Written by Elizabeth Tobey, OFRF Communications Supervisor
In 2019, Dr. Joji Muramoto grew to become the primary Cooperative Extension Specialist within the College of California (UC) system devoted particularly to natural agriculture. This week, he’ll obtain an award from the Agricultural Sustainability Institute (ASI) at UC Davis for his contribution to natural agriculture analysis.
The 2025 Eric Bradford and Charlie Rominger Agricultural Sustainability Management Award acknowledges and honors the legacy of Eric Bradford and Charlie Rominger by celebrating the management of a person who has labored to advertise agricultural sustainability.
A few of the most vital scientific developments in strawberry analysis have been made by Dr. Muramoto and Dr. Carol Shennan at UC Santa Cruz, the place they’ve pioneered options to methyl bromide in business strawberry manufacturing. The practices of anaerobic soil disinfestation (ASD), an alternative choice to soil fumigation for the management of soil pathogens and nematodes, developed by Dr. Muramoto and colleagues, have been broadly adopted amongst natural and traditional strawberry growers in California.
From an early age in suburban Tokyo, Japan, Dr. Muramoto was within the natural motion. “Natural farmers there informed me repeatedly, ‘Soil is the muse of farming.’ That’s after I received inquisitive about soil science,” he says. As he superior in his profession, he discovered that serving to growers was particularly rewarding. “My ardour is to assist natural and traditional farmers make their farms extra sustainable: ecologically sound, economically viable, and socially simply.”
Dr. Muramoto’s influential analysis focuses on enhancing soil well being and selling the sustainability of natural agriculture in California by transdisciplinary agroecological approaches. Since 1996, he has carried out analysis and extension on fertility and soil-borne illness administration in natural strawberry and vegetable manufacturing and fumigant options in standard strawberry manufacturing in coastal California.
The Natural Farming Analysis Basis (OFRF) started following Dr. Muramoto’s analysis in 1997 once we helped to provoke the work with a analysis grant. OFRF awarded extra grants in 2003 and 2010, which have since been leveraged to safe greater than $5 million in funding from state and federal businesses to assist this pivotal work. “I thank OFRF for its assist from the start of my profession at Santa Cruz,” Dr. Muramoto mentioned once we reached out to congratulate him on this award. We applaud researchers like Dr. Muramoto, whose work exemplifies the ways in which natural analysis can result in revolutionary options that profit the entire farming neighborhood, standard and natural alike.
With natural agriculture because the fastest-growing sector in the US’ meals market, accounting for over 6% of whole meals gross sales and 15% of all produce gross sales, we imagine it ought to obtain a proportionate quantity of analysis funding. Nevertheless, natural analysis at present receives lower than 2% of USDA’s analysis funding, and fewer than 1% of the Agricultural Analysis Service’s (ARS) analysis funds. Moreover, the analysis businesses on the USDA haven’t been spared from the present administration’s funds cuts and widespread firings.
Agricultural analysis is the spine of the technical and monetary help applications operated by the USDA that guarantee meals safety, meals security, environmental sustainability, and financial vitality for the US. We’re dedicated to persevering with to advocate for the funding that natural agriculture analysis deserves, enabling scientists like Dr. Muramoto to proceed to pave the best way in the direction of sustainable options for all farmers.
Learn extra about our Coverage Priorities right here, and discover extra analysis in our new searchable useful resource database, The Natural Analysis Hub.
This story was tailored from a press launch by UC Davis and a earlier story OFRF launched about Dr. Muramoto’s work.
