Assessing Equity in Access of Midwestern Farmers to the U.S. Voluntary Soil Carbon Sequestration Market
During the last decade, voluntary carbon markets have emerged to allow firms with emissions reductions goals to compensate agricultural producers for accumulating carbon in soils and/or reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions such as nitrous oxide. While agricultural soils have the physical potential to offset a significant share of GHG emissions, the economic viability of storing carbon in soils at a large scale remains uncertain, with significant spatial variation and open questions regarding the permanence of stored carbon. Little work has been done on the social side to investigate how carbon offset markets might serve different social groups.
This project utilizes a qualitative and quantitative approach to examine:
- The significance of carbon offset markets to minoritized agricultural producers in the American Midwest.
- The relative importance of a range of barriers to offset market participation among crop farmers.
Lab members: Postdoc Ashley Colby
Funding: Environmental Defense Fund
Exploring the Influence of Demonstration Farm Networks on Cover Crop Adoption
While agriculture provides food, fiber, and fuel, it can also create environmental challenges including soil erosion and water quality degradation. Cover crops, which provide ground cover between cash crop rotations, can ameliorate multiple environmental concerns. Despite increased academic research and federal funding, adoption rates in the United States are low (approximately 5%). Literature drawing on theories including the diffusion of innovations finds farmers’ social networks influence cover crop decisions. Yet there is little research measuring the impact of formal farm networks on regional adoption rates of conservation practices like cover crops.
This in-process mixed methods research explores the influence of US Department of Agriculture-funded demonstration farm networks on cover crop adoption in Wisconsin watersheds. We use a quantitative event study analysis to assess how much more likely a farm is to adopt cover crops when near a demo farm, and we use qualitative interviews to understand why the practice was adopted on nearby farms (or not).
We expect the results from this study to provide government and extension agencies with insight into the best practices for developing demonstration farm networks.
Lab members: PhD student Heather Craska
Funding: The Nature Conservancy
Sustaining Ecosystem Services in Agricultural Landscapes through a Better Understanding of Decision-support Systems
Agricultural regions with connected groundwater-surface water resources provide crucial ecosystem services including groundwater to support irrigated agricultural production and streamflow to support recreation and habitat for fish and wildlife. Ecosystem models, which provide decision-support systems (DSS) for policy and management, are often developed to inform management in these basins. However, little is known about how and to what extent DSS influence decision-making to sustain ecosystem services in these managed agroecosystems.
In this project, we connect refined models of groundwater-surface water ecosystem services provision with research on the human dimensions of environmental decision-making to address fundamental gaps between foundational and applied science and provide recommendations for DSS creators. Our case study region in Kansas has streams affected by groundwater withdrawals and extensive irrigated row crop agriculture, providing the context to better understand the connection between ecosystem health and sustainability (A1451 Program Area Priorities).
Our research objectives and methods are: (1) Model ecosystem service outcomes under different management and climate scenarios to better understand the response of ecosystem services to local and global change; (2) Describe and compare the mental models (conceptual representations of an object or tool) of DSS creators and users through sociological interviews; (3) Develop a framework linking mental models to DSS processes and outputs, which will inform a) dissemination of best practices for DSS creators and b) a NIFA AFRI Standard Proposal. We will work with an Advisory Committee composed of agencies, agricultural producers, and DSS creators to ensure useful and usable project outputs and outcomes.
Lab members: PhD student: Nouman Afzal
Funding: USDA AFRI-NIFA Grant # 13687338
Cumulative Effects of Ecological and Social Stressors on the Dynamics of Integrated Ranching-Wildlife Systems: Drought, Wolves, and Human Decision-Makers
As environmental changes intensify around the world, both humans and wildlife face greater uncertainty and risk, threatening both human livelihoods and wildlife biodiversity. This research seeks to understand how multiple sources of stress impact humans, free-ranging livestock, and wildlife in shared rangelands in the western U.S.
Increasingly frequent and more severe droughts make forage plants for wild herbivores and cattle less predictable and abundant, even as the return of gray wolves to parts of the landscape increases predation risk. As a result, wildlife such as deer and elk, as well as free-ranging livestock, may be forced to trade off food and security, and ranchers grazing their cattle on public land may face more uncertainty.
Lab members: Postdoc Nicolas Bergmann, PhD student Lara Mengak
Funding: National Science Foundation Award # 2317537
Growing Agroforestry in Illinois
Sustainable forestry and agricultural practices like agroforestry are necessary to ensure global food security, mitigate climate change, conserve biodiversity, and provide ecosystem services. Such practices can also boost economic profitability and enhance human well-being. Agroforestry, defined as the integration of trees into crop and livestock systems, is widely promoted as a sustainable land use practice. However, the rate of adoption of agroforestry practices remains low due to social, economic, ecological, and political barriers. Consequently, we miss a critical opportunity to advance both environmental and social sustainability goals. Scientific understanding based on an interdisciplinary approach to address ecological, economic, social, and political interactions is needed to spur appropriate expansion of agroforestry practice.
The goal of this research project is to advance agroforestry knowledge and policy by:
- Mapping the suitability of agroforestry practices and developing a model to predict priority areas for targeting agroforestry across the United States (US) Midwest.
- Assess the feasibility of and policy incentives for greater agroforestry adoption in Illinois through field-based inquiry.
We are using a qualitative research approach, combined with geospatial analysis, to examine the opportunities and barriers to agroforestry adoption as well as the relative importance of environmental, social, and economic criteria within the conservation decision-making process.
Lab members: PhD student Sarah Castle, MS Student Alex Ramirez
Funding: USDA North Central SARE Graduate Student Grant, UIUC Graduate College Dissertation Completion Fellowship, USDA Hatch
Community-Based Herbicide Resistance Management
This project focuses on creating innovative solutions to the growing problem of herbicide resistance through community-scale collaborations with farmers, agronomists, conservation specialists, grain distributers, researchers, and other stakeholders across the Pacific Northwest. The first year of the project focused on co-producing new ideas and strategies for addressing herbicide resistance at a community-scale. This stage of the project involved recurring monthly farmer-focused meetings with three different communities.
The second year of the project focused on implementing the most actionable outcome from the first year. Because of limited resources, we focused on effort on the most cohesive community and its idea to develop alternative crops to improve weed management. Using a co-production of knowledge research process, this community then collaboratively designed and implemented an innovative field-scale experiment to research the viability of growing grain sorghum in North Central Washington.
Lab members: Postdoc Nick Bergmann
Funding: Washington Grain Commission