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Scientists Work In Arizona To Reshape Desert Food Production
The experimental garden at Biosphere 2 about 35 miles north of Tucson is part of a wider effort to radically reshape desert food production to meet the growing challenges posed by climate change
Methods To Increase Yield, Lower
Water Use Draw On
Practices of Indigenous Cultures
Caleb Ortega, an environmental studies undergraduate student, harvests basil from an experimental garden outside Biosphere 2. Record heat has given the research new urgency.
Josh Galemore/Arizona Daily Star
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) – In the cool shade of solar panels, a lush plot of herbs and vegetables hints at one possible future for farming in the desert.
At the moment, that future includes more basil than researchers know what to do with.
“We’ve been pulling out pounds of it every week,” said University of Arizona biogeographer Greg Barron-Gafford. “All of us are getting a little sick of pesto and pizza and mozzarella at this point.”
The experimental garden at Biosphere 2 about 35 miles north of Tucson is part of a wider effort to radically reshape desert food production to meet the growing challenges posed by climate change.
The 14 researchers from the Southwest and Mexico believe their model can produce a sustainable, local source of food that will improve the health and well-being of consumers and farmworkers alike.
The idea involves a mix of desert-adapted food species grown cooperatively in ways that increase yield while reducing water use.
Picture a variety of agave and fruit-bearing cactus interspersed with rows of mesquite and other legume trees, all with wild herbs, greens, beans, and native chiltepin peppers growing in the shade beneath them. Other potential crops include squashes, mints, and jicama.
In some cases, those plants would be grown beneath a photovoltaic “canopy,” as the solar panels generate cheap, renewable electricity to pump irrigation water and power farm equipment.
Pilot projects to test the model are now underway in the U.S. and Mexico, including at Biosphere 2 and in campus gardens at three public schools across southern Arizona.
“I like to think of it as using the desert and the sun here as our laboratory for the future,” said Erin Riordan, a UA research associate and one of the lead authors on a scientific paper about the project.
The team focused on desert plants that are as nutritious as they are drought-tolerant, with special emphasis on crops that can reduce or even prevent diabetes and other chronic diseases often exacerbated by heat stress.
Meanwhile, the shady design of the growing areas would benefit both the plants and the workers tending to them, curbing the frequency of injuries or illnesses associated with farm labor in extreme environments.
The sweeping proposal, published recently in the journal Plants, People, Planet, is rooted in practices perfected over millennia by Indigenous desert cultures.
“People have been growing food in the shade for 4,000 years in this region,” Barron-Gafford said.
“It’s not something that’s new to anyone,” said Gary Paul Nabhan, the study’s other lead author and a research social scientist in the university’s Southwest Center. “We’re drawing on that expertise and combining it with modern techniques and technology.”
Solar panels, healthy crops
The importance of food security has been highlighted in recent months by record-setting heat, sputtering monsoon conditions, and supply disruptions caused by the pandemic.
“We are already hitting the temperature limits of conventional crops,” said Nabhan, a MacArthur award-winning agroecologist and the endowed chairman in food and water security at UA.
Greg Barron-Gafford, Caleb Ortega, and Alyssa Salazar work in a garden that is part of an experiment on growing techniques for hotter, drier desert conditions. Josh Galemore/Arizona Daily Star
Among the Southwestern farm staples most threatened by global warming, he lists corn, dry beans, melons, chiles, and most vegetables.
“Yes, we can still grow chiles in our backyards,” he said, but growing them in a large-scale agricultural setting will become increasingly difficult as temperatures rise, droughts deepen and water resources shrink.
Nabhan said a market already exists for some of the new crops considered in the study. “They’re already in our grocery stores, but we’re importing them from 1,000 miles away,” he said.
Back at his outdoor laboratory at Biosphere 2, Barron-Gafford said pairing agriculture directly with solar generation could “open the door to food production in marginal lands” by providing both a shady place to grow plants and the electricity needed to pump water to them.
For the right crops, the shade beneath the solar panels can produce healthier, more productive plants with as little as half the water, all while extending the length of the growing season.
In turn, the plants provide a benefit to the solar array, cooling the air around it by as much as 12 degrees and improving the efficiency of the panels.
Barron-Gafford said the experiment in so-called “agrivoltaics” began nine years ago with a few plants tucked underneath a single, small solar panel slanting up from the ground.
“We started with salsa plants because we’re here,” he said with a smile.
Some crops grow, others don’t
The test garden now covers an area about the size of a half-court in basketball, shaded by a solar array mounted 10 feet off the ground.
Along with all the basil, the current crop includes heirloom cherry tomatoes, Anasazi red beans and a special type of bell pepper Barron-Gafford said was brought in from Mexico by the chefs at Penca restaurant in Tucson.
In a nearby control garden, equal-sized plots of the same plants bake in the direct sun. The basil there doesn’t even look like the same species. Its leaves are skinnier and more pointed, and the plants are already going to seed. One patch has shrunk and dried out in the heat after its water ration was cut in half to match a similar plot still going strong in the shade of the solar array.
“Those plants died for science,” said Barron-Gafford, an associate professor with the UA’s School of Geography, Development, and Environment.
He and his research assistants planned to plant a fall crop – both in the shade and out – of cilantro, fava beans, white onions, and native mouse melons, which taste like cucumbers but look like miniature watermelons.
Agrivoltaic farming doesn’t work for everything. Broccoli, for example, tends to grow large, impressive leaves in the shade, but it never produces florets.
The jury is still out on the Anasazi beans. Barron-Gafford said the ones planted in the direct sun of the control garden have already produced their crop of seed pods, while the ones shaded by the solar array are taking their sweet time.
Whether that will lead to a fuller, more flavorful bean or a pile of tiny, underdeveloped pods remains to be seen.
Questions about scaling up
There’s one thing the research team already knows: Transforming an entire agricultural sector won’t be easy.
“It is a big shift,” said Riordan, the principal scientist coordinating the binational research team based at the UA’s Desert Laboratory on Tumamoc Hill. “There’s a huge scaling piece that is going to have to be addressed.”
One key part will be convincing consumers to expand their palates to include wild, locally grown foods they might not have considered before.
Luckily, Riordan said, Tucson already has something of a head start there, thanks to its diverse population, rich cultural history, and its designation six years ago as the first UNESCO City of Gastronomy in the U.S.
The community is already home to about 40 startup businesses that produce more than 120 new desert food and beverage products.
Ultimately, researchers argue, desert agriculture will be transformed by climate change whether we want it to be or not. Through careful planning and adaptation, we can make that transition profitable instead of painful.
“It might be hard right now to envision edible desert landscapes, but it might not seem so far-fetched in a few years,” Riordan said. “I think we’re going to have a lot of motivation to come up with big solutions fast.”
UAE, Israel Both Expect To Benefit From Agricultural Ties
The regional government in the capital, Abu Dhabi, announced in April that it was investing approximately $100 million in vertical farming
TARA KAVALER
08/23/2020
Emiratis will have access to Jewish state’s agritech while Israelis will gain financially
The United Arab Emirates, where less than 1% of the earth is arable, is set to reap major growth from its agricultural sector with the help of Israeli technology after the two countries normalize relations.
Israel, a world leader in agriculture under conditions with little water and high heat, will sell its expertise to farmers in the desert nation where the average temperature in August is 43°C (109°F) and the average annual temperature is 30°C (86°F). Israeli growers also plan to export food to the UAE, from where it may be re-exported to currently unreachable markets.
The UAE and other Gulf Cooperation Council countries have been trying to become more self-reliant in food, most of which they import. The UAE has already seen an explosion in agricultural growth, particularly in vertical farming and other next-generation planting techniques. It plans to start using hydroponics, soil-less crop cultivation, before the end of this year. The regional government in the capital, Abu Dhabi, announced in April that it was investing approximately $100 million in vertical farming.
“Any food production here requires a technological solution,” Nicholas Lodge, a UAE-based agricultural expert, told The Media Line.
“It doesn’t make sense to grow almost anything in terms of arable crops, except for higher-value crops like tomatoes that are grown in greenhouses, with the latest technology, like hydroponics, where minimal water is needed,” Lodge said.
Dr. Yaron Drori, an Israeli agronomist and co-owner of Etza Agriculture consultants, told The Media Line: “There are very sophisticated greenhouses all over the world, especially in northern Europe, but what is special about Israeli equipment is that we know how to deal with the excess of heat in the structures.”
“Most of the year in our greenhouses, we are trying to avoid overheating. This is the opposite of what you are trying to do in Europe, where you are trying to gain heat,” added Drori, whose company specializes in desert farming in southern Israel.
The greenhouses in Israel use shade nets that can be turned on automatically with a “smart” control system that monitors temperature, radiation, and humidity.
The system also activates cooling sprinklers, or a “curtain” of water, which brings outside air into the greenhouse to change the high temperatures and low humidity that make desert agriculture difficult.
The device also irrigates plants without wasting scarce resources. Saving water is one of the centerpieces of Israel’s “advanced innovation” in agritech, Drori said.
Associate Prof. Zvi Peleg of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem spoke to The Media Line about his work at the university’s Robert H. Smith Institute of Plant Sciences and Genetics in Agriculture to reduce the amount of water plants need.
“We are working now on how to improve water-use efficiency, meaning the plants will produce more biomass by using less water.”
“We are trying to change the plant … so it will be more suitable for the climate,” Peleg said. “We are changing the root system to become deeper … to get to the water more easily and reduce the size of the root architecture so it will not take so much water from the soil because it’s a very limited resource.”
He also explained some of Israel’s latest agricultural technology.
“By using sensors to check the water status in the soil and the plant, you improve productivity because you irrigate whenever the plants need water, not whenever you feel they need water,” Peleg said.
“We are also using thermal imaging to see if a plant needs water or nutrients. There are a lot of techniques now related to drones and different kinds of cameras to detect the plant’s growth, as well as diseases and other problems the plant has,” Peleg said. There is “a lot of technology that can benefit many regions, including the UAE.”
Meanwhile, the UAE is doing high tech agricultural research of its own. Dr. Mohammed Abdul Mushen Salem Alyafei, an associate professor at The College of Food and Agriculture at United Arab Emirates University, said studies are being done in the Emirates on an “open-top chamber,” which encircles a plant to examine the impact of carbon dioxide levels and an “aeroponic control unit.” Aeroponic devices grow plants in the air in a moist environment.
Israel’s successful efforts to make its own desert bloom have resulted in exports of its desert produce.
Some “60% of Israel’s [agricultural] exports, which include tomatoes and watermelon, come from the Arava [in the southeast], which is very similar to the UAE, with bad soil and poor [quality] and limited amounts of water,” Shafrir Godel, an agricultural business expert, told The Media Line.
“Everything is against the farmer, and yet it is the major export region for Israeli produce [sent] to Europe and America,” said Godel, founder and managing director of Israel-based AgriQuality, an international consulting company.
Long-distance exporting is very expensive, but Israel has figured how to do it profitably; this know-how could help the UAE.
“The chain from the seed to the supermarket shelf abroad is something that Israelis do well and cost-effectively: starting with the variety [of crop] to plant, the methods and technical solutions for growing, sorting, picking, the plastic you are using to extend shelf-life, and getting them to the right companies that have a hold on the main markets.”
Israeli growers are also looking for new markets.
“Over the years, Israeli farmers have grown with a capacity that is way beyond Israelis’ ability to eat. We need other markets. It is a new market, and it could be a transit station to places that we normally would not sell to,” Godel said.
The UAE is one of the world’s top three re-export hubs.
Agricultural expert Lodge noted that “the UAE has built a reputation as a transport hub serving many countries.” “It’s quite interesting what you might be able to do with that mix of location, technology, and capital for certain crops.”
Both countries’ agricultural businesspeople are excited about the potential for the new alliance.
“The UAE has a history of looking at where it can forge partnerships, where it can make investments where there’s a mutual benefit,” Lodge said. “Israel is an acknowledged leader in arid farming and the application of technology to make farming possible. I’m sure it’s one of the areas that could and should benefit both parties.”
Etza Agriculture’s Drori said: “If you bring the practical and academic knowledge and all the technology that we have to the UAE, we can all benefit from it, both the Emirati and the Israeli companies.”
“Israel gets business, so it benefits financially. But beyond that, it would be fascinating to work there. It’s a new place, you learn and see new things,” he said. “It’s a new world for us.”
Lead photo: Dr. Effi Tripler, a soil and water scientist, stands next to a solar-powered sensor that helps a drip-irrigation system know when and how much to water a crop of sorghum at the Central and Northern Arava R&D facility on May 21, 2015, in Hatzeva, Israel. The soil and water R&D facility tests and produces various crops in the dry, harsh climate of the Arava, near the Jordanian border. (Ann Hermes/The Christian Science Monitor via Getty Images)