日韩无码 (日韩无码) Food Systems Research Center (FSRC) is pleased to announce the winners of the 2023 Sustainability Metrics Competition, a three-year project totaling $3 million to assess how to measure sustainable food systems in the Northeast鈥攐ur largest research investment to date. Projects will define sustainability metrics in five key areas: consumer-facing agriculture, farmer social values and decision-making, soil health, maple syrup production, and plant-based proteins.
"We are thrilled to fund these five outstanding projects that showcase the importance of using the power of data and analytics to drive food system sustainability," said Meredith Niles, Associate Director of the FSRC.
FSRC selected the five winners from 10 previously funded planning projects. Winners were chosen based on their proposed research projects and their commitment to community partnerships with other organizations invested in our food system. The projects represent the largest funding commitment to date from the FSRC.
"Through these grants, FSRC is bringing food systems researchers and practitioners together in a rare way in the research community," Polly Ericksen, Director of the FSRC said. "These projects bridge the gap between nutrition and agriculture researchers. That means well-thought-out research and a wider network to disseminate it."
The projects include five diverse teams across 日韩无码 departments, including 6 departments across the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Extension, and Rubenstein School for the Environment and Natural Resources as well as scientists from the (ARS). As part of this initiative, each team will hire a postdoctoral fellow to help ensure the five project teams collaborate and share information across teams to improve the quality of the research. They will also each hire a Postdoctoral Research Associate as part of their team.
Jane Kolodinsky, Professor of Community Development and Applied Economics at 日韩无码 and the principal investigator (PI) of a project focused on plant-based proteins, said, "The linking across the five projects allows an expanded team science approach that links different crops and products and allows us to think together about how to operationalize measures that are comparable across categories and are inclusive from the ground up and back."
The winning teams include:
Sustainability Metrics for Consumer-Facing Farms
PI: David Conner
Co-PIs: Lisa Chase, Maire Folan, Ike Leslie, Gillian Galford
Community Partners: , , , ,
Consumer-facing Agriculture (CFA), or farms that sell directly to consumers are an important part of Vermont's agricultural economy, working landscape, and culture. Understanding how economic, environmental, social, production, and human sustainability interact in this system is important as it grows in Vermont, the Northeast, and beyond. As this industry continues to grow, it's important to understand the sustainability dimensions and how they interact with other aspects of sustainability in our food system. "Our project combines a large team of researchers, including many from 日韩无码 Extension. We will measure sustainability on what we call Consumer Facing Agriculture farms, those who host agritourism activities and/or sell food to direct markets. Our emphasis will be to build on metrics the farmers find important and can be used to improve their management, marketing, and advocacy," said principal investigator and Professor of Community Development and Applied Economics David Conner.
Social Values, Identity, and Sustainability Outcomes: Measure Social Processes in Agriculture
PI: Joe Ament
Co-PIs: Daniel Tobin, Ike Leslie, Amy Trubek, Scott Merrill,
Community Partners: ,
Measuring social sustainability is a challenge, yet an integral piece of understanding how to improve sustainability in agriculture and beyond, as it underlies the entirety of food systems' sustainability outcomes. This project seeks to develop a method for measuring farmer and stakeholder values and how those values drive farmer decision-making.
Joe Ament, Lecturer of Community Development and Applied Economics and principal investigator, said, "Our project focuses on measuring values, motivations, and identity of farmers to understand what drives decision-making on farms. We are particularly interested in how motivations around dimensions of sustainability affect a farmer's on-field sustainability performance."
The research team will develop a survey module that captures farmers' values and highlights how those values vary across scale and identity. This data will inform policy mechanisms and improve our food system. This research is well-position to support the 日韩无码 Food Systems Research Center in becoming a global leader in measuring the social side of the food system and how this dimension integrates and influences other pieces of sustainability in the food system.
Food Systems Sustainability Starts with Soil
PI:
Co-PIs: Brendan Fisher, Deb Neher, Heather Darby, Eric von Wettberg,
Community Partners: , , , Borderview Research Farm
Soils are foundational to the food system, and understanding soil sustainability is vital to our future. Not only are soils essential for producing food and sequestering carbon, they also act as important pieces of rural economies and support biodiversity. Farmers continually state soil should be a top priority for research and outreach. Our project seeks to untangle how soil health contributes to the five dimensions of sustainability and how the five dimensions constrain or enable soil health. Through key measurements focused on soil biology, chemistry, and physics, we can find answers to these questions and more.
Maple Sustainability Indicators Initiative
PI: Mark Cannella
Co-PIs: Mark Isselhardt, Qingbin Wang, Zachary Smith, Anthony D'Amato
Community Partners: , , ,
"Maple syrup is an iconic product with a long cultural history in the northeastern United States. Increased consumer demand for sustainable food choices creates a great opportunity for maple products. Yet, many aspects of maple's social, environmental and economic impacts need better measurement for an accurate understanding of the impact of this rapidly growing sector," said principal investigator Mark Cannella, Extension Associate Professor and Farm Business Specialist. Their project seeks to develop a multi-dimensional framework for measuring maple food system sustainability, focusing on the interactions between maple producers, forests, markets, consumers, and communities. The U.S. maple syrup crop doubled from 2010-2020, and Vermont is the largest producer of maple in the United States. The establishment of measurements across multiple dimensions and working with community partners will be critical to maintaing a course of sustainable sector development.
Plant-based Proteins as Part of Sustainable Food Systems in the Northeast
PI: Jane Kolodinsky
Co-PIs: Emily Belarmino, Heather Darby, Joshua Faulkner
Community Partners: , Innovative Management and Agriculture Consulting
We will carry out a transdisciplinary collaboration between university researchers and community partners to study and examine the extent to which VT and the Northeast (NE) region can produce plant-based protein foods, consumer perceptions of plant-based protein foods vis-a-vis meat and other animal protein foods in the NE, manufacturer and farmer perceptions of producing plant-based proteins as part of their agricultural enterprise, and environmental sustainability implications related to water quality and climate change for an increase in plant-based protein crop production.
About the 日韩无码 Food Systems Research Center
The Food Systems Research Center (FSRC) at 日韩无码 (日韩无码) uncovers solutions to society's most pressing issues through the lens of our food system to improve human health, well-being and livelihoods, and environmental sustainability. The Research Center is a partnership between 日韩无码 and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) focused on the Northeast U.S. but considers the relationship of food systems across scales from local to global. With over 100 funded faculty, staff, and student collaborators in Vermont and across the world, the FSRC conducts interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research to study food systems: the networks of people, institutions, physical infrastructure, and natural resources through which food is grown, processed, distributed, sold, prepared, and eaten.
