On an unusually rainy August afternoon, about 40 people were huddled under a pair of tents on the edge of . The group of farmers, researchers and home gardeners had made its way to Corvallis to learn more about a technique called dry farming.
鈥淲e have a couple acres of land and we鈥檙e looking for what suitable crops would be to grow on it,鈥� said home gardener Lauren.
She and her husband, Tim, have only had their property for a year, and he said part of their interest in dry farming is the desire to streamline the process. 鈥淲e鈥檙e not there all the time, so if we have to water less, that鈥檚 great,鈥� Tim said.
A simplified definition of dry farming is , relying only on the moisture stored in the soil. It鈥檚 most successful in regions with at least 20 inches of annual rainfall, and it鈥檚 a technique that鈥檚 been used around the world for centuries.
鈥淭丑别 , [people] in the Mediterranean 鈥� There鈥檚 just a lot of places and examples throughout the world where people have grown food without irrigation,鈥� said Amy Garrett, founder of the Dry Farming Institute. 鈥淎nd they didn鈥檛 even call it dry farming 鈥� they were just farming, using what they had to grow food.鈥�
Garrett explained that since growers are all in a different situation in regards to irrigation, the expands on the definition, calling it a 鈥渓ow-input, place-based approach to producing crops within the constraints of your climate.鈥� Agriculture irrigation and as access to that water becomes increasingly complex, even more farmers are taking notice.
鈥淚 think the folks that are more interested in exploring dry farming have already experienced some water limitations,鈥� said Garrett. 鈥淥r they have values like, 鈥榃hile I have access to water to irrigate, I don鈥檛 know that my kids are gonna have access to water to irrigate.鈥欌��
Garrett鈥檚 interest in dry farming started in 2011, when she was working with first-time farmers in . And they had a lot of questions: everything from recognizing soil types to what crops they should grow. But something that kept coming up was water rights, or more specifically, a lack thereof.
鈥淚n a lot of cases they were on lands that had limited water access or did not have ,鈥� said Garrett. 鈥淔or a lot of new and beginning farmers, land access is already an issue and in a lot of cases, there鈥檚 not great water access where they are finding land opportunities to grow.鈥�
Crystal Ligori
Garrett recognized how much of a hurdle water was for those farmers, so in 2015 she connected with a to learn more.
鈥淚 knew there were people dry farming down in California and they helped to connect me with five or six farmers,鈥� said Garrett. 鈥淚 did a visit down there to look at what crops are being grown without irrigation, what techniques were being used.鈥�
Garrett wanted to share that newly acquired knowledge with farmers back in Oregon, so later that year she implemented OSU鈥檚 first . That summer, the entire state was in , so conditions for real-world usage of the technique were ideal.
鈥淎 lot of people came to that field day and were surprised that there was anything growing out there,鈥� said Garrett. 鈥淎nd they were asking questions like, 鈥極K, well, how many times did you irrigate here?鈥� And I was explaining, we didn鈥檛 irrigate. And people were sort of just flabbergasted.鈥�
Those real-world trails are essential, not just for the farmers, but also for plant and seed breeders like who鈥檚 based in Arcata, California.
鈥淥ne of the questions when you鈥檙e doing plant breeding is: Am I selecting this plant or these plants because they actually have something special about them genetically?鈥� Zystro said. 鈥淥r am I just seeing something that鈥檚 related to the very specific micro-environment that the plant鈥檚 experiencing that makes it look better?鈥�
Essentially, the on-farm trials give researchers the opportunity to plant the same seed over and over in different soils and conditions in order to get an idea of how the plant is adapting.
鈥淪ome plants鈥� root architecture might point more downward, rather than really being wide and shallow rooted, and be able to tap into the moisture as it鈥檚 sort of retreating in the soil as the wet spring soil dries into drier summer soil,鈥� he said.
As the co-director of research and education for the , Zystro said these new dry-farmed crop varieties could also be key to helping agriculture of all types in the future.
鈥淭丑别 prime, best agricultural land is often being held intergenerationally or by the largest commercial production,鈥� he said. 鈥淪o for many organic farmers, they鈥檙e working with whatever ground they can get access to and often that might mean they don鈥檛 have water rights or water is in a limited supply.鈥�
Even as climate change makes and access to water becomes more politicized, Zystro says we still need to find ways to grow these crops.
鈥淏eing able to either identify and develop crops that can grow with much more limited access to water and without potentially supplemental water allows us to be able to continue to grow good food into the future,鈥� he said. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 something that is really important.鈥�
Earlier this year, to facilitate a multi-year project across Oregon, Washington and California to look at regional approaches to 鈥渇ood system resilience to drought and climate instability.鈥�
鈥淲e鈥檙e partnering with multiple growers, organizations and tribes in that project to elevate their approach to water resilient strategies,鈥� she said. 鈥淎nd doing a lot of storytelling to amplify examples of what this looks like in different contexts.鈥�
Over the next three years, the Dry Farming Institute along with Oregon State University, the Washington Water Trust and other climate leaders in the Pacific Northwest will focus on sharing scalable climate-smart farming practices and on-farm learning events in hopes to get even more folks on the dry farm bandwagon.
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