Location
States
ArizonaEcosystem
Desert, RuralIntroduction
Oatman Flats Ranch, near Gila Bend, Arizona, has been owned by the Hansen family for four generations. After decades of intensive horse ranching and cotton farming in the lower Gila River region, Oatman Flats Ranch transitioned from conventional to organic practices in 2018, then to regenerative agricultural practices in 2020. With their minimal tillage model and leverage of traditional agricultural knowledge, Oatman Flats seeks to restore balance to their land while producing crops profitably. Today, the 665-acre operation grazes sheep among native and low-water-using crops that can thrive in the desert climate of southern Arizona. Oatman Flats Ranch was certified as organic in 2019 and became the first grain farm in the Southwest to be regenerative organic certified® (ROC) in 2022. ROC is a level up from organic certification, and it represents a more holistic approach to farming that considers soil health, animal welfare, and social fairness.
Oatman Farms®, the sister company of Oatman Flats Ranch, was founded in 2020. Oatman Farms® is a food company that works with chefs and bakers to create products from ROC heritage crops, including grains grown at Oatman Flats Ranch, and sell them directly to consumers. Together, Oatman Flats Ranch and Oatman Farms® work to find profitable, regenerative solutions to revitalize and sustain family farms in arid environments.
Key Issues Addressed
The quantity and reliability of water available for irrigating crops in Arizona is decreasing. Lack of precipitation has led to prolonged drought, which is further exacerbated by warming temperatures. This is negatively affecting family farms that rely on well water like Oatman Flats, often leading to lower crop yields and financial instability. Arizona farms are currently facing the worst water crisis in history, in which limited surface water availability plays a major role (Nabhan et al., 2023).
Industrialized farming practices like conventional tillage, monocropping, and chemical spraying were previously thought to be the most efficient methods for a profitable farming business. However, these practices can lead to soil erosion and nutrient depletion, lower quality crops, and overall land degradation.
Commodity market conditions tend to favor crops grown through these conventional practices because they can be sold at lower prices and still be profitable due to government subsidies like crop insurance (Edwards, 2023). ROC crops, including the heritage grains grown at Oatman Flats, are more expensive to produce, and a stable consumer market does not yet exist for some of these desert-adapted crops.
Project Goals
Oatman Flats Ranch strives to utilize the limited water available in southern Arizona’s arid Lower Gila River environment in the most efficient way through advances in irrigation and planting practices.
After generations of intensive agriculture which degraded soil health, Oatman Flats Ranch now works to improve soil health across their property. In alignment with ROC goals, this work includes increasing soil organic matter and sequestering carbon below and above ground.
Oatman Flats Ranch aims to construct a replicable and profitable regenerative ranching model for warmer and drier environments. They hope to provide a case study of agricultural methods for arid lands that can sustain healthy ecosystems alongside people, crops, and domesticated animals. This includes finding a viable business model and consumer market for family farms producing regeneratively-grown crops.
Project Highlights
Sharing Regenerative Resources: Oatman Flats collaborates with local organizations to host workshops covering holistic farm management and food entrepreneurship. They also offer farm tours, and share regenerative agriculture resources on their social media.
- Cultivating Low-Water Cash Crops: Oatman Flats chose to cultivate small grains, particularly heritage wheats. Heritage grains were introduced by Spanish missionaries and have been grown by Indigenous communities in the Southwest for hundreds of years, and are low-water species adapted to arid conditions. For example, White Sonora wheat is a hardy species that adapts well to the saline soil found on Oatman Flats. Other wheat crops on the farm include Blue Bread Durum, Red Fife, and Skagit 1109, showcasing the viability of heritage crop options.
- Improving Soil Health to Increase Irrigation Efficiency: Oatman Flats works to increase soil organic matter (SOM), increasing the soil’s water storage capacity and water infiltration rate. One practice that builds SOM is cover cropping, which builds carbon-rich and well-structured soils to increase long-term water use efficiency. Oatman Flats maintains diverse cover crops including mung beans, cow peas, and sunflowers.
- Rotational Grazing with Sheep: Oatman Flats uses a herd of nearly 300 sheep to augment nutrient cycling. Oatman Flats collaborates with Heartquist Hollow Family Farm, allowing their sheep to graze the cover crops for free, as part of a holistic management scheme. Oatman Flats reaps the benefits as sheep cycle nutrients into the soil via urine and manure and mulch down the biomass through trampling. Ranchers from Hearthquist Hollow move fences every two to three days to rotate the herd through the fields.
- Finding a Market for Premium Products: While wheat yield at Oatman Flats is relatively low compared to more industrialized farms, the quality of their unique products is high. Each grain harvest is used to make Oatman Flats’ products, including loaves of bread, bagels, sourdough mixes, and beverages. Oatman Farms® now operates a community supported agriculture (CSA) program in Tucson, Arizona which provides a box of ROC grain products from the ranch in exchange with a monthly subscription fee, directly supporting local farmers and bakers. They hope more consumers whose values align with ROC principles will be willing to pay a premium for local foods produced through these environmentally friendly practices, while simultaneously being educated about where and how the food they eat is being produced.
Lessons Learned
Weed management is a major challenge with regenerative organic farming, because ROC farms do not spray chemical herbicides. For Oatman Flats, Johnson grass, bermuda grass, and tumbleweeds are the major problem weeds. They continue to test different methods to control weed growth, including changing the microbial balance of the soil to favor fungi by increasing soil organic matter, and maintaining a multispecies cover crop for integrated weed suppression. To manage tumbleweeds specifically, they use a roller-crimper mounted to a tractor to push tumbleweeds into the irrigation canal and burn them into ash, which they use as fertilizer. Results from this combination of methods are still unclear.
Oatman Farms® emphasizes the importance of cooperation and community to produce profitable goods and build a consumer market. Oatman Farms® found success selling products to restaurants and school districts that prioritize using locally-sourced and ethical ingredients. Achieving a competitive price point for direct-to-consumer goods is more difficult, but Oatman Farms® is able to sell some unique products using their ROC gain. They collaborated with local chefs to create a variety of sourdough loaves and pancake and waffle mixes which are now available online and in stores all over Arizona.
One of the fields on Oatman Flats Ranch is dominated by mesquite trees, and there is a large market for mesquite flour which is currently not saturated. So far, they have harvested the mesquite pods to be milled into flour just once, though they estimate being able to mill 500-800 pounds of flour annually. Mesquite flour can be sold for up to $15/lb, but harvesting and processing the pods is very labor-intensive, and pod flavor is highly variable. The pods need to be taste tested and picked by hand, and can’t be harvested from the soil because they could be contaminated with poisonous aflatoxins. Oatman Flats is currently experimenting with techniques to reduce these labor costs, including laying tarps on the ground as the pods ripen to catch them.
Next Steps
- Begin converting the farm from flood irrigation to solid set sprinklers, saving an estimated 54% of water: Oatman Flats plans to convert 506 acres to sprinkler irrigation, which will cost $1.2 million. $800,000 is covered by a grant from The University of Arizona Cooperative Extension Water Irrigation Efficiency Program, and they are applying for an Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) grant through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (USDA-NRCS).
- Rebuild and reline wells, and repair additional below-ground water infrastructure which was damaged by a Gila River flooding event
- Begin riparian riparian
Definition of riparian habitat or riparian areas.
Learn more about riparian restoration along farm boundaries - Build shade structures for the sheep
Funding Partners
The University of Arizona Cooperative Extension Water Irrigation Efficiency Program
Resources
● Nabham, G. P. et al. (2023). “Toward Water-Resilient Agriculture in Arizona: Future Scenarios Addressing Water Scarcity in the Lower Colorado River Basin”. Working Paper.
Contact
Yadi Wang, Oatman Flats Ranch and Oatman Farms®: yadi@oatmanfarms.com
CART Lead Author
Erin Connolly, Drought Learning Network (DLN) Case Study Author
Suggested Citation
Connolly, E. E. (2024). “Regenerative Agriculture in the Arid Southwest at Oatman Flats Ranch.” CART. Retrieved from https://www.fws.gov/project/regenerative-agriculture-arid-southwest.
