Resilient Agriculture: Cultivating Food Systems for a Changing Climate

by Laura Lengnick

Climate change presents an unprecedented challenge to the productivity and profitability of agriculture in North America. More variable weather, drought, and flooding create the most obvious damage, but hot summer nights, warmer winters, longer growing seasons, and other environmental changes have more subtle but far-reaching effects on plant and livestock growth and development. Resilient Agriculture recognizes the critical role that sustainable agriculture will play in the coming decades and beyond. The latest science on climate risk, resilience, and climate change adaptation is blended with the personal experience of farmers and ranchers to explore: The climate change challenge is real and it is here now. To enjoy the sustained production of food, fiber, and fuel well into the twenty-first century, we must begin now to make changes that will enhance the adaptive capacity and resilience of North American agriculture. The rich knowledge base presented in Resilient Agriculture is poised to serve as the cornerstone of an evolving, climate-ready food system. Laura Lengnick is a researcher, policymaker, activist, educator, and farmer whose work explores the community-enhancing potential of agriculture and food systems. She directs the academic program in sustainable agriculture at Warren Wilson College and was a lead author of the report Climate Change and Agriculture in the United States: Effects and Adaptation .

Genres: Agriculture

288 pages, Paperback

First published September 22, 2014

Reviews

[Sepideh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book about how climate change is going to affect our food systems that I avoided reading because I thought that the topic would be very dry. I was pleasantly surprised by the author and how a significant portion of the book involved interviews with farmers engaging in sustainable agriculture research. She spoke to farmers all over the country, and some were feeling the effects of climate change on their farming practices and some were not. There were discussions about how some of the practices such as cover crops or having pigs run through the orchard put farm practices in conflict with insurance or food safety regulations. As a consumer of farm products, I think I am possibly a little more inclined to support local farms than I was before reading this book.

[Pam Dawling · Rating 5 out of 5]

Laura Lengnick, who works as a consultant and educator in climate resilience, is doing valuable work to help farmers get ready for climate change. This is far from a doom-and-gloom book. Nor is it a “Blame Industry/Government” tome. It is a very practical and constructive aid to successful sustainable farming. She suggests viewing climate change as yet another production risk to assess and prepare for – a big one. We need to start with ourselves.

In Resilient Agriculture, Laura Lengnick uses her own extensive knowledge of the science and politics of climate change and her personal experience of growing food, along with interviews with award-winning sustainable farmers across the US to give us a both a basic framework for approaching the issue and many practical tips.

I also found moral support and help with thinking clearly about what could otherwise be a paralyzing topic: producing food in the face of an increasingly erratic and unpredictable climate. This major transformation is so hard to consider that at times I’ve thought “thank goodness I’m already in my sixties – it’s the younger people who will have to bear the brunt of coping with this mess.” I know that is neither a constructive nor a realistic approach – we each need to make our best effort if our species is to survive the wild changes and unprecedented obstacles ahead.

In the Southeast, farmers report more frequent summer droughts, more and hotter heat waves, increased intensity of hurricanes, and in general more frequent extreme weather events of all types, more often. This is what we need to be ready for, at the same time as we reduce our own carbon footprints and campaign for national changes. Starting around 1980, the length of the frost-free season increased across the US. In the SE, it became 6 days longer. Ours is the region with the smallest frost-free season change. On the other hand, the Southeast has seen a 27% increase in the amount of rain and snow dropping down as very heavy precipitation. The East has become a bit warmer and has heavier rainfall/snowfall, while the West has become hotter and has a smaller percentage change in the amount of heavy precipitation.

The framework of this book

Thinking about climate change using the framework presented in this book helps us focus on the components we have most control over.

The vulnerability of a farm is the degree to which it is susceptible to each adverse effect of climate change. It is a combination of exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity. Exposure and sensitivity acting together determine the potential impact of climate change. We can reduce exposure overall by reducing emissions and increasing carbon sequestration. These broad efforts are vital, but will have less immediate effects at a farm level.

As far as vulnerability, the most immediate key exposure (change in conditions) is water issues (too much and too little). Rising air temperatures (including night temperatures) and more extreme temperatures provide threats and some opportunities. Increasing CO2 levels will provide some positive effects such as faster crop growth. There are also effects we have barely begun to think about: different bugs and plant diseases; weeds which can grow faster than before; times of desperate water shortage, times of flooding; hurricanes and other strong winds; colder winter and spring temperatures affecting bud burst of fruit and nut trees.

Sensitivity and adaptive capacity are the factors we have more control over. Sensitivity is a measure of how much a given farm is affected by the conditions (exposures). For example, is the farm in a flood plain in a region that can expect more floods in future? What are the factors limiting the ability of the farm to adapt to climate change? Assessing the farm’s sensitivities provides a good starting point for planning adaptive strategies.

Adaptation is the method most successful in addressing the challenges of climate change at a local level. Adaptive capacity includes our individual capabilities, knowledge and options, and the operating context (your farm’s unique combination of economic, social and ecological conditions). As far as adaptive capacity, the main feature of that aspect is our personal capacity to respond and plan. Laura Lengnick says “Greater attention to climate as critical for decision-making is expected by future generations of producers.”

In some cases we have already been practicing some of the skills we’ll need: growing a diversity of crops and livestock; learning from our experience (record-keeping!), paying attention to the weather and learning to forecast our local weather; making plans we are prepared to change as conditions change, and having enough workers, seeds and machines to take advantage of smaller windows.

The interviews encompass farmers of vegetables, fruits, nuts, grains and livestock. Each production section includes five to ten farms in various parts of the country and ends with a summary of challenges to the adaptive capacity of farmers in that production area. Farmers report on changes they have observed in the past twenty years, whether those changes seem to be long term, and changes they have made to their farming practices as a way to improve their chance of harvesting good yields. Naturally I paid most attention to vegetable growing, and to farmers in the Southeast, to get some ideas on what changes I might wisely introduce.

Some vegetable growers noted the arrival of longer growing seasons, in particular, a longer fall season. Many refer to the need to improve irrigation systems and access to water supplies. Many also see a need to improve soil drainage and soil water-holding capacity. The diversity of vegetable crops many growers produce is a strength in that it spreads the risk. Whatever the weather, something will grow (surely?)

I also found the sections on other types of farming useful, noting that fruit and nut tree growers were looking at diversifying into annual vegetables because of problems with late frosts or insufficient chilling hours that can lead to a complete crop failure in a perennial. Grain farmers had very interesting advice about mixtures of cover crop seed, cocktails of 10 – 20 different cover crops, to increase the chance of improving the soil and gaining longer-term benefits of resilience.

I first heard Laura Lengnick speak at the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association conference in 2012. Her solution-focused presentation was “Is Your Farm Climate Ready?” She is one of the main authors of a USDA ARS report Climate Change and Agriculture: Effect and Adaptation.
(USDA Technical Bulletin 1935) Feb 2013. She also spoke at the August 2012 symposium of the Ecological Society of America, Climate change impacts on agricultural systems: She participates in the Climate Listening Project, a “storytelling platform for conversations on climate change resilience”.

Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy writes in his endorsement of the book, “we must keep climate from changing too much - because there's nothing even the best farmer can do to cope with a truly overheated planet.”

[T · Rating 3 out of 5]

== Super brief review ==
This book has some great content, but you must know where to find it. It suffers from poor writing / editing and makes for a frustrating read unless you confine yourself to chapters 5-8. I would give it more stars if only it were better-written.

== To start on a positive note ==
I learned a good deal from the interviews about how to run a sustainable / resilient farm. I think that when a lot of folks discuss sustainable agriculture, they're largely focused on preserving the health of the (farm) environment and of the farming community. The *economic* sustainability of a farm is a topic that sits on the sidelines and is less-often discussed. The interviews in this book have a definite focus towards economic sustainability and for that I'm very appreciative.

You'll learn how many different farmers have managed their economic risk, especially in the face of a changing and less-predictable climate,and see real examples of their successes over other more-industrial nearby farm operations. For instance, one farmer talks about the value of forging relationships at farmer's markets: if you're selling direct-to-consumer, you can use your personal relationships to convince your customers to try new cultivars of fruit / vegetables that they are unfamiliar with. This is a massive boon because it allows the farmer to plant crops that specifically leverage the climate idiosyncrasies of their land (e.g. apple cultivars that require less water if you live in a drought-prone region or tomato cultivars that have a shorter growing season if unpredictable rains make your fields too muddy to plant when you normally would). All of these interviews happen in chapters 5-8 and I definitely suggest that you read them.

== Now for the negative ==
This book can be very frustrating to read; it's terribly written and I was always on the verge of giving up. To minimize your potential frustration, dear reader, I offer this advice: absolutely skip (or quickly skim) the first four chapters; they are generally so high-level / basic and horrifically repetitive that it's a total waste of your time. Chapters 5-8 contains the meat of the book; they are summaries of the author's interviews with some 25 farmers who manage relatively-small and sustainable operations. There is only a single farm from California and only a single nut farm (pecans) in the book, so if you're looking for information on these specific topics, then look elsewhere. The final two chapters should be quickly skimmed; there are no real details on these pages, but you will expose yourself to a little bit of vocabulary.

Some specific complaints:
1.) Painfully repetitive. "Increasing temperates and increasingly variable precipitation from climate change will present farmers with a lot of problems." You will read that same sentence -- paraphrased -- on at least every other page of the first four chapters. I'm not being hyperbolic either. It reads like a high-school book report with a minimum-word limit. In fact, I believe a lot of this book was written in a copy-paste style. Read the first paragraph of Chapter 5 and then read the first paragraph of Chapter 6; they are nearly word-for-word identical.

2.) Desperately needs an editor. Right off the bat, on page 3, she drops this gem on us: "The ruminant animals -- sheep, goats, cattle, camels -- convert inedible grasses and forbs into high-quality meat, milk, and eggs for human consumption." HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA. If her idea of resilient agriculture is getting sheep to lay eggs…no, no, this is obviously a typo. She cannot possibly believe that ruminant animals lay eggs, but I think it does speak to a lack of thoughtful editing of the book. Similarly, there are many tables and figures presented with insufficient explanation for you to understand them, with confusing units (plants get watered in "days per inch" in Table 3.3), and inconsistent color schemes (Figure 2.4 has most- and least-precipitation areas colored similarly). The list goes on -- and yes, I made a list.

3.) Too abstract. Actual details about ANYTHING are few and far between outside of the interview chapters. Almost every topic is treated superficially (and then repeated at that same level over and over). Details that are given are usually trivially obvious. Did you know that different plants require different amounts of water? I bet you don't need the confusing table mentioned in the previous paragraph (Table 3.3) to make that point.

I'll spare you my smaller complaints.

== Final Thoughts ==
For whom is this book written? It is probably not written for serious farmers, because any farmer worth their salt would already have been exposed to most of the ideas in the book; though, I admit that they might change their own farming practices after hearing first-hand accounts of other farmers' successes . My suspicion is that this book is ultimately written for hobby farmers / gardeners / new farmers: people who are growing things more for personal enjoyment than for profit, but who are also kicking around the idea of taking their operation to the next level. They started their small farm without fully considering their land, their plants, their available water, and the community around them from a systems perspective (i.e. that they are all interconnected subsystems operating together within a larger system). They may not realize the value of cover crops, of using plants and surrounding habitat to defend your main crops against insect damage, of cultivating soil quality to increase its ability to absorb (rather than run off) water. They may not realize that little farmers have a hard time getting insurance on their crops and that FDA food safety regulations can make it difficult to recycle water on the farm. This book won't offer ANY solutions for how to leverage the former benefits or to circumvent the latter setbacks, but it will alert the well-meaning-but-wet-behind-the-ears farmer to these issues. This book generally stays at a very high level, keeping it understandable to almost any education level, and leaves it to the reader to pursue any of these topics on their own if they want some depth.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first third of the book is a tough slog. The author summarizes the challenges that face agriculture resulting from climate change. The summary could be better focused and organized around the point of the book. One fact I picked up is how many farmers still are in denial of climate change, even though they are more directly affected than just about anybody.

The next three dense chapters provide the theoretical underpinnings for resilience—exposure to risks, sensitivity to risks, and adaptive capacity—offering the context of climate induced risk. The heart of the book are case studies of vegetable, fruit, nut, grain, and livestock farmers. These are well-composed and interesting, but somewhat formulaic and repetitive. The concluding chapters offer a way forward. Overall a book worth reading if one cares about the sustainability of agriculture.

[Joel]

I'd borrowed the book from the public library & was also reading a couple of other books, too. I actually only read bits & scanned the book which I feel is authoritative, realistic & quite readable. I returned it, since I know another person who'd like to read it.