Sebastopol's Drought Farmer

[Shandi]

The Drought Fighter

Could a controversial farmer in California have found the most effective way to grow food in a warming world?

By TODD OPPENHEIMER

One afternoon last March, on a small vegetable farm that Paul Kaiser runs in a particularly chilly valley in Sebastopol, California, a group of agriculture specialists gathered around a four-foot steel pole. The experts had come to test the depth and quality of Kaiser’s top-soil, and one of them, a veteran farmer from the Central Valley named Tom Willey, leaned on the pole to push it into the dirt as far as he could. On a typical farm, the pole comes to a stop against infertile hard-pan in less than a foot. But in Kaiser’s field, the pole’s entire length slid into the ground, and Willey almost fell over. “Wow, that’s incredible,” he said, wondering if he’d hit a gopher hole. The whole group burst out laughing. “Do it again! Do it again!,” said Jeff Mitchell, a longtime professor of agriculture at the University of California at Davis.

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Come hear Paul speak on June 13 at the Laguna Environmental hall. More info here.