Delta Harvest Researches Climate-Friendly Specialty Rice
Excerpts from article, The California-to-Arkansas Farmer Pipeline, by Lela Nargi with Ambrook Research.
Date: 19 July 2024
Author: Lela Nargi
A few glistening inches of water lie across several paddies on Hallie Shoffner’s 2,000-acre seed farm, Delta Harvest, from which thousands of bright green stalks of specialty rice protrude. An assistant stands on a metal levee bridge perched above the wet, taking measurements — part of a U.S. Department of Agriculture partnership pilot to determine how much methane, carbon dioxide, and nitrous oxide these fields are generating. When the pilot wraps up at the end of next year, Shoffner will share the results, for free, with any producer who’s interested.
“We want to democratize climate-friendly data for small farmers” who can’t afford to conduct such trials on their own, Shoffner said. But this is just one part of her much bigger plan. That is, to create a market for sustainably produced specialty rice grown across the Mississippi Delta. If “we can say to [buyers], we have this variety grown in these environments that give you these [lower] percentages of greenhouse gas emissions, we can also say, these are unique attributes that we should be compensated for.”
Shoffner believes that using more valuable crops could generate increased revenue for smaller, disenfranchised farms — specifically those that are women- and Black-owned, which comprise 9% and 1.3% of U.S. farms respectively — and help break them out of commodity rice production; it’s an industry that heavily favors large-scale growers who can produce enough of the crop to make a decent income. “Even without doing climate-friendly [practices], specialty rice can bring a farmer 12 to 20% more revenue per acre,” she said.
Shoffner’s efforts stand on their own. But they are also nestled within an even more monumental goal, spearheaded by World Wildlife Fund (WWF), to shift some crop production from increasingly water-scarce, heat- and fire-scorched California to the Mid-Delta. Called The Next California, WWF’s plan is not to steal fruit, vegetable, nut, and grain production from the Golden State. Rather, it presumes that climate change will make it impossible for California to continue producing all its customary crops — that state’s water-dependent farmers will need an out, and it might be soon.
コメント