Arizona Alliance for Climate-Smart Crops

Partnering with Arizona Farmers

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We are at a crossroads.

Arizona farmers want to produce food for their communities and keep agriculture in our state, but this is becoming increasingly difficult. Approximately one fifth of Arizona’s water budget for crop irrigation (nearly one million acre-feet) has been lost from use in food production due to water rationing, drought the effects of a warming and drying climate.

Being climate-smart means recognizing that we are living in drier and hotter times and producing food using less water.

We will work with farmers to identify crops and varieties adapted to current and future climate conditions, select desert-adapted seeds and starts, and trial climate-smart practices such as alley cropping, using conservation cover, multi-story cropping, agrivoltaics, and reduced/ no-till. We will support scaling and marketing to spread awareness of desert-adapted foods.

We want to work together to elevate climate-smart practices and foods.

Through this USDA award, we will provide cash incentives directed at reducing farmers’ input costs, increase farmers’ income and reduce the risk of trying these climate-smart practices and foods.

At the same time we will provide new markets and revenue streams that help farms cover the costs and gain economic benefits of using farming practices that lower greenhouse gas emissions and sequester more carbon - all while using less water.

Not a farmer? learn how you can still support climate-smart crops

Farmers Helping Farmers do More with Less Water

Work with us to:

Learn and share regenerative, climate-smart farming practices

Lower water use and improve soil health

Reduce farm operating costs

Increase visibility of your products

Plant water-wise crops, including: Agave and other succulents, Prickly Pear, Tepary Beans and other legumes

Promote benefits of desert-adapted plants and keep agriculture in Arizona

Annual Incentive of $11,000

**+ Marketing assistance for desert-adapted crops**
**Needed from you**:
• Continued collaboration through the term of the project
• Provide FSA Farm Tract Map and Subsidiary Print
**Covered Practices:**
• Alley Cropping
• Conservation Cover
• Multi-story Cropping
• Reduced/No-till
• Tree and Shrub establishment

Apply Now

Who We Are

We are a diverse team of ecologists, farmers, food marketers, and folks committed to a better food future!

PI, Greg Barron-Gafford, Ph.D., Professor,
School of Geography, Development & Environment, Biosphere2, University of Arizona

Erin Riordan, Ph. D., Conservation Research Scientist, Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum

Co-PI, Michael Kotutwa Johnson Ph.D., Research Scientist, Indigenous Resilience Center, School of Natural Resources and the Environment, University of Arizona

Mary Werner, Research Program Administrator, School of Geography, Development & Environment, University of Arizona

Kimber Lanning, Founder and CEO,
Local First Arizona

Jesús García, Ethnobotanist
Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum

Patty Emmert,
Director of Resilient Food Systems, Local First Arizona

Co-PI, Moses Thompson,
Director, Community and School Garden Workshop, University of Arizona

Elise Gornish, Ph.D., Cooperative Extension Specialist, University of Arizona

Alyssa Crijns, Marketing Manager, Local First Arizona

Matt Fitzpatrick, Ph.D.,
Associate Director for Research and Professor, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science

FAQs

Please check back as we build out this based on questions from our partners and interested farmers!

• Learning what will be a viable food source in our state in the next 25 years.
• Financial support: We are recruiting farms to join our project in 2024. These farmers will receive a stipend of $11,000.00. In Year Two (2025), a subset of these farmers will be asked to expand our work together and be supported with an additional stipend of $20,000.00. In 2026, we will again recruit new farmers to the program, with each farmer receiving $10,000.00. These funds are intended to defray the cost of changing your planting practices and to help support marketing these products.
• Actively participate in finding solutions to the challenges specific to Arizona Agriculture with less water in a warming climate.
There is no minimum amount of land required to participate, but since our goal is to help create new markets for these climate-smart crops and practices, the more land enrolled in the program, the more crops that will be produced.
The farmer must grow (at least) one of the agreed-upon climate-smart crops and use at least one of the agreed-upon climate-smart practices. Members of our team will work with the farmer partners to identify times we can come measure how well the plants are doing, both in terms of plant photosynthesis rates and then in terms of cumulative yield per plant. We'd also like to understand how much water is being used to irrigate the crops enrolled in this project so that we can create a metric of yield per unit water from irrigation.
The minimum commitment is one year, but we hope to be engaged with all farmer participants through at least 2026.
Farmers in the state of Arizona can apply.
Applicants must have an FSA Tract map and a copy of their Subsidiary Print , as well as a Core Customer ID (CCID).
FSA can provide you with a farm number, which is required for USDA program participation as well as help you with copies of the FSA tract map and Subsidiary print. Find your local FSA office in the resources link below.
If you are not sure if you have these FSA numbers or IDs, please still reach out. We want to help enroll folks into our program, even if all of these USDA details are new to you!