Enhancing production, resilience, and ecosystem health in Northern regenerative agricultural systems

北部地区拥有加拿大最丰富的自然资源基础，但气候和景观对农业生产提出了独特的挑战。白昼时间的延长使得生长季节短而密集，而地形、土壤和降水的巨大变化意味着作物的管理必须与南方的同类作物不同。在北方的环境中，通过频繁耕作、使用合成肥料和杀虫剂来维持生产力的大型单一种植系统更难维持。因此，艾伯塔省北部的许多农民开发了一种可再生的、减少投入的生产模式，在保持盈利生产的同时促进土壤健康、生物多样性和可持续性。然而，为了提高再生农业的采用率和经济可行性，需要更多的研究来确定管理决策对生产力、资源利用效率和生态系统健康的影响。我们的主要目标是开发一个协作的、农民驱动的研究和推广项目，以评估RA实践对北方牲畜和作物综合生产系统生态系统健康和生产的影响。RA农场是复杂的，适应性强的，跨越了环境、文化和价值观的多样性。因此，研究过程必须由当地、本土和西方科学知识体系的实践者的见解来指导，以促进富有成效的知识共享和创新。在与RA从业者进行详细磋商后，我们将围绕种植者和土地管理者最迫切的需求，采用农场参与式方法制定我们的研究计划。我们将调查常见的RA做法，如覆盖作物管理和放牧策略对生物多样性、盈利能力、动物和传粉媒介健康的影响。该计划还包含了大量的扩展和外展发展组成部分。推广和知识交流基础设施的发展是确保研究成果有效转移和应用于最终用户的必要条件。这项研究和推广计划的成果将为种植者提供优化RA实践所需的知识，成为再生农产品生产的世界领导者，同时在气候变化的时代保护我们在加拿大北部独特的自然资源基础。

Northern environments contain some of the richest natural resource bases in Canada, but the climate and landscapes present unique challenges for agricultural production. The extended daylight hours necessitate a short but intensive growing season, and the substantial variability in topography, soils, and precipitation means that crops must be managed differently than counterparts to the south. Large monoculture cropping systems whose productivity is maintained through frequent tillage, synthetic fertilizers, and pesticides are more difficult to sustain in Northern environments. Thus, many farmers in Alberta's North have developed a regenerative, reduced input model of production that promotes soil health, biodiversity and sustainability while maintaining profitable production. However, to enhance adoption and economic viability of regenerative agriculture (RA), more research is required to determine the impacts of management decisions on productivity, resource-use efficiency, and ecosystem health. Our main objective is to develop a collaborative, farmer-driven research and extension program to evaluate the effect of RA practices on ecosystem health and production in Northern integrated livestock and crop production systems. RA farms are complex, adaptive, and span a diversity of environments, cultures, and values. As such, it is imperative that research process is guided by the insight of practitioners across local, indigenous and western scientific knowledge systems to foster productive knowledge sharing and innovation. After detailed consultations with RA practitioners, we will develop our research program around the of the most pressing needs of growers and land stewards using on-farm participatory approaches. We will investigate the influence of common RA practices such as cover crop management and grazing strategies on biodiversity, profitability, and animal and pollinator health. This program also contains a substantial extension and outreach development component. The development of extension and knowledge exchange infrastructure is essential to ensure research results are effectively transferred and applied to benefit the end user. The outcomes of this research and extension program will provide growers with the knowledge needed to optimize RA practices, become world leaders in the production of regeneratively farmed goods, while conserving our unique natural resource base in Northern Canada in an era of changing climate.