Category Archives: Sustainable Practices

Check It Out: Ensuring that Hazelnuts in Oregon and Washington Stay Resilient

Morgan Lawrence, USDA Northwest Climate Hub

Mowed vegetation between rows of hazelnut trees

Cover crops grow between rows of hazelnut trees on Ioka Farms in the Willamette Valley. Photo: Robert Hathorne, NRCS Oregon.

You may know hazelnuts (also called filberts) for their starring role in everyone’s favorite hazelnut-chocolate spread. Or perhaps you’ve enjoyed a delicious hazelnut latte while eating a hazelnut-filled truffle. But did you know that Oregon produces 99% of U.S. hazelnuts, and Washington produces the other 1%? Under the right conditions, hazelnuts are a climate-resilient crop that can be used for food products, cooking oils, livestock feed, and even bioenergy. With the development of pathogen-resistant cultivars, the hazelnut market in Oregon and Washington has the potential to expand. However, expansion will require some climate-smart management.

Because reliable hazelnut crops can only be produced under moderate climatic conditions, they will need some help in adapting to the challenges of climate change. Hazelnut trees do not grow well under extremely hot or cold temperatures, high winds, or with pathogens like eastern filbert blight. However, they are drought-resistant trees, and they can be grown in soils not suitable for a lot of other crops, like hilly or sloping soils. Hazelnut trees also provide many benefits, including storing carbon, reducing soil erosion, improving water quality, and providing wildlife habitat. There are methods to ensure the resilience and growth of the hazelnut industry under climate change in our region. For example, producers can choose a planting site with soils that have good drainage and are not south-facing. To learn more about this delicious Northwest crop and considerations for keeping it resilient, check out this article I wrote for the Northwest Climate Hub.

 

 

Profitability Tool for Growers Considering Alternative Rotations in Dryland Systems

By Karie Boone, Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources, Washington State University, and Clark Seavert, Oregon State University

Wheat field ready for harvest

Climate change could bring changes in practices for small grain dryland systems. Photo: Erin Brooks

For the inland Pacific Northwest, climate change predictions including wetter springs and drier, hotter summers leads to production system uncertainties and risks for dryland, small grain farmers. Annual precipitation is projected to increase by about 5-15% by 2050 except during the summer months where precipitation is projected to decrease, resulting in decreased soil moisture during the late summer months. We have seen conditions similar to these projections in recent years, such as the droughts in 2015 and 2021 and a wet spring in 2019 that prevented planting almost 53,000 acres across Washington, Idaho, and Montana.

These changes are expected to increase reliance on fallow for small grain dryland systems. Fallowing strategies can lead to further declines in organic matter inputs, soil health, and reduced production capacity in the future. Potential alternatives attractive to producers include incorporating winter pea into rotations and planting cover crops coupled with livestock grazing. But will they be profitable? Continue reading

Producers are the Best Ambassadors for Adoption of Climate-Smart Practices

By Tyler Harris, Eastern Oregon Agricultural Research Center, Oregon State University

A cayuse oat cover crop interseeded into a brassica field in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. Cover crops are just one example of a climate-smart practice that can help growers adapt to unpredictable weather patterns. Photo: Andrew Donaldson, Soil Conservationist, USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service.

With climate change, growers in the Pacific Northwest are facing a myriad of new challenges. These include a longer fire season and more frequent fires, warmer and drier summers, and increased drought potential in summer. A question that is becoming more pertinent every day for agronomists, rangeland managers, soil scientists, water quality specialists, and other service providers in agriculture is: How do we help producers adapt to climate change by adopting climate-smart practices? This is something a panel of agricultural professionals considered as part of a recent online climate resilience training hosted by the Oregon Climate and Agriculture Network (OrCAN). Continue reading

Check It Out: Virtual Fencing Can Exclude Cattle from Burned Areas in Large, Sagebrush Steppe Rangelands

By Morgan Lawrence, USDA Northwest Climate Hub

A cow grazes the sagebrush steppe

Sagebrush steppe rangelands play a crucial role in the success of Northwest ranching operations. Photo: Ben Amstutz under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Extensive sagebrush steppe rangelands play a crucial role in the success of Northwest ranching operations, allowing livestock to graze throughout the spring and summer months on fresh forage. However, as wildfire frequency and size increase in sagebrush steppe due to climate change, burned areas of varying sizes within these rangelands will need to be rested as they recover. Ranchers and rangeland managers will need new, cost-effective methods of separating cattle from these sensitive, burned areas on public rangelands while still grazing neighboring unburned areas.

Virtual fencing presents a compelling climate change adaptation option for doing just that. Continue reading

Exploring the Nexus of Solar Energy and Agriculture: How Do We Invest in Climate-Friendly Energy While Ensuring the Future of our Food Supply?

By Addie Candib and Chantel Welch, American Farmland Trust

Series of solar panels over bare ground

By 2050, 90% of solar energy is expected to come from utility-scale projects in rural communities (Ardani et al. 2021). Photo: Camille Seamann/Solutions Project under CC BY 2.0

Given ambitious state and federal goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the pace of solar energy development is accelerating rapidly in the Pacific Northwest, placing significant pressure on the region’s agricultural land and its stewards. According to a US Department of Energy study, by 2050, 90% of solar energy will come from utility-scale projects in rural communities (Ardani et al. 2021). Our team at American Farmland Trust (AFT) recently looked specifically at solar development as a contributor to farmland loss (Hunter et al. 2022). In addition to the nearly 200,000 acres at risk of conversion to urban and low-density residential development, Washington State could lose as many as 86,000 acres to solar development by 2040 (Figure 1).  We estimate that about 80% of that development – or 68,800 acres – will occur on agricultural land. While this may not sound like a lot given Washington’s vast agricultural landscape, it’s equal to or more than the total acreages used by some flagship crops: barley (70,000 acres), hops (43,000 acres), cherries (39,000 acres), or onions (19,000 acres).

 The opportunity to lease land to solar developers may have considerable appeal for a farmland owner given the many challenges that face our region’s producers: unstable commodity markets, rising property values, labor shortages, climate change, and lack of successors, just to name a few. But solar leases also carry significant risk for the landowner and for the land. Here we discuss two approaches AFT is taking to help ensure that the interests and values of agricultural lands and landowners are equitably considered at all levels of decisions around solar development. Continue reading

Deficit Irrigation Can Improve Fruit Quality for Hard Cider Producers

By Sarah Davis, Intern at Washington State University’s Tree Fruit Research and Extension Center and the Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources

Apple trees with fruit on the branches, green foliage

Cider apples in mid August under RDI treatment. Photo: Sarah Davis.

Growing up, I remember my grandfather bringing my family fresh Honeycrisp apples from his orchard in the Chelan area, describing the qualities that made them special. As an orchardist, my grandfather always strived to have delicious, high-quality produce coming from his orchards. My grandfather is not alone in this quest; growers across the state are looking for ways to enhance the quality of their crops. As climate change progresses and temperatures rise, fruit quality could be affected: climate change has been linked to delayed fruit ripening, low fruit quality, low fruit yield, sunburn, and more.  Regulated deficit irrigation (RDI) is one possible way to combat some of these impacts. Continue reading

Deficit Irrigation Conserves Water in Agriculture to Aid in Combating Water Stress

By Sarah Davis, Intern at Washington State University’s Tree Fruit Research and Extension Center and the Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources

A group of red apples, showing a sticker labeling them from Chelan

Washington state produce can be found in supermarkets across the world. These Chelan apples were found in Kuala Lumpur. Photo: Flickr user Dennis Sylvester Hurd, under CC0 1.0 Universal

Washington State has nearly 15 million acres of farmland with around 39,000 operating farms, each producing necessary agricultural commodities. A few of the most well-known crops that are produced and distributed from Washington State are apples, cherries, hops, raspberries, and pears. Even when traveling across the country, I can find Chelan apples, which shows just how productive the state is in their cultivation of high value foods. Many of the 39,000 operating farms require irrigation to produce much of the aforementioned fruit that get distributed far and wide, which consumes a large portion of water resources. Continue reading

Challenges with Renewable Energy and How Biofuels Can Help

By Janelle Christensen, MESM, ORISE Science Communication fellow for the USDA Northwest Climate Hub

Wind turbines over a grassland with livestock

Renewable energy like wind power could help to reduce some of the biggest impacts from climate change. Photo: NRCS Montana.

In the face of climate change, much of the world looks to renewable energy. It offers the promise of preventing some of the worst impacts from climate change while allowing us to continue to live similar to how we do currently. Although we need to change how we live in addition to using renewables, without them, we would need to completely revert to pre-industrial times. However, I can guarantee that as I write this on my laptop in my air-conditioned house at my remote job that that is out of the question. With a power grid that runs off clean energy, the changes and reductions we make in our day-to-day lives have a larger impact. If we choose public transportation over driving, it makes a bigger difference if that train runs off a renewable energy powered grid. If we change to more efficient, long-lasting light bulbs and we use solar to power those bulbs, we are wasting less and not emitting carbon dioxide to power our house. The combination of action and renewables is powerful, but switching to 100% renewable energy has some challenges. Continue reading

Our Five-Year Mission … to Boldly Go Where No Integrated Model Has Gone Before

By David I. Gustafson, Adjunct Research Faculty at Washington State University

This article is part of a series, Climate Friendly Fruit & Veggies, highlighting work from the Fruit & Vegetable Supply Chains: Climate Adaptation & Mitigation Opportunities (F&V CAMO) project, a collaborative research study that was co-led by investigators at the University of Florida and the Agriculture & Food Systems Institute. Other collaborators included researchers at the University of Arkansas, University of Illinois, the International Food Policy Research Institute, the World Agricultural Economic and Environmental Services, and Washington State University. This project identified and tested climate adaptation and mitigation strategies in fruit and vegetable supply chains.

Star ship flying around a planet

Figure 1. Still image from the original Star Trek TV series. Source: Maurice Mitchell (https://www.thegeektwins.com/2019/10/every-star-trek-opening-theme-song.html)

As a child of the sixties, I can still remember our family sitting together to watch the coolest show on television, Star Trek (Figure 1). Every episode began with these poetic words: “Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before!”

These words came to mind as I reflect on the conclusion of our five-year project to develop and apply the powerful tools of integrated modeling for a unique purpose: to identify climate adaptation and mitigation opportunities in U.S. fruit and vegetable (F&V) supply chains. Continue reading

A Cornucopia of Opportunities for Domestic Produce

By David I. Gustafson, Adjunct Research Faculty at Washington State University

This article is part of a series, Climate Friendly Fruit & Veggies, highlighting work from the Fruit & Vegetable Supply Chains: Climate Adaptation & Mitigation Opportunities (F&V CAMO) project, a collaborative research study co-led by investigators at the University of Florida and the Agriculture & Food Systems Institute. Other collaborators include researchers at the University of Arkansas, University of Illinois, the International Food Policy Research Institute, the World Agricultural Economic and Environmental Services, and Washington State University. This project seeks to identify and test climate adaptation and mitigation strategies in fruit and vegetable supply chains.

A pile of fresh vegetables, including carrots, potatoes, leafy greens and leeks

Eat your fruit and vegetables. Can farmers grow the necessary produce for all Americans to each five servings of fruits and vegetables daily? Photo: Shiela Sund under CC BY 2.0.

Most of our moms urged us to “eat our fruits and vegetables,” and multiple studies confirm this motherly advice. For instance, the U.S. National Institutes of Health recently reported that consuming more fruits and vegetable results in reduced mortality. Unfortunately, the same report tells us what we already know: most Americans don’t consume anywhere near the five servings a day needed for maximum health benefits.

But what if we did? Could America’s farmers grow all of that additional produce? Continue reading