The Capacity-Building Stewardship Model: assessment of an agricultural network as a mechanism for improving regional agroecosystem sustainability

Abstract

. 2017. The Capacity-Building Stewardship Model: assessment of an agricultural network as a mechanism for improving regional agroecosystem sustainability. Ecology and Society 22 (1) ABSTRACT. Working lands have potential to meet agricultural production targets while serving as reservoirs of biological diversity and as sources of ecological services. Yet agricultural policy creates disincentives for this integration of conservation and production goals. While necessary, the development of a policy context that promotes agroecosystem sustainability will take time, and successful implementation will depend on a receptive agricultural audience. As the demands placed on working lands grow, there is a need for regional support networks that build agricultural producers' capacity for land stewardship. We used a social-ecological system framework to illustrate the Healthy Grown Potato Program as an agricultural network case study. Our Capacity-Building Stewardship Model reflects a 20-year experience working in collaboration with potato growers certified under an ecolabel in Wisconsin, USA. The model applies an evolving, modular farm stewardship standard to the entire farm-croplands and noncroplands. The model demonstrates an effective process for facilitating communication and shared learning among program participants, including agricultural producers, university extension specialists, nonprofit conservation partners, and industry representatives. The limitation of the model in practice has been securing funding to support expansion of the program and to ensure that the ecolabel standard is responsive to changes in the social-ecological system. Despite this constraint, the Capacity-Building Stewardship Model reveals an important mechanism for building regional commitment to conservation, with agricultural producers in a leadership role as architects, adopters, and advocates for stewardship behavior. Our experience provides important insight for the application of agri-environment schemes on private lands. The durability of a conservation ethic on working farms is likely to be enhanced when networks engage and support producers in an ongoing stewardship dialogue. Stewardship networks provide a means for coordination of conservation practices across property boundaries; with sufficient enrollment, they can achieve the spatial scale necessary to enhance regional agroecosystem sustainability.

Integration of Abandoned Lands in Sustainable Agriculture: The Case of Terraced Landscape Re-Cultivation in Mediterranean Island Conditions

“…Thus, younger generations abandon farming and more arable land remains uncultivated. The disadvantages of land fragmentation can be overcome through a collaboration system between farmers, stakeholders and local authorities, which will encourage active participation of local bodies and land users in a sustainable land management plan and will revitalize the local society and economy [68,69]. The land stewardship (LS) system could be a successful approach for a holistic management of abandoned and marginal areas.…”

Identifying ranching landscape values in the Calgary, Alberta region: Implications for land‐use planning

“…On the other hand, constructing ranching landscapes as primarily productive landscapes potentially undervalues other natural processes that are important to protect, such as riparian zones or critical habitat for threatened, endangered, or keystone species (Informant 28). The tension between production and conservation on working landscapes has been noted elsewhere (e.g., Huntsinger and Oviedo 2014;Duff et al 2017).…”

Ecological and financial strategies provide complementary benefits for smallholder climate resilience: insights from a simulation model

“…Thus, a longterm view may not be pragmatic if focusing exclusively on cover crops. Capacity building, educational opportunities, and subsidies for cover crop seeds and labor during the transition period may help to overcome this barrier (Baumgärtner and Quaas 2010, DeLonge et al 2016, Duff et al 2017. Integration of dynamic decision making and interactions with other institutional structures are avenues for future research on ecological resilience-enhancing strategies.…”