Using farmland for solar panels, especially in the agriculture-heavy Midwest, is fraught with controversy. “There is concern that solar energy will prevent land from being used for farming,” says Matt O’Neal, professor of entomology and Henry A. Wallace Chair for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University.

What if the two could co-exist?

A new study underway at Iowa State University seeks to answer that question.

“Solar panels don’t have to be disruptive. It doesn’t mean farming the land has to stop,” says O’Neal. “We want to look at possibilities and profitability.”

A multi-disciplinary team of ISU professors, graduate and undergraduate students is working with Alliant Energy through a public-private partnership to study the potential of agrivoltaics, the simultaneous use of areas of land for both solar panels and agriculture. The team includes horticulturalists, economists, environmentalists, sociologists, engineers and even entomologists.

The project is the first of its kind. “There has been research conducted, but not on a utility scale,” says Nick Peterson, Strategic Partnerships Manager with Alliant Energy, “and not in a public/private partnership with a land grant university.”

There has also been little research conducted in the Midwest, the heart of agriculture, where farmland is gold.

The solar farm

Alliant Energy completed construction on the 10-acre Alliant Energy Solar Farm on the ISU research farms near Ames, Iowa in the fall of 2023. Managed by the ISU College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the research farms are used to study livestock production and the agriculture industry.

Alliant designed, built, owns and will operate and maintain the 3,300 solar panels and 16 inverters at an ultimate estimated cost of around $4 million.

The ISU team will plant fruits and vegetables beneath and among the panels to measure not only plant growth but the effect on energy production.

“One of the questions before the electrical engineers is the effect of the vegetation on the panels,” says Peterson. “Engineers know from previous study, particularly out of Colorado, that panels that are cooled can absorb more energy. What we’re studying now is how different types of panels and vegetation impact energy production.”

The solar array consists of two types of panels—fixed and single access tracker. 

Fixed panels are like those often found on rooftops. As the name implies, they stay in one fixed position. For scientific method purposes, the lowest edge of the panel sits at two heights, five feet or 2.5 feet. 

Tracker panels move with the sun. They are placed at five or eight feet. All panels are bi-facial, meaning they absorb sunlight on both sides.

Horticulturalists are growing raspberries, strawberries, summer squash, peppers and broccoli, along with control grasses. The first of the raspberries and the grass mix went in this fall. The remainder of the crops will be planted in the spring. 

Traditional Iowa crops such as corn and soybeans were avoided due to the need for large equipment and the small acreage. 

Issues such as harvest timing and growing season will be studied, as well as climatic impacts. O’Neal sees specific varieties eventually being developed for the environment.

The harvested crops will be sold to the university’s dining halls.

The crops, along with flowering perennials, were chosen with natural attraction of pollinators in mind, and the project will include beehives, with researchers studying how the bees develop and what kind of honey they produce. Other projects in various parts of the country have utilized sheep grazing in their agrivoltaics, but livestock was ruled out at ISU due to limited area and water availability.

“Bees are livestock, too,” says O’Neal.

More questions

While the bees, plants and energy production are under study, sociologists and economists will weigh in.

Sociologists will study public perception of agrivoltaics and solar power in general. Researchers will look at how such a project could affect a community and will track how information based on science leads to future community decisions.

“There are valid concerns about how land will be used in the future,” says O’Neal. “People are leery about ag land being used for recreation, urban development or energy production.” Wildlife conservation is a concern, including pollinators. Some see solar arrays as disruptive to agriculture, Iowa’s top industry. “This project will give the public a chance to see if various modifications to a solar farm make these sitings more palatable.”

“The bottom line is this is Iowa, and we should be growing things,” says Peterson. “For us to be good stewards of our customers, we need to be looking at how we can maximize land use.”

For Alliant Energy, the economics of power production are front and center. Peterson says 52 percent of Alliant’s energy comes from a mix of renewable sources such as wind and solar. The rest comes from natural gas and a few remaining coal plants set to retire by 2040.

A three-person economics team will study the cost and profitability of the solar farm. “Every step can be costly,” says Hongli Feng, assistant professor at the ISU Department of Economics, “from the land to the ground preparation, to the seeds and equipment and labor.” 

Based on the cost tracking, the team will create an enterprise budget tool for farmers and solar field developers.

The basic business model is based on reality. 

“The land lease agreement between ISU and Alliant Energy follows what landowners might experience if the energy company chooses a site on their land,” says O’Neal. “We want to look at what that relationship would be like.”

“Much of the existing research is regionally specific,” adds Feng. “We need to see how it applies to Iowa and the Midwest.”

The partnership

Alliant Energy has been active in research conducted by ISU’s Electric Power Resource Center for more than 60 years. According to EPRC director Anne Kimber, the center’s research focuses on integrating renewable energy into the existing structure that wasn’t designed for it.

In addition to the ongoing research, Iowa State University has a five-year strategic plan for operational sustainability, which includes goals for tripling the use of renewable energies and ultimately, carbon neutrality.

“ISU called Alliant to explore what sustainable energy production on the research farm might look like,” says Peterson. “ISU has added several new facilities to its research farm in recent years, including a feed mill and a turkey teaching and research facility. These projects give students the opportunity to learn agriculture and the agriculture industry firsthand, but they come with operating costs.”

The Alliant Energy Solar Farm will produce 1.375 MW of power at maximum capacity, enough to power the equivalent of around 200 homes. The renewable energy ISU receives will offset a portion of the university’s annual carbon emissions.

That alone is a pragmatic goal. But Ray Klein, director of partnerships at Iowa State University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, saw more opportunity. He proposed leveraging the project for academic and ag industry research.

The result was a four-year, $1.8-million grant from the US Department of Energy, the largest grant awarded by the agency for such a project.

The research

Iowa State University is a land-grant teaching college, and the project includes surveys, seminars and field days to share findings with agriculture producers and the public through Iowa State University Extension and Outreach.

“When we first started this, ISU’s priority was that they be able to share what we learned,” says Peterson.

The information may be especially useful in the growing farm-to-table sector of ag production, where producers often operate on smaller tracts of land and sell locally, and food produced in agrivoltaics systems may more immediately go into local food systems impacting food availability.

“Local food systems are the next level of diversity in ag,” says Peterson. “This opens up a new avenue for farming that is coupled with renewable energy. I’m hoping we can develop the research base to show if agrivoltaics is viable, profitable and sustainable for this part of the world.”

“This is unbiased research,” adds Ajay Nair, an ISU professor of horticulture. “We will report what we find, and people can decide whether this is a system that is feasible or not.”

Kimber sees benefits beyond food and energy. “There are a lot of communities who are thinking about community solar arrays,” she says. “Imagine if the community also gets to have gardens associated with those arrays? You’re starting to build community around that. I think that’s worth working on.”

The post Crop and Energy Production Merge in Iowa Project appeared first on Modern Farmer.

This first version was released in the early 1900s and refined multiple times. In 2012, the map received a massive overhaul backed by a novel climate modeling tool. And last week, the USDA unveiled its newest update, which underscores a warming trend perceived by many growers. 

“The 2023 map is about 2.5 degrees warmer than the 2012 map across the contiguous United States,” said Dr. Christopher Daly, a senior professor at the university and the founding director of Oregon State University’s Climate Group, which developed the map with the USDA. “This translated into about half of the country shifting to a warmer five-degree half zone, and half remaining in the same half zone. The central plains and Midwest generally warmed the most, with the southwestern US warming very little.”

A complex model

Daly helps the USDA generate the widely used plant hardiness map using a system known as the Parameter-elevation Regressions on Independent Slopes Model (PRISM). This knowledge-based system interpolates climate elements in complex landscapes using data such as temperature, precipitation and other climatic factors, generating a continuous grid of weather estimates on a monthly, yearly or event-based basis. 

“I’ve been interested in topography, mountains, valleys, rivers, coastlines and how they affect the environment around me,” says Daly. “I took what I knew and learned to do that and developed the first version of PRISM.” Before this model, he found no reliable digital tools that mapped the climate in these complex landscapes. Continuing his research at Oregon State, Daly began to look at rain shadows along the Cascade and Sierra Nevada mountain ranges. His research led to the birth of PRISM. 

“That was back in the early nineties,” says Daly. “It’s been improved and updated for the last 30 years and we’re still using it today.”

PRISM remains unique as it combines topographical data with expert knowledge of complex climate extremes and averages. The model is widely used and remains the highest-quality spatial climate data available. As the burning of fossil fuels such as gas and coal warms the planet, developing precise and accurate climate maps and data has become more important to growers and the economy.

One of the major changes in this year’s edition of the hardiness map is the zone boundaries. The USDA states that the new zones are generally about one-quarter-zone warmer than reported in 2012 throughout much of the United States. This is directly related to a more recent averaging period and warming. However, it is also attributed to additional data sources and improved interpolation. PRISM pulled data from 13,412 weather stations, almost 5,000 more than the 2012 data set. One thing that surprised Daly when the map was finalized and compared to the previous version was that it did not change as much as recent climatic warming would suggest. But, he said, “I think in the end we will see warming zones creep northward.”   

A community resource

Across the country, cooperative extensions exist for advice on anything plant-related. These local hubs empower farmers, ranchers and gardeners to meet challenges in growing plants. With a science-based approach, extensions are a great resource for local growers. This includes the volunteer-run master gardener program. Rachel McClure, coordinator of the Master Gardener Program at the University of Nevada, Reno, is just one example of the resources available to communities. 

“The USDA plant hardiness zone map gives us an idea of our average high and low temperatures,” says  McClure. She comes from a horticultural family and manages about 100 volunteer master gardeners across northern Nevada. “We have contact with thousands of community members every year and recommend this as a source to many people.”

The map is revised every 10 to 12 years by the USDA and reflects data from thousands of weather stations. Being a virtual map, it enables users to examine hardiness zones at a finer scale than before. “This is such a useful tool to home gardeners and everyone alike that it is interactive, and if you go to the web page, you can put in your state and get specific information,” says McClure. The interactivity includes a ZIP code zone finder, allowing users to zero in on their precise location.

“All our home gardeners and users of this map must know that it’s not absolute, it is a general guideline,” says McClure.  She adds that Mother Nature is tricky and has a sense of humor, often to the dismay of eager spring gardeners. She echoes Daly in stressing that there are microclimate differences among elevation changes, bodies of water and urban areas. Even across large properties, growers should learn to find cool pockets. As a general tool, though, the map is a wonderful source of knowledge for gardeners and the economy.

“We want to give gardeners, horticulturalists and others the best information that we can; there’s a lot of economics riding on these maps.”

“Horticulturalists use the zones also when they’re developing new plants; plant breeders use them a lot to determine which zones they would like to access in terms of markets and they look to our map to see what the cold tolerance would have to be for a plant to be able to survive in that zone,” says Daly. “We want to give gardeners, horticulturalists and others the best information that we can; there’s a lot of economics riding on these maps.” For growers, nurseries, plant breeders and even the USDA Risk Management Agency, the map provides a solid baseline of data and information.

PRISM’s data gets reviewed by a group of horticultural, botanical and climatological experts who then offer feedback and insight to Daly and his research team. From there, he builds the interactive digital map that represents a balance between year-to-year weather fluctuations and the differences between weather and climate, as far as plants are concerned. The same period of data, 1991 to 2020, is the same window that climatologists use to describe normalities in the climate, increasing the robustness of modeling.

“Climate is what you have in your wardrobe, and weather is what you wear today,” explains Daly. This distinction is important when studying the climate and weather. Climate looks at long-term trends to make predictions. PRISM succeeds at this very thing when running weather models. “Because the climate and the plant hardiness statistic is kind of like a weather statistic, it’s that coldest weather that occurred each year where the climate would be a long-term average over many days and years.”

For perennials, these averages are what matters. The finer scale provided by the new map will help growers better understand the data. “Generally speaking, the USDA hardiness zone map gives us a parameter to set,” says McClure. “And if we plan our gardening around those things, more often than not, it will help us be successful.”  

The post USDA’s Updated Plant Hardiness Map Shows Where Growing Zones Are Warming  appeared first on Modern Farmer.

SNAP is a government program that offers financial assistance to qualifying individuals to help with food costs. Research has shown that SNAP significantly helps address food insufficiency. But the applications can be difficult to complete for non-English speakers, so El Centro de la Raza’s navigation assistance is critical.

In one case, the team helped a family where the mother was experiencing homelessness and staying at a women’s shelter downtown. El Centro de la Raza staff found that the family was eligible for assistance, because the mother’s two youngest children had been born in the US. The team helped her navigate the application, and she was approved for SNAP benefits for her family.

“This has helped greatly as she was concerned for their health,” wrote the System Navigation Team in an email. “Most of the food provided by the shelter and food bank is processed food and her family was suffering from stomach issues from this.”

Even if the applications are available in Spanish, they can contain confusing legalese that doesn’t translate well. Some people don’t apply for SNAP because they are not American citizens and are worried that receiving benefits will have negative consequences for their immigration status. (It does not. You do not have to be a US citizen to qualify for SNAP, but there are other requirements.) For any non-English speaking individual, accessing benefits can be difficult, even if they qualify. As a result of these obstacles, some people who qualify for these critical benefits do not apply for them.

Researchers at Cornell University have highlighted an additional obstacle for Spanish speakers in applying for SNAP. New research found that Google ads that recruit Californians to sign up for SNAP may have been disproportionately favoring English speakers over Spanish speakers.  

SNAP ads

Californians may apply for SNAP through GetCalFresh, a website created by the nonprofit group Code for America. Researchers observed that, based on income data, fewer Spanish speakers were applying for SNAP than expected. For example, of all the adults in San Diego County who live below the federal poverty line, 23 percent of them speak Spanish primarily. But only seven percent of ad-converted SNAP applicants were Spanish speakers. Even though the qualifications for SNAP are more complex, income level is a decent proxy for estimating the number of eligible individuals. Code for America and researchers at Cornell, led by assistant professor of information science Allison Koenecke, decided to investigate.

Screen grab of GetCalFresh website.

They found that it costs nearly four times as much to convert Spanish speakers into SNAP applicants through Google ads than it does for English speakers, although Koenecke and her team can’t say exactly why.

“There are a lot of moving parts in a lot of these different online ad algorithms, including Google’s, which, of course, for any of these sorts of commercial services, the underlying algorithms are black boxes,” says Koenecke. “We don’t have any internal data access.” 

Still, they can make an informed hypothesis that the higher cost to convert Spanish speakers is resulting in a lower-than-expected number of Spanish-speaking applicants. The algorithm tries to be as efficient as possible and will therefore try to convert as many new people for the lowest amount of money. As a result, Spanish speakers could be targeted less.

Although an efficient algorithm makes sense mathematically, it’s not very equitable in real life.

“Overall, I’d say the most efficient method is not always the one that makes the most sense to implement in the wild,” says Koenecke.

Beyond advertising

The Navigation Team at El Centro de la Raza wrote to Modern Farmer to say there are enough organizations to help people apply for SNAP, but there are gaps in the information available.

“There is not enough information as to who is eligible; also there should be more resources geared to minimize the fear that these families have about how this could affect their immigration status. There should be more helpful resources explaining the process and documents required.”

In a 2021 report by Massachusetts anti-hunger organization Project Bread, the City of Boston’s Office of Food Access and UMass Boston’s Center for Survey Research, 30.4 percent of Latino respondents and 38.4 percent of Asian respondents reported they were concerned that applying for SNAP would affect their immigration status.

“SNAP does not impact immigration status! You can apply for benefits without worrying about impacting your or a loved one’s immigration status,” wrote Erin McAleer, president and chief executive officer of Project Bread, in an email.

El Centro de la Raza’s staff includes individuals who speak English, Spanish, Mandarin and Cantonese. Project Bread’s awareness campaign targets several different languages, but McAleer says there could always be more.

“There are many more languages and many more people who don’t fit into the seven official languages with which our campaign is operating. To reach all Massachusetts residents, and people nationwide, further outreach, support and understanding will always be required.”

SNAP helps people obtain food items, including fresh vegetables. (Photo: Shutterstock)

Real-world impact

Koenecke and her team also administered a survey to 1,500 Americans from diverse backgrounds. They found that, in general, the consensus was that the survey recipients would prefer an equitable approach to SNAP recruiting over the most efficient one. This study and survey can result in a tangible difference in overcoming barriers to food assistance.

“This sort of finding is specifically one that can help local programs, things like GetCalFresh, actually make these sorts of decisions on how to allocate their funds,” says Koenecke. And that’s what happened in this case—Code for America made the decision to begin advertising more intentionally to Spanish speakers as a result of these findings. 

Koenecke says it feels good to do research that has a real-world impact. “This work is very much inspired by the hope that folks who need food assistance are able to get the help that they need through SNAP,” she says. “Hopefully, this research will help make sure that the process to get that food assistance is straightforward and doesn’t unnecessarily burden these folks.”

The post Making SNAP Recruitment More Equitable Across Language Barriers appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Alternative textiles aren’t new, but the use of sustainable materials in the industry, while still a small percentage overall, is growing. In an attempt to combat the unsustainable consumption of clothing and other materials made from synthetic fibers, scientists and entrepreneurs have considered other more environmentally friendly alternatives, such as algae and mycelium.

Kombucha tea is made from tea, sugar and a SCOBY. The SCOBY takes the shape of a gelatinous mat, and when it’s dried out and shaped, it can resemble leather or fabric.

SCOBY has its advantages as a material since it’s environmentally sustainable to produce and also biodegradable at the end of its life. But it also has drawbacks. For example, it sponges up water in a way you don’t want clothing to do. Still, with a little bit of experimentation, Brazil-Geyshick made several items out of this material. In the future of sustainable textiles, can kombucha become a prominent player?

Asiah Brazil-Geyshick holds leather in her right hand and kombucha leather she made in her left hand. (Photography courtesy of University of Idaho)

Homegrown

Chelsey Byrd Lewallen teaches an introduction to textiles class at the University of Idaho. In the class, she covers non-traditional textiles, such as coconut, orange peel and more. 

Byrd Lewallen brought up the prospect of kombucha leather in her class, along with the idea of partnering with a local company, Love’s Kombucha, to try and make a usable leather alternative out of SCOBY. Her student, Brazil-Geyshick, was inspired and volunteered to take on the project. 

“I got excited because I’m Native American, and we use a lot of leather,” says Brazil-Geyshick.

Byrd Lewallen and Brazil-Geyshick began doing research, gathering materials and learning from others who had experimented with this material. 

After mixing the materials and growing the SCOBY, Brazil-Geyshick took the thick and rubbery mats—“It feels like raw chicken,” she says—and washed them in soapy water. This removed the fermentation smell and some of the stickiness. After washing, she dried and rubbed them with glycerin.

Asiah Brazil-Geyshick shapes fabric made out of SCOBY. (Photography courtesy of University of Idaho)

It was a lot of trial and error—some things worked really well, such as rubbing glycerin into the SCOBY to prevent it from becoming too brittle, a tip they picked up from Armine Ghalachyan at Washington State University, who is well versed in working with kombucha. Other things were less successful, like when they had the wrong proportion of sugar in their recipe, causing the material to fall apart. 

Once the material was made, dyed, dried and ready to work with, Brazil-Geyshick began creating. 

“It’s really fun to do your own natural stuff,” says Brazil-Geyshick.

The material is not waterproof, Byrd Lewallen and Brazil-Geyshick say, but they’re still optimistic that it can be useful with additional experimentation and that it can be part of a wave of sustainable materials that will help shift the needle away from fast fashion and its hefty environmental impact.

“I think we [as a society] can do better,” says Byrd Lewallen. “I know we can do better.”

Beyond the SCOBY

Byrd Lewallen and Brazil-Geyshick are far from the only ones experimenting with kombucha as a textile. Fashion designer Suzanne Lee, who founded Biocouture and Biofabricate, brought the potential for kombucha textiles into the public eye. Scientist Theanne Schiros partnered with the brand Public School to style a fashionable sneaker using SCOBY. Today, there is a handful of companies and researchers experimenting with the raw material or specific elements derived from or inspired by it and creating usable textiles.

Kombucha SCOBY in a jar. (Photography: Shutterstock)

Zimri T. Hinshaw, founder and CEO of Bucha Bio, began growing kombucha under his roommate’s bed for use in textile development. But, over time, he realized that, for his purposes, he didn’t actually want the SCOBY itself but a byproduct of fermentation called bacterial nanocellulose. 

“It imbues things with immense tensile strength,” says Hinshaw. So, now, Bucha Bio uses bacterial nanocellulose as a raw ingredient to make its composite products stronger. The company no longer brews kombucha, but it sources the bacterial nanocellulose from a larger producer of fermented products.

SCOBY as a textile can be brittle to work with and vulnerable to water, which is why Hinshaw chose to change paths and instead use an isolated element that would give his products—usable in everything from car interiors to clothes—strength without the SCOBY-associated drawbacks.

“If it reabsorbs water in, say, a rainstorm … on your skin, that’s gonna feel pretty gross,” says Hinshaw.

Bucha Bio’s composite materials are also made from bio-based resins and additives, as well as pigments from fruit and algae. The strength added by the bacterial nanocellulose is a significant boon for functionality.

According to Hinshaw, the interest in sustainable materials in the textile industry is tangible, but the path is not yet paved.

“In terms of the startups, there’s not been one clear winner,” says Hinshaw. “We haven’t had our Impossible Foods or our Beyond Meat yet. So, the potential is any one of these number of startups could be that.”

Hinshaw’s advice for consumers is to consider their buying power and do research to find materials that are holistically sustainable.

“Try to buy something made out of next-gen materials, rather than another recycled PET [polyethylene terephthalate] material like another recycled shoe,” says Hinshaw. “That’s great, but it’s not the future.”

The post Does the Future of Textiles Include Fermented Fashion? appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Iezzoni is the only institution-affiliated tart cherry breeder in the United States. And if you’re going to work with tart cherries, Michigan is the place to do it. Michigan is the leading US producer of this fruit, accounting for 75 percent of tart cherry acreage. 

But if Michigan has a tart cherry abundance, it also has a tart cherry problem: The industry is dominated by one type of tree. The Montmorency cherry originated in Europe, and today, it is the main commercial tart cherry in the US. Most of the tart cherries you’ll find at the store—often in cans or in the frozen food aisle—are Montmorency. The lack of diversity in the tart cherry landscape has made growers vulnerable to threats such as disease, pests and climate change.

It’s a problem that Iezzoni has been addressing for her entire career.  

Amy Iezzoni, professor emerita at MSU. (Photography courtesy of Amy Iezzoni).

Plant breeding is how we get the optimal versions of our favorite foods—the corn with the biggest kernels, the crispest apples, the tomatoes with the ideal shelf life. Breeding also gives us more options from which to choose.

Hybrid breeding is the process of crossing two varieties of something to create a new cultivar that has traits of both parents. It can take a few generations to stabilize the results, and it traditionally requires a lot of trial and error.

When Iezzoni was an undergraduate student at North Carolina State University in the 1970s, she got to work with a peach breeder. It was working with peaches that set the course of her career. Fruit, she says, had not made the same progress in breeding science as bigger crops such as vegetables and grains.

“I felt that I could make more of an impact—more of a change that consumers might actually see and benefit from—by working on fruit because it was rarely done,” says Iezzoni.

In 1981, Iezzoni was hired by Michigan State University as a tart cherry breeder, the first of her kind there. 

“I didn’t inherit a program because there was no real program,” says Iezzoni. “There was really nothing to change; there was something to develop.”

Iezzoni was tasked with building a breeding program from the ground up. But there was a problem: She needed access to cherries that weren’t Montmorency.

“You need genetic diversity to make a breeding program,” says Iezzoni. “There are certain traits that the industry wanted bred into new cultivars, and if you don’t have the diversity to do that, you’re sort of stuck.”

So, Iezzoni went to where there was a diversity of tart cherries, which just happened to be behind the Iron Curtain. In 1983, Iezzoni traveled to several Eastern European countries in search of tart cherries beyond Montmorency. Iezzoni collected pollen samples, brought them back to the US, and began putting them to work immediately.

The first step was to infuse the breeding program with Eastern Europe’s cherry diversity. Having more options in the industry is not just a resilience tactic; it can open consumers up to a wide range of possibilities when it comes to the flavors and uses for cherries.

Cherry blossoms at the MSU Clarksville Research Center. (Photography courtesy of Amy Iezzoni.)

“Think of the apple industry with just Red Delicious,” says Iezzoni. “How many Red Delicious would you eat? There are cherries that are as different as Red Delicious is from Honeycrisp.”

The next aspect of the work was trying to optimize some of that genetic diversity to address the main challenges in the tart cherry industry. From her test orchard in Clarksville—25 acres of diverse cherry trees—she began breeding to address the primary threats. 

Among the leading issues Iezzoni has worked on are cherry leaf spot (an infectious fungal disease) and spotted wing drosophila (a fly known for infesting and damaging certain crops). Iezzoni also focused on breeding for later bloom time. Warmer temperatures associated with climate change can prompt cherries to bloom earlier, but that makes them more vulnerable to late spring frosts. Michigan’s tart cherry industry saw huge losses in 2012 due to spring frost. Future breeding to address these obstacles will depend on the critical work done by Iezzoni.

Cherry trees at the MSU Clarksville Research Center. (Photography courtesy of Amy Iezzoni.)

The breeding process is long and slow, especially when it comes to fruit trees. The lengthy juvenile stage means that many years pass before you start seeing results. One thing that can speed it up? DNA. Having genomic insights can help breeders hack the process, by knowing what genes are associated with the traits for which they are breeding.

Iezzoni was awarded USDA funding to start and run RosBREED, a project intended to develop DNA tests and breeding strategies to create new cultivated varieties for eight different crops within the Rosaceae family, including tart and sweet cherries, apples, peaches and strawberries. Beginning in 2009, the project involved dozens of scientists across research programs.

Last year, Iezzoni was part of a team of MSU researchers that created the first annotated genome of the Montmorency cherry—a tool that will unlock a lot of doors for the future, not just for tart cherries but for other Prunus crops such as peaches and apricots, as similarities in the DNA can be used to speed up discoveries. 

“I wanted to leave the program having crossed that hurdle,” says Iezzoni. “And so having done that is really good closure for me.”

The Rosaceae family of crops. (Graphic courtesy of Amy Iezzoni.)

Iezzoni officially retired in August of 2021, but she has been “keeping the lights on,” she says. Iezzoni wants to get certain cherry cultivars into the market, even if it’s just a cherry tree here and there, in peoples’ backyards.

“If I can just get to the point where they’re tested, and then I can get them in commerce,” says Iezzoni, “then that’s my goal.”

Even in retirement, Iezzoni retains her passion for tart cherries. She remembers a breeding class coming out to the Clarksville orchard. She let the students pick both sweet and tart cherries and take home whatever they wanted. Nearly everyone, she says, opted for a tart cherry variety called Jubileum. 

“Who would have thought people would choose a tart cherry over a sweet cherry?” says Iezzoni. “You can’t even fathom that—until you taste it.”

The post Meet the Breeder On a Quest to Bring Genetic Diversity to US Tart Cherries appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Not native to the United States, the Japanese beetle was first detected on the East Coast in the early 1900s, and it began spreading across the country. The beetle has an appetite for more than 300 types of plants, including agricultural staples such as corn, hops, asparagus, cherries and more. The beetles eat plant leaves between the veins, leaving a cobweb-patterned mess behind. As of 2015, it was estimated that the US was spending more than $460 million annually to manage this pest.

Most states east of the Mississippi River have these beetles, and there have been infestations in some western states. A recent Washington State University study published in the Journal of Economic Entomology modeled the potential spread of the beetle across Washington state and found that, within two decades, if nothing is done to inhibit the beetle, it could be causing problems in all corners of Washington. The beetle’s first sighting in Washington was in the southern town of Sunnyside in 2020. Subsequently, the Washington State Department of Agriculture caught more than 20,000 beetles in the area.

Map of Japanese beetle distribution in the United States as of 2018, depicting established populations. (Map courtesy of USDA)

Gengping Zhu, research assistant professor in the Department of Entomology at WSU and lead author of the study, says that this research can inform people about where they are likely to see the beetle, hopefully enabling interventions to take place.

Both official management plans and public engagement can help curtail the progress of the beetle. States such as Oregon and California have had repeated infestations, but they have effectively prevented full-on establishment through swift management action.

Interventions can include things such as localized quarantines—making sure yard waste and other soils don’t travel to outside areas. At the federal level, the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service utilizes a nationwide quarantine, specifically designed to prevent the spread of the beetle from eastern states to western states through air travel.

Many states have reporting forms online, where people can document sightings of the beetle. In parts of the country where the beetles are already pervasive, other innovative solutions are taking off, such as this 4-H project that turned into a beetle-busting business.

Stopping the spread of the beetle is preferable and more economically efficient than trying to address it after it has taken over, says Zhu. Adult beetles are easier to spot, but it’s even better to find them before the beetles can get to adulthood. “That’s the perfect window to control this beetle, but it’s harder to detect the eggs,” says Zhu.

The spread of the beetle is often attributable to human activity. Humans unknowingly transport beetles or their eggs/larvae through soil, potted plants, yard waste or other debris. 

That’s why engaging and educating the public about the spread of non-native species can make a difference, no matter where you live. Zhu says public involvement has been hugely helpful thus far and will continue to be critical for the successful management of this species.

The post Swift Intervention By Western States Is Keeping a Devastating Beetle at Bay appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Strawberries are one of many crops that often use plastic mulch during their growing season. Mulching is the process of covering the earth around a plant with something to help it grow. Myrvold says that for the strawberries at Viva Farms, plastic mulch—long, thin sheets of polyethylene—serves two main purposes.

“It adds heat to the soil, which is really beneficial for a heat-loving crop like strawberries. And it also helps with weed suppression, which is always a challenge in organic production.”

But there is a critical downside. There are no consistently accessible mechanisms for sustainably disposing of plastic mulch film at the end of its life. What’s more, research shows that renegade pieces of this plastic can break down into the soil and waterways as microplastics—pieces of plastic less than five millimeters long that present serious health and ecosystem concerns. 

“We always talk about this on the student farm—it’s kind of like the dirty secret of organic agriculture and agriculture in general, is just the amount of waste—the amount of single-use plastic,” says Myrvold. “So, that’s something that we’re very open to finding an alternative to.”

But the current alternatives also have drawbacks. Myrvold says they tried using paper mulch one year, and it tore too easily, wasn’t flexible enough and large swaths of it blew away in the wind.

“It didn’t get the job done at that time,” says Myrvold. 

A new $8-million USDA grant will allow researchers from Washington State University (WSU) to investigate end-of-life recycling solutions for plastic mulch, as well as effective biodegradable mulch options. Researchers across several institutions and industry partners, such as Natureripe and Driscoll’s, will participate, with contributors spanning both coasts. Although many crops use plastic mulch film, this project will focus on a fruit that uses it extensively: the strawberry.

Strawberries from Viva Farms. (Photography by Marcus Badgley.)

The ubiquity of plastic

The use of plastic in agriculture, known as “plasticulture,” is expansive. The United States agriculture sector uses one billion pounds of plastic mulch every year. When it comes to disposal, the vast majority of this film gets taken to the landfill or is buried or incinerated.

When the use of plastic mulch began in the 1950s, it proved to be immensely helpful to growers. The benefits include trapping heat for faster growth, retaining fertilizer and suppressing weeds. It has also proven to be the most economical option for people growing on a commercial scale. 

Plastic mulch is made out of polyethylene, or PE. PE is recyclable, but most plastic mulch film is not recycled because of a few key hurdles. “There’s quite a few things against you,” says Karl Englund, a research professor in WSU’s Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, who is leading the recycling component of WSU’s grant research.

Recycling plastic mulch is not as easy as putting your household recycling in a blue bin. 

Plastic mulch film spends its life in the dirt, and contamination is a real obstacle. Recycling is generally only possible if contaminants make up less than 5 percent of the weight of plastic mulch. But by the end of the growing season, the weight of plastic mulch can increase by as much as 80 percent—all directly due to dirt and organic matter.

Tractor laying plastic mulch ahead of the growing season. (Photography by Jazmine Mejia-Muñoz.)

Moreover, consistent industry pathways for recycling plastic mulch don’t exist yet.

“If there’s no avenue for it to go, then who cares if you clean it?” says Englund. “You build an industry that’s out there that can handle this or at least a group that can say ‘I’ll take this but you got to clean it,’ I think you’ll start to see more and more people starting to clean it. That’s the hope.”

Englund and his team will investigate three different avenues for recycling plastic mulch lifted from strawberry fields: through pyrolysis, for use in road asphalt and as potential added material to deck boards. They’ll use mulch from strawberry fields at different partner sites across the US in Florida, California, Nebraska and Washington and at different levels of cleanliness. Strawberries are an ideal crop to focus on for this research because they’re a popular thing to grow across the country, spanning various soil systems, climates and growing conditions.

But the conversation about how to deal with end-of-life materials needs to start in their initial design, says Englund.

“It’s a quagmire, the position we put ourselves into with these specialty polymers,” says Englund. “[There’s] a lot of design that goes into them and not a design for deconstruction. We have to start designing this stuff better.”

In the fields

The bulk of US strawberries are grown in California—more than 40,000 acres this year. Plastic mulch used for strawberries and other crops has become a problem, however, as plastic pollution can infiltrate waterways.

“There’s a lot of agricultural fields right next to the coast. And so we try to work really closely with ag stakeholders to look at preventative strategies that can help reduce the amount of plastic that can escape out into the ocean,” says Jazmine Mejia-Muñoz, water quality program manager at the California Marine Sanctuary Foundation (CMSF), on detail for NOAA’s Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. By working with researchers and major berry producers in the area, the organizations are attempting to break the link between agricultural plastic use and plastic marine debris.  

Microplastic pollution is a global problem. Although it is difficult to estimate the true extent of the problem, it is thought that there are between 50 trillion and 75 trillion pieces of plastic or microplastic in the ocean. While mulch is far from being the only contributor to this issue, agricultural plastics are certainly a factor. Mulch that breaks down over time could be part of the solution, although a main obstacle associated with the soil-biodegradable plastic mulch currently on the market is that it doesn’t behave consistently across different climates and field conditions. CMSF is collaborating with the WSU team to run trials for biodegradable mulch in strawberry fields. It’s also working with California Sea Grant to investigate new technology to remove contamination from the plastic film without creating wastewater, which would aid in efforts to recycle the material.

Strawberries grown through soil-biodegradable mulch in California’s Central Coast. (Photography by Jazmine Mejia-Muñoz.)

The future of mulch, says Mejia-Muñoz, likely won’t align with just new plastic recycling strategies or biodegradable mulch. It’s going to depend on a combination of different strategies to create a path forward that works for different farm systems with different needs. It’s not only about finding new pathways that work—they also have to be efficient and scalable. 

“In order for the technology to be implemented, it has to be viable, and it has to make sense with the system and the economics around it,” says Mejia-Muñoz.

Should growers just be ditching plastic completely? It’s not nearly that simple, says Mejia-Muñoz.

“Growers here are responsible for meeting food demand, and they feed the world,” says Mejia-Muñoz. “And in order to meet this demand, they rely on really effective technology.”

Beyond plastic

There are several alternatives to plastic mulch—but none can totally fill plastic’s shoes just yet.

Soil-biodegradable plastic mulch film is already on the market, but there are notable obstacles. It degrades inconsistently across varying field conditions and cannot be used for organic farming if it is not 100 percent bio-based, which is required in order to be used in certified organic operations in the US. 

Last year, trials began at WSU and North Dakota State University to determine the most effective formula of hydromulch, a material made of paper, water and tackifier. Hydromulch could contribute to a closed-loop system in agriculture, if the boxes used to transport produce could then become the paper needed to make the hydromulch.

Box of freshly-picked strawberries from Viva Farms. (Photography by Katherine Myrvold.)

Katherine Myrvold of Viva Farms says that despite its less than satisfactory experience with paper mulch in the past, Viva Farms would be open to new techniques or tools. She’d really like whatever the alternative is to add heat to the soil—in the Pacific Northwest climate, the heat boost really makes a difference.

“We would love to try it again, if there’s a newer variety that would last better through the season,” she says.

Myrvold thinks others would be open to it, too.

“I know that there are a lot of people who are working in organic agriculture for all kinds of values-related reasons,” says Myrvold. “It seems like it would be a natural fit to extend that into making an effort to recycle the more wasteful components of what you use on your farm.”

The post Plastic Mulch is Problematic—and Everywhere. Can We Do Better? appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Germinating seeds and growing food on the red planet is difficult, particularly when it comes to Martian soil. The soil on Mars contains a high level of perchlorate salts, which are toxic for plants. 

To simulate Martian perchlorate levels, a team of researchers from the University of Arkansas gathered soil from the Mojave Desert, where the desert earth is similar to that on Mars. The area was developed by NASA and its Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 2007 as the Mojave Mars simulant (MMS). Researchers mainly use the area for soil sampling, but they’ve also test-driven rovers and practiced using sampling equipment in icy conditions. 

The research team grew three varieties of rice, including one strain of wild rice and two strains with gene-edited lines. The goal was to produce rice better suited to drought, salty conditions and a lack of natural sugars. All three rice strains were grown in three mediums: soil from the MMS, a regular potting soil mixture and a combination of the two. The plants were able to grow in the all-MMS soil, but they didn’t thrive. Instead, the combined potting mixture provided the best results. Researchers found that a 75-percent MMS soil to 25-percent potting soil mixture created improved plants. They also discovered that plants could still take root with one gram of perchlorate per kilogram of soil, but three grams per kg was the upper limit—past that, nothing would grow. 

The team presented its findings at the 54th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference last month. Its next steps will be to experiment with other Martian soil simulants and other rice varieties that tolerate high salt concentrations. The team will also work to determine how much perchlorate can leach into the plant from the soil. 

It’s not just potential Martian settlers that could benefit from this experiment. There are several regions on this planet that are covered with high-salinity soil, such as parts of the Australian desert. 

But perchlorate salts is just one issue facing would-be Martian farmers. Martian soil is lighter and looser than soils on Earth, meaning they would drain water faster than our soil. It’s also missing many nutrients on which we rely to grow crops, such as nitrogen. Plus, Mars has about a third of Earth’s gravity, which could be disorienting for plants that rely on gravity to root into the ground. 

However, we may be closer than we think to providing astronauts with a semi-varied diet. In recent studies, wheat, mustard and tomatoes have all performed well in simulated conditions. Those on the mission to Mars may not be able to order a pizza, but they might just be able to make one themselves.

The post How to Grow Rice on Mars appeared first on Modern Farmer.

This is how a group of biomaterial scientists and engineers are envisioning the future of crops after developing the first microneedle-based drug delivery technique for plants. Their paper, published in the journal Advanced Materials, details how they were able to provide small compounds to a wide variety of plants and monitor plant response via biomaterial injection. 

For roughly a year and a half, researchers based in Singapore and Cambridge, Massachusetts tested the needles using GA3, a plant growth regulator widely used in agriculture. Via genetic analysis, the group was able to closely examine the reaction of tomatoes, lettuce, spinach, rice, corn, barley and soybeans and confirm the effectiveness of the method, noting that it resulted in minimal scar and callus formation. 

Benedetto Marelli, a corresponding author of the paper and associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says that the research on microneedle technology was motivated by the desire to offer farmers an alternative to spraying that is more sustainable and ecologically friendly. 

“There is increasing pressure for the agriculture sector to adapt and stay resilient to the realities of climate change,” says Marelli. “When we consider the current option of spraying, it is scalable, but it can be harmful to the farmer and the environment by sending particles into the air or percolating in the soil, going into the aquifer and then draining into the water stream.” 

According to Marelli, when sprays are used, roughly 50 to 90 per cent of an  application ends up in the air or soil or doesn’t get fully absorbed into the plant tissue. The reason why the technology holds so much promise, he says, is because it offers a precise and streamlined way to deliver a substance by directly targeting the plant tissue. And because the needles are made of silk, they are biodegradable. 

“You minimize the waste,” says Marelli. 

While the invention is essentially a plant vaccine, these needles aren’t like the syringes used at the doctors office. To make them, Marelli and his team mixed functional compounds (in this case, GA3) into a silk fibroin solution. The mixture was then cast into a mold to dry and form the needles. Researchers used tweezers to grab the needles and pierce them into the plant tissue to release the compound directly inside the plant. 

Yunteng Cao, the first author of the paper and postdoc researcher at MIT, says there are many ways in which the technology could make a positive impact, but Cao sees the microneedle as an especially promising solution to citrus greening disease, which has decimated the orange industry, particularly in Florida. A 2020 study estimated the damage of the disease amounted to more than $1 billion in annual revenue losses and 5,000 jobs lost each year in the sunshine state. 

An example of citrus greening disease on an orange tree. (Photo: Shutterstock)

There is currently no cure for the disease, and spraying trees with an antibiotic has been shown to be largely ineffective because so little of the drug is absorbed into the plant’s system.

“I see this as a tool to help ensure the world has greater food security and ensure we can continue to grow food into the future,” says Cao. “I think we can have hope and excitement for what sorts of meaningful impacts our work can have.”

Researchers say the microneedles could also be used to design new crop traits, in addition to administering drugs or other inputs. 

 Their process to advance the project will involve trials on different plants and at various stages in their life cycle. They will also attempt to attract business partners that might be interested in manufacturing the technology and bringing it into the commercial space. 

With those steps in mind, the researchers say they would be happy if the technology was available to farmers within the next seven years. 

The post Plant Vaccines Delivered Via Microneedle Could Offer Alternative To Chemical Spraying appeared first on Modern Farmer.

It’s a lot to put on the shoulders of a chocolate bar. But the organizers of the annual Chocolate Scorecard say having full transparency into the cocoa industry is the first step in righting those wrongs. 

This year’s scorecard, which was released last week, offers updated rankings of chocolate companies and retailers across the globe. The chocolatiers are ranked on six key metrics, decided by a team of experts in collaboration with  Green America, Mighty Earth, Be Slavery Free, and the universities compiling the stats and scores: Macquarie University, The University of Wollongong and the Open University. The metrics are: traceability of products, if workers are paid a living income, if the supply chain contains child or forced labor, deforestation, agroforestry and agrichemical management. 

If that feels like a lot for a chocolate bar to contribute to, it is. Cocoa, as an industry, has been rife with issues for decades. There are still roughly 1.5 million children in the cocoa industry in two countries alone, Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. Those same countries have lost more than 80% of their forest cover in the last sixty years, and cocoa production accounts for a third of that loss. There are some smaller companies working to rid their supply chains of problems, but, overall, progress has been slow. 

Newly deforested land for cocoa farming. Photography courtesy of Mighty Earth.

But with this scorecard, you can see exactly where a company or retailer ranks. The organizers and universities came up with a scoring methodology that ranks the companies in each category, and then they are given an overall score. A green egg means a company is ahead of industry standards. Yellow means it is developing good policies, and orange shows that it has made some starts but needs more work on implementing policies. A red egg means it is well behind industry standards. 

“I wanted the scorecard to shed some light on who was changing to address deforestation, first in policy and then in practice,” says Etelle Higonnet, creator of Mighty Earth’s original scorecard. (Several years ago, there were multiple scorecards with the same goals; they merged in 2019 to simplify the process.) “I think it’s important to…lift everyone up, to see excellence across the board but with a level of disaggregated detail, to give [a company] credit where credit is due, but hold [that company’s] feet to the fire where needed.” 

After several years of these scorecards, it’s also interesting to see which companies are making moves and implementing processes. This year, Nestle made it into the top ten companies, with green eggs in both the child and forced labor and deforestation categories. Godiva has also made progress, getting an overall score of orange, an improvement on its “rotten egg” score just two years ago. “Large corporations who are involved in chocolate recognize that they have a role in solving problems like farmer poverty, labor [and] deforestation, and they’re starting to take steps in those directions,” says Todd Larsen, executive co-director of Green America. Larsen says the progress is often “incremental,” but it’s progress nonetheless. “These problems are not new,” says Larsen. “Each of the largest companies made promises 20 years ago that they were going to address the problem of child labor in their supply chain.”

Children carrying cocoa. Photography by Fuzz Kitto.

The timeline of progress is just one of the concerns organizers raise. As the data in these surveys is self-reported, Higonnet says they have to take a “trust but verify” approach. However, if a company was found to falsify data, it would be left with PR fallout.

Then there are the companies that decline to fill out the questionnaires entirely. General Mills, makers of Häagen Dazs and Betty Crocker products, didn’t participate this year. Neither did Mondelez, makers of Cadbury products, Target, Walmart, Kroger or Whole Foods. 

“It’s surprising that a company like Whole Foods wouldn’t respond,” says Larsen. “In general, they’re considered to be a company that takes sustainability fairly seriously. So you would think they would respond.” Instead, companies that fail to respond don’t get rated and are scored with a rotten egg. 

One area that the scorecard doesn’t expand on at first glance is the relationship between certain companies. Tony’s Chocolonely, which scored second overall for its practices, processes its chocolate at Barry Callebaut facilities, which has an overall score of yellow. Ben & Jerry’s ice cream scored an overall yellow, but it is owned by Unilever, which declined to answer the survey as a whole. 

Organizers say the relationships between the companies are factored into the scoring, which they tweak and work on from year to year. “If I’m a retailer, and [Company A] is one of my suppliers, and I find out that [Company A] has child labor in their supply chain, then what? Do I suspend [Company A]? Do I ask them to change certifications? What do I do if I find out they’re non-compliant?” says Higonnet. In short, they attempt to hold each company accountable for each step of its processes and supply chain management, although only about half of respondents have an improvement plan in place for suppliers. 

There are changes coming from above as well. The EU passed a law banning cocoa that is linked to deforestation; there is a similar act in debate in the UK. Across the US, states such as New York and California are debating bills, and a federal Senate bill was introduced in the last sitting.

It’s a lot of data to keep track of, which is why the scorecard is presented as a snapshot. Organizers, who timed this year’s scorecard release to coincide with the spike in chocolate sales ahead of Easter, hope it will help customers make choices they feel good about and they will continue to spur companies and retailers to implement positive changes.

The post New Rankings Score Chocolate Companies on Environmental and Labor Issues appeared first on Modern Farmer.