Water shortages, rising temperatures, and droughts caused by climate change have an immense impact on agriculture — and today’s farmers are desperate to find solutions.
In the western United States, some are turning to dry-farming, a form of agriculture that doesn’t require irrigation.
Here’s how it works: Dry-farmed plants take moisture stored in the ground, rather than sprinkled from above.
All farmers need is a wet, rainy season, followed by a dry growing season, as well as some methods like insulating a layer of mulch on top of soil to retain moisture, spacing plants more widely, and planting earlier in the season.
According to the Dry Farming Institute, “dry-farming is a low-input, place-based approach to producing crops within the constraints of your climate.” As the institute defines it, “a dry-farmed crop is irrigated once or not at all.”
A plot of land that has been dry-farmed. Photo courtesy of Dry Farming Institute
Dry-farming is not a one-size-fits-all solution, but it can save farmers thousands of liters in water every season — and help maintain a climate-resilient business.
And the best part? Dry-farmed produce notoriously tastes better than irrigated crops, and produce such as tomatoes, potatoes, squash, corn, watermelon, and even grapevines, are excellent candidates for dry-farming.
In fact, dry-farming is so game-changing for vineyards that some areas in Europe forbid irrigating wine grapes, in order to maintain their rich flavor.
It’s not a new concept.
Dry-farming is a long-held standard practice, from olive groves in the Mediterranean to melon fields in Botswana.
In the U.S., it dates back thousands of years among Indigenous peoples — proving once again that Indigenous knowledge is the key to protecting the planet.
“Dry farming is just farming — it’s our way of life,” Michael Kotutwa Johnson, an Indigenous resiliency specialist at the University of Arizona and member of the Hopi Tribe, told Science News.
“You get to really learn what the environment gives you, and you learn to reciprocate. It’s a beautiful thing, and it’s something that needs to be cherished.”
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A version of this article was originally published in The 2024 Plants Edition of the Goodnewspaper.
Header image by Veronica White on Unsplash
