Transitioning to Sustainable Agriculture Requires Growing and Sustaining an Ecologically Skilled Workforce

Abstract

In the face of rapidly advancing climate change, biodiversity loss, and water scarcity, it is clear that global agriculture must swiftly and decisively shift toward sustainability. Fortunately, farmers and researchers have developed a thoroughly studied pathway to this transition: agroecological farming systems that mimic natural ecosystems, creating tightly coupled cycles of energy, water, and nutrients. A critical and underappreciated feature of agroecological systems is that they replace fossil fuel-and chemical-intensive management with knowledge-intensive management. Hence, the greatest sustainability challenge for agriculture may well be that of replacing non-renewable resources with ecologically-skilled people, and doing so in ways that create and support desirable rural livelihoods. Yet over the past century, US agriculture has been trending in the opposite direction, rapidly replacing knowledgeable people with non-renewable resources and eroding rural economies in the process. Below, we suggest how US policy could pivot to enable and support the ecologically skilled workforce needed to achieve food security in the face of climate change.

“Who Has the Power to Adapt?” Frameworks for Resilient Agriculture Must Contend With the Power Dynamics of Land Tenure

“…Farmland financialization research shows how land registration and the formalization of property rights assemble land in a way that integrates with global capital and productivist agriculture (Li, 2014;Fairbairn, 2020). For young and beginning farmers who have the technical capacity to practice DFS, the land access barrier prevents their ability to enter the agricultural workforce at meaningful scales (Beckett and Galt, 2014;Carlisle et al, 2019) or limits their agency in restrictive tenant farming operations (Calo and De Master, 2016). Tenure also props up racial inequity, as those who control land access mechanisms align with the dominant groups in society (Horst and Marion, 2018;Figueroa et al, 2020).…”

“…provokes new lines of inquiry that support the justice dimensions of a DFS for adaptive capacity framework. Questioning the values behind and the distributional effects of existing land tenure dynamics of any given agricultural system allows proponents of DFS to understand who has the ability to make changes toward a "resilient trajectory" and what might need to be changed in order to broaden the class of potential diversified farmers (Carlisle et al, 2019).…”

The 10 Elements of Agroecology: enabling transitions towards sustainable agriculture and food systems through visual narratives

“…composting). This exemplary effort is in line with the need to build and sustain an ecologically skilled workforce to better manage or replace nonrenewable resources and hence support the transition to sustainable agriculture (Carlisle et al 2019). While granted land cannot be sold, lifetime use is possible if respecting agroecological approaches and practices.…”

Agroecological Transitions: A Mathematical Perspective on a Transdisciplinary Problem

“…Meanwhile, less wealthy economies struggle to compete. As food systems have become increasingly globalized, farms have become larger, produce fewer crop types and have converted to "deskilled" labor in order to compete in global markets (Carlisle et al, 2019).…”