The Russell Ranch Sustainable Agriculture Facility conducts long-term research assessing the sustainability of different cropping systems by comparing system outputs and soil quality indicators. Russell Ranch is a 1500 acre tract near the UC Davis campus, which hosts the Long Term Research on Agricultural Systems (LTRAS) and Sustainable Agriculture Farming Systems (SAFS) projects. Russell Ranch is a unit of the Agricultural Sustainability Institute (ASI).

The primary objective of the LTRAS and SAFS projects is to understand the relationships between sustainability and external inputs. Sustainability is assessed from long-term trends in yield, profitability, efficiency in use of limited resources (such as water or energy), and environmental impact, such as leaching of nitrate or pesticides. The Russell Ranch site is primarily a research facility and also supports UC Davis' extension and teaching missions by hosting field days, class field trips, undergraduate interns and graduate student research.