Tucson Standard

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is set to invest over $4.7 million into a three-year initiative backed by the University of Arizona, alongside the University of Maryland, Tucson City of Gastronomy, the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, and Local First Arizona, according to an article published by the University of Arizona on December 20. The Climate-Smart Food Crops will promote climate-friendly food production methods and assist farmers in lowering their water usage and carbon emissions. With funding from the grant, the project will promote and market the aforementioned production methods and allow the involved teams to use a commercial test kitchen for their project research.

"While the climate challenges that Arizona faces can seem daunting, our researchers are among the world's best in water, agriculture and many other areas related to climate resilience. We are committed to ensuring the farmers and people of Arizona have the tools they need to adapt, and this project is a perfect illustration of that," said University of Arizona President Robert C. Robbins. "By coming together to study and implement the most climate-smart tools we have, we can ensure a future in which we all thrive."

"We are prepared to help farmers reduce their input costs and increase the value of their crops," said project principal investigator Gary Nabhan, a research social scientist in the UArizona Southwest Center and the Kellogg Endowed Chair in Southwestern Borderlands Food and Water Security. "None of this matters if the farmers can't market their crops."

"(The University of Arizona is) joining a network that will be serving over 60,000 farms – 25 million acres – to be able to work on climate-smart production practices," said Gloria Montaño Greene, a UArizona alumna and the Deputy Undersecretary for farm production and conservation at the USDA. "We are going to be reducing more than 60 million metric tons of carbon dioxide over the lives of these projects … which is like removing 12 million gas-powered vehicles from the road in one year. We know that agriculture is part of the solution."

"There are many ways we can be more climate-smart about how we produce food," said Greg Barron-Gafford, co-principal investigator on the grant and professor in the School of Geography, Development, and Environment. "This grant represents an investment in multiple ways of elevating climate-smart food production across Arizona and the drylands of the United States and beyond."

"As a desert city with tribal communities that hold thousands of years of traditional agricultural knowledge, it is fitting to have projects to promote climate-smart food production practices," said Tucson Mayor Regina Romero said during a Tuesday news conference. "The pandemic exposed so much in terms of societal concerns and how fragile our food supply systems are. Increasing our food resiliency with foods that are climate-smart could not be more timely."

The researchers will also study how intermixing crops through a method named "strip cropping" can prevent soil erosion, and they will also provide farmers with more native seeds that can survive the expected climate and water scarcity conditions predicted over the next several decades.

"We aim to anticipate what climate conditions and water scarcity conditions farmers are likely to face over the next 30 years and help them access seeds that can survive not only that amount of drought and water stress but also the heat that they'll be subject to," Nabhan said.

The researchers also plan on promoting the use of solar panels to direct and collect rain runoff, among other similar water harvesting techniques, so that farmers don't have to rely so heavily on irrigation.

"What's really exciting about this grant is that it's not just about the physical science of how to grow more food. It's not just about the social science of where the knowledge around food production comes from and how to translate it, and it's not just about working with Indigenous communities to shout out the great work they've been doing for generations," said Barron-Gafford. "It's also about working with people who are actively trying to promote dryland, climate-smart food as a mainstream way of pivoting in our food system and actually making it happen."

"Indeed, the University of Arizona is uniquely positioned to address this complex, pressing challenge, bringing to bear the breadth and depth of our research expertise," said Elizabeth "Betsy" Cantwell, UArizona senior vice president for research and innovation. Shanghai Ranking's Global Ranking of Academic Subjects ranked UArizona second in the U.S. and sixth in the world for its water resources program.

"We are serious about being in the game of producing solutions for the next century," Cantwell added.

"This is a very important achievement on the part of the University of Arizona and everyone associated with it. The money will be used to look at integrating what needs to be integrated in our fight with climate change," said U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D). "I'm proud of all the partners, the city of Tucson, the university, the departments involved and certainly the USDA for having the foresight to look forward and not take a step backwards on this fight on climate."