Location: Food Systems Research Unit
Project Number: 8090-21600-001-000-D
Project Type: In-House Appropriated
Start Date: Jan 28, 2025
End Date: Nov 30, 2028
Objective:
Objective 1: Characterize the current and potential capacity of regional food systems to support healthier diets and improved sustainability outcomes.
This objective investigates the current and potential capacities of regional food systems through two sub-objectives. Sub-objective 1a addresses improved sustainability outcomes. Subobjective 1b addresses healthier diets.
Sub-objective 1.A: Identify if farmer attitudes, motivations, experiences, and beliefs regarding soil health and related practices predict measured soil health metrics in New England.
Sub-objective 1.B: Quantify the capacity of field- to regional-scale food production systems to provision human diets.
Objective 2: Identify pathways and evaluate risks of transformations of regional food systems in response to changing climates, diets, and markets.
Sub-Objective 2.A: Identify and evaluate social and environmental resources under changing climates: food systems impact and resilience.
Sub-Objective 2.B: Adapting dairy to an unstable climate: Identifying and evaluating dairy forage production strategies to improve soil health and mitigate climate risks.
Objective 3: Enhance the long-term sustainability of regional food systems by building a research strategy designed around coproduction of knowledge with stakeholders.
Sub-objective 3.A: Compare models of experimentation, data integration, and knowledge co-production for long-term food systems research.
Approach:
We combine modeling, field research, qualitative interviews, and secondary data analysis to ask, “How can regional food systems enhance environmental, economic, and social sustainability and improve human nutrition?” We focus on the Northeastern US. In Objective 1, we characterize the current and potential capacity of regional food systems to support healthier diets and improved sustainability. We link farmers' attitudes, beliefs, and motivations with soil health (Sub-Objective 1a) using surveys of farmers and on-farm sampling of soil health. Farmer-participants will be identified throughout the region with external stakeholders. We also estimate regional food production systems’ contributions to diets in historical and future scenarios (Sub-Objective 1b). We approach this challenge at the regional and field scales. Regionally, we will estimate the historical and potential future self-reliance of the Northeastern US. At the field scale, we will compile and assess contrasting conceptualizations of agricultural productivity and explore their implications for valuing different agricultural production systems. Both scales will rely extensively on public data or the reanalysis of pre-existing samples. In Objective 2, we identify pathways and evaluate the risks of transformations of regional food systems in response to changing climates, diets, and markets. We identify sociopolitical barriers to improving water access in Northeastern food systems. Here, too much and too little water are increasingly common, as the 2023 Vermont flooding catastrophe exemplifies (Sub-Objective 2a). We will identify the key climate change impacts to water systems of concern for farmers, processors, distributors, and consumers in the Northeastern U.S., the formal and informal institutions that exist to support farm system and food system resilience, and strategies these groups are taking to cope with recent and repeated flooding disasters. We approach this through a combination of literature review, a case study with stakeholders across the food system, and combining farmer interviews with historical water use data and hydrological models. We then evaluate adaptation strategies at the farm scale to erratic rainfall patterns by comparing forage production systems for their ability to improve soil health and reliably support productive dairies (Sub-Objective 2b). This field study will contrast standard practices, such as corn silage or improved hay, with emerging practices like winter-summer annual double crops, to assess tradeoffs between forage production, susceptibility to extreme weather, and resilience capacity via soil health. Finally, food systems is a new research area for the USDA-ARS, and programmatic innovation is essential to meet stakeholder needs. In Objective 3 and in close collaboration with the University of Vermont, we build a research strategy designed around the coproduction of knowledge with stakeholders to enhance the long-term sustainability of regional food systems. This coproduction research strategy will hasten efforts to develop local and regional food systems that are more productive, sustainable, and healthy.
