Grant: Alliance Grants

Farms are becoming increasingly vulnerable to climate change, especially with the rising frequency and intensity of extreme weather events such as droughts or floods. At the same time, farmers employ a significant amount of fossil fuels to produce food, operate tractors, synthetic pesticides and fertilizer applications, and farmland maintenance. With intensive practices, agricultural field environment, can become stressed and lose the services that farmers rely on for crop production such as soil health, carbon storage capacity and other biological components such as micro-organisms diversity that allow plants to flourish. Natural systems can adjust to respond to environmental or climate changes; plants, for example, can change the timing of bloom or grow slower during droughts. Nature can also be a source of inspiration for farm managers and is part of what we call Nature-based Solutions (NbS). These solutions include, but are not limited to, actions that address farmers' challenges by protecting, sustainably managing, and restoring agroecosystems and their adjacent landscapes. By utilizing and implementing tools and strategies that we know work in natural systems, NbS can simultaneously provide support for agricultural production, its supporting ecosystem and, ultimately, human well-being. The project will assess the performance and impacts of cover cropping and alternative soil amendments on agricultural fields, including soil, crops, biodiversity and plant-insect interactions. Understanding how the changes in field conditions with new strategies will also encompass the social and economic assessment of these alternatives and how farmers perceive adopting such alternatives. To do so, the team will also dedicate time for knowledge transfer to farmers and the general public for greater social acceptability.