SCC-PG - Connecting Communities through Smart Tools and Sensors to Deliver Enhanced Ecosystem Services and Economic Returns from Regenerative Farmland Management

我们管理农业用地的方式是人类面临的两个最大挑战的核心：1）扭转土地和土壤退化，同时保持粮食和纤维的可持续生产，以满足不断增长的全球需求，2）利用土壤碳固存的潜力减少大气中的二氧化碳，以帮助稳定全球气候。为了实现这些目标，需要从根本上改变农业土地管理和我们粮食系统的更广泛结构。这一结构调整的核心必须是强调改善土壤健康和管理农业系统，以提供环境生态系统服务（例如，碳固存、改善水质、减少侵蚀、生物多样性传粉者栖息地等）作为作物产量的重要副产品。支持向这种所谓的再生农田管理过渡并维持这种管理，需要将所提供的各种环境服务的价值货币化，并确保农民保留更大比例的作物和环境服务价值。我们的提案旨在更好地了解采用再生农业做法的机会和障碍，以及区域农业社区关于土地使用管理的集体决策。为了进行这项调查，该项目将汇集全国领先的土壤科学家和社会科学家与山核桃街屡获殊荣的工程团队，设计一个综合研究项目，为促进再生农田管理奠定技术和社会基础。该项目将1）加强和扩大现有的农场温室气体（GHG）核算系统（COMET农场）与国家的最先进的传感器和地理空间数据集，以更好地促进农村社区的规模评估，和2）试点该系统在选定的社区，目标是推动农民从个人层面的决策，对集体决策的再生农田管理，这将导致改善，该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The way that we manage our agricultural lands is at the nexus of two of the greatest challenges facing humanity: 1) reversing land and soil degradation while maintaining sustainable production of food and fiber to meet growing global demands, and 2) harnessing the potential of soil carbon sequestration for drawdown of atmospheric CO2 to help stabilize global climate. To accomplish these goals will require fundamental changes in agricultural land management and the broader structure of our food systems. Central to this restructuring must be an emphasis on improving soil health and managing agricultural systems to provide environmental ecosystem services (e.g., carbon sequestration, improved water quality, reduced erosion, biodiverse pollinator habitat, etc.) as important coproducts to crop yields. Supporting the transition to, and maintenance of, this so-called regenerative farmland management requires monetizing the value of the various environmental services provided and ensuring that farmers retain a greater proportion of the value of both the crops and environmental services they cultivate. Our proposal seeks to develop a greater understanding of the opportunities for and barriers to adoption of regenerative agricultural practices, as well as collective decision-making about land use management by regional farming communities. To carry out this investigation, this project will bring together the nation’s leading soil scientists and social scientists with Pecan Street’s award-winning engineering team to design an integrative research project laying the technological and social foundations for facilitating regenerative farmland management. This project will 1) enhance and expand an existing farm greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting system (COMET-Farm) with state-of-the-art sensors and geospatial datasets to better facilitate landscape-scale assessments for rural communities, and 2) pilot that system in select communities with a goal of nudging farmers off individual-level decision-making towards collective decisions about regenerative farmland management that will result in improved, marketable carbon sequestration and ecosystem service provisioning.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.