THRIVING AGRICULTURAL SYSTEMS IN URBANIZED LANDSCAPES

This project seeks to create economically thriving and environmentally beneficial agricultural systems in urbanized landscapes. These agricultural systems are located in metropolitan counties and in non-metropolitan counties adjacent to metro areas, and are vital to the sustainability of U.S. agriculture. Our central hypothesis is that value-added agriculture of the kind required to be economically sustainable in urbanized landscapes can be achieved while enhancing ecosystem services. Our overall goal is to make this hypothesis a reality within the 25-year period stated in the RFA, using the Chesapeake Bay Watershed as a case study translatable to other urbanized landscapes. This project will engage closely with stakeholders using a shared discovery and co-learning process to envision desired 25-year futures for agricultural systems in urbanized landscapes that are economically sustainable while enhancing ecosystem services; and conduct scenario-building exercises with stakeholders to identify how agriculture in urbanized areas would need to evolve to realize these desired futures, and the technologies, markets, and public policies that could help make the desired futures a reality.This project will carry out iterative research processes with stakeholders on increasing TFP through enlarged markets in urbanized landscapes for local, organic, and traceable food products; and on improving NUE and TFP through a suite of nutrient management tools, models, and analyses for farmers, companies selling data analytics services to farmers, land use planners, and agricultural and environmental policy-makers. We will implement the recommendations coming out of the scenario-building exercises through modelling, experiments, surveys, and demonstrations; bring the results to stakeholders to evaluate; and carry out additional research based on feedback from stakeholders. Expected outcomes from our stakeholder-led approach include rapid uptake of the project's research outputs because they will address present-day needs and desired futures identified by stakeholders.