Duration: 10/01/2007 to 09/30/2008

Administrative Advisor(s):

NIFA Reps:

Non-Technical Summary

Statement of Issues and Justification

Major agricultural regions of the US are now dominated by landscapes that are not providing ecological services that are essential to environmental quality; these services include maintenance of biodiversity and water quality, regulation of the flow of water and of invasive organisms. These problems are evident in the Mississippi River Basin and Great Lakes Region in the Midwest, where annual commodity crops occupy most of the landscape. The result is unintended environmental impact such as discharge of sediment, nitrogen and other nutrients into surface and ground waters and reduced biodiversity.

The underlying and fundamental hypothesis of this proposed multi-state research project is that a multifunctional agroecosystem would provide sufficient amounts of desired ecological services such as soil conservation, clean water and biodiversity while producing desired market-based goods such as food, feed, fiber and biomass. Research results from the Midwest suggest that a diversified grassland (prairie) agroecosystem on degraded agricultural land can increase both carbon sequestration and the net energy gain in bio- fuel production. Restored and constructed wetlands on flood-prone farmland and along riparian zones could provide biomass, increase wildlife abundance, and improve water quality via biogeochemical processes.

A recent assessment of the potential economic, social, and environmental performance of multifunctional agroecosystems done by a simulation study for two representative agricultural watersheds in the upper Midwest United States suggests that major environmental services could be attained by targeted plant diversification using perennial crops without substantially increasing public costs. Economic and social benefits expected with targeted placement of perennial plant systems include farm profitability, avoided costs associated with specific environmental damages, and greater willingness of landowners to cooperate on targeted diversification projects.

Adoption and further development of these new agroecosystems are being inhibited by a complex set of barriers in the form of limits to knowledge, markets, infrastructure, capital access and public policy. These barriers are interrelated and mutually-reinforcing. Therefore, it is critical to identify and explore more effective and systemic approaches to removing or reducing the barriers to adoption of agroecosystems on private lands that yield environmental functionality and associated value and marketed food, feed, fiber, and biomass.

Project Essence and Goal:
We propose a project that will investigate optimal planning and management models to capitalize on the enormous potential of multifunctional agroecosystems designed to produce market and non-market good and services. The goal of this project is to research better ways of organizing and transferring science-based knowledge so as to reduce or eliminate the barriers to adoption of agroecosystems that enhance profitability of annual and perennial crops and sustains the environment and communities tied to the land and crops.

Types of Activities

Methods:
To achieve the project goal the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture has been engaged with a participatory environmental planning effort in Iowa and the Midwest that involves non-governmental organizations (NGOs), researchers and farmers. The planning effort is multi-faceted. One facet is the identification of barriers and assessment of existing agroecosystem practices on private farms that have documented production, profitability and environmental services. Another facet is to address obvious gaps in science-based knowledge of multi-functional agroecosystems by facilitating local and farm-based projects such as grass-based livestock production, multi-cropping, perennial grain crops and agroforestry practices.

Over the past three years the Leopold Hypoxia project has supported the multi-state Green Lands Blue Waters Initiative (GLBW hhtp://www.greenlandsbluewaters.org). The GLBW NGO shares a common vision of reducing the barriers and the mission of achieving socio-economic, market, and environmental benefits from multi-functional agroecosystems.

Project Activities

Agroecosystem research: Evaluate grass-based systems. Evaluate cost-effectiveness of grass-based systems and overall profitability.

Communication of science-based knowledge about market and non-market benefits from grass-based systems: Develop learning groups of stakeholders in key watersheds in Iowa and participating states. Learning groups provide a forum for learning, innovation, and integration of different types of knowledge among stakeholders. The learning groups will identify the most promising continuous living cover systems, help design and carry out research and demonstrations, identify barriers to the adoption of perennial crops and the use of cover crops in annual crop systems and propose effective means to remove them, and evaluate related Federal farm policy.

Support implementation of multi-cropping systems: Support implementation of existing and new continuous living cover systems and their corresponding practices by transferring knowledge, providing necessary contacts, and advocating on behalf of the adopters.

Objectives

1. Optimize agricultural production on specific landscapes by developing new levels of collaboration to engage and leverage public and private resources and demonstrate models for integrating landscape use and agricultural production.
   
2. Support research and demonstration that facilitates use of ecological buffers and water retention areas
   
3. Support diversification of Midwest agricultural markets and land use for bio-based and energy crops
   
4. Provide evaluation and feedback of effectiveness of targeted interventions, case-specific research, and the Midwest states collaborative efforts.
   

Expected Outputs, Outcomes and/or Impacts

1. Change in agricultural content knowledge. Increased awareness of unique role of perennial plants and continuous living cover in the following ecosystem services: (a) reduction of surface soil erosion, leading to improved surface water quality; (b) reduced percolation of water, thus increasing purification filtration processes of soils, leading to improved ground water quality; and (c) increase in number and type of parasites and predators that play a beneficial role in natural plant protection.


2. Change in knowledge of utilization of perennials, animal systems and living cover technologies. Improved understanding of (a) range of technology options for using perennials, animals and third crops in specific agricultural situation and under a range of normal Midwest climate condition; (b) selected practice and experimentation with management options for using perennials, animals and third crops on demonstration and producer-owned farms; and (c) increased quality of processes for decision-making related to establishing costs associated with adoption of perennials, cow-calf and third crop technologies, including forecasting net farm income resulting form the change for specific operations.


3. Change in knowledge of impacts of farm-level management changes on regional watershed-level ecosystem health. Memorization and retention of knowledge of evidence-based indicators of water quality that show impacts of agricultural practices at the sub and regional-watershed scale level; (b) improved knowledge of nitrogen and phosphorus loading at the farm-level that are associated with normal farming practices; and (c) familiarity with modeling and forecasting technologies for projecting impacts on economics and water quality if X technology was implemented.


4. Change in ability to work constructively with formerly-disregarded potential partners for protection of water quality. (a) Two key state and national organizations (environmental and commodity) newly share leadership for a new sub-watershed monitoring project; representatives of seven organizations that did not formally work together on grass and grazing projects now network informally, and have jointly sponsored (financially) workshops and field days, including development of handbook and other curricula.


5. Development in common discourse, and novel expression of role and value of perennials. (a) Standardization of key concepts, which enhanced efficiency of communications across organizations lines; (b) Reduction in time spent in meetings re-forming common objectives once standard nomenclature was established; increased ability of network members to effectively represent common vision independently at a greater range of venues for policy making and project initiation; and


6. Greater flexibility of leadership when faced with novel situations under time and financial constraints. (a) greater ease of transactions in sharing and leveraging organization personnel and fiscal resources, (b) Funding about $200,000 from private philanthropic foundations resulting from evident solidarity among diverse GLBW leaders.

Overall program evaluation will use program Logic Model per Taylor-Powell to assess the impacts on participants and their organizations in relation to enhancing capacity to create, implement, and nurture activities to improve the sustainability of integrated natural systems related to agriculture in the Midwest.


(1) To what extent have participants improved their understanding of key issues?


(2) To what extent have learners improved their connection to reliable sources of knowledge and support about sustainability?


(3) To what extent are participants ready and willing to apply new knowledge?


(4) What outcomes resulted from the project for participants and their organizations?


(5) How effective and acceptable were project methods for different types of participants?

Projected Participation

View Appendix E: Participation

Literature Cited

Attachments

Land Grant Participating States/Institutions

IA, MN

Non Land Grant Participating States/Institutions