Abstract
Humanity faces a triple threat of climate change, biodiversity loss, and global food insecurity. In response, increasing the general adaptive capacity of farming systems is essential. We identify two divergent strategies for building adaptive capacity.Simplifyingprocesses seek to narrowly maximize production by shifting the basis of agricultural production toward centralized control of socially and ecologically homogenized systems.Diversifyingprocesses cultivate social-ecological complexity in order to provide multiple ecosystem services, maintain management flexibility, and promote coordinated adaptation across levels. Through five primarily United States focused cases of distinct agricultural challenges—foodborne pathogens, drought, marginal lands, labor availability, and land access and tenure—we compare simplifying and diversifying responses to assess how these pathways differentially enhance or degrade the adaptive capacity of farming systems in the context of the triple threat. These cases show that diversifying processes can weave a form of broad and nimble adaptive capacity that is fundamentally distinct from the narrow and brittle adaptive capacity produced through simplification. We find that while there are structural limitations and tradeoffs to diversifying processes, adaptive capacity can be facilitated by empowering people and enhancing ecosystem functionality to proactively distribute resources and knowledge where needed and to nimbly respond to changing circumstances. Our cases suggest that, in order to garner the most adaptive benefits from diversification, farming systems should balance the pursuit of multiple goals, which in turn requires an inclusive process for active dialogue and negotiation among diverse perspectives. Instead of locking farming systems into pernicious cycles that reproduce social and ecological externalities, diversification processes can enable nimble responses to a broad spectrum of possible stressors and shocks, while also promoting social equity and ecological sustainability.
Highlights
Climate change, biodiversity loss, and global food insecurity present an Anthropocene triple threat for humanity (Kremen and Merenlender, 2018)
Building on prior work showing the potential of diversified farming systems to improve social-ecological outcomes of agriculture (Kremen et al, 2012), we explore what happens when farming systems adapt to the triple threat through diversifying pathways as opposed to simplifying pathways
Our objective is to address these questions through structured analyses of five cases of challenges in which farming systems struggle to adapt to the triple threat under different types of shocks and stressors (Box 1): living with foodborne pathogens, weathering drought, farming marginal land, dignifying labor, and enhancing land access and tenure (Figure 2)
Summary
Biodiversity loss, and global food insecurity present an Anthropocene triple threat for humanity (Kremen and Merenlender, 2018). Due to demographic trends and migration policies at the federal level, employers face shortages and instability of labor supply (Martin et al, 2016) This situation affects critical tasks including planting, cultivating, and harvesting, which threatens food production and farm profitability and undermines farmers’ ability to both adapt to climate change and use diversified farming practices. Additional stressors from climate change exacerbate the inequities and risks that farmworkers already bear (Table 1) Extreme events such as heat waves can cause significant health consequences and socio-economic hardship for workers— while potentially disrupting farm operations (Castillo et al, 2021). Heightened climate change risks coupled with biodiversity loss of ecosystem service providers will exacerbate barriers to entry for new-entrant farmers (Carlisle et al, 2019b)
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