Scale.

Scott Park 2:59
Thanks for inviting me. Everybody hear me? Okay? Dave and Linley, so yeah, this has been all end up speaking pretty loud as time goes on. I’m going to go off on rants. So, you know, just, just get get ready, because we’re not going to follow a lot of rhyme or reason here. And it is interesting for me. I have spoke quite a bit. I have classes come from UC Davis, and I have corporations and state and come, but I always have people that, for the most part, I feel they don’t really know what I’m going through, but I feel pretty comfortable you all know what I’m going through. Okay, so it’s kind of I hopefully I’m relevant to ranchers and what have you the concept that we’re going to go on today is basically, how do you make a profit? You know, with improving the environment, improving the lives of the people around you, that each of us has, whatever we have, our ability on where we’re at. Myself, I’m a field and row crop grower, actually, on 1700 acres. So, but yeah, that’s right. There’s a reason for this. So, yeah, the term a normal California farm, farm down normally. What I’m getting at there is that we are a normal in size and crops to a California farmers, a lot of them are a lot larger, but ours is pretty representative. The uniqueness of it is that we’re doing what normal farms do, but we’re doing it with improving the soil every year and doing it with 100% our inputs have shrunk to almost nothing. So, so we’ve got a functional farm that could be representative for anywhere in the United States or really in the world, because the concepts are the same as all of what you’re doing in your world. So you know, as you’ll see, 10. Care of the soil in tilling. Let’s see work these, these, that back one, this one. There we go. So my son’s taking over the farm, but will and I got going. Quick story. I have no roots. I’m first generation. Actually have a degree in political science, okay, the applicability of that to farming, but, but maybe, maybe there is. I actually was, as I said, I do a lot of stuff with UC Davis and the head of the soil microbiology department. Surprisingly, said to me, Scott, I think you have an advantage on on how you think and why you think the way you think. And I’m going, what’s that? And she’s going, because you’ve never been trained how to think like a farmer. You’ve never been trained and gone through and I’m not meaning to criticize those that have taken right, you’ve got maybe PhDs and ag, but, but basically, you know, I came into this without a preconceived idea of how to do anything. And so I basically, from 1974 to 85 cloned all the other farmers around me, and whatever they did that was right, and what they did was a lot of chemicals. So through the first 1112, years, that’s what I did. And then I started seeing that all our costs were going to the moon. We weren’t getting any better yields, you know, like we are at a dead end. And so how do you, how do you make this thing work? And just worked out in 85 I picked up a field from another farmer. This is all rotating tomatoes that those days, that’s the only way you got into farming, if you weren’t generational, is you had to be a whack job to grow processing tomatoes, because it’s really high risk. You can lose all your money in one year. And so most everyone owned their own ground. Why would they mess with that? They could use government subsidies, grow wheat, rice, safflower, be safe and comfortable, bring in the idiot to grow the tomatoes, which actually also would make their next crop better by having tomatoes in the rotation. Then you get kicked off that then you go to another field. So you’re basically a gypsy wandering in the Sacramento Valley, scrounging up acreage. And then in 85 so I picked up this field, and it worked up beautifully, and it wasn’t working up where we have gigantic lockers and the soil is just destroyed. And so I started thinking about how, what are these people doing different? It wasn’t organic, but they were very careful, in general, with the soil. They were in really light equipment. They waited as long as they could before they got on the ground, whereas all of our other farmers, including myself, was you just powered your way through. You just got bigger equipment, and you ran deeper equipment. You made more passes, you used more fuel and labor, but by God, you beat that soil into the condition that you wanted it in. And these people, so I pulled in this old d7 and a ripper into this field, expecting that it’s gonna take three passes, grinding, roaring of the engine. It’s just like, you know, wow, this is the way I want to farm. This makes sense. And so that started me on the journey that we’ve gone on. So you’ve read most of this. We are 100% regenerative, organic, certified. I’d love to discuss that sometime with any of you. Personally, I think it’s, I don’t think it’s worth it, and I think it’s taking things in the wrong direction. We actually did it because we had buyers begging us in order for them to market the term, right, regenerative And so anyway, but that’s, that’s for another day. Yeah, next so, no, that’s too big of a jump. One back, go the other way. There you go. I didn’t I feel like, how many people have ever seen processed tomatoes in any way other than Paul? Okay, not many. So we’re having a quick tomato 101, okay, just so you understand, because the processing tomatoes are the foundation of our farm, and they have been since day one. Okay, they’re really high value. You can make a lot of money on it. They’re really good rotational crop and and so anyway, that’s why you sort of need to understand, especially on the tillage side, what we do and why we do it. Okay, so that’s this, just a picture of this is, and you can see it’s till. It’s nice. So all our fields are furrow irrigated. You can see the pipes laying over that is, anyone need an explanation on what furrow irrigation is? Basically just a flood rate. Well, in those furrows, right? Running, running in the furrow. So, so most California farming on veg crops is, is drip systems, and we stay away from drip. Long story. So anyway, this is like five weeks old. Next, okay, this is the middle of season. You. Sea water running. That’s what the tomato plants look like. These are planned. There’s just one plant like every 15 inches on a five foot bed, so they can grow fairly robustly next. So this, these are we grow for a few canneries, but we also grow specifically for Heinz and for Campbell Soup there, and actually the Campbell Soup Pacific foods. If any of you buy Pacific foods, it’s a cardboard thing. It’s on the it’s all over national. We’ll have our our tomato product will be on the label of Pacific foods probably in a month or two.

Bernadette Brogden 10:40
Yes, I can’t help but wonder why, why Campbell’s why Heinz? You know you’re offering this product that seems just so much above what those labels represent. I’m just so curious why they’re your buyers,

Scott Park 10:58
Mostly marketing. They will give lip service to sustainability and caring. And I don’t mean to knock them, that’s corporations, that’s power, that’s money. I will say Campbell’s is making Campbell Soup, which is now no longer Campbell Soup. It’s Campbell’s company. Time moves on. But they actually are trying as hard as they can to change California conventional Campbell’s growers, and they’re going absolutely crazy. It’s almost there. There’s what they’re doing. They’re they’re coming up with a little bit of money, but there’s a lot of grants and stuff right now in California, probably everywhere, right the government’s showing a lot of money. It’s sustainability, and so like they’re encouraging that, but, but for the most part, I can honestly say that. And we have other corporations we’re dealing with wonderful at giving lip service to caring, but if it’s not showing on the bottom line, sorry, we’re going somewhere else. Yeah.

Bernadette Brogden 12:03
And the follow up to that is, are processing tomatoes similar to like California nut growers, where you don’t know your price until you get your check in the mail, or do you have a contract with them that you know what you’re signing up for, or your tomatoes are gone before you even know the price they’re paying for

Scott Park 12:19
that, for the most part, we know, however, we’re 51 years now, I’ve been doing this wrong, slow learner. The that what they do is, you plant, you go, you’re coming in, you start planting in March, okay, or early April. And so you’re negotiating prices, and they just don’t get it quite where it’s not done yet. Well, go ahead and plant. Okay, so we start planting transplants. We’re putting them in. What are these transplants good for? Except for processing tomatoes, right? I mean, 20 so what am I gonna do with 20,000 tons of tomatoes if I don’t like the price they got us? And so for 51 years, you go back and forth with the canner. You know, I want this price now we’ll give you this and now, well, you better plant your transplants. Are getting awfully tall in the greenhouse. Go ahead and get those in the ground. So we get them planted, and then we start arguing on price again. They’re going, hmm, what are you going to do with those fields that are all full of transplants they got? It’s a time thing for us. We can’t go well, we’re just going to hold off for three weeks to plant, you know, unless we get the price set. I mean, the cannery has a really tight schedule. You know, when we’re planning a plan in the 20th of March that’s destined to be run through the cannery, August 2. I mean, it’s just there. They’ve got to be organized. We’ve got to be organized. And so they play the hold off the price game. I think we’ve I probably had a price settled maybe twice in 51 years before I planted. So yes, Bob, are you getting any interest in your nutrient density work? None, none. Yeah, like Campbell’s is very interested, okay, but they’re not coming up with money and saying, We want, well, no, and just like the example you gave, that’s a great one of doing a conventional with the organic. So they’re in a perfect position to have our tomatoes coming in. And conventional growers, like part of Campbell’s cannery, is one’s dedicated to organic and the other is dedicated to conventional, but they’ve got the both coming in same day. They could have the same variety planted the same day. They could duplicate the whole thing and then run just what you’re saying, nutrient dense trials and verifying it and marketing it. But it’s, I’m not sure why they’re gun shy of it, and there’s other canneries, and there’s other costs. Just you might be interested in knowing that the buyers say we don’t want to be associated with organic, because if we’re associated with organic, we’re implying that our conventional is pesticide laden. Well, it is pesticide. Laden. But anyway, so they’ve actually just said that point blank, we don’t want to look raw. We don’t want to make our main market look bad. Yeah, no, there’s lots and lots of games going on and and this regenerative, organic. You know, I mentioned that we were persuaded to go that way. I I actually feel quite strongly that that’s completely the wrong way to go. But our buyers were going, please do this, and we just watched their purchase of our product diminish every year. In other words, they’re not moving it, and even though they asked us to jump through all the hoops, even though we qualify for it, they’re not standing by their word and going, we asked you to do this now we’re going to stand by and give you this many times, or this many pounds or whatever. You know, it’s all here’s, is it working the marketing we love? You can we have more? You know, it’s all working on the module. No, no. So, so

Speaker 1 15:59
your concern about that isn’t around the program itself. It’s more about the marketing, end of it, of regenerative.

Scott Park 16:05
Well, I think it’s, it’s just going the way of natural, sustainable, unfortunately, organic. I mean, the hydroponic CAFOs look at how that’s watered down. The meaning of organic. So the regenerative same thing. So as another example of this in this is in the tomato industry, is we are contacted by a cannery going, well, we’d like your regenerative tomatoes. And you know, I interrupt you mean regenerative, organic certified tomatoes. No, we want regen. Ified we want not regen, regenerative. And so I’m going, Well, why not regenerative organic? And they’re going, because our cannery isn’t certified organic, but they didn’t say it. We could really market the word regenerative. So we don’t truly care what the hell you’re doing, but if we can get product from you that says regen, if regenerative, that’s to our advantage. Now that’s some of the trends of what’s going and miss. Total misuse of the term of regenerative. Organic Farming is regenerative, probably in this group, I would guess. Huh, Paul, like 90% you call 99% of you qualify. As your regenerative farmers. You didn’t start farming thinking you’re regenerative. That’s a natural process of what you’re doing. You know, regenerative? It’s almost duplicating the word. Of course, I’m not going to show you a 20 ton to the acre crop, right? This is a 62 ton to the acres of tomatoes. We grow about 20,000 tons of tomatoes every year over a month’s time. Next, please. So that’s this what a tomato harvester looks like. It does. It goes technology. A lot of it’s dependent on electronic eyes, and we can harvest really fast. Next so this a back shot. But just for you know, farmers or mechanic junkies that this will this can do 50 tons an hour that can run. We run three to four weeks, doing about 800 tons a day. Runs pretty much day and night, every day, until we get the tomato crop off. Just as this is this picture here, I remember taking it very well, because they were about 10 feet from making it to the end of the row, and that was the end of tomato harvest. So like there’s no much better feeling than that last 10 feet. When you got it done, you made it through another season, you paid the bills. Then you know, no better. So you just go do it again next. Okay, so I can just get a couple for you, having been in California, the only good farming in California for 99% of farmers, is bare ground. Okay? Brown is beautiful. Green is gross. Okay, so if you have completely sterilized environment, and you’re doing what you should do, and if you’ve pulverized the soil to death, that’s that’s a good farmer. That’s where the landowners drive by and actually go, Oh, how beautiful is that. That it’s just a square box of a bed that’s been completely pulverized. And so you get rains coming through and standing water is no big deal next. So this one on the right, that’s what the ground looks like after that drought. Standing water disappears. I mean, it’s for sure, it’s dead and then, plus working it up, it’s a mess. So on the left, that’s what we try to have on every field. I use that quote from Buckminster Fuller, kind of just as a driving point, like, Can don’t worry about how others are judging what you’re doing. If you believe that what you’re doing is one, you profit, but change your change is applicable. It can be applied to others, maybe in. Time you can just dissolve the other system as farmers just see, there’s a better way to do this, that I can make money, and I’m going to mention money and profit a lot, but that’s what’s real on getting farmers to change. Okay, they’re not going to change because they’re worried about the environment. The best is to get a change, or by them managing the environment correctly, they’re making a profit, and that’s the way I do feel it’s always got to present it to farmers next so this, just last conventional tillage, like this one is this probably set up right here. Probably cost a million dollars. Neither say it’s not mine, it’s a wheat field. Neither say you don’t see any wheat straw, but that’s it. This is good farming. This is coming in and absolutely overpowering whatever situation you have on the ground. You just beat it to death in one pass. They, you know, owners of this will probably go look at how much I get done in one pass. Well, you need to do all that ripping to get rid of all the compaction you got from the giant tractor that you’re running, and so that I just showed the compaction. So this is what we run instead of the giant rig that I showed the picture of on the wheat field. This is all we’re doing. But we’re going in about 18 inches with this, and we go in and we rip right where all the traffic is, okay. And so that breaks that up. That’s, that’s, that’s what our tillage is. Because we do. I’ve been messing with since 1997 trying to grow no till, okay, working with Jeff Mitchell in UC Davis, and I completely It’s fine with me if I could figure out how to do it and get the results that I’m getting. But again, it gets down to that. Don’t let the perfect eliminate. The good is our farm. Is the soil getting better every year, you know? And it’s the community getting better. Is the environment getting better? We’re moving in the right direction. We aren’t moving as fast as we used to. We you tend to plate What do you think, Paul? Where’s Paul? Can’t leave me alone out here. But yeah, you can. And you see Dave is actually seeing it too. And other or Ed sales, another grower in in California, that are organic matter, and our positive results, they’re not going downhill, but it’s not anywhere near improving. But a lot of this stuff, for 35 years now, we’ve been putting 10 to 15 tons of biomass in the ground and and so it’s sort of it, sort of planes out. It doesn’t it in our environment, your environment, you may be able to do it forever and keep seeing the growth we seem to be tapping out in our area, the organic matter is about two, maybe one, eight to two, two. So we’re at around three, five summers, up to three, eight. Some is up to 4244, but for the most part, three, eight, we seem to be hitting that’s about, you know, California, our turnover, our heat, the moisture, whatever it is the crops were growing, it’s really hard to get that organic matter up, so we bumped it up about one and a half percent, which is really good. But it’s not just that. It’s all those other positives, right? Of the my stupid cartoon, but we’re that’s what we’re getting from it. You know, it’s just, it’s respecting the soil and taking care of it, keeping your costs in line, you know, making a book, so you can’t be greedy. You can’t you’ve got to take a long term approach on this. So my suggestion is you get the field. Let’s say you got it in the fall, you plant a cover crop, a real simple one. I highly recommend anyone taking on growing cover crops the first time grow legumes and specifically vetch, because it’s really user friendly. Okay, where most farmers, when they start messing with cover crops, they’re looking for a reason to not grow it. They don’t want it to succeed. They like their cocoon just the way it is. So don’t, don’t give them that out. So you suggest they grow a Vetch. Then in the spring, they come in and they plant in our area something like safflower super simple, not much money, but you don’t have any money out take the safflower crop off. Plant if you can quick summer cover crop, follow again with a winter cover crop, then go in and plant sunflowers. Okay, so in those two years, you probably didn’t make any money at all. Okay, but then, after the sunflower, you’re planting another cover crop coming into that third year. So just think, you put in the safflower biomass. You put in three cover crops. You’re putting the sunflower, all of it’s going to the ground, all of it’s building up, and it’s training your microbes. This is what you’re getting, guys, no more synthetic no more urea. This is the real deal. Adjust. And so then your third year depends on how you’re reading your soil. You could go and even do a one year alfalfa, or you could just go and grow, if timing right, you could even plant a high value crop in the first day of the fourth year. You’d be harvesting it for organic but the idea is, which we did. I. Okay, so I’ve transitioned 35 fields from conventional to organic over the years. And in the first 1015, fields that I transitioned in, I had the attitude, I’m going to make as much money this year as I can. Because, you know, it’s, it’s going to be three years for us organic, but I can’t just put the money out. No, you’re that money is going out no matter what, it’s either going to go out with you having low cost and building the ground or high cost and not building the ground. So So that’s, that’s what we do, and it tends, yeah, it. So I finished that by saying, Okay, you kind of went in the hole for two years, but now that that fourth year you harvest, you’ve got a gold mine, right? It’s getting better in the fifth year. Now you’re getting your premium. You got your premium the fourth year, and now, after five years, your grounds much better than what it was five years ago. Instead of a conventional field, five years down the road, it’s not much worse. So all that money is going out. That’s where you got to have that long term mindset. This is just putting money in the bank this I’m not getting it now, but I’m going to get it back over time. No, none of that money is being wasted.

Linley Dixon 26:10
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