A vision and roadmap for the next generation of agricultural systems

Working Groups

For the current slate of working groups, these are the primary goals:

• Agroforestry – Cultivate agroforestry for multiple purposes including bio-energy, carbon sequestration, and improved environmental performance (in this respect, there are synergies with other four groups).
  
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• Biomass – Create viable perennial (and cover crop-based) biomass enterprises and markets that yield multiple ecological services benefits.
  
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• Cover crops – Develop and implement cover crop systems to improve environmental performance of annual cropping systems.
  
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• Grazing – Build value chains for grass fed and grass finished and other animal systems on environmentally sensitive lands and beyond.
  
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• Perennial grains – Develop germplasm for commercially viable perennial grain production systems and markets for the harvested products.
  
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Each working group relies on learning group partners consisting of scientists, farmers and other stakeholders interested in the specific cropping category to develop, adjust, and implement action plans regarding research and development. The work and information within each working group are integrated at the consortium level through regular meetings, electronic forums, and consortium-wide activities, such as communications and evaluation.

At the working group level, these activities fosters the transfer of lessons learned in one group to others and ensures that there is both feedback between the priorities and insights of farmers, consumers, and scientists, and that emerging solutions are directly communicated to the relevant stakeholders. This also puts a full array of laboratory, field and entrepreneurial resources in play across the consortium. These features are essential to building resilience and adaptability into our work, given climate and market uncertainties.





Together, the core strategies of the five working groups are the following:

• Strategically research, develop, and evaluate commercially viable perennial crops and other cover cropping strategies for enterprise development, along with associated production, harvesting, and processing technologies to meet market needs; discover and develop new uses for products of continuous living cover systems; devise cropping systems to meet multiple goals-economic, environmental, human health and social.



• Target demonstration projects at multiple scales of activity where the “scaling up” opportunities are most promising.



• Coordinate information-sharing networks among all partners, from farmers to researchers to government agencies.



• Develop markets for ecological services that are produced through perennial and other continuous living cover enterprises.



• Develop public and private sector financial incentives that are linked to eco-services.



• Promote adaptive landscape design and land use change, along with innovative adaptive management strategies.



• Develop ecological assessments based on project outcomes of what works where at what scale to maximize social, ecological, and environmental benefits.



• Ensure information feedback to consortium as a whole.