WASHINGTON, June
2, 2016 - Solutions from the Land (SfL), a collaboration led by an acclaimed
group of active farm, forestry and conservation leaders, has been awarded a $500,000
grant from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation to design and
implement a three to five year climate smart/resilient agriculture action plan
designed to help Upper Midwest farmers adapt to changing climatic conditions,
improve the resiliency of their operations and further enable agricultural
landscapes to deliver multiple food, feed, fiber, energy and ecosystems
services from the land.
"Unpredictable shifts in regional weather events and patterns lead to predictable disruptions on our working landscapes. Over the next 25 years, agricultural producers big and small are projected to experience declines in crop and livestock productivity due to pollination problems, weeds, new and old diseases, insect pests, extreme temperatures and other climate change induced stresses,” said AG Kawamura, Co-Chair of Solutions from the Land.
Collaborating with SfL on this initiative will
be The Ohio State University's Initiative for Food and AgriCultural
Transformation (InFACT), and other partners. The initiative, which will begin in Ohio and then
extend to other Upper Midwest states, aims is to extend that diversity across
the region's food value chain, and enable agricultural landscapes to realize their
full potential as sustainable production platforms for producing nutrient rich
food, improving public health, creating new economic opportunities for those
who live below the poverty level, and by doing so improving the lives of the
most vulnerable members of the population.
#30
