"In the end we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand; and we will understand only what we have been taught."
Baba Dioum
EWG Initiatives
The current initiatives are:
- Assessing Carbon Sequestration in Complex Agricultural Landscapes
- AgricultureBridge Initiative [AB]
- Landscape Measures Resource Center [LMRC]
- Sustainability of food Systems [SFS]
Assessing Carbon Sequestration in Complex Agricultural Landscapes
Photo by Scott Bauer for the ARS USDA Image Gallery
Academic Venture Fund (AVF), CCSF
The Academic Venture Fund (AVF) of the Cornell Center for a Sustainable Future (CCSF) has awarded a grant to a team of Cornell faculty members to explore the development of a cost-effective land use carbon assessment methodology that can help farmers around the world benefit from emerging carbon markets and bring the agriculture sector into global climate change treaties.
Cornell faculty involved in the initiative are James Lassoie (NTRES), Antonio Bento (AEM), Steve DeGloria (CSS), David Lee (AEM), Philip McMichael (DSOC), Alexander Travis (VET), David Wolfe (HORT), and Louise Buck (NTRES).
The group is collaborating with Ecoagriculture Partners, Forest Trends, The Terrestrial Carbon Group, COMACO and others to pioneer a methodology that accounts for potential co-benefits of carbon-rich farming including hydrological function, biodiversity conservation, livelihood security and others. Click here to download the project proposal.
More information about this initiative will be available soon.
AgricultureBridge.org
- AgricultureBridge (AB) is a collaborative initiative between Cornell University, Ecoagriculture Partners and the University of California at Berkeley that is developing a communication and learning system designed to connect ecoagriculture innovators and college classrooms around the world. The three-year initiative is funded by the USDA´s Higher Education Challenge Program.
Connecting Ecoagriculture Practitioners and Student Researchers
Presently in its first year, the AB team is developing 10 multi-media case studies of ecoagriculture practice and practitioners in developing countries and the USA, and a web based platform that will be key components of the learning system.
AgricultureBridge seeks to connect students and practitioners in mutually-beneficial problem-solving to meet the challenge of satisfying growing demand for agricultural production while maintaining ecosystem services and ensuring local livelihood security in diverse landscapes around the world. For more information about this initiative watch this video, or visit the website agriculturebridge.org.
Landscape Measures Initiative
Landscape Measures Resource Center: a web-based tool to build capacity for assessing the performance of ecoagriculture landscapes
The EWG in collaboration with Ecoagriculture Partners (EP) lead an international effort to create and maintain a Landscape Measures Resource Center (LMRC) based on their Framework for Measuring the Performance of Ecoagriculture Landscapes. The online site provide concepts and tools that professionals in agriculture and natural resources, biodiversity conservation, and rural development can use with local communities to assess whether landscapes are 'moving in the right direction' with respect to the goals for conservation, food production and livelihood support that define an ecoagriculture landscape.
The LMRC provides tools, also, for assessing the status of institutions that support, or potentially could support integrated landscapes. The EWG anticipates that improving capacities to measure ecoagricultural performance will lead to better management. For information contact the EWG Coordinator, Louise Buck, or visit the LMRC.
Assessing Sustainability of Food Systems
Photo by Eric Hunt
Collaboration with the interdisciplinary team for research on Sustainable Food Systems
Consumer interest in "eating local" has increased sharply in recent years, although locally grown food still accounts for a small share of food sales. Professors Miguel Gomez (AEM), Huaizhu Gao (CEE), Dennis Miller (FDSC), Ardyth Gillespie (NS), and Jonathan Russell-Anelli (CSS) are leading a two-part project that will yield a method for assessing the sustainability of local and conventional food systems.
The group will develop an assessment model through a series of seminars and workshops, and then apply it in a study comparing the sustainability of one local and one conventional supply chain for fruits and vegetables.
The project will quantify the overall sustainability of a shift from conventional to local food systems, shedding light on key policy questions about the nation’s food supply.