Obstacles to Decision-Making in an Orchard

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

“So we've got, of course, a bunch of projects going on exploring many different things. On project interesting project we are doing is looking at the barriers to the decision making processes and the adoption of new technologies by growers,” Brown said

So it's more of a sociological cultural sort of analysis. And it's very interesting to see where the constraints lie and how you can use that information to focus our research and extension.

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

“Some barriers on education that, you know, the irrigators, the fertilizer, the guys who manage those systems might not necessarily have the full understanding of the needs and the science behind it. And perhaps not the time to make nuance decisions,” Brown said.

“In much of California, you have irrigation delivery systems, both from the districts, as well as the built engineering in the field that constrains 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,” noted Brown

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.