Is Dry Farming the Next Wave in a Drought-Plagued World?
National Geographic | 9/29/16
By Ari LeVaux
When he wasnât swearing in Spanish at his broken mechanical potato harvester, Ryan Power of New Family Farm spent the better part of his afternoon professing his commitment to âdry farmingââgrowing food without any irrigation. Now, he was thirsty.
We took our leave of his rainbow-colored field of dry-farmed quinoa, and walked over to a patch of tomato plants that hadnât been watered or rained on for six months. The plants appeared roughly how one might expect the recipients of zero water outside of Sebastopol at the tail end of Californiaâs record drought last year to lookâall but dead. The only signs of life were the plump, radiant orbs dangling from the withered vine. Power carefully removed a golf ball-sized fruit. âTry one of these,â he said…