The presentation addresses a brief history, recent trends and future proposals for rural America's and small farm agriculture's adaptation and potential contributions to overcoming the climate crises.

1. Food Systems and Climate Change
“Managing from Within”
Nicole Avendano, Lipscomb University
Dodd Galbreath, Associate Professor, Lipscomb University

2. Food Systems and Climate Change
Managing from Within
• Basics & the Connection to Climate Change
• New Farm Energy Commodities
• Farm Productivity Solutions
• New Rural Life Models?
• New Rural Regionalism (i.e., The City Region)

3. 25x
7x
66,667x

4. 68.5%

5. 47%
49%
1.0%
17.8%
40.4%
40.4%

6. The Connection
Poor and Nemecek, 2018
or 26% when it includes
supply chain, etc.

7. Making a Difference in Climate Change?
Typical Proposals
• Efficient N Fertilizer Use*
• Create N from natural sources*
• Methane capture*
• Renewable fuel & energy*
• Expand natural capture (forests,
riparian/wind breaks, soil - no/
reduced-till)*
• “Green up” supply chains (Poor and
Nemecek, 2018)
• Others not yet known*
*Tackle and Hofstrand, 2019

8. Goal:
Exert
Leverage/
Impact
14
of 25 the
Top Ranked
Solutions
are related to
or are being
resolved in
Agriculture &
Rural America

9. So, how do we achieve
momentum?
New Farm Energy Commodities

10. Example:
What did ranchers in the West
“commoditize” after cattle?

11. But Without Cows

12. Wind Commodities with Cows

13. What are farmers in the
East beginning to
commoditize?

14. Farming the Sun #8
• Maine Solar Dairy: Saved $14-20K in heating oil.
• Pasture and Crop Land: Solar Pays triple normal
land rents.
• Cotton to Solar Farm: $500-700 per acre annually.
• Click Here for Link

15. Chicken House Solar Array,
Lancaster, PA
Cattle Barn Solar Array

18. Solar Farms #8
President Jimmy Carter’s
former peanut field.
A North Carolina farm
family also decided against
replanting a 47-acre, water-
intensive cotton field, in lieu of
renting their land to a solar
developer for the local market
rate, likely $500-$600 an acre
annually, although terms
weren’t disclosed.

19. How Georgia Became A Surprising Bright Spot In
The U.S. Solar Industry
June 24, 20191:51 PM ET
Heard on All Things Considered, National Public Radio
Click Here for Link

20. What about the land left behind?
Click Here for Link

21. Click Here for Link

22. Click Here for Link

23. No Subsidies - Republican Led
Power Commission - Market Driven

24. What other “commodity”
in the East can farmers
sell?

25. New Farm Energy Commodities
Use Food Waste/Manure to Convert to
Energy #3
Click Here for Link

26. Anerobic Digestion of Food Waste & Manure and
Collect Methane
Click Here for Link

27. Burn the Methane,
Generate Electricity for 1,500 homes,
Create New Farm Revenue, and Use Excess Liquid Fertilizer.
Click Here for Link

28. Farm Productivity
Solutions

29. Silvopasture
#9
Far outpaces grasslands
5-10 times as much Carbon as
treeless pastures
For Monoculture Forests
Not for Native Forests
Click Here for Link

30. Tree
Intercropping
#17
• Regenerative
• Carbon Capture
• Higher Production
• Click Here to See Link

31. #15
Click Here for Link
Planting with native Trees - NOT Monocultures

32. Conservation Agriculture #15

33. Link To Story: Dee uses a mixture of plants such as radishes, turnips, clover, winter peas and oats as cover crops for her
4,000 acres of row crops. The cover crops grow to different depths in the soil, providing a variety of benefits. She still tinkers
with the mixture based on seed prices.
Dee is one of the early participants in an incentive program run by startup Indigo Agriculture called the Terraton Initiative,
which will pay farmers like her $15 per ton of carbon sequestered in the soil where she grows crops like corn, soybeans and

34. Farmland Restoration #23
Click Here for Link

36. Managed Grazing #19
Click Here for Link

37. Natural Infrastructure
Solutions

38. Temperate
Forests
#12
99 Percent have been
altered in some way
High resilience for
communities
1.4 billion acres eligible for
restoration/enhancement
Click Here for Link

39. Now, integrate all.

40. New Rural Life Models?
• Increase village/town density
• Increase rural
interconnectedness and
redundancy
• Seek self sufficiency in
energy / increase resilience
• Develop / enhance leaders
• Provide insights to
opportunity / career
pathways

41. A Theoretical Visual Model

42. Which way are the arrows pointing?
From where to where?

43. How about…
The Rural Sustained City!

44. A Word About State Legislative
Influence
• Personal relationships.
• Local evolved, bottom up.
• Annual, regular patterns of contact.
• Expert & Mutually planned, comprehensive vision (state
specific but neighboring state calibrated).
• Mutually formed, filed and lobbied legislation.
• Follow-up.

45. Graduate School Spring Entry: March 2020
Accepting Master of Science Applications Now
Learn On-line or On-campus Weeknights
for Working Adults
Courses!
Community Resilience: Aug-Dec, 2020
Advanced Sustainability in New England:
July 11-18, 2020
Christian Scholars Conference: June 3-5, 2020
Theme: A Livable World

46. Thank you!
G. Dodd Galbreath, Associate Professor and
Founding Director, Lipscomb University
Institute for Sustainable Practice