Weed Suppression Strategies for Key Cultural Crops in the Yazidi Farming Community of the Midwest

View the project final report

Commodities

• Vegetables: eggplant, peppers

Practices

• Education and Training: on-farm/ranch research, participatory research, technical assistance
• Pest Management: mulches - general, mulching - vegetative, mulching - plastic
• Soil Management: soil analysis

Affordable and effective weed-suppression strategies are critical to managing small-scale specialty crop production, especially for beginning farmers looking to scale up their operations. Additional challenges are experienced by refugee and immigrant farmers, including language barriers and a need to adapt production methods of culturally-important crops to different climates. Successful organic weed-control strategies minimize farm labor and tillage for more environmentally and economically sustainable farms.  All participating farmers are co-located at an incubator farm in Southeastern Nebraska and grow similar crops across their farm businesses, catering to the Yazidi, Arabic, and Kurdish communities of Lincoln, NE. The research is a collaboration between agricultural professionals in a nonprofit (Community Crops) and land-grant university (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) and refugee farmers from the Yazidi community. It will include translation of existing USDA-supported course materials on weed management into Arabic and the current research findings will be shared in English and Arabic, with an emphasis on reaching Midwestern farmers of Arabic-speaking backgrounds. This innovative approach makes information on sustainable agricultural practices more broadly available to refugee and immigrant farming communities.   

Each year of this project partnered with Yazidi farmers to test different low-cost weed suppression strategies over two seasons in two culturally-important crops, eggplants and pickling peppers. This project helped us address the original challenge  on our incubator farm of intense weed pressure due to a variety of grass species. Based on our findings upon completion of this project , we learned that geotextile mulch was the most economical and effective strategy for suppressing weeds, in combination with row cover to mitigate flea beetle pest pressure that can greatly impact plant health, and in turn, yields. Participating farmers continue to use the geotextile mulch for pickling pepper and eggplant, and have expanded this practice to other crops, including onions, garlic, and greens. 

1. Six farmers will receive technical assistance implementing low-cost weed suppression methods for their farms.
2. Four techniques of proactive weed suppression will be tested with an emphasis on culturally-relevant crops for Middle Eastern communities in the Midwestern United States.
3. Research findings on effectiveness of four weed-suppression techniques will be made publicly available in English and Arabic for two culturally-relevant crops for Middle Eastern cuisine.
4. Selected educational materials for a new USDA NIFA funded course at the University of Nebraska titled, “Organic Weed Management Innovations for Specialty Crops,”  will be translated into Arabic for Yazidi farmers in annual technical assistance workshops.