Management of agricultural irrigation water is extremely important as fresh water resources are being depleted on a global scale. In anticipation of regulatory restrictions, several greenhouse and nursery operations in New Jersey have implemented systems that disinfect and recycle their irrigation water. This study compared the disinfection methods at two greenhouses and three container nurseries, focusing on the qualitative and quantitative benefits of using chlorine gas, ultraviolet light, ozone, and copper for water disinfection. The data were collected during on-site visits where the growers were interviewed on camera. A cost analysis was performed, but the most efficient disinfection technique could not be determined due to the variability between businesses and various unquantifiable benefits of proactive water management recycling, such as improved plant health, decreased fungicide and fertilizer use, a cleaner operation, reduced runoff, reduced pressure on aquifers, and increased customer satisfaction. The investment and maintenance costs per hectare and 1000 L were calculated, which can be useful reference tools for growers. The net present value (NPV) of each disinfection system was calculated to analyze the profitability of the investments. All three container nurseries had positive NPV values and profitable investments, which improved with cost sharing from the National Resource Conservation Service. This information will be useful in the future as growers throughout the state, and country, may be required to deal with the stricter regulation of their irrigation runoff.
As high-input systems, plant production facilities for liner and container plants use large quantities of water, fertilizers, chemical pesticides, plastics, and labor. The use of renewable and biodegradable inputs for growing aesthetically pleasing and healthy plants could potentially improve the economic, environmental, and social sustainability of current production systems. However, costs for production components to integrate sustainable practices into established systems have not been fully explored to date. Our objectives were to determine the economic costs of commercial production systems using alternative containers in aboveground nursery systems. We determined the cost of production (COP) budgets for two woody plant species grown in several locations across the United States. Plants were grown in plastic pots and various alternative pots made from wood pulp (WP), fabric (FB), keratin (KT), and coconut fiber (coir). Cost of production inputs for aboveground nursery systems included the plant itself (liner), liner shipping costs, pot, pot shipping costs, substrate, substrate shipping costs, municipal water, and labor. Our results show that the main difference in the COP is the price of the pot. Although alternative containers could potentially increase water demands, water is currently an insignificant cost in relation to the entire production process. Use of alternative containers could reduce the carbon, water, and chemical footprints of nurseries and greenhouses; however, the cost of alternative containers must become more competitive with plastic to make them an acceptable routine choice for commercial growers.
As fresh water supplies become more unreliable, variable and expensive, the water-related implications of sustainable agriculture practices such as cover cropping are drawing increasing attention from California's agricultural communities. However, the adoption of winter cover cropping remains limited among specialty crop growers who face uncertainty regarding the water use of this practice. To investigate how winter cover crops affect soil water and evapotranspiration on farm fields, we studied three systems that span climatic and farming conditions in California's Central Valley: processing tomato fields with cover crop, almond orchards with cover crop, and almond orchards with native vegetation. From 2016 to 2019, we collected soil moisture data (3 years of neutron hydroprobe and gravimetric tests at 10 field sites) and evapotranspiration measurements (2 years at two of 10 sites) in winter cover cropped and control (clean-cultivated, bare ground) plots during winter months. Generally, there were not significant differences in soil moisture between cover cropped and control fields throughout or at the end of the winter seasons, while evapo-transpirative losses due to winter cover crops were negligible relative to clean-cultivated soil. Our results suggest that winter cover crops in the Central Valley may break even in terms of actual consumptive water use. California growers of high-value specialty crops can likely adopt winter cover cropping without altering their irrigation plans and management practices.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.