The University of South Dakota joins a nationwide cohort of institutions seeking to maximize agricultural opportunities in a changing climate. Namely, the use of greenhouses.
The program, run by the US National Science Foundation, grants over $77 million to projects nationwide to research and develop these opportunities in states that generally see less funding.
These dollars are flowing from South Dakota to New Mexico and everywhere in between. For Meghann Jarchow, chair of the USD Department of Sustainability and Environment, it’s an exciting opportunity.
“We have extreme climate variability across this range, but in different challenging ways," Jarchow said. "So, the focus is to look at how does controlled environmental agriculture do across this wide area? For example in South Dakota, we can’t grow food in the winter outside, so greenhouses can be used in the winter to grow food.”
Jarchow said it’s not as simple as installing a greenhouse on every farm.
“With greenhouse agriculture you either have to heat them like in our case with the winter, or cool them if it gets too hot," Jarchow said. "So, the focus of this is to have experiments of growing agriculture throughout this region and then taking a lifecycle approach. Looking at the full impacts of energy, the resources used to grow food across this wide range.”
She adds there are also another angle to the nationwide effort – tribal food sovereignty.
“Empowering tribal communities looking at workforce development for people to work in greenhouses," Jarchow said. "The focus of the grant, in a lot of ways, is on tribal communities and helping support the needs they identify they have – but of course for all of it there’s a lot of opportunity for workforce development.
The major partners for USD include the Universities of New Mexico, Wyoming, New Mexico State, and the Santa Fe Community College.