As Andrea Garfinkle heads into her first season leading the University of Wyoming’s Powell Research and Extension Center, she says the facility’s big focus is “getting researchers from campus here, doing the stuff that growers care about.”

“I think that there’s this general sentiment that we’re not doing stuff that matters,” Garfinkle said in an interview, and “we’re trying to get people that are interested in doing really basic, fundamental research that growers can directly implement on their farms.”

When she became the center’s director in August, one of Garfinkle’s initial aims was to simply listen to local growers about the issues they’re facing. One of those conversations led to an upcoming study that will examine soil nitrogen levels and potassium supplementation in sugar beets; the aim is to see if changes in fertilizer regimes can boost local beet yields and bring them more in-line with surrounding regions.

Much like the farms around the Big Horn Basin, beets, beans and barley make up a significant chunk of what’s grown at the 220-acre center, which is better known as PREC. In the coming season, the plantings will include a pair of barley trials in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and similar evaluations of dry beans.

Other projects include testing chickpeas’ resistance to drought, growing high-quality seeds of vetch, western wheatgrass and meadow foxtail and separate experiments examining how coal char and algae work as soil amendments. Meanwhile, the Powell Economic Partnership will be using the center’s hoophouse this summer for a local foods initiative.

As the growing season gets underway, Garfinkle is enthusiastic and says she’s enjoyed the Powell community.

“The growers here are really special; they’re really, really good at what they do,” she said, and she’s found the staff at PREC to be “amazing.”

Rebuilding trust

Garfinkle said she hopes to rebuild trust and increase engagement with local farmers so they’re willing to bring their issues to the center.

“I think the biggest motivation behind all of this is we want to be seen as more helpful and more useful, because we want to be more helpful and more useful,” said Farm Manager Sam George. “And we can’t really do one without the other: If people don’t see us as valuable and useful, they’re not going to come to us when they have problems and challenges.”

Going forward, Garfinkle wants to show that PREC does work that benefits growers, including by communicating that in a way that’s both “helpful and actionable.”

For example, while alternative crops like chickpeas or safflower might seem superfluous right now, Garfinkle said they could become more significant if markets for traditional crops continue to weaken. And when it comes to trying out a new crop, the thinking goes that it’s better for the center to learn it’s a flop through a study than have a farmer find out through a money-losing growing season.

“Our service that we can provide is to take the risk away from growers,” Garfinkle said. “So we can beta test things like chickpeas, or safflower, or … name the thing, here.”

It’s not limited to crops, either: PREC can experiment with new approaches to herbicide applications, fertilizers or irrigation regimes.

Beyond having a research-focused mission, the center also has research-focused equipment that can precisely measure results and control variables. As one example, PREC has a pair of sprinkler systems that can deploy water at different rates in specific sections of the system and, say, impose drought conditions in just a certain spot. As more basin farmers move to pivot irrigation, Garfinkle sees an opportunity to advance or test out different practices, such as reduced tillage.

Whatever is being studied, “we can test that here, figure out what works best, and they [farmers] can operationalize that knowledge,” she said.

Including growers and the community

Garfinkle’s expertise is in plant pathology — studying the diseases that impact agricultural crops — and she’s already made efforts to increase the center’s laboratory facilities. That will boost its ability to identify and analyze disease.

When she was first hired, George said he told Garfinkle that, traditionally, there hasn’t been much plant disease in the Big Horn Basin.

However, “what it’s looking like is, in reality, we probably do have disease that has just gone undetected for so long,” George said, “and so she’s going to bring a lot of skillsets there …”

He believes the area’s crops are seeing increasing pressure from disease, and said Garfinkle has already helped identify some disease in local fields.

“We’re definitely just scratching the surface,” Garfinkle said. “Each field season we’ll learn more and more.”

Garfinkle also wants PREC to connect with the broader Powell community, with staff working to boost participation in the center’s annual Field Day. 

“I would like this year to see not only producers show up for kind of the research side of things, but also have community members come and see what we’re doing here,” she said.

The event is slated for Tuesday, June 30.