Identifying Opportunities to Promote Water Treatment Practices among Nursery and Greenhouse Growers

Abstract

<jats:p>There are many water treatment technologies available to the nursery and greenhouse industry, but this sector has been somewhat hesitant to adopt them. An online survey was used to evaluate nursery and greenhouse growers’ knowledge, implementation, and continued use of 12 water treatment technologies. Less than 24% of the growers had used a water treatment technology. The knowledge level was low overall, and fewer than one in four growers had implemented all 12 technologies. However, most growers who had implemented 10 of the 12 technologies continued to use them. The results imply water treatment technologies available for this group are somewhat unknown and underused, thereby implying that there is a need to increase awareness of these innovations and highlight the opportunity for growers to advocate for treatment technology use among their peers.</jats:p>

Understanding Greenhouse Growers’ Willingness to Use Municipal Recycled Water on Food Crops: The Need for Tailored Outreach Coupled with Deep Engagement to Increase Adoption

“…White et al (2019) argued that having more information about costs would help growers understand how much capital investment is required to replace irrigation system piping to enable use of MRW. In other studies of US growers' knowledge and perceptions of alternative water sources, scholars found that growers lacked knowledge about recycled water treatment (Dery et al 2019;Lamm et al 2019). Each of these studies concludes that providing growers with technical and financial information about recycled water, thus filling knowledge gaps among growers, may help to improve its uptake (Dery et al 2019;Lamm et al 2019).…”

“…In other studies of US growers' knowledge and perceptions of alternative water sources, scholars found that growers lacked knowledge about recycled water treatment (Dery et al 2019;Lamm et al 2019). Each of these studies concludes that providing growers with technical and financial information about recycled water, thus filling knowledge gaps among growers, may help to improve its uptake (Dery et al 2019;Lamm et al 2019). Yet emerging research suggests that informational needs are far from uniform across all growers (McOmber et al 2021).…”

“…Growers' varied thinking about recycled water means most growers do not think of recycled water as treated municipal wastewater (hereafter, MRW), and most growers do not understand how MRW is produced (McOmber et al 2021). Indeed, Lamm et al (2019) found that most growers know little about the processes involved in recycling water on the farm. This lack of understanding about how water is recycled suggests that many growers may also misunderstand the processes involved and the quality of MRW and its overall suitability for greenhouse production.…”

“…Trust in the safety of recycled water and in the authorities responsible for ensuring recycled water quality can also undermine use (Po et al 2003). At the same time, US growers have little experience with and knowledge about recycled water (McOmber et al 2021), which is thought to impede use (Dery et al 2019;Lamm et al 2019;McOmber et al 2021). Although scholarship in this area provides some clues regarding the barriers to growers' recycled water use, studies often treat growers as a homogenous group, which misses the underlying heterogeneity in grower understanding, perceptions, and willingness to use recycled water (McOmber et al 2021).…”

An Online Tool for Estimating Return-on-investment for Water Recycling at Nurseries

“…Instead, the goal is to measure only upfront capital costs and changes in annual cash flow that can be directly attributed to the investment. Categories of marginal costs and benefits that one might expect from the decision to recycle water at a nursery are shown in Table 1 (not everything in Table 1 is economic; see Cultice et al, 2016;Lamm et al, 2019;Raudales et al, 2014;and Warner et al, 2018 for fuller treatments of the operator decision-making process). The most important benefit in Table 1 that the online tool does not currently estimate is "benefits to the physical environment."…”