Ryan C. Atwell

Linking Resilience Theory and Diffusion of Innovations Theory to Understand the Potential for Perennials in the U.S. Corn Belt

In the last 200 yr, more than 80% of the land in the U.S. Corn Belt agro-ecosystem has been converted from natural perennial vegetation to intensive agricultural production of row crops. Despite research showing how re-integration of perennial vegetation, e.g., cover crops, pasture, riparian buffers, and restored wetlands, at strategic landscape positions can bolster declining regional ecosystem functions, the amount of land area devoted to row crop production in the Corn Belt continues to increase. As this region enters a time of fast-paced and uncertain reorganization driven by the emerging bioeconomy, changes in land use will continue to take place that will impact the resilience of the Corn Belts linked social and ecological systems for years to come. Both resilience theory and the diffusion of innovations theory investigate how change is brought about in systems through the adaptation and innovation of social actors. In this paper, we integrate these two frameworks in the analysis of 33 in-depth interviews to improve our understanding of how rural Corn Belt stakeholders make conservation decisions in the midst of an uncertain future. Interview data indicate that the adoption of conservation practices is based not only on immediate profitability but also on the interplay between contextual factors at three distinct levels of the system: compatibility with farm priorities, profitability, practices, and technologies; community-level reinforcement through local social networks, norms, and support structures; and consistent, straightforward, flexible, and well-targeted incentives and regulations issuing from regional institutions. Interviewees suggest that the multiscale drivers that currently support the continued expansion of row crop production could be realigned with conservation objectives in landscapes of the future. Adaptation of social actors through collaborative learning at the community level may be instrumental in brokering the sort of multiscale system change that would lead to more widespread adoption of perennial cover types in the Corn Belt.

Landscape, community, countryside: linking biophysical and social scales in US Corn Belt agricultural landscapes

Understanding the interplay between ecological and social factors across multiple scales is integral to landscape change initiatives in productive agricultural regions such as the rural US Corn Belt. We investigated the cultural context surrounding the use of perennial cover types—such as stream buffers, wetlands, cellulosic bioenergy stocks, and diverse cropping rotations—to restore water quality, biodiversity, and ecosystem function within a Corn Belt agricultural mosaic in Iowa, USA. Through ethnographic techniques and 33 in-depth interviews, we examined what was most important to rural stakeholders about their countryside. We then used photo elicitation to probe how interviewees’ assessments of farm practices involving perennial cover types were related to their sense of place. Our interviewees perceived their rural “countryside” as a linked social and biophysical entity, identifying strongly with the farming lifestyle and with networks of people across the landscape. While most interviewees approved of perennial farm practices on marginal agricultural land, implementation of these practices was neither a priority nor strongly assimilated into rural experience and ethics. We identified three scale boundaries in our interviewees’ perception of place which present key challenges and opportunities for landscape change: landscape-community, individual-community, and community-institution. In all cases, community social norms and networks—exhibited at landscape spatial scales—may be instrumental in bridging these boundaries and enabling networks of perennial cover types that span privately owned and operated farms.

Tweak, Adapt, or Transform: Policy Scenarios in Response to Emerging Bioenergy Markets in the U.S. Corn Belt

Emerging bioenergy markets portend both boon and bane for regions of intensive agricultural production worldwide. To understand and guide the effects of bioenergy markets on agricultural landscapes, communities, and economies, we engaged leaders in the Corn Belt state of Iowa in a participatory workshop and follow-up interviews to develop future policy scenarios. Analysis of workshop and interview data, in conjunction with the results of regional social and ecological research, was used to develop a heuristic model outlining interactions between key drivers and outcomes of regional landscape change. Three policy scenarios were built on this framework and included the following approaches: tweak, adapt, and transform. Our results suggest that if macroscale markets, technologies, and federal farm policies are allowed to be the overriding drivers of farm owner and operator decision making, Iowas agricultural landscapes will likely become highly efficient at row crop production at the cost of other desired outcomes. However, the perspectives of Iowa leaders demonstrate how multifunctional agricultural landscapes can be achieved through a concerted portfolio of change coordinated across local, regional, and national scales.

Warren, J., C. Lawson, K. Belcher: The agri-environment

Agriculture accounts for nearly 40% of global land use and its footprint is rapidly expanding in order to supply food, fiber, energy, and other societal goods and ecosystem services to our burgeoning global population (Benton 2007). Consequently, the interface between farms, species, and ecosystems is a frontier of scientific inquiry and, for ecological scientists, studying human-dominated systems is a particularly daunting challenge latent with interdisciplinary hurdles. In particular, emerging sub-disciplines, such as landscape ecology and conservation biology, must rapidly interface with many other disciplines (e.g., agriculture, anthropology, economics, geography, and sociology) which are grounded in much different approaches and terminologies. Perhaps because of the challenge inherent in such integration, few ecologists have attempted to synthesize the science at the intersection between agriculture and the environment, leaving the task instead to scholars of culture and agriculture. That is, until now. In their book, The AgriEnvironment, Warren, Lawson, and Belcher (hereafter Warren et al.) elucidate the nexus between agriculture and environment from a fundamentally ecological point of view. Chapter 1 begins by defining agriculture in terms of basic biological principles—as competition between populations of species for limited resources. Because its basic aim is to systematically increase the productivity of certain species while limiting others, Warren et al. point out that agriculture can never fit a simple definition of ‘‘natural.’’ Rather, it is thoroughly dominated by human decision-making processes which are presented in later chapters that deal with agricultural economics, political history, and farm management. While reading The Agri-Environment, I found myself imagining how a book with this sort of breadth might form the groundwork for a syllabus in an interdisciplinary undergraduate or graduate level class offered by an agronomy or natural resource ecology department. Chapters 2 through 4 outline the history of agricultural policy, describe the impact of agriculture on the environment, and offer an overview of international agri-environmental policy responses. Chapters 5–7 detail approaches to farm conservation planning and management in Europe and North America, Chapter 8 describes and evaluates agricultural approaches that claim lower environmental impacts, and Chapter 9 presents the challenges of complexity and scale raised by landscape ecology. While making my mental syllabus, however, The Agri-Environment left me wanting more—and less—for my would-be students in several key ways. Its stated aim is focused too narrowly on the sub-discipline of population ecology and the book begins with a pedantic progression of mathematical R. C. Atwell (&) Natural Resource Ecology and Management, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011, USA e-mail: ryancardiffatwell@gmail.com

Mediated Modeling: A System Dynamics Approach to Environmental Consensus Building

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