Sunday, March 29, 2020

Our Roots are Showing

            An awakening of sorts is underway—at URI and across the globe. There’s growing recognition that the 20th century’s industrial approach to farming and food production is unhealthy for people, animals, soil, and the environment, and is environmentally and economically unsustainable. So what’s to be done? At URI, where agriculture is central to our history and mission as a land grant university, our faculty, students, and alumni are rediscovering our agricultural roots, taking a new, interdisciplinary approach to practical agriculture, and leading the way for a new generation of farmers and food producers.

            In late October, a section of the University’s agronomy field is blooming with gorgeous purple saffron flowers. Although 90 percent of the global harvest of saffron—the world’s most expensive spice—comes from Iran, plant sciences professor Rebecca Brown has demonstrated that the Ocean State has the potential to claim a share of the market as demand grows in the United States.
            “It’s tolerant of arid conditions, which is why it’s mostly grown in the poor, dry soils of southeastern Iran,” she says. “But until now, no one had tried to grow it in southern NewEngland's moist, rich soils." 
            With the help of postdoctoral fellow Rahmatallah Gheshm, who grew the spice in Iran for 27 years, last year’s campus saffron yield per acre was about triple that of Iran’s.
            “It’s an attractive crop because you don’t need sophisticated farm equipment or technology to grow it,” she says. “It’s a lot less work to grow than vegetables, though it’s more
labor intensive to harvest, which is why saffron is so expensive. It also doesn’t have insect or disease problems here, and you don’t have to water it. All of that is attractive to farmers.”
            The saffron experiment is just one of URI’s many sustainable agriculture initiatives, which include numerous research projects, new faculty members, an academic major, and several campus measures designed to develop agricultural practices, products, and policies that reduce the environmental impact of food production while also considering economic sustainability and social justice for farming communities. The efforts attest to URI’s long history in agricultural research and education, and its commitment to leading a new generation of growers in an effort to create a sustainable system of food production.
            Plant Sciences and entomology assistant professor John Taylor is looking for ways to produce more food in smaller plots by using different nutrient inputs and tillage strategies and by cultivating several crops in the same space in a practice called polyculture.
“In polyculture, you’re growing multiple species together to get more production from a unit of area compared to growing those crops in monoculture,” he says. “It’s a way to maximize the use of space. In Chinese-origin household gardens, they sometimes double production because they have a vine crop growing vertically on a trellis with a leafy ground layer below. It helps the household be more food secure.”
He is also teaming with the Southside Community Land Trust in Providence to evaluate the use of urban-adapted high tunnel systems, temporary greenhouses that help to extend the growing season. By pairing raised beds in the tunnel with native flower beds that capture rain dripping off the tunnel, he is helping urban residents intensify production in small spaces.
            “If we’re going to meet the goal of producing 50 percent of the region’s food needs by 2060,” as proposed in a report prepared in 2014 by Food Solutions New England, “then a lot of our food is going to have to come from small scale production in urban backyards and vacant lots,” says Taylor, the first of several new professors hired as part of the sustainable agriculture program. He is finding that the yield from his... 

Read the rest of this story in the Spring 2020 University of Rhode Island Magazine.

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