Link to Medium Article with photos and links: https://medium.com/@dontipping/new-dryland-farming-strategies-for-the-pacific-northwest-bdcac7827d69
New Dryland Farming Strategies for The Pacific Northwest
As a farmer of nearly 30 years, I have been intrigued with the various ideas around adapting agriculture to my bioregion and its changing climate. This curiosity has led me to try a wide variety of experiments over the years. I have tried planting traditional vegetable crops with a variety of plant spacings, different mulches, no-till strategies, and non-irrigated dryland approaches. The primary data and subsequent conclusions that I have come away with are that the common crop species that many of us may grow have traveled a long pathway from wild crop relative to the domesticated, refined variety that exists today. As agriculture evolved it became more sophisticated with more careful planting, spacing, fertilization, irrigation, trellising, mulching, and so on. In our modern agrarian civilization, we have generally tried to optimize the growing conditions as much as possible whenever possible. This has led to a sometimes pathological obsession with achieving higher yields above all else and resultant overuse of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Historically, much of the first agriculture was dryland due to the lack of irrigation techniques and technology. Decreased rainfall patterns over much of the west has compelled many growers to explore alternatives to modern irrigation strategies including revisiting traditional dryland farming approaches.
There’s an old saying, “you can’t work on an empty stomach”.
First of all, a clarification of terms is useful. I appreciate how Oregon State University (OSU) educator, Lucas Nerbert puts it here, “some say that the definition of dry farming is farming without irrigation during an arid growing season, by accessing soil moisture that is replenished by the wet season. Some distinguish "dry farming" from "dryland" farming by setting a threshold precipitation level: say, 20 inches or more annually is "dry farming", and less than 20 inches annually is "dryland farming". This definition and practice of dry farming borrows heavily from Mediterranean Region dry farming traditions and works particularly well in certain areas of the maritime Pacific Northwest. As a convention with the Dry Farming Collaborative (DFC), to participate in a dry farmed trial, you are only to irrigate during planting (e.g., if there is insufficient rain to establish your plants), and then no irrigation at all after that. Having an established dry farming protocol has been useful to determine important site factors and drought hardy cultivars for that increase dry farming success.
However, as I have listened to more and more people working with water conservation agriculture in their own areas across the western U.S., I feel less inclined to attach an exact definition to dry farming, which is why I defined it so loosely in the last email. Growers have been doing incredible work (some for many generations) growing food with minimal water on soils and in climates that are inherently not very suitable for "dry farming" as has been defined in our Dry Farming Collaborative variety trials.”
Amy Garret, another educator at OSU helped to initiate the Dryland Farming Collaborative in 2016 which is a group of growers, educators, researchers, plant breeders partnering to increase awareness of practices and strategies that support crop production with little to no irrigation. The OSU Dry Farming Project supports the DFC in multiple ways:
- Facilitating communication and creating space for information sharing: DFC Facebook group, instagram, YouTube channel, email list (for trial hosts and those actively involved in research and events), field days, winter convening and coordinating conference presentations with DFC members.
- Build a dry farming resource hub on the OSU Small Farms website.
- Coordinating participatory research to help address inquiries from the DFC: Developing protocols and tools to assist with data collection, sourcing plant material for dry farm trials, and distributing to trial hosts.
- Developing resources to assist growers new to dry farming
I am inspired by and encouraged by the experiences of others such as those involved with the Dryland Farming Collaborative, and I feel that we would all be well served to continue to experiment and refine both the techniques and the cultivars that we marry towards successful growing in what appears to be an increasingly arid west. And with that said, so much of this work is highly site specific and is highly dependent upon your water table, moisture holding capacity, soil organic matter levels, aspect, rainfall distribution, choice of crops, desired yields and so much more.
In my experimentation on my small farm in SW Oregon with various no-till and dryland approaches for growing crops such as corn, beans, squash, tomatoes, and melons, while I may have achieved success in growing the crop, the yields were always significantly less than growing the same crops under ideal circumstances and conditions. Many of our summer garden favorites are crops that originated in the humid subtropical region of Meso-America. Corn, beans, squash, tomatoes, and the Capsicum annum peppers originated near present-day Oaxaca, Mexico with a sub-tropical, fairly rainy climate. As these crops traveled north through exchange and trade, they underwent decades & centuries of adaptation to local conditions in order to successfully produce seed and continue radiating out from their center of origin. An international team of scientists led by Dolores Piperno, an archaeobotanist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, and Anthony Ranere, professor of anthropology at Temple University in Philadelphia, have discovered the first direct evidence that indicates maize was domesticated 8,700 years ago, the earliest date recorded for the crop. The research findings will be published on March 23 in the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. However, it is thought that corn did not arrive in what is now the USA until 1000–4000 years ago(in New Mexico and Arizona). This is largely due to the fact that the ancestor of modern corn is a photo-sensitive grass called Teosinte(Zea mexicana), in that, it doesn’t initiate flowering and seed formation until the day length begins to decrease after the summer solstice (day length is fairly consistent from summer to winter in the tropics). When Teosinte is grown at our farm in Oregon (42 degrees north latitude) it grows luxuriantly tall leaves (up to 9'), but does not initiate seed formation until September and then we typically get our first Fall frost in October thereby ruling out a successful seed crop. It took many hundreds of growing generations and seasons for corn to acclimatize to the long days of more northern latitudes. The ancestral corns from 900 years ago that Apache native peoples were growing came from these Mexican highland landraces and were adapted to summer monsoon rains to irrigate them. This can be seen in the deep taproot that traditional SW corn varieties develop quickly upon germination. Contrast this to modern sweet corns that develop a multi-branched, fibrous root system upon germination, having adapted to ample irrigation and fertilizer that is prevalent in modern agricultural growing systems.
Corn Seed germination: note the taproots on dryland adapted flour corns and fiberous roots on sweet corns. (Photo by Don Tipping)
I tell this bit of back story about the domestication of corn to underscore how inseparable the plant is from the climate, soils, and the cultural techniques employed in its cultivation. Modern agriculture is constantly aiming to optimize for a given crop and corn is certainly no exception. Even on modern organic farms, many growers will actually grow sweet corn as a transplant to ensure more successful production, even though it has been planted directly in the soil the world over for centuries. This is leading the plant in the direction of adaption to this agronomic technique. Contrast this with how corn was traditionally planted throughout the sandy soils in the desert southwest of the USA, where, a planting stick was used to plant a medley of corn, beans, and squash 10–12" deep. The corn is a monocot, emerged first, pushing its singular seed leaf up through the sandy soil, while the beans and squash, both dicots, pushed their dual cotyledons up through the soil. The advantage of this approach was that the plants would be deeply rooted to take advantage of the soil moisture available down deep and be able to weather the heat of early summer until the monsoon rains came in July.
My own experiments here on my farm with no-till and dryland strategies turned out to be fairly labor-intensive and are consistent with the study above. Personally, I have come to the conclusion that as much as I am fascinated with novel permaculture approaches, and how they seem to offer the promise of saving labor and moving towards a more self-regulating ecosystem, they almost universally result in significantly lower yields. That said, the biodiversity and meta-stability on our farm is much higher than a monocrop. Some of the strategies that I have tried include, no-till with mulch, no-ill with cover crop scythed down for mulch and then transplant into the mulch, un-irrigated three sisters plantings of corn, beans and squash, un-irrigated garlic, wider spacings of squash that was grown without irrigation. In all of these experiments I felt as though I was doing the right thing and was hopeful for the outcomes, nevertheless, with 30 years of farming under my belt I clearly see that they were largely a waste of time due to low yields, small fruits, or complete crop failures. The yields that I did obtain through experimentation came in the form of knowledge, experience and wisdom. Often permaculture is advertised as “no-work” gardening popularized by co-founder Bill Mollison’s classic image of the “designer recliner” where one simply kicks back and watches it all grow. Maybe in the tropics, this is possible, but I strongly doubt it. Considering the high value of farmland in western Oregon, the cost of deer fencing, labor, and the other inputs, I am doing my best to optimize yields (within limits of the soil productivity). I have taken the cue from permaculture design to focus more on water harvesting and storage to address drought to ensure ample water during dry spells. My two cents is that most of the crops that we grow during the dry season have thousands of years of selection towards optimizing yields or are grown in regions with summer rainfall. Traditional three sisters plantings (corn, beans & squash) in the desert SW were planted 10–12" deep in sandy soils in advance of summer monsoon rains. We don’t have those rains here in Oregon and if we planted seeds that deep they would most certainly rot in our cool moist soil.
Over the millennia, civilizations that were able to re-direct water in canals, aqueducts, and channels were able to create resilient agriculture, by averting undesirable flooding, prolonging water availability, and increasing arable land. History bears this out and a review of the civilizations that were able to feed large populations had much to do with their abilities at civil engineering and agriculture techniques for irrigation thereby increasing the yields and reliability of their crops. The crops they worked with evolved and adapted to their environment over the generations due to a beautiful inevitability with seed saving, or grain harvesting in that the plants that perform the best and yield the most will always represent themselves in each succeeding generation as a larger percentage of the total population. Conversely, the plants that do not yield as well (or those that outright perish from pests, disease, or other environmental stresses) will manifest as an increasingly smaller percentage of the total population. Even without thoughtful selection which would involve only saving seeds from the top 1–10% of the plants in a population, mass selection (the term to describe this approach of simply pulling one’s planting stock for the next generation/season from the total harvest) trends towards adaptation to soil, climate and the total environment in an increasingly logarithmic fashion.
An ancient Moorish water channel in Spain (Photo Wikipedia)
Consider that the word Acequia is actually a word with Arabic origins, having been introduced to Spain with the Moors 800 years ago as they brought advanced agriculture techniques from northern Africa, Persia, and beyond, and then the Spanish brought these techniques with them to the USA in colonizing indigenous lands in the desert southwest. It is worth noting that the prehistoric Hohokam built irrigation canals in what is now Arizona’s Salt Viver valley from A.D. 600 to 1450 AD.
Nazca canal (Photo - Wikipedia)
When we survey the notable civilizations of the past few millennia a few important details pertaining to their agriculture, irrigation and their demise come to light:
- The Han Dynasty (202 BC — 220 AD) was the longest imperial dynasty in China but ultimately collapsed due to uprisings largely stemming from the leadership failing to prioritize addressing silt buildup in the Yellow river that resulted in extensive flooding which displaced peasant farmers.
- The Akkadian Empire in Syria, 2334 BC — 2193 BC collapsed due to extended drought.
- The Old Kingdom of ancient Egypt, 4200 years ago collapsed due to extended drought.
- The Late Bronze Age (LBA) civilization in the Eastern Mediterranean. About 3200 years ago collapsed due to an extended drought.
- The Maya civilization of 250–900 AD in Mexico collapsed due to an extended drought.
- The Tang Dynasty in China, 700–907 AD collapsed due to an extended drought.
- The Tiwanaku Empire of Bolivia’s Lake Titicaca region, 300–1000 AD collapsed due to an extended drought.
- The Ancestral Puebloan (Anasazi) culture in the Southwest U.S. in the 11th — 12th centuries AD. Beginning in 1150 AD collapsed due to an extended drought.
- The Khmer Empire was based in Angkor, Cambodia, 802–1431 AD. The Khmer Empire ruled Southeast Asia for over 600 years but was done in by a series of intense decades-long droughts interspersed with intense monsoons in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that, in combination with other factors, contributed to the empire’s demise.
- The Ming Dynasty in China, 1368–1644 AD. China’s Ming Dynasty — one of the greatest eras of orderly government and social stability in human history — collapsed at a time when the most severe drought in the region in over 4000 years occurred.
And we can look to Modern Syria for an example of how our modern civilizations are not immune to collapse from shifting rainfall patterns. Syria’s devastating civil war that began in March 2011 has killed over 300,000 people, displaced at least 7.6 million, and created an additional 4.2 million refugees. While the causes of the war are complex, a key contributing factor was the nation’s devastating drought that began in 1998.
Consider that the line dividing in the USA where dryland wheat is grown and that where summer rains irrigate corn/soy has shifted about 100 miles east, erasing a huge swath of very productive farmland. We must participate in evolving outdated agronomic approaches and crops that are unsuitable for their bioregion and climate.
The tumultuous history of civilization and its rise and fall closely mirrors periods of plenty and those of scarcity have often been due to the availability of water to grow crops to feed the workers necessary to build and maintain extensive public works, temples, roads, fields, mines and so on. From my reading of history, the civilizations that were able to develop reliable systems for maximizing agricultural yields were able to placate the masses to continue to support the rulers. This was often carried out with a combination of irrigation canals, ditches, flood control structures, granaries for storage, roads for distribution, and crop improvement through selection and domestication of a diverse suite of plants. Dryland agricultural societies were limited in their spread and influence due to their agricultural output being inextricably linked to rainfall and how the rainy season overlayed over the growth cycles of their key crops.
A phenomenal example from the ancient Inca illustrating the importance of the political leaders supporting successful agricultural research can be seen in the Moray terraces near Cuzco, Peru constructed on a high plateau at about 3,500 meters (11,500 ft). These ingenious terraces simulated a wide diversity of microclimates such that early Inca agricultural scientists could trial various species and varieties (landraces) in differing amounts of sunlight, frost, and so on in one concentrated area and thereby make suggestions to farmers to grow crops well suited to their microclimate. At a total depth of 30 meters, their depth, design, and orientation with respect to wind and sun create a temperature difference of as much as 5 °C (9 °F) between the top and the bottom.
The Incan terraces at Moray (Photo - Wikipedia)
According to my research and also the conclusion of NASA/NOAA on the subject, most civilizations failed due to a changing climate, drought, and declining crop yields coupled with a top-heavy consolidation of people in managerial/political leadership positions. Seems like the industrial civilizations of the global north are in such a circumstance presently.
An overly simplistic approach to “dryland farming” might become just another sustainable agriculture buzzword (like no-till, regenerative, or local) that lacks the depth of having been developed over many seasons of actual practice in a specific region. I have been applying my theories for over a decade around what crops are suitable for dryland farming in SW Oregon, and possibly similar climates with distinct dry and wet seasons. Where I live and farm here in SW Oregon is characteristic of the wider Pacific Northwest region in that the climate alternates from a moist temperate rainforest for half the year and then a dry Mediterranean climate in the summer. Our rainfall season begins after the fall equinox and typically continues to the end of May (although some years May can be dry and warm, or June can be rainy and cool). For reference, my farm is at 42 degrees north latitude (same as Rome, Italy, S.Spain, Turkey, N.China, N. Japan, and the Pennsylvania/New York border) and receives an average of 40" (101 cm) of rain per year. Given our relatively mild winters here in the Pacific Northwest, many crops can be fall planted, including garlic, onions, leeks, overwintering cereal grains, brassicas (such as mustards, kale, collards, Brussels sprouts, arugula, radishes, turnips, rutabaga, overwintering cauliflower, cabbage), chard, beets, radicchio, parsley, cilantro, and parsnips. Traditional herbs that are predominantly of Mediterranean descent that we grow for seed also include mints, rosemary, thyme, catnip, clary sage, rue, hyssop, and others. Our farm system has gradually evolved to become primarily focused upon seed production as this most accurately mirrors the reproductive cycle of many of the significant vegetable and herb crops that we work with.
Consider a Brassica oleracea species crop such as Lacinato (Dino or Tuscan) kale that was domesticated in the Mediterranean sea area of modern-day Italy that originated as a wild plant whose seeds likely sprouted with the coming of early fall rains, becoming a 12–18" tall leafy green plant over winter and then forming immature flower buds (proto broccoli/rapini) with the increasing day length and the warmer temperatures that February brings at this latitude. Then it would reach full flower in April, and as the rains begin to subside in May, seed pods form and swell and naturally dry down towards brittleness in the heat of June and then finally shatter in late June or early July.
Garlic is the perfect dryland adapted crop for N.California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia. (photo by Don Tipping)
A central tenant of Permaculture or any whole systems approach (including Regenerative farming, Natural Farming, Holistic Resource Management) to farming and land stewardship is Pattern Recognition. So considering the landscape of the Mediterranean climate that is common throughout the dry season in the Pacific Northwest, it seems to make sense to establish crops with the fall rains and support systems that allow them to grow and flourish when the moisture present in fall/winter/spring and then benefit from the onset of our fairly predictable dry season that comes in May and June. In my estimation, this is what dryland agriculture looks like for SW Oregon and similar bioregions. Crops such as garlic, onions, fava beans, and many brassicas can be planted anytime between the Fall Equinox and Halloween (precisely when our fall rainy season begins), then only sparingly irrigated if May and June are drier than normal and produce admirable yields.
Fava beans can be planted right when the Fall rains return and require no supplemental irrigation. (photo by Don Tipping)
These ideas and techniques emerging from applying theory to practice spring from my deep curiosity in reviewing ancient histories of agrarian civilizations. Given the high value of farmland throughout the Pacific Northwest, I personally feel that we must optimize our use of the land to honor the supreme blessing of having access to land whilst honoring that we appear to be in the early stages of what may be a prolonged drought cycle. Storing and redistributing water is a concurrent approach that land stewards would be wise to employ if they are fortunate enough to have the requisite circumstances to facilitate it. Growing heat-loving summer crops such as corn, beans, squash, tomatoes, peppers, melons and the like can be done quite successfully if one is confident in their access to the necessary water through the heat of late summer. On my home farm here (Seven Seeds Farm) I have constructed a total of 9 ponds to capture and store rainwater to have it available to finish out summer crops.
In learning how to work with the land aspiring towards a reverential, regenerative approach, I have come to realize that much of the predominant settler mindset is still in a fairly adolescent colonizer, or “pioneer” mindset. Consider that Oregon did not achieve statehood until 1858 and the first settlers arrived in the 1820s. Further, due to the abundance of native edible plant and animal resources, the indigenous peoples (Takelma, Karuk, and the Dakubetedeh) of this area never developed what we may recognize as “agriculture” (however, when viewed through the lens of Traditional Ecological Knowledge, I would argue that their land stewardship was arguably far more sophisticated and regenerative.) So in many ways, we are still figuring out the WHAT and the HOW to farm and garden in the Pacific Northwest. To demonstrate this point, I have planted and gotten successful harvests from Russian short-season pomegranates, Arbequina olives, peanuts, and pineapple guavas among other novel to Oregon crops.
I have always been inspired by the novel approach to problem solving as so wonderfully demonstrated by R. Buckminster Fuller who famously said, “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” So in that spirit may we all keep experimenting with new crops and novel ways to grow them in harmony with the land and her resources and not lose sight of obtaining a yield so we can share with others.
Don Tipping has been farming and offering hands on, practical workshops at Seven Seeds Farm since 1997. Seven Seeds is a small, certified organic family farm in the Siskiyou Mountains of SW Oregon that produces fruits, vegetables, seeds, flowers and herbs, while raising sheep, poultry and people. The farm has been designed to function as a self-contained, life regenerating organism with waste products being recycled and feeding other elements of the system. Lauded as one of the best examples of a small productive Biodynamic and Permaculture farms in the northwest by many, Seven Seeds helps to mentor new farmers through internships and workshops. In 2009 we began Siskiyou Seeds, a bioregional organic seed company that grows and stewards a collection of over 700 open pollinated flower, vegetable and herb seeds and is constantly breeding new varieties that we distribute nationally. Siskiyou Seeds produces about 50% of the seed at our home farm and then sources the remainder from a network of organic seed growers throughout the PNW.
Don is active in the Seed Stewardship movement and educates regionally on seed saving through the Seed Academy, the Student Organic Seed Symposium, Seed Schools and numerous conferences. He sits on the board of the Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance and contributes to the Open Source Seed Initiative.
Don Tipping has been farming and offering hands on, practical workshops at Seven Seeds Farm since 1997. Seven Seeds is a small, certified organic family farm in the Siskiyou Mountains of SW Oregon that produces fruits, vegetables, seeds, flowers and herbs, while raising sheep, poultry and people. The farm has been designed to function as a self-contained, life regenerating organism with waste products being recycled and feeding other elements of the system. Lauded as one of the best examples of a small productive Biodynamic and Permaculture farms in the northwest by many, Seven Seeds helps to mentor new farmers through internships and workshops. In 2009 we began Siskiyou Seeds, a bioregional organic seed company that grows and stewards a collection of over 700 open pollinated flower, vegetable and herb seeds and is constantly breeding new varieties that we distribute nationally. Siskiyou Seeds produces about 50% of the seed at our home farm and then sources the remainder from a network of organic seed growers throughout the PNW.
Don is active in the Seed Stewardship movement and educates regionally on seed saving through the Seed Academy, the Student Organic Seed Symposium, Seed Schools and numerous conferences. He sits on the board of the Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance and contributes to the Open Source Seed Initiative.
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Jonathan Weber
Really thorough and deeply informative article, Don! Thank you for sharing your knowledge!