New Report: 21st Century Agriculture Renaissance: Solutions from the Land

February 18, 2021

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(Solutions from the Land) “There has never been a greater need for an Agricultural Renaissance. The many voices of farmers, echoing across centuries of scarcity and abundance, challenge us to find new ways forward, paths that produce abundance for expanding populations while rejecting wasteful destruction of resources. We must seek these new ways to collaborate and innovate together. For if we can create an unprecedented pathway of collaboration as many peoples who inhabit this small planet, we may be able to tell the remarkable story of our species as it re-learns to thrive sustainably.”

The 21st Century Agriculture Renaissance: Solutions from the Land report was written by farmers, ranchers, foresters and other land stewards, advised by a broad team of nationally and globally renowned experts: scientists, climate and clean energy authorities, conservation and environmental specialists, food systems and supply chain partners, economists, government agency officials, and more. It lays out a vision for an agricultural renaissance in this century and offers a model for constructing sustainable and resilient systems across working landscapes to counter growing interlinked global food security, nutrition, health and climate challenges.

The report was released by SfL Co-Chair A.G. Kawamura during a side event that SfL, the Global Farmer Network, the Global Dairy Platform, along with Argentina, Australia, the Netherlands and the United States, hosted Feb. 11 in conjunction with the 75^th anniversary meeting of FAO's Committee on Food Security held virtually from Rome.

The paper notes that the 21^st century is now fully under way, amid weather-related crop failures; locust plagues; wildfires and deforestation; regional conflicts; loss of biodiversity; erosion of ecosystem health and functionality; a changing climate; and the spillover of 2020's global pandemic into 2021.

"Our 20^th century agricultural production and conservation systems are increasingly under stress and are proving to be inadequate to manage the risks and uncertainties of 21^st century production" said Kawamura. "Our report promotes solution pathways that better boost not only food security, but energy, healthy ecosystems and livelihoods as well."

The SfL paper sets out a vision and pathways for defining agriculture through the lens of a broader reality of living as opposed to simply surviving. It promotes the resilience needed to maintain abundance in the years to come.

"Today's agriculture must address hunger, livelihoods, water scarcity, clean water, healthy soil, ecosystem resilience, climate change, greenhouse gases and a whole range of local and global realities. " said the report's Co-Chair Howard-Yana Shapiro, a Senior Fellow at the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, University of California in Davis.

The paper offers a lengthy list of technologies and innovations that address the proliferating and varied challenges that farmers, ranchers and foresters are facing. Smartphones, computing technologies, geographic information systems (GIS), global positioning systems (GPS), remote sensing, models, robotics, drones, and on-demand local climate projections are being applied to support precision agriculture, agricultural ecosystem and biodiversity management, and more effective ways for farmers and others in farming landscapes to communicate and collaborate.

Advanced science is uncovering processes in microbiology, plant biology, agroecology and landscape ecology – at field, farm and landscape scales – that can be harnessed to develop nature-positive production systems. Inventions such as robotics, machine learning, artificial intelligence, CRISPR, nanotechnologies, genetic and biological engineering, sound wave pulverization and data-rich modeling are rapidly moving beyond conceptualization to experimental trials and mainstream uses.

"Yet despite these advances," the report warns, "without the full engagement of farmers, foresters and their partners, our capacity to transform the systems of agriculture for the future will be compromised. The development of a more dynamic and robust toolbox is essential, but will be insufficient without the voice, experience, and understanding that the stewards of the land provide as they move beyond timely projections to address changes and threats in real time.

"Those on the front line must have support and resources to strike new ground in managing their lands and shaping their working landscapes," agreed report Co-Chair Tom Lovejoy, who serves as Biodiversity Chair and Professor at George Mason University and previously as President of the Heinz Center.

A vision for working landscapes of the future offered by the paper brings production, environmental, food, and nutrition policies into harmony and streamlines regulations that are too often overlapping and contradictory. It is a model that engages with farmers to sharpen a shared focus on outcomes, not prescriptive mandates that tell farmers how to farm.

The vision calls for strategies anchored by the three overlapping climate smart agriculture (CSA) pillars: 1) sustainable intensification of production, 2) adaptive management and 3) greenhouse gas reduction. The paper notes that a CSA approach does not prioritize any one of the pillars and represents the simultaneous co-benefits that accrue from their pursuit. Subsequently, a "many pathways" approach to managing working lands recognizes the tremendous diversity of agricultural landscapes and ecosystems, and enables producers to utilize the systems and practices that best support their own unique situations and circumstances.

The overarching objective of the vision for 21^st century agricultural and forestry production systems offered by SfL's white paper is the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), 17 objectives set in 2015 for 2030 by UN members to call for (among other outcomes) the elimination of hunger, the restoration of clean water resources, the development of clean energy and the mitigation of a changing climate.

Included in the paper are "stories from the land" that document the work being undertaken on many farming, ranching and forestry operations that showcase "win-win" scenarios: systems and practices that offer that present solutions for global challenges, while improving environmental resilience, building strong rural communities, engaging consumers, and enhancing public health through access to nutritious food.

Thanks to hard work, indigenous knowledge, innovation and technology, and uncommon collaboration among those who make their living off the land, agriculture is poised to bloom, grow, and emerge as a primary solution pathway towards the achievement of worldwide sustainable development goals. SfL invites partners across the planet to join in this epic quest and movement to position farmers, ranchers and foresters at the forefront of addressing global challenges. READ MORE READ REPORT

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Excerpts from Report: The phrase, “farmers, ranchers and foresters” encompasses farmers, ranchers, foresters, orchardists, graziers, aquaculturalists, and all those who are stewards of working landscapes. Working landscapes are agricultural croplands, grasslands, orchards and forests, vineyards, fisheries, and other lands and waters that are managed for livelihoods and the production of food, fiber, energy, and ecosystem services. The transformations that a farmer-led Renaissance brings require broad collaboration with industries, academia, civil society, and policymakers to bring the best science and engineering innovations to system-level solutions.
...

The third pillar of our 21st century CSA vison is a commitment to greenhouse gas reduction that embraces the myriad ways in which agricultural landscapes can be managed to deliver high-value, near-term carbon mitigation and sequestration services. At a time when an all-hands-on deck approach to addressing the climate crisis is required, these landscapes can be managed to improve nutrient use efficiency, reduce emissions, retain and sequester carbon in soils and vegetation, capture methane, and produce clean energy in the form of electricity and renewable natural gas.

As shown in a recent study by researchers at Environmental Health & Engineering Inc., ethanol, biodiesel and other homegrown renewables—such as corn-based ethanol, which represents a 46 percent greenhouse gas emissions reduction compared to gasoline—offer low-cost, dependable fuel alternatives that help enhance energy security, reduce carbon emissions, and improve public health (Scully 2021). These pathways can reinforce and amplify place-based management of soil, vegetation, and animal systems that could, applied worldwide, achieve by 2100 a drawdown of 157
parts per million in atmospheric CO2: more than the total increase from pre-industrial levels to date (Lal 2020).

Enabling policies and programs that address climate change can give each land manager a menu of options to both best
serve their individual needs, and work cooperatively with others in their landscapes to unlock the enormous potential of farms, ranches, and forests to lead the world in both economic and environmental sustainability. READ MORE

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