Location: Dale Bumpers Small Farms Research Center
Project Number: 6020-21500-001-010-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Jul 1, 2022
End Date: Mar 31, 2026
Objective:
The objective is to develop tools and disseminate information to tribal producers for optimizing production of culturally important crops for combating climate change and food insecurity on US Tribal reservations.
Approach:
An interdisciplinary team, including the developer of the digital soil mapping technology (US patent US No. 2016/0003792), remote sensing and other GPS enabled technology specialists, economists, and the director of the Indigenous Food & Agriculture Initiative to advance our understanding of interconnected soil health, crop growth, and nutrient/water cycling, all of which are linked to agricultural water availability across farm landscapes. By spurring water and nutrient smart agriculture, we will advance system innovation towards practices that promote healthy soils and water conservation on Tribal Lands. Overall project goals are to integrate multiple data sources ranging from Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK, or tacit knowledge) for use in digital agriculture platforms that ultimately promote water and nutrient-smart agriculture.
