Sustainable Agriculture System Design

NSF GCR AWARD

Collaborative Research: Designing a Sustainable Agricultural Production System through Convergence Research Using a Multi-Scale Ecosystems Approach

Coffee, the world’s most traded tropical agricultural commodity, has led to significant environmental impacts including deforestation and water supply compromises due to increased production and processing. This proposal aims to enhance sustainability in coffee production by using a convergence approach to design a system that incentivizes forest conservation through improved yields, cost reductions, carbon trading, and ecosystem services. We employ the Multi-Scale Ecosystem Framework (MEF), which integrates ecosystem principles across sustainability dimensions and scales, enabling the identification of synergies, trade-offs, and vulnerabilities to adapt the system effectively before and during its implementation.

 

Proposal  

Phase 1: Investigating Farm Scale Sustainability

Our goal in this phase is to evaluate how regional and global conditions affect the social, economic, and environmental sustainability at the scale of an individual farm that uses our design. This work will allow us to grow our community further and incorporate more coffee farms into the system.

Aim 1.1 focuses on quantifying and leveraging forest ecosystem services to support biodiversity, particularly avian species, which are crucial for both pest control and pollination within coffee farms. By integrating these ecological benefits, we anticipate that IOC practices will lead to higher yields and more stable farm income, as hypothesized under Aim 1.2. We will assess the economic viability of these farms by modeling potential revenue streams from enhanced coffee yields and carbon credits, adjusted for varying market prices. Additionally, Aim 1.3 seeks to understand the social and economic drivers behind farmers’ willingness to adopt sustainable practices, incorporating factors such as income stability, community benefits, and environmental conditions. Through surveys and choice experiments, we will capture data on farm owner preferences and perceptions, which will help tailor IOC practices to local needs and conditions, ultimately encouraging wider adoption and informing best practices for sustainable coffee production.

Phase 2: Multi -Scale Sustainable Coffee System

Our goal is to scale up from the farm scale to implement sustainable coffee
at a regional scale work and evaluate system resilience to exogenous changes in climate and markets.

We aim to refine and expand upon the foundational work conducted in phase one, focusing on regional-scale sustainability and the integration of new interventions necessary for the evolution of the coffee production system. Our efforts will include optimizing coffee and carbon marketing, advancing carbon verification, and ensuring environmental conservation through effective forest management. Key interventions will include developing greener processing technologies and enhancing water and biodiversity management through empirical systems modeling. We also plan to expand microcredit and training programs, particularly emphasizing women’s participation to boost social and economic sustainability. Ultimately, these actions aim to establish a resilient, adaptable coffee production system capable of withstanding global environmental and market shifts.