Modelling and Metrics Archives

Navigating community engagement in participatory modeling of food systems

This paper describes the participatory modeling experiences of five discrete teams across the U.S. working to develop models of food systems to identify leverage points and policies to induce food system transformation. Collaboration between academic and community partners within these individual modeling processes enables teams to address food systems complexity, integrate scientific evidence and local knowledge into models, while improving a model’s credibility and accessibility for policymaking. While tools for facilitating participatory modeling are becoming more available, there is scant discussion on the practicalities of community engagement processes, including how teams respond to the needs of partners, navigate challenges that arise during projects, and communicate results. Synthesizing results from five independent teams in Albany, New York; Austin, Texas; Cleveland, Ohio; Denver, Colorado; and Flint, Michigan, this paper provides an overview of each team’s approach to community engagement for participatory modeling of food systems. Analysis of engagement strategies across these five teams revealed four essential components to successful participatory modeling projects: 1) building research in collaboration with partners from the onset, 2) developing awareness of the challenges of community-researcher partnerships, 3) supporting transparent communication, and 4) promoting justice and trust through accessible dissemination processes. We emphasize that there is no single best approach to participatory modeling with community partners, rather that researchers need to understand and respond to various stakeholder needs. While each team faced challenges to the engagement process, including responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, our findings reveal important considerations for research in participatory modeling for food system policy.

A Tale of Two Strawberries: Conventional and Organic Open-Field Production in California

Conventional and Organic Open-Field Production in California

Current state of enteric methane and the carbon footprint of beef and dairy cattle in the United States

Livestock is an integral part of societies worldwide and contributes to a host of human activities beyond food production, including income, heritage, insurance, labor, and culture. Livestock’s positive contributions to society are contrasted by environmental impacts, which include greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, biodiversity loss, and natural resource depletion, among others. Though environmental impacts of ruminant livestock production extend beyond GHG emissions (Rotz, 2020), considerable effort has been dedicated specifically to quantifying and mitigating enteric methane (CH4) emissions from beef and dairy cattle, which is the focus of this review.

Quantifying Biodiversity Co-benefits from Livestock Production A Case Study of Beef Grazing Management in Central Florida

Improved grazing management can enhance the multifunctionality of agroecosystems by drawing carbon dioxide (CO2) out of the atmosphere and into soils complementing international efforts to curb and cease CO2 emissions. The adoption of improved grazing strategies to mitigate climate change, however, may come at the expensive of other critical agroecosystem co-benefits like biodiversity, and understanding these tradeoffs is important for informed decision making. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is one approach to evaluate multiple environmental services associated with an agricultural product, i.e., 1 kg of beef live weight (LW). Few livestock LCAs include a biodiversity assessment due to difficulty and complexity in quantifying biodiversity impacts at appropriate spatial-temporal scales or beyond those associated with land use. We applied the recent Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Livestock Environmental Assessment Partnership (LEAP) biodiversity guidelines to a case study ranch located at Archbold Biological Stations Buck Island Ranch to 1) assist practitioners in understanding and differentiating between the regional (i.e., potential species loss) and site-specific (i.e., pressure-state-response) quantification approaches in the LEAP guidelines, and 2) evaluate the differences and similarities between the two approaches for quantifying biodiversity impacts under two types of pasture management. Our results illustrate how indicator selection and functional unit may result in discrepancies between the two approaches. Differences between methods can be attributed to differences in quantifying biodiversity impact potential species loss (land occupation) vs. biotic integrity (integrated measure of land and non-land related impacts) and whether biodiversity impacts are evaluated on a cumulative or a footprint basis. The growing global demand for livestock products and the interest in the livestock sector to capture and store atmospheric carbon demands that biodiversity impacts are incorporated into holistic evaluations of mitigation intervention co-benefits and tradeoffs.

Accounting for the hidden costs of agrifood systems in data-scarce contexts: Background paper for The State of Food and Agriculture 2023

This background paper to The State of Food and Agriculture 2023 reviews the methods used, as well as the data required, to estimate the hidden environmental, social and health costs associated with agrifood systems. The studies analysed are based on the true cost accounting approach, which can facilitate improved decision-making by policymakers, businesses, farmers, investors and consumers. The reviewed studies demonstrate that hidden costs of agrifood systems are considerable, and that action is needed at global, national and local levels.

To apply true cost accounting at the country level, the methods developed must be downscaled and the data limitations overcome. This review goes through each cost category – environmental, social and health – and proposes approaches to deal with them, with a focus on country-level estimates and analysis, especially in data-scarce countries. Where data are not available or time is limited, methods combining secondary data are suggested. In some cases, the suggestion is to collaborate with research centres.
The paper further argues that, when addressing hidden costs in agrifood systems, trade-offs may arise, which may require the use of more complex tools, such as partial and general equilibrium models, to analyse their impacts on different areas. In general, the extent of the compromise will be minimized if there are at least as many policy instruments as there are objectives. For example, if a country seeks to restore fish stocks and address rural poverty, restricting catch alone could increase poverty in the artisanal fishing community. Adding income support, however, could allow both objectives to be met.

PSIII-9 Hempseed Meal as an Effective Protein Supplement for Finishing Wethers

As our global agriculture landscape continues to change it has become more important than ever to find sustainable alternatives to feed livestock. Hempseed and its derivatives may provide alternative sources of nutrients for inclusion in livestock diets, however, due to the paucity of research on hemp and its byproducts, there is no authorization of the inclusion of these products in food animal diets. We hypothesized that the digestibility and use of hempseed meal would be similar to other livestock protein sources. Forty Western White-Faced wethers were used in a completely randomized block design with 5 treatments. These treatments included diets formulated to be near isonitrogenous with 0, 5, 10, 15, or 20% of diet DM as hemp seed meal, primarily as a substitute for dried distillers grains with solubles. Wethers were fed the diets individually for 90 d, which was followed by a 5 d balance trial with a total collection of urine and feces. There were no differences in DM intake (P = 0.44) or average daily gain (P= .16) between treatments. There were no differences in DM digestibility (P = 0.86) or N digestibility (P = 0.29) between treatments, although there was a slight increase in P digestibility as hemp meal inclusion increased until it represented 15% of the dietary DM (P = 0.02). There were no differences in the digestibility of Ca (P=0.44), Mg (P = 0.10), K (P = 0.85), or Na (P = 0.54). There were no differences in urinary N excretion (P=0.33) or urinary urea excretion (P=0.34) between treatments. Additionally, blood chemistry constituents were also not affected by treatment (P ≥ 0.10). Based on these data, it is concluded that hemp seed meal is a comparable protein supplement for sheep with no identified deleterious effects.

Strengthening Our Understanding of the Food-Energy-Water Nexus through Completing Suppressed Datasets

The demand for food, energy, and water (FEW) from agricultural production will rise with population growth, urbanization, and income. Agricultural production, however, contributes to freshwater depletion, energy consumption, and land use. Without effective mitigation, the food system’s environmental impact is estimated to increase by 50-92% between 2010 and 2050, which could be beyond the safe operating space for humanity. An extensive literature emphasizes the urgent need for multidisciplinary scientific efforts to better understand the FEW nexus.

Facility locations in the fresh produce supply chain: An integration of optimization and empirical methods

Facility locations are crucial determinants of supply chain efficiency for aggregating and distributing products. The multi-disciplinary nature of the facility location problem requires multiple complementary approaches, at different levels of aggregation, to accommodate the salient features of location determinants. This study examines the facility location problem for the U.S. fresh produce supply chain. We present a model that incorporates an empirical scenario into a facility location problem in order to capture much of the information required to make an optimal location decision. Our results suggest that the reliability of facility locations can be improved without significantly increasing the operating costs. This study sheds light on how the application of complementary modeling approaches improves the effectiveness of facility location solutions.

The Environmental Impacts and Economic Viability of Grass-fed Beef Production in the Northeastern U.S.

In recent years there has been an increase in consumer interest in grass-fed beef.
Expansion of beef production in the New York and New England region may contribute to a
gradual shift toward grass-based finishing systems. However, the environmental consequences of
the grass-fed beef production expansion have far gone unanswered. To fill this gap, we propose to
build a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) approach to assess the environmental performance of a
representative beef cattle expansion scenario in NYNE. We find that grass-fed beef is more
environmentally friendly than grain-fed beef produced in the region if carbon sequestrations from
grazing lands and hay lands are considered. This study sheds light on assessing the environmental
performance of the livestock or crop systems, and exploring potential improvements to achieve a
certain threshold of performance.

Increasing Anthropogenic Disturbance Restricts Wildebeest Movement Across East African Grazing Systems

The ability to move is essential for animals to find mates, escape predation, and meet energy and water demands. This is especially important across grazing systems where vegetation productivity can vary drastically between seasons or years. With grasslands undergoing significant changes due to climate change and anthropogenic development, there is an urgent need to determine the relative impacts of these pressures on the movement capacity of native herbivores. To measure these impacts, we fitted 36 white-bearded wildebeest (Connochaetes taurinus) with GPS collars across three study areas in southern Kenya (Amboseli Basin, Athi-Kaputiei Plains, and Mara) to test the relationship between movement (e.g., directional persistence, speed, home range crossing time) and gradients of vegetation productivity (i.e., NDVI) and anthropogenic disturbance. As expected, wildebeest moved the most (21.0 km day–1; CI: 18.7–23.3) across areas where movement was facilitated by low human footprint and necessitated by low vegetation productivity (Amboseli Basin). However, in areas with moderate vegetation productivity (Athi-Kaputiei Plains), wildebeest moved the least (13.3 km day–1; CI: 11.0–15.5). This deviation from expectations was largely explained by impediments to movement associated with a large human footprint. Notably, the movements of wildebeest in this area were also less directed than the other study populations, suggesting that anthropogenic disturbance (i.e., roads, fences, and the expansion of settlements) impacts the ability of wildebeest to move and access available resources. In areas with high vegetation productivity and moderate human footprint (Mara), we observed intermediate levels of daily movement (14.2 km day–1; CI: 12.3–16.1). Wildebeest across each of the study systems used grassland habitats outside of protected areas extensively, highlighting the importance of unprotected landscapes for conserving mobile species. These results provide unique insights into the interactive effects of climate and anthropogenic development on the movements of a dominant herbivore in East Africa and present a cautionary tale for the development of grazing ecosystems elsewhere.

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