Changing Agriculture in the Southwestern United States: A Survey of the Arizona Agriculture Community
Tuesday, July 23, 2019
Cohiba 5-11 (Tropicana Las Vegas)
Blase Evancho, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ
Channah Rock, University of Arizona, Maricopa, AZ
J L Dery, University of Arizona, Maricopa, AZ
Dennis T. Ray, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ
Declining water availability for agriculture in the Southwestern United States necessitates new strategies to sustain rural economies. High-valued crops that are drought and heat tolerant, grow on marginal lands, and provide economic returns will be important under variable future climate predictions. In 2017, the Sustainable Bioeconomy for Arid Regions (SBAR), Center of Excellence, was created to start a research pipeline for crops with a known primary product. This team is working to improve the primary product and identify economic co-products, including cultivation systems, and scalable engineering processes for crop and product processing. Guayule (
Parthenium argentatum) was identified as the prime candidate to explore for production in Arizona. This woody shrub is native to the Chihuahuan Desert and has been periodically utilized in arid landscaping and for its natural rubber production for over 100 years. Guayule also produces resins and biomass with potential uses as pharmaceuticals, industrial chemicals, and biofuels. These valuable products have created a strong industry backing with high potential for large scale commercial production of guayule in the arid Southwest. To better understand the potential of guayule adoption by growers, we surveyed Arizona’s crop producers to collect data on the following topics:
1) Attitude toward growing crops for biofuel production.
2) Attitude and knowledge of guayule.
3) Willingness to change current production system.
We received 113 responses of which 19 were growers. These 19 growers manage approximately 110,000 acres or 10% of the 1.1 million acres of cropland in the state. The surveys were collected at agricultural events held by the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension throughout Arizona to get a wide array of production systems and ideologies associated with crop production. The responses showed a high interest in biofuel production and willingness to change their production system with positive responses to these questions of 67% and 73%, respectively. Sixty-six percent of those surveyed also indicated they had heard of guayule. These and other data collected lead us to believe that there is adequate interest in commercial production of guayule in Arizona. This indicates that our present and future research will be extremely valuable and justified in SBAR’s pursuit of establishing a new bioeconomy around this versatile crop.
