Dr. Brittany Johnson, UW Environmental and Forest Sciences
Exploring links between agroforestry, food security, and land sovereignty
This module was originally used in the courses ESRM 210: Introductory Soils and SEFS 510: Fundamentals of Plant-Soil Interactions and promotes big picture thinking about land management and soil health. This content is formulated to be adapted for a wide range of audiences, from graduate to high school students. If will be helpful for students to have a basic familiarity with concepts such as eutrophication, soil health, over-fertilization, and land degradation prior to starting this lesson. Some additional background in conventional agriculture methods and soil processes (decomposition, gas exchange, nutrient cycling, etc.) may also be helpful.
Overview
- Climate Justice Issue: Focusing on restorative soil management, consciously thinking about how communities/systems can work in harmony with the natural towards sustainability for the future and justice for the planet.
- Target Audience: University level/ Mature High school level
- Lesson Length: 1 50+ minutes class period with prior preparation
- Learning Objectives:
- Become familiar with common terms in agriculture
- Understand the impacts of agricultural practices
- Discuss the impact and importance of changing the dialogue around food production and sustainability
- Apply these ideas in a civically-minded exercise (Think, Pair, Share)
- Topic Overview: This lesson promotes big picture thinking about land management and soil health. The focus is on increasing the awareness of our absolute dependence on the beautiful substance below our feet as well as the connections between food systems, human health, and environmental processes. Learners are engaged through a “Think-pair-share” style activity about challenges and solutions to agricultural issues and then taking this a step further to think about solution obstacles and incentives (template provided). This will likely bring up many questions about food security, food sovereignty, and sustainability which you may choose to tackle in more detail during subsequent lessons. Provided are options to utilize this lecture during both synchronous and asynchronous classes.
- Chapter Components:
- Lesson Overview
- Instructor Guide: Instructions on preparing the content for this lecture, templates, and assigning student groups.
- Pre-class Work for Students: A short article and common terms students should know going into lecture. Option to add short quiz to check learning objectives.
- Lecture Content: How to structure the course time and flow of the lecture period.
- Additional Links and Resources: More information on many topics and some resources I find helpful.
- Attribution
Instructor Guide
Estimated preparation time: 1 hour
Before the start of class, the instructor should do the following:
SYNCHRONOUS OPTION
1) Assign the “Pre-class Work for Students” which contains reading and gets students familiar with common terms. Consider adding more definitions and a short Canvas quiz to reinforce learning objectives important to your course.
- Never made a Canvas quiz? See here for a how-to!
2) Create a short lecture (<20 minutes) on current and future challenges facing food production. I encourage you to begin with the land acknowledgment appropriate to your location. Some ideas and resources:
- Consider having students calculate their water footprint before class begins (add to the pre-class work). Illustrate the idea of visible and invisible water usage and how that could influence perceived water use. You could also use a figure like this one from Future Food 2050 to demonstrate the actual cost of common items like coffee and beef in class. In class, have students name one thing they could do in their household to conserve water.
- This article by Jennifer Morris, the CEO of The Nature Conservancy, has all the building blocks for a brief summary of food production challenges and lots of statistics.
- Discuss the food-water-energy nexus and how population growth stresses each of these components. Also be sure to mention that soil is at the literal foundation of all factors within the nexus, so changes to soil health will feed back into the overall balance. I have found this figure from Future Earth describing the interactions among components and this one from CNA about stressors on the nexus from population growth to be useful illustrations.
- Touch on land degradation and the effect of forest conversion on soil health and carbon storage. I recommend checking out Soils Revealed for some really amazing visuals on carbon loss and sequestration due to land use.
3) Create a template like the photo below in an appropriate shareable format (Google Slides recommended). Feel free to alter the challenges to suit your course material, these are just some examples.
- For example, Challenge #1, the solution could be to convert to minimum/no-till operations, obstacle is convincing the agricultural community to adopt this strategy, and the incentive is to redirect federal subsidies toward sustainable agricultural practices
- When creating your Google Slides document, duplicate the template slide according to the number of small groups you plan to have for the activity (recommended group size is 4-5 students) and narrow the challenges to 1-3 per group depending on how much time you would like to allocate to the activity. Leave the example Challenge #1 on each slide for student reference
- Prefer to do this on paper? Simply do the step above and then print copies
4) Assign student groups (4-5 students/group)
- If you have term-long working groups, feel free to continue using them for this activity.
- If you would like to randomize groups, here are two fun ways to do it:
- Print or write the group numbers 5 times, cut them out in squares, fold them in half, place them in a container, and have students pick one when they arrive for the day. Pre-label areas of the classroom for each group. They will then sit in the designated area for the number on the paper they selected.
- Have mini-candy bars in a bowl (5 of each kind) and allow students to choose as they enter. Group them by what type of candy they selected.
- Suggestion: If you choose to randomize groups and your students are not normally very social, consider building in a fun introductory step to the start of group work (e.g., instruct students to share their names and what they wish their superpower was).
ASYNCHRONOUS OPTION
Before the start of class, the instructor should follow steps 1-3 as above. Record your short lecture created in Step 2 and post to Canvas using the software of your choice- Panopto is nicely linked to Canvas, but you can also record in PowerPoint. Try adding captions for your students to improve accessibility; YouTube does an excellent job of adding auto-captions which do not require much editing. For Step 3, create this Slides document. For Step 4, create Discussion Groups and assign students before class (how-to here) so that students can interact with each other. Be sure to share the link to the Slides documents in the Discussion Group instructions.
Pre- Class Work For Students
Reading
- These two articles barely scratch the surface, but highlight the importance of acknowledging, honoring, and incorporating Indigenous knowledge and practice into agricultural systems:
- Heart of the Hopi (Levin, A. 2019. American Indian Magazine 20(3).)
- Meet the Three Sisters Who Sustain Native America (Murphy, A. 2018. PBS: Native Voices)
Introduction to Concepts and Common terms
Have your students review the following terms and watch the videos. Add, subtract, or modify as suits your course. As mentioned in the instructor work page, consider reinforcing the key takeaways that are important for your class using a short Canvas quiz!
- Agroforestry: The intentional integration of trees and shrubs into crop and animal farming systems to create environmental, economic, and social benefits. It has been practiced in the United States and around the world for centuries (USDA).
- Conventional Farming (Industrial Agriculture): Farming systems which include the use of synthetic chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and other continual inputs, genetically modified organisms, Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, heavy irrigation, intensive tillage, or concentrated monoculture production. Thus conventional agriculture is typically highly resource and energy intensive, but also highly productive (Wikipedia). See “Tillage” below for a video example of the effects of mechanical disturbance.
- Community Forestry: A participatory approach to forest management that strengthens communities’ capacity to build vibrant local economies, while protecting and enhancing their local forest ecosystems. By integrating ecological, social, and economic components into cohesive approaches to forestry issues, community-based approaches give local residents both the opportunity and the responsibility to manage their natural resources effectively and to enjoy the benefits of that responsibility (Aspen Institute).
- Food Security: Ensuring that all people at all times have both physical and economic access to the basic food that they need (FAO).
- Food Sovereignty: A food system in which the people who produce, distribute, and consume food also control the mechanisms and policies of food production and distribution (Wikipedia).
- Forest Garden: A garden modeled on the structure of young natural woodland, utilizing plants of direct and indirect benefit to people – often edible plants. It may contain large trees, small trees, shrubs, herbaceous perennials, herbs, annuals, root crops and climbers, all planted in such a way as to maximize positive interactions and minimize negative interactions, with fertility maintained largely or wholly by the plants themselves (Agroforestry.org). To visualize this, check out the video below:
- Precision Agriculture (Site-Specific Crop Management): The practice of using precise global positioning combined with location-specific measurements—either in-field data collection (such as soil variables or pest occurrence) or remotely sensed data (such as from aircraft or satellites)—to quantify spatially variable field conditions and target treatments (herbicide, pesticides, fertilizers, water) (USDA).
- Permaculture: The conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems. It is the harmonious integration of landscape and people — providing their food, energy, shelter, and other material and non-material needs in a sustainable way (Permaculture News).
- Regenerative Agriculture: A holistic land management practice that leverages the power of photosynthesis in plants to close the carbon cycle, and build soil health, crop resilience and nutrient density. Regenerative agriculture improves soil health, primarily through the practices that increase soil organic matter at small (first video) and large (second video) scales (Regeneration International). It is important to understand that the techniques at the heart of regenerative agriculture are not new, they are rooted in traditional Indigenous methods which have been passed down through generations that promote crop diversification and a deep reverence of the landscape:
- Tillage: The mechanical manipulation of the soil for the purpose of crop production affecting significantly the soil characteristics such as soil water conservation, soil temperature, infiltration and evapotranspiration processes (Busari et al., 2015).
- Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK): Describes Indigenous and other traditional knowledge of local resources. As a field of study in anthropology, TEK refers to “a cumulative body of knowledge, belief, and practice, evolving by accumulation of TEK and handed down through generations through traditional songs, stories and beliefs. It is concerned with the relationship of living beings (including humans) with their traditional groups and with their environment.” Such knowledge is used in natural resource management as a substitute for baseline environmental data in cases where there is little recorded scientific data and shapes other scientific methods of ecological management (Wikipedia). It is important to note that many techniques which are considered “regenerative agriculture” in mainstream media have been practiced by Indigenous peoples since time immemorial
Lecture Content
For a SYNCHRONOUS class:
Setting Up the Discussion (15-20 minutes)
Begin this class period by presenting the short lecture you prepared (Instructor Guide, item 2) discussing issues of population growth and food production.
Learner Engagement and Activity (20-25 minutes)
In order to have students think critically about the potential of sustainable growing methods to be implemented as a long-term treatment for ecological and soil health, they will work in small groups to discuss the challenges currently faced by the agricultural industry and potential solutions. This lesson then takes it one step further by incorporating in additional sections on obstacles and incentives (because there is no plan universally accepted!).
(5 minutes) Example challenge: To facilitate this activity, use your shared Slides document created during preparation for this lesson. Walk through the completed Challenge #1 to provide a working example of how to use the flow chart. Go into more detail in each section (e.g., how is soil health quantified, formation of tillage pans, where federal subsidies are currently allocated, etc.) to demonstrate the path of thinking. Remind the students to think about the pre-class reading while completing this task.
(15 minutes) Group work: Send students into numbered small groups (4-5 students per group). Remind them to put their names in the slide comments section of their group slide so that they can be graded on their submission. Allow students to brainstorm potential answers to each challenge and point out that there can be multiple solutions/obstacles/incentives for each challenge so be creative!
Speak Out and Reach Out Session (10 minutes and beyond)
In this final step of the “Think-Pair-Share” activity, pair off the groups and have them present one of their challenges, solutions, obstacles, and incentives to each other and discuss. Ask students to provide other ideas, from new solutions to additional obstacles and incentives.
At the end of class, ask the students to keep thinking about these challenges. What does food security mean? How will we achieve it on local to global scales? How can we ensure resources are shared equitably? Encourage students to talk to one person about this issue whether it is a friend, roommate, classmate, family member, or stranger while keeping an open and curious mind. Enjoy!
For an ASYNCHRONOUS class:
Present your short recording on Canvas along with the optional quiz if you created one for the pre-class work. Have students in each small group work together remotely to fill out the Slides template and contribute to their discussion board. Try making multiple discussion boards within your class so that each one has ~10 students in it (i.e. two groups) and students should review the Slide created by the other group and use the discussion board to complete the “Speak Out” portion of the lecture. Make this a graded discussion so that each student has incentive to participate.
Additional Links and Resources
- LEAF Network: All about edible trees (care, types, planting planners, etc.). Developed for Arizona, but can be used widely.
- Communities Committee: Guides and step-by-step instructions for creating a community forest.
- Stewardship Contracting Overview: Federal partnership in forest management
- National Urban and Community Forestry Advisory Council (NUCFAC): Congressionally designated advisory council to the Secretary of Agriculture on urban forestry and related issues
- Regeneration International: Blog and resources focused on promoting regenerative agriculture
- Growing a Revolution: Book by UW faculty David Montgomery focused on the benefits, history, and data behind the movement toward regenerative agriculture
- Dirt to Soil: Gabe Brown’s book on discovering regenerative agriculture benefits on his farm, check out his TEDx talk on YouTube as well!
Media Attributions
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