Water management has always been critical to agriculture. Yet, it’s never been more difficult to manage, with increasing unpredictability in timing and rates of rain and snowfall due to shifting weather patterns and changing climates.
Farmers from across the U.S. will showcase how they manage water using a variety of low- and high-tech approaches during an event hosted by Solutions from the Land at the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.
The event, “Water Is the Face of Climate Change,” will be accessible via Zoom (access code: IICA*COP27) at 5:30 a.m. Eastern (12:30 p.m. ETT) Monday, Nov. 14.
The event, which will take place in the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture Pavilion, is one of five organized by Solutions from the Land during the conference, with goals to build support among policymakers and other stakeholders for SfL’s guiding principles for enabling food systems to support and attain the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. These principles emphasize the need to keep farmers at the center of all discussions and decision-making as well as to value science, technology, systems-based approaches, collaboration and innovation.
Panelists will discuss the need for uncommon multistakeholder collaborations among governments, the private sector, academia, agriculture and food systems, and the forestry and aquaculture sectors as well as civil society.
Farmers and value-chain partners will share their climate-smart strategies for managing and recycling water as well as cropping systems that increase soil resilience under drought and excess water conditions. Some plant breeding research underway to increase crop resilience under water stress will also be shared.
Farmer Participants
AG Kawamura, former secretary of agriculture for California and Solutions from the Land co-chair, will moderate the panel discussion. Kawamura grows fruits and vegetables in California.
Dr. Jerry Hatfield, soil scientist and agricultural climatologist, will share a public-funded science perspective. He serves as an advisory board member for USDA-NIFA’s Rainfed Agriculture Innovation Network (RAIN) in the semi-arid southern Great Plains.
Farmer and value-chain partner panelists include:
- Brad Doyle, Weiner, Arkansas, farmer, Berger Farms/Eagle Seed, manages the No. 1 rice-growing farm in the U.S. as well as soybeans on 100% irrigated land using a tailwater recovery system.
- Jocelyn Anderson, Willow, California, farmer, GSA Farms,grows almonds, walnuts and row crops. Her farm uses walnut huller technologies.
- John Farner, Netafim, is involved in private-public water management innovations and partnerships in the Americas.
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