High Residue Farming in the Irrigated Far West

High Residue Farming in the Irrigated Far West

Summary

Farmers in the irrigated regions of the far west have not adopted high residue farming (HRF; no-till, strip-till, etc.) to any great extent. Compared to the Midwest, adoption in these areas has been slowed by the challenges of using these systems with surface irrigation, by intensive crop rotations that include vegetables and other non-agronomic crops, and by the relatively less urgent soil conservation issues in arid climates. Recently, however, needs for water conservation, a new interest on building soil quality, increased overhead irrigation, and increased focus on controlling wind erosion has spurred adoption of high residue farming. To assist farmers with this major change, Extension and NRCS field personnel must adapt systems used in other regions to different climates, crops, and soils. We will bring together Extension and NRCS representatives from AZ, CA, ID, NM, OR, and WA for a two-day conference to discuss the challenges of doing this, how best we can help each other, and how best to reach farmers. Farmers from these states, who are already using HRF, will also attend to guide and ground our discussions. Finally, we will bring in an expert on adult education to give us the most current research on what motivates adults to make large, significant changes like the one to HRF and what methods could be used to increase adoption rates. After this meeting, we will initiate a HRF network using a central website, a listing of people and active projects, and news sharing resource.

Objectives/Performance Targets

1. Increase Extension and NRCS personnel’s awareness and knowledge of HRF practices, challenges, and solutions in other states with similar agricultural systems.
2. Collaboratively identify HRF problems common to these regions
3. Identify and implement appropriate adult educational strategies for moving ahead with HRF programs
4. Establish collaborations between Extension and Research personnel and with NRCS programs
5. Create a website as a method to promote networking on these topics in the region, and post relevant information there.
6. Create a case study of one or more farmer practitioner of high residue farming, for use among all the Western states that make up our project. This case study would include both edited video and a written publication, both posted online.

Accomplishments/Milestones

• The website that resulted from this project, http://westernhrf.wsu.edu/, was updated with relevant material from research papers, Extension publications, and other sources. This work included a literature search, summarization and editing of materials, categorization and posting to the website.

• Completed interview and video recording of case study subject

• Initiated drafting and editing of publication text, and editing of video footage.

• From Jan. – April, we will finalize the publication and video, submit to the WSU publication system, and post online.

Impacts and Contributions/Outcomes

As a direct result of the project, a group from AZ, CA, and NM received a planning grant of $9450. With this funding, in December 2015, this group brought together 24 university, farmer, and NRCS partners to discuss and plan opportunities for jointly conducting research and extension education efforts related to these goals: 1) Increasing the production efficiency of specialty crop systems that are common throughout our irrigated region; 2) Planning research and extension aimed at maintaining the competitiveness of vegetable farms in these three states while simultaneously developing practices that address the uncertainties of climate change, energy costs, and water shortages; and 3) Developing joint, whole systems-oriented approaches that have been significant in improving various agronomic cropping systems in a number of other regions around the world through the use of reduced tillage, residue generation and preservation, and several other complimentary practices.

Collaborators: