In California, so-called dry farmers say that they’ve avoided the worst of the drought and produced more flavorful crops by keeping their plants thirsty, reports Ari LeVaux in FERN’s latest story, produced with National Geographic’s blog, The Plate.
“Dry farmers don’t irrigate their crops — at least beyond the seedling stage.” writes LeVaux. “The dry farmers of California don’t want a single drop of summer rain, as it would only water the weeds. Surface water is of no use to the crops, as the roots of a dry-farmed plant plunge deep into the earth, sniffing out water left months earlier by the heavy rains of winter. Along the way, according to dry-farm enthusiasts, the roots absorb terroir, adding complexity and earthiness to a crop’s flavor.” Wine grapes, potatoes, quinoa and California’s “Early Girl Tomato” — a “juicy little bomb that tasted like a normal tomato, but with all of the flavor dials turned up to 11,” according to LeVaux — have all been grown using the technique.
No one knows how many dry farmers there are in California, in large part because state and federal surveyors don’t typically ask whether a grower irrigates. But even though the number is likely only a fraction of the state’s total $43-billion agricultural industry, proponents argue that dry farming should be the way of the future. It dramatically cuts back on weeds, they say, while preserving groundwater and sending more water out to freshwater fish and ocean drainages. Dry farmers have also been left relatively unscathed by California’s historic drought.
“We were dry farming before the drought, we’re dry farming through the drought, we’ll dry farm after the drought,” says John Williams, the owner and winemaker at Frog’s Leap in Napa. “From a dry-farmed grapevine’s point of view, there’s been no drought. We got 21 inches of rain last year. A grapevine needs only about 12. We got all the rain we needed.”