Effects of increased humidity on lettuce yield on three small-scale, arid vegetable farms

Target Audiences

The project’s primary target audience is small-scale vegetable growers located in the dry 2/3rds of Oregon east of the Cascade mountains and elsewhere in the high desert west. As the PI is fluent in Spanish and has simultaneous translating experience, presentations will be offered bilingually.

Our secondary audience is technical service providers such as OSU Small Farms and Extension staff who can share information with growers we do not reach. Small vegetable farms in eastern Oregon geographically isolated due to the distance from our land grant university and lack of Small Farms agents and program and research investment in our region.

Objective 1: Discover latest research on vegetable production in the arid western US through five interviews with researchers on vegetable production in the arid west by December 2025. 

Small-scale growers have limited time to keep up with the most recent research and technology that could improve their production practices. As previously mentioned, some of the most popular farmer-author books and Extension publications come from wetter places like Indiana (Ben Hartman), Maine (Elliot Coleman), and Quebec (Jean-Martin Fortier.)

The PI will interview five arid vegetable production researchers at land grant institutions to learn the most recent research and findings regarding germination, transplant success, and yield as wells as practices that improve arid growing. The PI has a background in both scientific field research as well as working with the public to translate scientific findings in practical ways.

Objective 2: Discover common challenges for vegetable growers in the arid western US through five interviews with growers by December 2025. 

Small-scale growers often live in rural places, are highly isolated by geography, have limited time to connect with other growers, and may live in places where large-scale agriculture is the norm. As a writer for the small grower publication, Growing for Market, the PI has conducted many interviews with growers that brings the deep practical knowledge of growers together. In her experience, growers are eager to share their tips, tricks, observations, successes, and failures and learn from others'.

Outreach to growers has been successful in social media call outs where people self-select to be interviewed or recommend someone to be interviewed. As the PI also speaks Spanish, she will be able to interview growers who feel more comfortable speaking in Spanish.

Objective 3: Disseminate findings to arid vegetable growers through articles, podcasts, and in-person and online workshops the following activities by December 2026.

Articles & Podcasts

The PI and TA will write and get published a series of arid vegetable growing articles with the input of collaborating farms. We will utilize the interviews from objectives 1 and 2 and our research results.

Growing for Market is the premier small grower magazine in publication since 1992 with a nationwide audience. All articles are written for farmers by farmers. It is affordable for growers to subscribe to ($30/year) and also publishes many free articles and a podcast. The PI has written for GFM for five years. The magazine has 5,000+ growers subscribed.

OSU Extension publishes articles for growers of the state on growing practices, new research, and specific growing concerns. It is an important way to disseminate new information to growers throughout the state. The TA and PI will work together to write a series of articles on the SARE project and arid growing.

We will participate in two episodes of the the Growing for Market podcast to reach more growers beyond the articles series. To date the podcast has 200,000 downloads.

Workshops

As in the 2022 SARE project, collaborating farms will present at the 2026 OSU Small Farms Conference. This one-day, in-person conference draws 1000 plus attendees from across the state, but unfortunately, the majority of workshop topics are focused on growing in wetter climates and g larger, less rural communities than ours. Our participation will bring additional growing perspective and experience to a large audience of Oregon growers and OSU staff. Workshops are typically attended by 50-100 people.

The online workshop series will feature the collaborating growers as well as interviewees from objectives 1 and 2 and others. We will focus on 1. strategies to improve summer germination, transplant survival, and yield, 2. the importance of humidity, temperature, and soil water tension in arid growing, and 3. how to monitor these factors on the farm for better decision making.

The workshop will be designed for growers to share their own advice and experience and identify additional research, education, tools, and outreach needed in small-scale arid vegetable growing.

We expect approximately 100 producers to attend.

Outreach

We will reach out to arid growers through OSU Extention, GFM, our personal networks, as well as other western Extension lists.

Importantly, the collaborating growers represent women, BIPOC, LGBTQ, and very rural communities. Collectively, are tied to dozens of formal and informal grower networks in the state and beyond. Outreach will start with our own diverse networks and broaden from there. As a group, we are dedicated to information sharing and farmer-to-farmer collaboration as key values. We are ourselves are underrepresented in agriculture and understand the central importance of making information welcoming and accessible to others.