INNOVATION PATHWAYS FOR DIVERSIFICATION IN MIDWEST AGRICULTURE

<b>Project Methods</b><br> 1. Advancing an innovation platform for diversification of Midwest agriculture.Current understanding of coordinated innovation focuses on niche forms of agriculture, and on developing countries and Western Europe . Little work has addressed the dominant cropping systems of the Midwest, with its particular economic, cultural, and political circumstances. Work on this objective will advance understanding of effective and efficient methods for coordinating innovation across supply/value chains, from sustainable production to end-use and market development. Work will focus on a Commercialization Accelerator Project now being organized by the Forever Green Initiative (www.forevergreen.umn.edu), which will organize and support an innovation platform to shorten and "derisk" the process of commercializing promising diversification crops. In brief, this process will conduct assessments of market and value-chain opportunities and constraints for these crops, design and implement pilot supply/value chains, evaluate results and use these to focus further R&D activities and to obtain additional resources for further commercialization. This approach will encompass diversification crops that provide the most promising near-term opportunities for this approach. We will draw these crops selectively from among the following crops: intermediate wheatgrass, winter camelina, pennycress, winter barley, winter pea, hybrid hazelnut, alfalfa, and other crops as resources permit. We will focus on an ongoing examination of the individual and collective roles and activities of participants in the coordinating institution (innovation platform), as these behaviors and associated attitudes and mental models are key to the emergence of new governing institutions.. Specifically, we will use participatory action research (PAR) methods, engaging participants in a coordinating institution (i.e., an innovation "platform") in an ongoing examination of their individual and collective roles and activities as participants in the coordinating institution. PAR is explicitly designed to explore the conceptions and experiences of practitioners regarding challenging or innovative aspects of their professional practice. It is based on the use of qualitative methods, including semi-structured interviews and group (focus group) discussions, and interpretive analyses of results from these interviews and focus-group discussions. Key issues will be perceptions of the effectiveness and efficiency of the coordinating institution (innovation platform) and the particular activities that will be used to achieve coordination. These will include group gatherings for "co-design" and foresight activities that enable so-called anticipatory governance of new crops, cropping systems, and value chains that will be necessary for commercialization of diversification crops. These co-design activities will explore the design of supply/value chains, with the aim of identifying and coordinating innovations across supply/value chains, including production, harvesting, transport, and other intermediate stages, and end-use and marketing. Other coordinating activities will be one-on-one conversations between platform coordinators and individual investigators, to elicit key factors, opportunities and constraints relevant to each element of supply/value chains. Qualitative data will be gathered before the operation of the innovation platform begins and at several intervals thereafter, likely after 12 and 18 months. Data from interviews and focus groups will be analyzed using grounded theory and the listening method.2. Enhancement of soil-related ecosystem services in agroecosystems by microbial husbandry.This work will be exemplified by one ongoing project, which is representative of other work that may occur during the project period. The project explores the effects on arbuscular-mycorrhizal (AMF) and saprophytic fungal communities of a Midwest-adapted implementation of the soil-health building strategy of "conservation agriculture" (CA, i.e., reduced tillage, continuous soil cover, and diversification) for corn/soybean production systems. This project provides replicated soil samples across a five year time sequence (2011-2015) from experimental sites in MN, IL, MI, and PA. We will assess the individual and interactive effects of the component practices of this CA system on fungal communities, to test our prediction that these practices will develop fungal communities that provide a broader range of ecosystem services. Fungal DNA will be extracted from soil samples and plant root samples, and sequenced via ITS2 bi-directional sequencing. Sequences will be processed to determine taxonomic identity of fungi, and fungal community structure will be assessed using non-metric dimensional scaling (NMDS), canonical discriminant analysis; effects of cover cropping and ridge-tillage on fungal community structure will be explored via the non-parametric multivariate statistical test, PERMANOVA. 3. Developing human capital for diversification. As noted above, we have worked with collaborators to define a curriculum and pedagogical model for the core curricula of undergraduate degree programs in Sustainable Food Systems (SFS). We are aiming to enhance these programs, which we see as important to developing a workforce that can support agricultural diversification, and also to develop curricular elements that can be used in other degree programs relevant to food and agriculture. Based on our own work and the literature, this model identifies the following learning approaches as essential for developing students' capacities for systemic thought and action: (1) holistic and pluralistic ways of understanding sustainability challenges in food and agricultural systems (2) multi-, inter- and trans-disciplinarity, (3) experiential learning approaches and, (4) participation in collective action projects. We are now undertaking a new phase in this work, in recognition that the core curricula of our SFS programs (at UMN, Montana State, and U. British Columbia (UBC)) were not developed in full cognizance of this model and its underlying principles. Therefore, we are now undertaking to refine our core curricula in the light of the principles, goals, and practices that are central to our model. In this new phase, we will carry out a process of curriculum mapping, development, refinement, evaluation, and dissemination. We will begin by conducting curriculum mapping, and developing and administering evaluation tools to assess the existing core curricula of the SFS programs at MSU, UMN, and UBC, informed by our curriculum and pedagogical model. Curriculum mapping is a systematic analysis of a program of study and its component learning activities (semester courses, internships, and "co-curriculum") to elucidate the structure and key functional aspects of the curriculum. Each of our SFS programs has an existing curriculum map, or similar document, for its core curriculum; we will redevelop the curriculum maps of each of our SFS programs. This process will allow us to evaluate how each institution is currently approaching its curriculum. Secondly, we will collaboratively refine existing core curricula of SFS programs at MSU, UMN, and UBC based on gaps identified through Objective #1, striving to enhance key deficiencies and to more fully implement our model at each institution via targeted interventions in the courses that make up the core curriculum at each institution. We will collaborate further to implement and evaluate these interventions in the core courses of the SFS programs at MSU, UMN, and UBC. Finally, we will refine and widely disseminate adaptable four-year core curriculum models for Baccalaureate degree-level SFS programs.