Barriers in Making Decisions in Tree Nut Orchards

Barriers in Making Decisions in Tree Nut Orchards

Patrick Cavanaugh
Patrick Cavanaugh
There's a lot going on in tree nut orchards throughout the year. There are many cultural practices, and decisions to make. Patrick Brown is a professor in the department of plant scientists at UC Davis. He's looking at the barriers of that decision making.

“We've got an interesting project right now on the barriers to decision making processes and the adaption of new technologies by growers,” said Brown. “So it's more of a sociological, cultural sort of analysis and it's very interesting to see where their constraints lie and how you can use that information to focus our research and your extension.”

And we asked Brown what some of those barriers are and how growers in their employees get past them.

“There are some barriers on education that the irrigators, and the fertilizer guys who manage those systems might not necessarily have a full understanding of the needs and the science behind it, and perhaps not the time to make nuance decisions,” noted Brown. “In much of California, you have irrigation delivery systems both from the districts as well as the built engineering in the field that constrain the ability of the grower to make fine tuned decisions because they can't turn the pumps on only when they wish them to be on.”

And Brown said there are other issues about where the information stream is coming from. Employees are not sure where to get that needed information, which is a definite barrier.

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