In Search of Farm Equipment to Lessen Air Pollution

Deteriorating air quality in the San Joaquin Valley is bringing tougher pollution controls for the region’s farmers, which in turn is creating a growing market for environmentally friendly farm equipment.

Struggling to comply with the new rules, farmers are turning to innovative products and methods such as almond harvesters that kick up less dust, wood chippers as alternatives to burning orchard prunings and tractors steered by satellite-based global positioning systems to reduce the use of fuel, pesticides and fertilizers.

Even the venerable equipment maker Deere & Co. will come out with a line of more fuel-efficient, less polluting John Deere tractors this year, in part because of California’s increasingly stringent regulations.

“What happens in California percolates across the country, even in agriculture,” said Craig Weynand, Deere’s Western sales office branch manager.

Air quality has become a vexing issue for the valley, which health officials say has one of the highest asthma rates in the nation. In response, the state Legislature removed the air pollution exemption for farms in 2003.

What’s more, since December, growers must submit plans for controlling dust to the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District. And farms that emit more than 12.5 tons per year of certain smog-producing chemicals have to obtain permits from the district, which has missed multiple federal deadlines for cleaning up air pollution in the region.

Starting in June, there will be a prohibition on burning orchard prunings and other agricultural waste related to several dozen major crops, including peaches, plums and citrus fruit.

The new rule sent sales of wood chippers, which chop up trees into tiny pieces of mulch, up 10% last year at Cal-Line Equipment Inc. in Livermore, said Bruce Bartling, a company spokesman.

“But we think the real impact will be later this year when the restrictions tighten,” he added.

Cotton grower Cannon Michael is one farmer who has already made a sizable investment in environmental cleanup. His Bowles Farming Co. is using a new 45-foot long, 50,000-ton farm implement known as the Optimizer, which reduces the number of passes that tractors have to make through his fields near Los Banos.

Developed by Turlock-based Tillage International, the Optimizer is an immense gray machine that resembles an upside down battleship. It can hold up to nine types of implements, including a row of discs that cut and turn over the soil, an eggbeater-like leveling and blending device and a line of heavy barrels that smash dirt clods and firm the seedbed. Another attachment drops seeds into the ground.

“Before we would have to do six operations through the fields to get ready for planting,” said Michael, a co-owner of Bowles. “Now we can do that in two.”

Fewer passes mean less dust kicked up into the air and a reduction in diesel emissions from Bowles’ fleet of tractors.

But what Michael really likes about the equipment is that it saves thousand of dollars in fuel and labor expenses. He says it can be used on about two-thirds of the farm’s 6,000 acres each season, saving the company about $50 an acre, or $200,000 a year.

The Optimizer also qualifies the farm to apply for a special U.S. Department of Agriculture payment of up to $112,500 for converting to less polluting growing practices.

For a large operation, the tiller pays for itself, said Michael, even without a federal environmental quality payment.

The Optimizer was among the 100 acres of harvesters, combines, tractors, sprayers and other equipment on display this week at the World Ag Expo in Tulare. Other farmers viewing it seemed impressed.

“We could prepare and plant our 600 acres of hay with this, all in one pass,” said Gary Collins, a Petaluma grower.

Collins also could collect about $50,000 in federal Environmental Quality Program Incentives if he used the tool on his entire acreage. But even with that, Collins questioned whether his operation could ever support the tiller’s $189,000 list price and the $200,000 expense of the massive 450-horsepower tractor required to pull it.

Almond growers in particular are under pressure to reduce air pollution caused by the dusty nature of their harvesting technique.

On display at the Expo were newly developed almond-gathering machines from Modesto-based Exact Harvesting Systems. The harvesters, which resemble big yellow canister vacuums, use a closed-air loop to separate nuts from ground refuse. That reduces dust emissions by up to 70%, said Doug Flora, Exact’s co-owner.

It works like this: A pickup chain grabs the crop off the ground along with dirt, grass and leaves. The heavier nuts fall back to the ground, to be collected later, while the refuse is dropped to the ground in separate piles instead of being blown into the air.

The three pieces that make up the Exact system will retail for $230,000, about 20% more than conventional equipment.

Although lots of farmers were kicking the tires of the various eco-friendly machines at the Expo, such price tags remain a hurdle for many.

“I’m here to keep up with technology,” said almond farmer Tom Caswell of Modesto as he looked at Exact’s machines. “But I don’t think we will buy this type of stuff until we are forced to.”