UConn Student Farm Finds Ways To Stave Off Drought’s Impact

Across Con­necti­cut, farms are see­ing tougher grow­ing con­di­tions in the cur­rent drought, which is the worst New Eng­land has seen in more than a decade.

As the Hart­ford Courant report­ed in Sep­tem­ber, some Con­necti­cut farm­ers esti­mate a loss of almost half of their nor­mal hay and corn crops. Oth­er loss­es in veg­etable crops and dairy herd milk pro­duc­tion are due to the past sum­mer’s heat.

How­ev­er, in Mans­field the Spring Val­ley Stu­dent Farm had a fair­ly con­ven­tion­al sea­son. In fact, they just deliv­ered their last toma­to crop to restau­rant Chuck & Augie’s on Tues­day, Dec. 5- almost a month after last year’s har­vest end­ed last year.

Farm Man­ag­er Julia Cartabi­ano attrib­uted that suc­cess to the far­m’s organ­ic farm­ing meth­ods and use of soil building.

The farm, which has been hous­ing stu­dents year-long and pro­vid­ing them with prac­ti­cal farm expe­ri­ence since 2010, prac­tices con­ser­v­a­tive organ­ic grow­ing meth­ods such as liv­ing crop cov­ers, plant­i­ng seeds close togeth­er and not till­ing often.

In terms of direct affect of the drought, Spring Val­ley Stu­dent Farm had to bring in “arti­fi­cial” water from UConn to help seedlings grow at the start.

“The drought is an incon­ve­nience and its an eco­nom­ic con­cern because you’re buy­ing water,” Cartabi­ano said. Oth­er farms could also be pay­ing to pump in water or for plas­tic tub­ing for irri­ga­tion sytems, she said. 

Seedlings need to be in con­stant mois­ture in order to keep grow­ing so with reduced ground­wa­ter, the farm decid­ed to add UConn-bought water, an expen­sive and impure source water.

Water from the Uni­ver­si­ty includes the chem­i­cal Chlo­rine, which dete­ri­o­rates soil health.  Ide­al­ly, Cartabi­ano would like to set up a sys­tem to use the near­by nat­ur­al stream water instead, but that’s a project for the future she said.

 

“That was our biggest chal­lenge, and that’s not a nor­mal thing. Nor­mal­ly you would get enough soil mois­ture so you would­n’t have to add water to get your seeds to start in the first place. That’s def­i­nite­ly the last cou­ple years, Cartabi­ano said. 

The U.S. Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture this week declared Hart­ford, Litch­field, Tol­land and Wind­ham Coun­ties nat­ur­al dis­as­ter areas because of the drought, mak­ing farm­ers in those regions eli­gi­ble to apply for fed­er­al low inter­est loans and oth­er fed­er­al assistance.

Rain­fall was­n’t only low for the Tol­land region this sea­son, but as Cartabi­ano said, it was incon­sis­tent and heavy when it did come. Heavy rain­fall meant it was­n’t absorbed into the soil well- slid­ing off the top or break­ing up soil molecules.

The far­m’s hoop green­house crops– spinach, a let­tuce mix, kale and tat­soi– have to be watered three times every day. The top soil isn’t as moist as it should be, stu­dent farmer Ang­ie Cretel­la said.

“In the mid­dle of the drought we were prob­a­bly spend­ing two hours a day just water­ing,” Cart­biano said.

There are three paid stu­dents on the farm and with all the water­ing, their wages were spent on time water­ing while they could be doing some­thing more ben­e­fi­cial for the growth of the farm, such as plan­ning for next sea­son’s crop or post­ing on social media, she said.

Spring Val­ley Stu­dent Farm prac­tices organ­ic grow­ing, which Cart­biano said is a rea­son they were resilient to the drought’s impact.

These meth­ods include prac­tic­ing no-till, leav­ing fields unplowed and plant­i­ng over the left­over crop the next sea­son, accord­ing to Cart­biano. This pre­vents ero­sion and allows the soil to con­sume more nutrients.

To Cart­biano it makes sense for farm­ers to sus­tain a farm with min­i­mal envi­ron­men­tal harm, although many con­ven­tion­al farms do not prac­tice the same sus­tain­able methods.

Regen­er­a­tive organ­ic agri­cul­ture can also help reduce the gen­er­al effects of cli­mate change, accord­ing to Rodale Institute.

“If man­age­ment of all cur­rent crop­land shift­ed to reflect the regen­er­a­tive mod­el… we could poten­tial­ly sequester more than 40% of annu­al emis­sions,” accord­ing to the Rodale Insti­tute web­site.

 

NEXT: How UConn is Help­ing to Con­serve Water