Establishing the Pacific Coast Dry Farming Accelerator Program

Commodities

• Vegetables: tomatoes

Practices

• Crop Production: water management
• Education and Training: demonstration
• Production Systems: dryland farming

Dry farming is the practice of growing crops without irrigation during the dry season by relying on soil moisture retained from the wet season. Despite its many benefits, strong farmer interest, and high suitability in coastal Oregon and California, few formalized vegetable dry farming research and educational activities have taken root in the coastal regions of these states, limiting wider producer adoption. This program aims to increase regional adoption of dry farming through education, demonstration and outreach activities, and will connect coastal dry farmers between Oregon and California to facilitate knowledge exchange between the regions.

Phase one of this project will build on the work of the WSARE-funded project ‘Establishing a beginning dry farming curriculum and accelerator program’ to develop a new dry farming accelerator module focused on the coastal context. Content will be informed by and co-created with experienced coastal dry farmers and will incorporate research findings from experiments and interviews with dry farm practitioners in Oregon and California. 

Phase two will build on the module from phase one to create a Pacific Coast Dry Farming Accelerator that engages a cohort of beginning dry farmers along the Oregon and California coast and builds a community of practice around dry farming. Pacific Coast Dry Farming Accelerator cohort participants will work through Dry Farming Accelerator content, including the new module, and will meet regularly with regional breakout groups. Cohort participants will get to plan and implement a dry farm tomato trial on their farm, and will visit dry farming demonstration sites hosted by experienced dry farmers, and will receive personalized consulting support from the project leadership team.

Coastal farmers have conveyed a great need to expand dry farming educational efforts to coastal regions. This project will address barriers to adoption of previous SARE dry farming research results and meet farmers’ educational needs as follows: 

Objective 1: Implement a cohort-style Pacific Coast Dry Farming Accelerator Program for vegetable growers in Oregon and California to increase dry farming skills, practical science-based knowledge, and community-oriented farmer-to-farmer networking. Considering lack of information access and growing interest, this project will increase coastal growers’ understanding of dry farming practices, improve their technical skills to implement water saving strategies, share SARE-funded research findings on dry farming practices, and create grower-to-grower learning opportunities for lateral knowledge sharing.

Objective 2: Develop and establish a Coastal module to add to the existing Dry Farming Accelerator Program curriculum to increase the accessibility of coast-specific dry farming information for farmers on the California and Oregon Coasts. Since much of the science-based dry farming work in Oregon has been conducted solely in the Willamette Valley, PI Smith and Co-PI Nebert will share and adapt SARE-funded research findings to the coastal Oregon context. Co-PI Socolar’s WSARE-funded doctoral work is the only peer-reviewed research on vegetable dry farming in California, and it has yet to be shared widely beyond the region in which it was conducted. Dr. Socolar has started working with the new North Bay UCCE Specialty Crops Advisor, Co-PI Andrews, to bring outreach and educational opportunities to more coastal California growers, work that cannot continue without funding from this project.