The Project
On-farm…
Through collaboration between our farmers and research team we are designing on-farm research to improve the performance of CSAPs under working farm conditions.
Farmer clusters choose the CSAPs they want to evaluate, and the science team helps them assess how well these practices perform under working farm conditions by measuring outcomes including crop and livestock yield, financial impacts, compatibility with farm labor and machinery, soil health, and resilience in the face of extreme weather. Farmers play a central role in reviewing results from the previous year and making decisions about research methods for each field season.
Off-farm…
We know that farmers do not act in a vacuum, so we are also tackling CSAP adoption barriers at local and national levels. Through roundtable discussions and workshops with landowners, agribusinesses, and conservation agency staff, we are identifying local adoption barriers and creating community-scale action plans to improve local support for appropriate CSAP use. At the national scale, our stakeholder group of policy and market advisors are working with our farmer leaders to identify ways to change policies and market incentives to meet the needs of farmers using CSAPs.
And beyond!…
Extension teams across Ohio and Missouri are collaborating with our farmers and local and national teams to share the project’s findings with broad and diverse audiences, including through field days, farmer ambassadors, workshops, and digital media.
Our project also supports internships for underrepresented minority students to provide them with hands-on experience doing participatory research and to develop innovative agricultural teaching materials for high-school students.
