Sep 12, 2026 · 22 min · 11 segments
Caitlin Peterson, Associate Director and Research Fellow at the PPIC Water Policy Center, and Bradley Franklin, Research Fellow at the PPIC Water Policy Center join The Maddy Report to discuss…
Bradley FranklinGuest
Caitlin PetersonGuest
Blake ZanteHost
We're talking with Katie Peterson and Brad Franklin with the Public Policy Institute of California.
Katie, earlier we were talking with you in the previous segment, and you mentioned that one of your key findings was that bare fallow fields actually lose a lot of rainfall to evaporation.
Well, we usually think of following fields as simply a tactic to save water, and they do do that in the strictest sense.
But as I mentioned in the previous segment, they also come with all of those downsides, dust, weeds, things that you have to manage.
Follow fields also aren't doing much for us in terms of capturing rainwater.
So we're talking about losing up to eight inches of water sometimes, depending on how much rain actually falls, and to no productive end.
you could take that same amount of water and use it for a low input crop like the winter grains or forages that we're talking about.
If you do that, you're not only putting that rainfall to better use, you're also keeping the soil from degrading and you're ultimately maintaining that land's ability to capture and store water into the future.
We're talking with Katie Peterson and Brad Franklin with the Public Policy Institute of California.
Katie, earlier we were talking with you in the previous segment, and you mentioned that one of your key findings was that bare fallow fields actually lose a lot of rainfall to evaporation.
Well, we usually think of following fields as simply a tactic to save water, and they do do that in the strictest sense.
But as I mentioned in the previous segment, they also come with all of those downsides, dust, weeds, things that you have to manage.
Follow fields also aren't doing much for us in terms of capturing rainwater.
So we're talking about losing up to eight inches of water sometimes, depending on how much rain actually falls, and to no productive end.
you could take that same amount of water and use it for a low input crop like the winter grains or forages that we're talking about.
If you do that, you're not only putting that rainfall to better use, you're also keeping the soil from degrading and you're ultimately maintaining that land's ability to capture and store water into the future.
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