Research topics to scale up cover crop use: Reflections from innovative Iowa farmers

Cover crops as a conservation practice continue to receive attention from farmers, researchers, media, and policy makers, given their ability to effectively reduce water pollution and improve soil quality. Recent estimates of cover crop use across the midwestern Corn Belt, as well as the United States, demonstrate large acreage increases over the last number of years. The annual Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education–Conservation Technology Information Center (SARE– CTIC) survey found that nationally cover crop acreage doubled from 2011 to 2016, based on farmers self-reporting cover crop planting (CTIC 2016). However, the total cover crop acreage based on 2012 Census of Agriculture data only represents 3.2% of harvested cropland nationally and just 2.3% of the total cropland in the US Corn Belt (USDA NASS 2014a, 2014b)

Climate change challenges require collaborative research to drive agrifood system transformation

The recent Climate Science Special Report released as part of the Fourth National Climate Assessment confirms that we are living through the warmest period in modern civilization and that human activities are the primary driver of this warming (Wuebbles et al., 2017). These climatic changes have and will continue to impact global agricultural production, with food security and production consequences that will be felt unequally across the planet. Agricultural activities contribute to global warming emissions, while also offering opportunities for greenhouse gas mitigation. It is clear that the agrifood system will have to adapt to a changing climate. To better assess climate influences on agricultural systems in this themed issue of Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems, we challenged authors to submit interdisciplinary research that examines climate change adaptation and mitigation in agriculture and subsequent interconnected impacts to the food system. Indeed, agrifood systems provide a fertile context for examining climate change from multiple disciplines

Seeing is not always believing: Crop loss and climate change perceptions among farm advisors

As climate change is expected to significantly affect agricultural systems globally, agricultural farm advisors have been increasingly recognized as an important resource in helping farmers address these challenges. While there have been many studies exploring the climate change belief and risk perceptions as well as behaviors of both farmers and agricultural farm advisors, there are very few studies that have explored how these perceptions relate to actual climate impacts in agriculture. Here we couple survey data from United States Department of Agriculture farm service employees (n = 6, 514) with historical crop loss data across the United States to explore the relationship of actual climate-related crop losses on farm to farm advisor perceptions of climate change and future farmer needs. Using structural equation modelling we find that among farm advisors that work directly with farms on disaster and crop loss issues, there is a significant positive relationship between crop loss and perceived weather variability changes, while across all farm advisors crop loss is associated with reduced likelihood to believe in anthropogenic climate change. Further, we find that weather variability perceptions are the most consistently and highly correlated with farm advisors\u27 perceptions about the need for farm adaptation and future farmer needs. These results suggest that seeing crop loss may not lead to climate change belief, but may drive weather variability perceptions, which in turn affect farm adaptation perceptions. This lends further evidence to the debate over terminology in climate change communication and outreach, suggesting that weather variability may be the most salient among agricultural advisors

Hunger in the Land of Plenty: Local Responses to Food Insecurity in Iowa

Story County (estimated population 92,406 in 2013) lies in the heart of central Iowa, a state renowned for its remarkable agricultural productivity. Iowa leads all states for production of corn, soybean, and hogs. Revenues from agricultural products in Iowa total more than $30 billion annually according the 2012 Agricultural Census (USDA-NASS 2014). This productivity stems from a favorable natural and political environment. The temperate climate, productive soils, and gentle topography are ideal for our production system of commodity agriculture facilitated by federal policies, which include subsidized crop insurance and commodity payments (Horrigan, Lawrence, and Walker 2002). Despite this productivity and political support for commodity production, a very small amount of acreage in Iowa produces food crops such as fruits and vegetables. Within Story County, the amount of cropland dedicated to fruit, vegetable, and nut production per one thousand residents is 2.4 acres, compared to 3.7 acres statewide, which is much lower than the US average of 32 acres per one thousand residents (ISUEO 2014). Paradoxically, in this land so perfectly suited for agriculture, there is an increasing demand for food assistance. Iowa State University Extension and Outreach (ISUEO) estimates 16,366 people live in poverty in Story County, a 20.1 percent poverty rate, compared to a statewide average of 12.2 percent (2014). ISUEO further estimates that 15.2 percent of Story County residents are food insecure, representing nearly 14,000 individuals. Comparatively, the statewide rate is 12.7 percent (ISUEO 2014). Compounding the problem, 45 percent of people who are food insecure in Story County do not qualify for direct government assistance because their income is above the economic threshold set for federal food assistance, and so they depend on charitable efforts to meet their needs. According to Feeding America’s statistics, Story County is the most food insecure county in Iowa (Gundersen, Engelhard, and Waxman 2015). The juxtaposition of a productive agricultural system with persistent hunger and need for food assistance is widely apparent in Story County and has inspired community-based efforts to address food needs. Through this chapter, we analyze the work of Food at First (FAF), a nonprofit that has emerged in response to the need for food assistance in Story County. Their work addresses the food needs of Story County residents by providing a daily free meal program and market as well as the recent development of a community garden. We illustrate the benefits of the FAF effort dedicated to building community-based solutions to hunger and food insecurity through a form of food democracy. We also explore key challenges associated with doing this work, including pragmatic issues of retaining and engaging volunteers. Further, we examine limitations of this model by exploring the underlying causes of food insecurity and how this organization contests as well as perpetuates a neoliberal model of food assistance. This neoliberal focus emphasizes individual responsibility and corporate charitable donations rather than collective, and/or government-level, responsibility for community food insecurity. We hope to raise important questions about how this community-driven work critically improves food security and a broader sense of community while still falling short of addressing poverty and inequality, the underlying reason for food insecurity in Ames and across the country

Farm service agency employee intentions to use weather and climate data in professional services

This is a work of the U.S. Government and is not subject to copyright protection in the United States. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.. Agricultural service providers often work closely with producers, and are well positioned to include weather and climate change information in the services they provide. By doing so, they can help producers reduce risks due to climate variability and change. A national survey of United States Department of Agriculture Farm Service Agency (FSA) field staff (n = 4621) was conducted in 2016. The survey was designed to assess FSA employees\u27 use of climate and weather-related data and explore their perspectives on climate change, attitudes toward adaptation and concerns regarding climate- and weather-driven risks. Two structural equation models were developed to explore relationships between these factors, and to predict respondents\u27 willingness to integrate climate and weather data into their professional services in the future. The two models were compared with assess the relative influence of respondents\u27 current use of weather and climate information. Findings suggest that respondents\u27 perceptions of weather-related risk in combination with their personal observations of weather variability help predict whether an individual intends to use weather and climate information in the future. Importantly, climate change belief is not a significant predictor of this intention; however, the belief that producers will have to adapt to climate change in order to remain viable is. Surprisingly, whether or not an individual currently uses weather and climate information is not a good predictor of whether they intend to in the future. This suggests that there are opportunities to increase employee exposure and proficiency with weather and climate information to meet the needs of American farmers by helping them to reduce risk

The trouble with cover crops: Farmers’ experiences with overcoming barriers to adoption

Cover crops are known to promote many aspects of soil and water quality, yet estimates find that in 2012 only 2.3% of the total agricultural lands in the Midwestern USA were using cover crops. Focus groups were conducted across the Corn Belt state of Iowa to better understand how farmers confront barriers to cover crop adoption in highly intensive agricultural production systems. Although much prior research has focused on analyzing factors that help predict cover crop use on farms, there is limited research on how farmers navigate and overcome field-level (e.g. proper planting of a cover crop) and structural barriers (e.g. market forces) associated with the use of cover crops. The results from the analysis of these conversations suggest that there is a complex dialectical relationship between farmers\u27 individual management decisions and the broader agricultural context in the region that constrains their decisions. Farmers in these focus groups shared how they navigate complex management decisions within a generally homogenized agricultural and economic landscape that makes cover crop integration challenging. Many who joined the focus groups have found ways to overcome barriers and successfully integrate cover crops into their cropping systems. This is illustrated through farmers\u27 descriptions of their ‘whole system’ approach to cover crops management, where they described how they prioritize the success of their cover crops by focusing on multiple aspects of management, including changes they have made to nutrient application and modifications to equipment. These producers also engage with farmer networks to gain strategies for overcoming management challenges associated with cover crops. Although many participants had successfully planted cover crops, they tended to believe that greater economic incentives and/or more diverse crop and livestock markets would be needed to spur more widespread adoption of the practice. Our results further illustrate how structural and field-level barriers constrain individual actions, as it is not simply the basic agronomic considerations (such as seeding and terminating cover crops) that pose a challenge to their use, but also the broader economic and market drivers that exist in agriculturally intensive systems. Our study provides evidence that reducing structural barriers to adoption may be necessary to increase the use of this conservation practice to reduce environmental impacts associated with intensive agricultural production

Farmers\u27 Trust in Sources of Production and Climate Information and Their Use of Technology

A regionally representative survey of 900 Inland Pacific Northwest farmers showed that farmers trust other farmers and agribusiness most for production management decisions but trust university Extension most for climate change information. Additionally, in responding to questions about use of the Internet and mobile applications for making farm management decisions, many farmers indicated that they use the Internet daily but mobile applications much less regularly to access farm-related information. These results suggest that university Extension personnel have an important role to play in informing farmers about climate change and can do so effectively by using certain digital tools alongside other more traditional avenues for information delivery

Challenges and opportunities in transdisciplinary science: The experience of next generation scientists in an agriculture and climate research collaboration

Agriculture in the twenty-first century faces unprecedented challenges from increasing climate variability to growing demands on natural resources to globalizing economic markets. These emerging agricultural issues, spanning both human and natural dimensions, are uniquely formulated, exceedingly complex, and difficult to address within existing disciplinary domains (Eigenbrode et al. 2007; Reganold et al. 2011; Foley et al. 2005; Hansen et al. 2013). Therefore, the next generation of scientists working on these issues must not only be highly trained within a disciplinary context but must also have the capacity to collaborate with others to solve systems-level problems