Location: Soil, Water & Air Resources Research
Project Number: 5030-21600-001-009-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Sep 1, 2023
End Date: Aug 31, 2026
Objective:
Establish a more structured relationship between the Midwest Climate Hub, the Cooperator and their extension partners.
Cooperator will work with the USDA Midwest Climate Hub (MWCH) and ARS to build rapport and conduct needs assessments with refugee-immigrant farming communities within Iowa. This work will aim to increase understanding of the intersect of cultural food systems and climate change among refugee-immigrant food production. The needs assessments will provide an opportunity for the Cooperator and MWCH to learn the unique impacts, mitigation, adaptation, and resilience of the refugee-immigrant farming communities.
Approach:
The project will establish a Cooperator liaison position that will work with or connect the ARS Midwest Climate Hub (MCH), the Cooperator, and other partners. The liaison will develop programming around climate, agriculture and water data with the MCH. The liaison will meet regularly with the MCH staff and join regularly scheduled meetings to discuss current climate issues and climate adaptation/mitigation efforts, and will assist in planning/developing extension-Climate Hub efforts with the Cooperator. The liaison will also assist in connecting with several other extensions, funded projects related to climate, and agriculture. The liaison will further help to transition regional efforts to possible funding on extension-climate adaptation and mitigation. The regional partner will help to gather and share current climate impact (i.e. drought/flood, etc.) information on agriculture that will be used by the MCH and various regional partners.
The Cooperator has the expertise, mission, and scope appropriate for direct outreach with undeserved farmer communities. They have established relationships with immigrant and refugee farmers in Iowa, and their leadership in this project will promote multilateral partnerships between organizations that represent refugee and immigrant farmers.
1. Relationship-Building and Needs Assessment:
To address the existing gaps in climate programming developed by and for marginalized communities, this effort will assess refugee-immigrant farmers’ needs for climate data, training, and educational resources.
• Visitation with relevant communities and organizations to build rapport with community members and key stakeholders.
• With coordination support from MWCH, work with communities to conduct a needs assessment to understand how climate data resources may support resilience in refugee-immigrant farming. The Cooperator and MWCH will collaborate to assess the current mitigation and adaptation strategies being applied in the communities, with special emphasis on the resilience of culturally relevant crops.
• Assess which climate data resources currently exist that can be utilized by the community for the time being to address the current challenges the community is facing. Collaborate with MWCH and community to determine useful, short-term dissemination strategies.
2. Outreach and Dissemination:
Stakeholder participation and engagement are key to addressing communities’ climate-related challenges. This work will strive to prioritize stakeholder participation and engagement by increasing the Cooperator's capacity to conduct outreach and climate data resources to refugee-immigrant farming communities.
• Design and implement an engagement plan for building and maintaining rapport with the community members and stakeholders.
• Draft and implement the participation and engagement plan for collecting stakeholders lived experiences of climate change impact on their culture food system.
