Solutions from the Land: Delivering 21st Century Solutions To 21st Century Challenges

(Solutions from the Land) Last week marks the fifth anniversary of Solutions from the Land (SfL), a nonprofit organization that places farmers, ranchers and foresters at the forefront of resolving food system, energy, environmental and climate challenges and achieving global sustainable development goals. It is an important milestone that marks a number of accomplishments.

The roots of SfL began to grow 10 years ago, when consensus was reached among agricultural, forestry, conservation, academic and business leaders that the policies, programs and practices of the past for managing land were not adequate to meet the needs of tomorrow. This wide range of experts built a roadmap to achieve their vision, including the need for state, national and global initiatives and alliances.

These efforts offer farmers, ranchers, foresters and collaborating partners the opportunities to showcase examples of innovation and proactively advocate for policies, partnerships, investments and research. These actions will enable agricultural landscapes to deliver near-term, cost-effective, integrated solutions to global mega-challenges: food and energy security; sustainable economic development; and environmental improvement.

The longest standing SfL initiative is 25x'25, an alliance of stakeholders who have driven the vision of U.S. farms, ranches and forestlands providing 25 percent of the nation's energy needs with renewable resources - biofuels, bioenergy, wind, solar, geothermal and hydropower - by 2025, while continuing to produce safe, abundant, and affordable food, feed, fiber and energy.

When 25x'25 was launched back in 2004, 5.75 percent of the total energy the United States consumed came from renewable forms of energy. In 2018, 11.52 percent of the total energy consumed in the nation came from renewable sources.

SfL opened up a second platform in 2015, Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA), and last year formed the North America Climate Smart Agriculture Alliance(NACSAA), a platform for inspiring, educating, and equipping agricultural partners to innovate effective local adaptations that sustain productivity, enhance climate resilience, and contribute to the local and global goals for sustainable development.

Among the state climate initiatives undertaken by SfL is the bringing together of agriculture and forestry leaders in Missouri, who looked into the future and examined what science is telling them is coming from changing climatic conditions and extreme weather events. Last October, the work group issued a report that presented opportunities to improve resiliency and ensure the economic viability of the state's farming and forestry sectors for decades to come.

SfL facilitated a similar but more expansive initiative in North Carolina, where a farmer/forester-led, multi-stakeholder coalition explored the impacts of increasingly extreme weather events and changing climatic conditions on the agricultural and forestry sectors of North Carolina. This work group constructed an adaptive management plan to improve agriculture and forestry resiliency and further enhance the economic viability of these sectors for decades to come. SfL announced last week that a similar initiative is now underway in Florida.

Only last month, a diverse range of stakeholders from around Ohio validated SfL's integrated land management model. More than two years of work resulted in an "Ohio Smart Agriculture: Solutions from the Land" action plan, ...

On the international level, SfL/NACSAA leaders are continuing their participation in the Global Alliance for Climate Smart Agriculture and the ongoing global UNFCCC climate change negotiations. Those include the development and implementation of new strategies for adaptation and mitigation within the agriculture sector that will both help reduce emissions from the sector and build its resilience to the effects of climate change. READ MORE