Edward Sills
Technical Advisor

Farm: Pleasant Groves Farms
Location: 5072 Pacific Avenue, Pleasant Grove, CA 95668
Telephone: (916) 655-3391
Fax: (916) 655-3699
E-mail:edsills@ucdavis.edu
Years with the Project:
Education: Bachelor of Science, Forestry UC Berkeley 1976

My interest is in crop rotations and natural fertility management practices (composts, green manure) which allow for adequate production and pest control. On our farm, we are trying various cropping sequences. Because a crop rotation pattern might be as long as nine years, including wheat, beans, popcorn, rice, oats, vetch, and fallow, long term research on a near-farm scale is necessary to acquire the most relevant information. Compost made with varied materials and methods result in different qualities related to nutrients and microbial populations. Research on compost characteristics and how they may influence soil fertility and pathogens is also necessary.

The SAFS project, studying long term fertility, pest control, and production among different cropping system, is providing information relevant to our farm. I am especially interested in the organic system as we are growing many of the same crops.

Ed Sills grows rice, popcorn, wheat, oats, beans, and almonds organically on approximately 2400 acres in Pleasant Grove, California. Ed graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with a Bachelor's Degree in Forestry, but he decided to return to the family farm in 1976. In 1985 he began a transition toward a more sustainable, resource-conserving farming system. Presently, 100% of the farm acreage is in organic production. Sills Farms processes, packages, and markets organic popcorn and various dry bean varieties under the Pleasant Grove Farms label.

Ed has served as vice-president and Board Member of the California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF) state organization and was a member of the University of California Sustainable Agriculture Public Advisory Committee. In 1982 he was chosen to participate in the Rotary Group Study Exchange Program to India. He was named California Conservation Farmer of the Year by the National Endowment of Soil and Water Conservation in 1989. Ed was California's Outstanding Young Farmer for 1989, an award sponsored by the Jaycees and John Deere Company. He has testified before several congressional hearings on the topic of Sustainable Agriculture.

Ed currently serves as a Farmer Advisor to the Sustainable Agriculture Farming Systems Project at the University of California Davis and is a member of the President's Council-- Henry A. Wallace Institute for Alternative Agriculture. He is a member of the Pest management Advisory Committee of the California Department of pesticide Regulation. He is also a member of the American Farm Bureau Federation's Information Technology Advisory Committee, which is concerned with the application of Global Positioning Systems to agriculture.

Ed's wife, Wynette Sills, was a Cooperative Extension Farm Advisor in Sacramento County until 1989, when she decided to devote her time to the family farm. She receive a Bachelor's Degree from the University of Arizona and a Master's Degree from the University of California at Davis in Pest Management.

Ed has been a cooperator on several University of California research projects on his farm, including rice straw incorporation, green manures, weed ecology, and beneficial insects.

Ed became involved in laser land-leveling on his own farm in 1982 and became interested in computer software for land leveling. Ed wrote a land-leveling calculation program for the Apple II computer in 1983. Soon thereafter, EMS software was started, which now sells a complete software package for agricultural land-leveling on the IBM PC.

Ed and Wynette are busy raising Katelyn (5), Jessica (3), and Andrew (7 months).

January 1996