Steven Jake Wallin
Graduate Student
Steven Jake Wallin wasn’t born a farmer. Steve took a lateral entry into farming from a construction and automation technology background. After attending San Joaquin Delta Colege in Stockton California, Wallin transferred to the College of Agriculture at Chico State. Here he met Dr. Zakeri who offered him the opportunity to participate in farming and agronomy research in the effects of intercropping and alley cropping legumes in orchard systems, whole orchard recycling (WOR) and measuring evaporative transportation at the tree scale with their novel Continuously Hydraulic Irrigation Comparison Array (CHICA) Pots. Continuing his research with the Zakeri Agronomy Lab at Chico State’s Farm, Steve entered the CSU Interdisciplinary Master’s Program with a focus on Regenerative Agriculture. This program works directly with the Center for Regenerative Agriculture and the College of Agriculture.
In November 2023, Steven along with Dr. Hossein Zakeri won 1st place in the poster competition at the American Society for Agronomy’s International Competition (2023 ASA, CSSA, SSSA international Meeting) in the Graduate level Evapotranspiration and Modeling category. His presentation “Water Use and Other Ecologic Observations in Alley Cropped Young Almonds” represents the ongoing experimental work of the Chico State Biologic Nitrogen Fixing Team (the BNF’s). Beginning in 2022, this experiment looks at differences in water use when growing other harvestable crops in the immediate vicinity of young orchard trees. To observe the water use of the trees and their surrounding plants, students designed and built an ultra low cost alternative to a traditionally expensive machine, a lysimeter. This low tech and low cost alternative allowed Steven Wallin to build the multi-year experiment represented in this victory in St. Louis for Chico State. This work will continue as his thesis work.
As for the future, Mr. Wallin looks forward to being a mad scientist and someday owning his own orchard. He wants to continue in his career of Farm and Plant Sensors that people use to better understand the natural world. Steve says he looks forward to possibly working in research and development for new sensors and new techniques for growing more and better food.
Most of all Jake would like to thank his family, his wife Dandy, and his daughter Juniper Ruth who keep him going. Jake wants to also thank Dr. Hossein Zakeri, Dr. Logan Smith, Dr. Robin Donatello, and Dr. Susan Riggins for the opportunities from which he has benefited. He especially appreciates the push from faculty to learn R, a programming language used in statistical analysis such as that popular in biostatistics and data science.
