Robotic Farm Equipment
January 16, 2015Food Chain Radio
January 29, 2015 Food Chain Radio Show #999
Michael Olson, Author & Urban Farming Agriculturalist
Farming the Big Dry – California Drought
Can we grow enough food farming the Big Dry?
Guest: Activist, Author and University of Arizona Professor Gary Paul Nabhan
This Poll is closed!!
It did rain once this season, but then the “California High” returned and forecasts now call for an extended period of sunny and dry. All this nice weather, and the promise of much more to come, portends a continuation of California’s multi-year drought.
Michael Olson Food Chain Radio – Farming the Great Dry and the California Drought
While some argue over whether California’s Big Dry is simply another in a long history of droughts, or is the product of anthropomorphic climate change, those who grow our food argue about the best way to adapt to the lack of water. What better place to look than in the world’s desert horticultural oases.
In the desert oases of the world, farmers use technogies refined over centuries of use to grow food. These technologies include bio-mimicry, which is copying the adaptations animals, organisms and plants have made over time to living in dry conditions; eco-mimicry, which is designing production systems after the adaptations made by ecological systems like the oases; and ethno-mimicry, which is copying how other cultures have adapted to living in deserts.
Which of the farming technologies of desert agriculture can be adapted to U.S. agriculture? Will the technologies force U.S. agriculture to change how it produces our food? Can the technologies be adapted in time should the Big Dry continue?
Can we grow enough food farming the Big Dry?
