Rachel F. Brummel

Social learning in a policy-mandated collaboration: community wildfire protection planning in the eastern United States

Policies such as the US Healthy Forests Restoration Act (HFRA) mandate collaboration in planning to create benefits such as social learning and shared understanding among partners. However, some question the ability of top-down policy to foster successful local collaboration. Through in-depth interviews and document analysis, this paper investigates social learning and transformative learning in three case studies of Community Wildfire Protection Planning (CWPP), a policy-mandated collaboration under HFRA. Not all CWPP groups engaged in social learning. Those that did learned most about organisational priorities and values through communicative learning. Few participants gained new skills or knowledge through instrumental learning. CWPP groups had to commit to learning, but the design of the collaborative-mandate influenced the type of learning that was most likely to occur. This research suggests a potential role for top-down policy in setting the structural context for learning at the local level, but also confirms the importance of collaborative context and process in fostering social learning.

Community wildfire protection planning: is the Healthy Forests Restoration Act's vagueness genius?

The Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003 (HFRA) encourages communities to develop community wildfire protection plans (CWPPs) to reduce their wildland fire risk and promote healthier forested ecosystems. Communities who have developed CWPPs have done so using many different processes, resulting in plans with varied form and content. We analysed data from 13 case-study communities to illustrate how the characteristics of HFRA have encouraged communities to develop CWPPs that reflect their local social and ecological contexts. A framework for analysing policy implementation suggests that some elements of HFRA could have made CWPP development and implementation problematic, but these potential shortcomings in the statute have provided communities the freedom to develop CWPPs that are relevant to their conditions and allowed for the development of capacities that communities are using to move forward in several areas.

Modeling the effect of social networks on adoption of multifunctional agriculture

Rotational grazing (RG) has attracted much attention as a cornerstone of multifunctional agriculture (MFA) in animal systems, potentially capable of producing a range of goods and services of value to diverse stakeholders in agricultural landscapes and rural communities, as well as broader societal benefits. Despite these benefits, global adoption of MFA has been uneven, with some places seeing active participation, while others have seen limited growth. Recent conceptual models of MFA emphasize the potential for bottom-up processes and linkages among social and environmental systems to promote multifunctionality. Social networks are critical to these explanations but how and why these networks matter is unclear. We investigated fifty-three farms in three states in the United States (New York, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania) and developed a stylized model of social networks and systemic change in the dairy farming system. We found that social networks are important to RG adoption but their impact is contingent on social and spatial factors. Effects of networks on farmer decision making differ according to whether they comprise weak-tie relationships, which bridge across disparate people and organizations, or strong-tie relationships, which are shared by groups in which members are well known to one another. RG adoption is also dependent on features of the social landscape including the number of dairy households, the probability of neighboring farmers sharing strong ties, and the role of space in how networks are formed. The model replicates features of real-world adoption of RG practices in the Eastern US and illustrates pathways toward greater multifunctionality in the dairy landscape. Such models are likely to be of heuristic value in network-focused strategies for agricultural development.

Interpreting federal policy at the local level: the wildland–urban interface concept in wildfire protection planning in the eastern United States

In 2003, the Healthy Forests Restoration Act (HFRA) called for USA communities at risk of wildfire to develop Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPPs) requiring local, state and federal actors to work together to address hazardous fuels reduction and mitigation efforts. CWPPs can provide the opportunity for local government to influence actions on adjacent public land, by establishing local boundaries of the wildland–urban interface (WUI), the area where urban lands meet or intermix with wildlands. The present paper explores local response to the HFRA and CWPPs in the eastern USA, specifically if and how communities are using the policy incentive to identify the WUI. We conducted document reviews of eastern CWPPs, as well as qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews with participants in four case studies. We found tremendous variation in local response to HFRA, with plans completed at multiple scales and using different planning templates. The WUI policy incentive was not used in all CWPPs, suggesting that the incentive is not as useful in the eastern USA, where public land is less dominant and the perceived fire risk is lower than in the West. Even so, many communities in the East completed CWPPs to improve their wildfire preparedness.

Does multifunctionality matter to US farmers? Farmer motivations and conceptions of multifunctionality in dairy systems

The concept of multifunctionality describes and promotes the multiple non-production benefits that emerge from agricultural systems. The notion of multifunctional agriculture was conceived in a European context and largely has been used in European policy arenas to promote and protect the non-production goods emerging from European agriculture. Thus scholars and policy-makers disagree about the relevance of multifunctionality for United States agricultural policy and US farmers. In this study, we explore lived expressions of multifunctional agriculture at the farm-level to examine the salience of the multifunctionality concept in the US. In particular, we investigate rotational grazing and confinement dairy farms in the eastern United States as case studies of multifunctional and productivist agriculture. We also analyze farmer motivations for transitioning from confinement dairy to rotational grazing systems. Through interviews with a range of dairy producers in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and New York, we found that farmers were motivated by multiple factors--including improved cow health and profitability--to transition to rotational grazing systems to achieve greater farm-level multifunctionality. Additionally, rotational grazing farmers attributed a broader range of production and non-production benefits to their farm practice than confinement dairy farmers. Further, rotational grazing dairy farmers described a system-level notion of multifunctionality based on the interdependence of multiple benefits across scales--from the farm to the national level--emerging from grazing operations. We find that the concept of multifunctionality could be expanded in the US to address the interdependence of benefits emerging from farming practices, as well as private benefits to farmers. We contend that understanding agricultural benefits as experienced by the farmer is an important contribution to enriching the multifunctionality concept in the US context, informing agri-environmental policy and programs, and ultimately expanding multifunctional agricultural practice in the US.

Mobilizing place: Examining mobility, identity, and boundary in the politics of Asian carp

The movement of Asian carp species through connected river systems is a transboundary challenge for actors seeking to reduce their impacts. In this paper, I use “place” as an analytical lens, focusing on how concepts of mobility, identity, and boundary emerged as critical elements in the public framing of Asian carp problems and solutions. Drawing upon in-depth interviews as well as newspaper, policy, and media documents, I discuss how Asian carp policy discourses have centered on protecting Minnesota’s inland lakes or “Sky blue waters” from invasive Asian carp moving up the Mississippi River. Advocacy groups in Minnesota view Asian carp as threatening the place-based Minnesota “lake culture” and have used that discourse to motivate and mobilize public support. Consequently, management activities have focused on creating boundaries in the Mississippi River to deflect Asian carp movement into Minnesota lakes, which emerge as the places of primary concern and value. Ultimately, exploring the mobility of Asian carp and the ways actors mobilize in response illuminates the critical role of place in understanding the politics of Asian carp in the Upper Mississippi River.