NEWS

Retired Madera farmer and formidable intellect on all things agriculture and natural resources, Tom Willey began his podcast “Down on the Farm” on KFCF on an ominous note: “Welcome to the merry month of May show and it would have been merrier indeed if we had had a much wetter winter or spring. The world is heating up around us.”

Willey sat down to talk California’s drought with University of California, Merced Professor and Watershed Scientist, Joshua Viers,on May 7, 2021.

The two talked water management approaches, from Sustainable Groundwater Management Act’s limitations on groundwater use to planting orchards with denser trees to increase shade and decrease water. They also spoke about energy production and agriculture, such as the use of agrovoltaics, where solar panels in the fields of crops, and reducing water loss by covering canals with solar panels. “Instead of looking for a silver bullet, we need some silver buckshot, which is to say we’ve got to do a lot of little things right, and taken together, we may just solve some of these problems,” said Viers.

There’s no such thing as a normal water year

With esteemed colleague and faculty at Utah State University, Sarah Null, Viers had conducted a study that explains California’s annual precipitation is changing at a pace that makes it harder to plan.

“Just looking at an average really doesn't get at the heart of our challenges as that suggests that there's some normality in our water years, and we know that that's far from the truth,” said Viers. “In fact, the Department of Water Resources doesn't even have a normal water year by definition.”

“We already have reservoirs built about everywhere that you can imagine,” remarked Willey.

“What we projected ten years ago as coming to bear is more of a bi-modal distribution.” Viers elaborated, “Things are getting pushed to the extreme. The analysis showed that for the dry and critically dry years, we expect to increase three-fold for the San Joaquin.”

UC Merced Experimental Smart Farm

To harness the power of the faculty and students of UC Merced, the campus intends to invest in a 40-acre farm at the edge of campus. “To be considered a national leader in sustainability and how that affects food, food production, and what we refer to as the food energy water nexus ... our Chancellor has now committed to building a 40 acre experimental smart farm.”

“Our intent is to bring not just research, but to bring our students out there and to bring the community out there so that it can be a demonstration space for how technology may improve sustainability.”

Viers introduced the components of the smart farm and new funding from the University of California Office of the President for Labor and Automation in California Agriculture: robotics and autonomous vehicles are one part, “but we also bring in humanists and labor advocates and people in Extension that really know how humans can and will remain in the loop for food production,” Viers said. “It addresses issues of upskilling the agricultural workforce.”

Willey ushered concerns: “Agriculture has been pretty exploitative of farmers and farm laborers for about 10,000 years. And whether we can turn the tables on that or not is a very serious and necessary issue. But since we haven't accomplished that in 10,000 years, it's a big ask to say that we're going to change that equation.”

Finally, they discussed the future of the San Joaquin Valley. “Assume that we’re going to have a civilization here a hundred years from now, what’s it going to look like?” asked Willey.

“I think everyone has a role in helping that come to fruition and really trying to identify the vision for how we want to live here.”

Viers continued, “Humans have certainly persisted on this planet for quite a while now. And there's always been some ingenuity and some adaptation. It is yet to be determined how technology may play a role in this. I'd like to think that if constructed well and used appropriately, it can certainly be a part of that equation, but at the end of the day, we're all human, and we need to keep humans in the loop.”

“Yes, indeed. We're very adaptable species,” said Willey. “And the more cooperative we become, probably will give us the greater chances of survival into the future.”

Listen online or download from the Down on the Farm with Tom Willey and subscribe to receive the podcast each month.

Viers also serves as Associate Dean of Research for the School of Engineering and Director of the Center for Information Technology in the Interest of Society and the Banatao Institute at University of California, Merced. The campus is the first American university to be carbon neutral.