Welcome
Baja Arizona Sustainable Agriculture, (Baja AZ), is a 501c3 non-profit organization working to increase local sustainable food production and marketing in southern Arizona. Sustainable agriculture is good for the earth, good for people and good for communities.
Radishes Buy locally grown! It’s thousands of miles fresher. Buying from local farms and ranches retains people with food-raising expertise on agricultural land. This also ensures that future generations will enjoy seeing open fields and grazing lands with lots of wildlife.
Eating foods raised without chemical additives, long distance transportation and long term storage is healthier for people and the environment. Eating more foods produced near your home offers an adventure in flavor and connects you to the landscape.
Row cover About our name: We chose to use a Spanish word “baja” which means lower as this part of the state, south of the Gila River, or “Baja Arizona” is a historic area that has many ties to northern Mexico. Our vision is a region on both sides of the border that can once again feed itself.
There’s plenty of sunshine in southern Arizona so many crops can be raised through the winter and in spring and fall, even at higher elevations, with row cover, cold frames and greenhouses.
Sustainable agriculture is resource saving. Baja AZ promotes improving the soil with organic methods and raising animals naturally on the land. Water is precious in arid lands. To be sustainable in the desert, food must be raised in a water-frugal way using rain water harvesting, drip irrigation and mulches. Baja AZ encourages a return to eating desert heritage foods and drought tolerant varieties developed by the peoples that lived in this region before us.
News
On a 100 mile diet and need help finding local food? Go to the Find Local Food Page to find local farmers and ranchers, farmers markets, CSAs, stores and restaurants that sell locally produced food.
Cholla bud hors d’oeuvres Find out how to harvest desert foods by taking a workshop with ethnobotanist Martha Burgess. See dates on the Calendar for scheduled cholla bud, mesquite, prickly pear and acorn workshops in Tucson and Sierra Vista.
Schedule a presentation for your school or organization on “The Joys of Coming Home to Eat” with a virtual tour of local farms and ranches or “Pasture Perfect: Raising Animals on Grass (the way they were meant to be raised)” and “Sustainable Ranching or Anticipating the Moisture” presentations by Baja AZ’s professional grass-fed ranchers.
Solar panels & cattle
Deep in the heart of Cochise County at 5,500 feet in the Mule Mountains, cattle on the historic 47 Ranch can now get a drink round the clock at Abbot Canyon. During the day solar panels provide power to pump water from the well. The windmill takes over at night when the breezes pick up. Rancher owner Dennis Moroney has worked with Arizona Game and Fish to distribute water throughout the ranch through the use of solar powered pumps. Formerly water was only available where the cows were, no place else, and pumped by moving a generator around.
Wildlife has also benefited with a greatly increased population of white tail deer for hunting. The ranch has a safe harbor cooperative agreement to ensure the survival of the Chiricahua Leopard frog which only survives in ranch stock tanks. Care is taken to stagger stock pond clean up and to relocate frogs that are dislodged.
250 artificial owl burrows will be constructed on the 47 Ranch which is a recipient site for the relocation of burrowing owls from areas near cities where expanding development has taken their habitat.
Baja Arizona Sustainable Agriculture, (520) 378-2973
5279 S. Calle Metate, Sierra Vista, AZ 85650
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