SOS 117 - Designing a Sustainable Agroecosystem: Bell Peppers

Growing Bell Peppers

               Bell peppers are a very particular plant, as I have come to learn.  When I lived in our old house, I had a couple of bell pepper plants, but knew nothing about how to take care of them.  I subscribed to the idea that I could just put a pepper plant into some Miracle Grow soil, water it, put it in a sunny window, and let it be.  My first plant flourished and produced two tiny bell peppers.  When I went to move it outside, I didn’t allow it time to harden, so it died after a week.  I never understood why until I went to research how to make this amazing and nutritious fruit grow. 

               Bell Peppers are a warm weather fruit.  They were originally found in Mexico, Central America, and the northern parts of South America.  They can be grown in greenhouses almost anywhere, but flourish best in warm humid climates like Florida.  Seeds are generally planted 4-6 weeks before the last frost of the season, almost exclusively indoors, because they need to be kept at about 70-80° while starting to grow.  Most seeds kept at this temperature will germinate within 10 days and be ready to harden within 3 weeks following the last frost. “Hardening” is the process by which a plant can gradually adjust to the outdoor temperatures. A grower would remove the plant from its indoor location and leave it outside for a few hours, gradually increasing the time spent outside until the plant is adjusted to the outdoor weather and ready for planting in a field.  Planting a Bell Pepper plant straight into the ground after it has been kept inside for so long will cause shock to the plant and potentially kill it, or at least slow its growth down dramatically.  Waiting until it has adjusted to the outside temperatures also allows the ground to heat up to the ideal Bell Pepper temperature of 65°.  In colder areas, farmers will cover the ground in black plastic to keep it warm, but in most instances, a heavy layer of mulch will keep the temperatures ideal for growth.  They also have a considerable growing season of 90-100 days, which is why it is important to start early in the season and plant indoors when the weather is not ideal.  A farmer would also want to make sure that they are very careful about removing the plant from their existing pot into the ground as Bell Pepper plants are prone to shock if they are not carefully removed from an existing seedling pot into the ground.  If they are in paper containers, it is best to cut the paper container open rather than try to remove the plant manually. 

Bell Peppers prefer “sandy” or “loomy” soil, rich in nitrogen, with a neutral pH level around 6.0 to 6.8.  Farmers are divided on tilling with some saying that heavy tilling in the spring and fall are essential to healthy growth as it turns over the cover crop completely, and others saying that the remains of the cover crop are essential for providing the ground with the nitrogen needed to grow Bell Peppers. Good cover crops include clovers, wheat, and buckwheat.  These plants deliver a much needed boost of nitrogen to the soil that will keep the Bell Peppers happy as they grow and produce fruit. While Bell Peppers love nitrogen, it is important to choose a mulch that is low in nitrogen so that the soil doesn’t get overloaded. The leaves will grow very well on a Bell Pepper plant with too much nitrogen, but the fruit will not. 

Bell Peppers also like friends. Planting species like Sunflowers near a Bell Pepper crop not only helps provide shade to the plant with its long leaves and lots of nitrogen to the soil through photosynthesis, but it also attracts pollinators and insects who would feed on the Bell Pepper’s top three pests: aphids, whiteflies, and the European corn borer. Sunflowers also have a much deeper root structure than the Bell Pepper, allowing for more moisture absorption, which helps maintain a balance for the Bell Pepper to thrive in. Excess water in the soil attracts soil pests and can cause the roots to rot.  A Bell Pepper plant needs about 2” of water per week.  While overhead watering is common in industrial farming, a more eco-friendly solution is drip irrigation, which delivers water slowly and directly to the soil. You also want to keep native plants nearby but not in the field.  Native agriculture encourages the growth of pollinator populations and predatory species populations, but a special type of fungus that is common to the Bell Pepper can transfer to native plants so you want them around but not near the growing plants. 

Cucumbers, carrots, and corn are also plants that grows well with Bell Peppers, since they also need the high nitrogen soil and will help maintain a good biodiversity among the field.  Geraniums, petunias, and marigolds make for excellent companion plants to the Bell Pepper as well.  But you want to be careful.  Bell Pepper plants like their space.  They need 18-24” of space between plants, and it’s not wise to grow the sweet Bell Pepper too close to its more spicy cousins.  Cross-pollination from pepper plants that are too close together can lead to spicy Bell Peppers and sweet Habaneros. 

That spacing between plants leaves a lot of soil exposed and the Bell Pepper plant does not have a deep root structure, so The Farmer’s Almanac advises to grow smaller companion crops such as dill and basil, or even a cover crop like buckwheat, in between the plants, not only to ensure that the soil is being maintained, but also because the herbs are natural pest repellants, and could provide a small bit of pocket change when the Bell Peppers are ready to harvest, as is the case with the cucumbers and sunflowers in my drawing.  But you absolutely want to avoid planting Bell Peppers near cabbage family plants, fennel, and apricot trees. 

When a Bell Pepper plant starts to reach maturity, it is suggested that the farmer either stake the plant or encapsulate it in a tomato cage to help it stay vertical, instead of allowing it to lay on the ground where ground pests can eat the fruit.  The same is suggested of cucumbers.  Crop rotation is required of this plant because of its heavy demands on nitrogen rich soil.  It should be rotated out every 2-3 years and never rotated into a field where a nightshade plant has been in for at least 3 years.  Regardless of its particularities, it would appear that growing Bell Peppers is almost as easy as growing corn.  Take care of the soil, let it adjust to changing climates, give it some friends, a bit of water, and voila!  A perfectly grown crop of Bell Peppers. 

 References

Bickerton, M. W., & Hamilton, G. C. (n.d.). Intercropping for Insect Pest Management. Retrieved from Rutgers New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station: https://njaes.rutgers.edu/organic/intercropping.php

Diaz-Perez, J. C., Phatak, S. C., Ruberson, J. R., Silvoy, J., & Morse, R. (2008, March). Effect of Winter Cover Crops and No-Till on the Yield of Organically-Grown Bell Pepper (Capsicum annum L.). Acta Horticulturae, 767(25), 243-247. doi:10.17660/ActaHortic.2008.767.25

Engel, H. (n.d.). Vegetable Garden Companion for Planting Bell Peppers. Retrieved from SFGate: https://homeguides.sfgate.com/vegetable-garden-companion-planting-bell-peppers-46329.html

Finley, R. (2020, April 22). How to Grow Bell Peppers: 7 Tips for Growing Bell Peppers. Retrieved from MasterClass: https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-grow-bell-peppers

Growing Bell Peppers: Planting, Growing, and Harvesting Bell Peppers. (n.d.). Retrieved from The Old Farmer's Almanac: https://www.almanac.com/plant/bell-peppers?page=5&trk_msg=SBG14LULT2T47803EAJVI2A2RO&trk_contact=VMRR54E455P5SKD0T9TV4NEI50&trk_sid=GEG3JA526TVFOGCJCE6L51LT5O&utm_source=Listrak&utm_medium=Email&utm_term=Bell%20Peppers%20%28title%29&utm_campaign=Companion

Parker, J. E., Snyder, W. E., Hamilton, G. C., & Rodriguez-Saona, C. (2013). Companion planting and insect pest control. Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. INTECH.

Peregrine Farm News Vol. 10 #17, 5/29/13. (2013, May 29). Retrieved from Peregrine Farm: Food with a Face, a Place, and a Taste: https://peregrinefarm.net/tag/no-till/

Schidler, A. (2019, March 20). Grow Crunchy, Sweet Bell Peppers in Your Own Backyard. Retrieved from Gardener's Path: https://gardenerspath.com/plants/vegetables/growing-using-bell-peppers/#:~:text=moisture%20related%20stress.-,Growing%20Healthy%20Plants,and%20warm%20temperatures%20to%20thrive.&text=Full%20sun%20and%20loamy%2C%20rich,evenly%20moist%20throughout%20the%20s

 

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Grade 100/100

Professor Comments: Excellent job! Very nice work on this, Kathleen! 

SOS 117 - Media Analysis 1: The Dust Bowl

We thought we had it handled.  We thought we had it under control.  We were going to learn from the mistakes of our elders and do better.  This would never happen again.  Not to us.  Not to the "Greatest Country on Earth." But did we really learn?  Are we farming ourselves towards a repeat of The Dust Bowl? 

At the turn of the twentieth-century, our forefathers followed a dream they had called “Manifest Destiny” that led them west, to cultivate the Great Plains region of North America, a place previously determined to be completely unsuitable for agriculture because of its lack of trees and water.  Yet, we did it anyway. Led by The Homestead Act, we settled the land, dug it up, planted monocultures, and believed that “rain will follow the plow.”  And for a while, things went great!  There was plenty of rain, crops flourished in the rich soil, and we got more efficient at farming through technological advancements. 

Then disaster struck. 

A once-every-hundred-years drought struck, a drought that would last 10 years, and cause untold damage, not just to the region, but to the nation as a whole. Crops died. Livelihoods were lost. The soil blew away in the strong prairie winds, suffocating everything in its way. The term “Dust Bowl” has become synonymous with the famine of the entire region, and for a while, we were in a bad way.

But we fixed it. We planted trees from Texas to Canada to halt the winds.  We taught farmers about soil preservation and even paid them to practice a much more sustainable form of agriculture.  The winds died down.  The great heat waves ended.  The rain returned.  And we patted ourselves on the back for a job well done. 

Then we went back to farming the land.  

In fact, according to an October 20, 2020, Science Magazine article (Links to an external site.), we not only went right back to the way we had been farming before, but now we were digging up more land to do it.  Cattle farms have expanded, adding to the already growing problem of Climate Change, which, according to CBS News (Links to an external site.), is hurtling us towards heat waves that will far outpace the hottest year on record - 1936.  Monocultures are still present, both grain to feed the cattle, and - as added irony - corn for new biofuels to replace fossil fuels, according to The Smithsonian (Links to an external site.).  And we're draining the local aquifers for irrigation.  According to the US Department of Agriculture (Links to an external site.), we're on pace to drain one of the largest aquifer's in the Great Plains region - the Ogallala aquifer - within this century.  And it would take the Earth 6,000 years to replenish it. 

A massive drought like the one experienced in the 1930's is not only on the horizon; it's coming in hard and fast due to Climate Change, according to The Daily Mail (Links to an external site.), which we have only aggravated with our unsustainable agricultural practices in the region.  While droughts, like the one that happened in the 1930's, used to be very rare (once every hundred years or so), new calculations put us on track to see the same kind of "megadroughts" at a speed of every 40 years due, in large part, to agricultural practices that are outdated and non-sustainable.  When - not if, but when - the next megadrought strikes America's Heartland, it will not only cut our own reserves by 94%, but it will decrease our exports by half.  It's not just our own necks on the line this time.  We are talking about global famine on a scale like we have never seen before, all because we haven't changed the way we have farmed a grassland region since the turn of the twentieth century... even though we know better. 

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Grade: 88/100

Professor Comments: Great work on this, Kathleen. As ever, a few comments on the rubric. 

Rubric Comments
Media Sources: 15/15 - Excellent selections for your sources, Kathleen. 
Depth of Discussion: 10/10 (no comments) 
Hyperlinks: 10/10 (no comments)
Design and Presentation: 8/10 - For this assignment, you'll want to make it a PDF or DOC/X so you can play with design, e.g., title, headings, insertion of visual material, etc. I did appreciate that you broke up your text into manageable pieces. The single sentences were particularly well done. 
Ease of Reading: 10/10 - Your writing style was perfect for a blog post. 
Graphics/Visuals: 0/10 - Please see note above
Peer Replies: 30/30 - I appreciated that each of your comments was specific to that student, engaging with what each one of them had to say. You had a conversation and this was great to see! 

SOS 117 - The Dust Bowl and The Green Revolution

               Agriculture has been around for thousands of years, as humans who once foraged and hunted eventually settled down into small communities, using knowledge of the surrounding environment to create ways of growing and harvesting food supplies to feed their growing populations.  As time has marched on, those small, largely agrarian, communities started growing, and the demand for food increased.  Harnessing knowledge passed down through generations of trial and error, Indigenous communities were able to create sustainable agricultural practices that continued to feed their growing populations.  By the mid-twentieth century, the global population had grown exponentially, and the ability to provide food for such a large population that was still growing at a lightning fast rate had become a question that demanded an answer.  There were many people who were starving, and our planet was quickly running out of resources.  It soon became apparent that we needed “out of the box” solutions, utilizing the resources we had to maximize yields and increase productivity, to feed our booming population. “That single objective was driving the force of agriculture for the past 50 years.  The big change is that society has come to realize that agriculture is not only about food production (Agriculture and Ecosystem Services).” Even our founding fathers wanted increased crop yields. “Ever since colonial days, agricultural leaders have been interested in increasing the productivity of American farming (Trautmann, Porter, & Wagenet, 1985).”

One such solution to this desire for increased crop production to feed the masses was introduced by President Lincoln, who signed The Homestead Act in 1862, offering free land in the Great Plains to anyone willing to cultivate it for five years.  This attracted farmers, who began to “settle the region and cultivate the fields under the long held, but mistaken belief, that ‘rain will follow the plow’ (History Brief: the Dust Bowl, 0:37).” Prior to the settlement and cultivation of the area, tall grasses, already adapted to the cycles of  drought and moisture that were common in the region, extended long roots into the ground, keeping the loose topsoil in place against the strong winds that would sweep across that plains (1985).  In the late 1800s, production of the steel plow made farming in the Great Plains more than a pipe dream.  The dense sod and tall grasses were no match for the tractors, combines, and mechanized plowing that had become available, revealing a rich, fertile soil that was easier to farm than ever before, producing “bountiful crops,” and from 1870 to 1910, the population exploded by a factor of 10 (Trautmann, et. al., 1985).  Heavy plowing revealed a powdery soil, and farming practices of the era “deprived the soil of its nutrients and increased the possibility of erosion (History Brief: the Dust Bowl, 1:20).”  Instead of using the more sustainable practices of crop rotation, using organic compounds as fertilizers instead of chemicals, creating biodiversity among their crops, and attempting to prevent soil erosion (Industrial and Sustainable Farming), settlers of the Great Plains continued heavy plowing, exposing the already fragile soil to harsh prairie winds, growing monocultures on dramatically increasing farmland, and  that would not be able to sustain itself, should a cycle of drought return.

               Another solution, what would eventually be called “The Green Revolution,” was introduced by Norman Borlaug, a plant pathologist from northeastern Iowa, who was looking for a way to end a wheat blight in Mexico called “Stem Rust” that was starving poor farmers out of entire crops and causing severe malnutrition of the inhabitants.  Backed by The Rockefeller Foundation, Borlaug, along with two young Mexican argonomists named Pepe Rodrigez and Jose Guerva, collected and planted 110,000 seeds from different varieties of wheat indigenous to the region in the Spring of 1945.  They would monitor the crops, and weed out the ones that started showing signs of the blight. By the harvest season, only four plants remained. Devising a plan to speed up the genetic breeding process, Borlaug took seeds from his four surviving plants and headed north to Sonora, where wheat could be grown in the winter. By cross-breeding the survivors with other successful species of wheat, driving to Sonora in the winter and back to the planting fields of Chapingo in the spring, he hoped to create a strain of wheat that would become resistant to “stem rust,” thereby enabling the poor farmers to create more bountiful harvests.  Manually cross-breeding the surviving species with other varieties of wheat twice a year – a process dubbed “shuttle breeding” – his goal was to ease malnutrition in half the time it would take to grow a new generation (The Man Who Tried to Feed the World, 19:56).  Wheat breeders, the agronomic textbooks, and his boss, a man named George Harrar all believed that one should only grow wheat in the region where it is intended to grow.  They were also afraid that the Sonoran growers, who had larger plots of land for growing wheat commercially to export, would benefit from this process more than the poor Chapingo farmers, so when Borlaug decided to continue his “shuttle breeding” project, he was given no money, no vehicles, no accommodations, and no support.  By 1948, he had developed a new type of wheat that would grow anywhere and resisted the “stem rust” blight that had plagued the farmers. 

               Both solutions would become failures in their own rights, though. 

In 1930, a severe drought occurred in the Great Plains, killing crops, and exposing the loose topsoil to harsh wind conditions, creating “Black Blizzards” that reached as far east as Washington D.C. (History Brief: the Dust Bowl, 2:19).  They were “so severe that they caused virtual blackouts in the middle of the day and left houses, roads, and fields buried by dust and sand (1985).” The areas most affected were the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma, western Kansas, and a large portion of Colorado and New Mexico.  The drought would last for the entire decade, and the more than 1 million acres affected came to be collectively known as “The Dust Bowl.” The region received anywhere from 15-25% less rain than usual, which, for an area that only sees about 20” of rain per year (and some years less than that), meant that some regions were seeing less than 15” of rain per year (History Brief: the Dust Bowl, 2:21). 

The Civillian Conservation Corps were sent into the Dust Bowl and planted over 200 million trees from Texas to Canada in an effort to block the harsh winds.  Efforts were also taken to teach farmers about soil conservation techniques such as crop rotation, contour plowing, and terracing (3:07).  In some cases, the government paid $1 per acre to farmers who practiced one of these techniques.  By the end of the 1930s, these efforts had reduced blowing dust by 65%, but by the time rainfall returned to the region, over 75% of the topsoil had been lost to blowing dust.  It would be years before the region recovered completely (History Brief: the Dust Bowl, 3:33).

As to the Green Revolution, Borlaug’s new, genetically engineered wheat could grow anywhere, but it required large amounts of fertilizer and large amounts of water, essentially shutting out the smaller farmers due to the cost of growing the new hybrid wheat plant, as his boss had feared, and getting him no closer to solving the malnutrition crisis in Chapingo. 

Around the same time, America created the “Food for Peace” program, under the idea that “nobody with a full belly joins the Communist party (The Man Who Tried to Feed the World, 27:30)” They began exporting excess grain to poorer countries, like India, as a kind of foreign policy.  Meanwhile, Borlaug was producing record yields, but his 5-foot stems started giving way under the weight of the wheat, so a new dwarf version had to be created.  In 1962, after 7 years and 8,156 crosses, Borlaug’s new dwarf wheat was successful (The Man Who Tried to Feed the World, 29:49). 

Though his wheat was a failure in Chapingo due to the high cost of fertilizer and water, his idea was picked up by an Indian agronomist named M. S. Swaminathan, who, in January 1963,  invited Borlaug to New Dehli to introduce his wheat to the leaders of India on the hopes that the region could self-sustain their own grain.  In 1965, India consumed one-fifth of the total American wheat crops and it was projected that, by 1970, that number would be up to one-half.  So, in 1966, at the height of a severe drought-borne famine in India, President Lyndon B. Johnson ended the Food for Peace program, essentially cutting off all exported grain.  India’s government funded fertilizer, irrigation, and guaranteed a sale price to all farmers who grew Borlaug’s grain.  In the spring of 1968, reports flooded in about overwhelmed grain silos, railroad depots stacking grain on the tracks because they had nowhere else to put them, and schools were closed and the classrooms were used to store grain. The total yield was 1.5 times larger than their previous record.  These successes were duplicated in with record breaking harvests in Turkey, Tunisia, and many other countries (The Man Who Tried to Feed the World, 44:48).

But there were glaring problems in The Green Revolution.  Despite record breaking harvests, the cost of the additional fertilizer and water made the crop yields cost-prohibitive to a number of people, who were still going hungry. 

“It is particularly frustration to me is that there are 700 million people who are short of food.  We have at least two different aspects of this food problem: One is to produce enough food, and two is the problem of poverty and the lack of purchasing power for a large part of the world’s population,” said Borlaug (The Man Who Tried to Feed the World, 49:37).  

In addition to the cost, by the early 1980’s, farmers and experts began noticing that the large amounts of fertilizer and water were taxing the local ecosystems (Chhetri & Chaudhary, 2011).  Degredation of the soil, reduction of the water table, and farmers no longer being needed on farms all created a perfect storm for a damaged and unsustainable ecosystem, both for the plants and the people who tend to the plants (The Man Who Tried to Feed the World, 49:01).

The methods required of the HYVs inspired by Borlaug’s dwarf wheat, and the methods of cultivation used in the Great Plains were not sustainable. 

“Too much water will seep through the soil, causing the groundwater to rise, which will saturate the soil and slow crop growth, or if the water is salty, will get into the root zone and potentially kill the crop.  Too many nutrients could flow into the groundwater or just wash off into a creek, causing ecosystem damage.  Too many chemicals could cause pollution in the waterways which will be harmful to the flora and the fauna (Industrial and Sustainable Farming, 3:49).” 

In both of these situations, taking care of the soil through crop rotation, contour plowing, interplanting, preventing wind erosion (which can ease water needs), and mulching, instead of using heavy chemicals, tons of water, and growing monocultures, would have prevented both of these projects from failing.  “Decades of research shows that rich biodiversity is essential for healthy ecosystems,” according to Dr. Mark Everard, Associate Professor of Ecosystem Services at UWE (Ecosystem services and Biodiversity - Science for Environment Policy, 1:29) 

“We need to make a shift in how we value landscapes and how we can balance the need to increase food production with the need to protect our landscapes. In many areas where the Green Revolution has been successful, the land is losing its value. It’s losing its quality and we have to regenerate the land.  To regenerate that land, you need to change your practices. You can’t continue doing the same thing, year after year,” states Dennis Garrity, former Director, World Agroforestry Centre (Agriculture and Ecosystem Services, 1:29)

In that regard, it is absolutely critical that we combine land stewardship, especially the ecosystem services and biodiversity, with food production. 

“Monetary valuation is not an open door to commodify and degrade nature. Ecosystem services can work alongside other tools to prioritize resources, raise awareness of the substantial benefits provided by the ecosystems, and create a common language to protect biodiversity and the many human benefits that stem from it, ensuring future wealth and abundance beyond mere monetary terms,” says Dr. Mark Everard (Ecosystem services and Biodiversity - Science for Environment Policy, 4:38)

The takeaway from both of these stories is that soil and the ecosystem matter. “The healthier our soil is, the healthier our plants will be, the less diseases, the less insects we’ll get, and the higher quality vegetable we’ll be selling so that the public, in the end, buys a vegetable that has high nutrition in them for themselves (Industrial and Sustainable Farming, 17:09).”

 

 

References

Agriculture and Ecosystem Services (n.d.). [Motion Picture].

Chhetri, N., & Chaudhary, P. (2011). Green Revolution: Pathways to Food Security in an Era of Climate Variability and Change? Review, Arizona State University; University of Massachusetts; and Royal Enclave, Srirampura, Jakkur Post, Bangalore, India, School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning and the Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes; the Department of Biology; and the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment.

Ecosystem services and Biodiversity - Science for Environment Policy (n.d.). [Motion Picture].

History Brief: the Dust Bowl (n.d.). [Motion Picture].

Industrial and Sustainable Farming (n.d.). [Motion Picture].

The Man Who Tried to Feed the World (n.d.). [Motion Picture].

Trautmann, N. M., Porter, K. S., & Wagenet, R. J. (1985). Modern Agriculture: Its Effects on the Environment. Cornell University, The Center for Environmental Research; and the Department of Agronomy. Cornell Cooperative Extension.

 

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Grade: 100/100

Professor Comments: Excellent work on this, (Katlin). This was a very thorough and enjoyable read.