CRITICAL SOIL AND WATER PARAMETERS IN SEVEN DRY-FARMED SYSTEMS IN CENTRAL COAST, CALIFORNIA: Considerations for Drought Resilience and Improved Access to Alternative Cropping Strategies
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- The present and future stability of global crop production hinges on adaptive cultivation strategies for ever-evolving social, political and climatic conditions. Amongst countless agricultural regions increasingly affected by drought, California’s Central Coast has seen enormous pressure fall on the shoulders of its farmers to maintain stable production by implementing best-available practices. Of these practices, dry farming has been adopted by a number of Central Coast growers who have enjoyed strong harvests of fresh market tomatoes to satisfy the demands of a lucrative market which stretches across the state. Wider adoption of dry farming could improve resilience in regional crop production in the years to come, but it is hindered by a severe deficit in both relevant research on the mechanisms which determine the success of dry-farmed crops as well as accessibility of existing knowledge. This study was born from co-developed and independently collected data on the strongest variables across seven unique dry-farmed tomato operations to grow regional knowledge as well as model potential directions for future research. Results demonstrated that several soil characteristics had a significant effect on available water in the included dry-farmed soils during the 2021 growing season and thus the viability of the crop systems, as well as a strong correlation between available water and crop outcomes. The significant correlations identified between previously explored variables and the outcomes for the participating operations, in spite of limitations in collecting data, bode well for future studies on comparable systems. Beyond its modeled biogeochemical relationships, this work highlights the paramount role of management strategies known best to farmers themselves, rather than the non-farming scientific community, in ensuring the success of adaptive crop systems. Centering farmers will continue to be a critical step in satisfying the acknowledged informational deficit, improving the accessibility of management wisdom, and developing relevant data in any future experimentation to promote dry-farming adaptation.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date modified | December 5, 2022 |
| Publication date | August 3, 2022 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Matta, Javier |
|---|---|
| Research team head | Socolar, Yvonne |
| Thesis advisor | Fendort, Scott |
Subjects
| Subject | Humus |
|---|---|
| Subject | organic matter |
| Subject | organic carbon |
| Subject | Soil |
| Subject | Drought-tolerant plants |
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
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- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC).
Preferred citation
- Preferred citation
- Matta, J. (2022). CRITICAL SOIL AND WATER PARAMETERS IN SEVEN DRY-FARMED SYSTEMS IN CENTRAL COAST, CALIFORNIA: Considerations for Drought Resilience and Improved Access to Alternative Cropping Strategies. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at https://purl.stanford.edu/hp106hb0003
Collection
Undergraduate Honors Theses, Doerr School of Sustainability
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- Contact
- tuckerjaviermatta@gmail.com
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