Biochar, when used as soil amendment, could enhance soil health, plant growth, and farm profitability while offsetting adverse effects of environmental pollution. Yet the adoption rate of biochar among agricultural producers remains extremely low. Message framing has been shown to play an important role in forming positive attitudes and generating desirable outcomes. To understand the effect of message framing in promoting biochar, we conducted a randomized experiment through an online survey of crop producers located in Eastern South Dakota. The results showed that participants who read a message about the benefits of adopting biochar from an economic perspective expressed higher interest in learning about biochar; no such effect was observed among participants who read a message about the benefits of adopting biochar from a stewardship perspective. Compared with the control group, economic and stewardship frames increased farmers’ likelihood of adopting biochar in the next 5 years, by 10.6% and 10.8%, respectively. Our findings illustrate the importance of message framing in encouraging farmers to adopt conservation practices that are rarely used. To promote future adoption of conservation practices such as biochar, it is important to highlight both economic and stewardship benefits when conveying information to farmers.

Food systems sustainability has interested researchers for decades; one area of interest is developing methods to measure it in various contexts. Our review of the literature finds many studies that have posited metrics and indicators for measuring sustainability in the food system, with most of them relying on secondary data rather than direct inquiry of stakeholders like farmers. This Preliminary Report presents results of farmer perceptions of sustainability, focusing on consumer-facing agriculture (direct market and agritourism) farms in Vermont, as part of the first phase of research in one of a set of projects aimed at developing sustainability metrics. We emphasize metrics that can be used for farm management, marketing, and policy advocacy, and add two dimensions (human and production) to the more common three (ecological, economic, and social). Using interviews from six case studies, we posit indicators across five dimensions of sustainability and identify tradeoffs in achieving them, emphasizing the farmers’ experiences. Our discussion compares and contrasts our results with the literature. Results will form the basis of a statewide farmer survey, which will be conducted in the next year.

Society faces an urgent need to move agriculture toward more environmentally sustainable practices to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss, and water pollution. Mandatory policy tools, such as regulations, are unpopular with farmers, notoriously difficult to enforce, and politically challenging in the United States. Instead, social norms—descriptive, dynamic, and injunctive—may be critical levers for scaling up conservation practices. In this study, we analyze the predictive power of social norms on three practices, two of which benefit conservation (no-till and cover crops) and one that is likely harmful to conservation (fall nitrogen fertilizer application). Farmers (N = 585) in four U.S. states (Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, and Pennsylvania) completed a survey indicating perceived social norms and adoption of each practice. Logit models of practice adoption demonstrate that different types of social norms predict each of the three practices. We find that social norms are correlated with practices that are both helpful and harmful to conservation outcomes. Descriptive norms are associated with no-till adoption, while dynamic norms are associated with the use of cover crops. Both descriptive and injunctive norms are associated with fall nitrogen fertilizer application. In line with previous work, we also find that self-efficacy, response efficacy, farm size, and farm income are statistically significant predictors of the adoption of each practice. Future research would benefit from examining the role of different types of social norms in more contextually specific areas of farm management and at different junctures in the prevalence of management practices within a farming community, whether emerging, well-established, or declining in use.

Microbial protein feed (MPF), produced through precision fermentation, offers a promising pathway toward a more sustainable agri-food sector by reducing reliance on conventional feed sources. This emerging cellular technology can help conserve natural resources, lower greenhouse gas emissions, and address the growing global demand for protein alternatives. Similar to other biotechnology innovations, the realization of MPF’s potential benefits dependents heavily on a supportive regulatory environment. This study examines the regulatory frameworks of the United States, the European Union, China, and Australia to assess how pre-market regulations shape the development of MPF and to identify specific legal challenges faced by manufacturers. Across these jurisdictions, there are no specific laws or regulations for MPF products. Their oversight falls under general feed and GMO-related legislation, creating regulatory gaps, ambiguity in product assessments, and procedural inefficiencies that are further exacerbated by overlapping regulatory authorities and generic labeling requirements. Such challenges not only slow the commercialization of MPF products but also impede broader efforts to develop more sustainable agri-food systems. Our analysis indicates that targeted regulatory reforms are needed to streamline pre-market approval pathways and improve risk assessment standards. By adopting dedicated regulatory approaches and strengthening pre-market consultation mechanisms with developers, these jurisdictions will be better positioned to advance environmentally responsible protein production and accelerate the transition to a more sustainable agri-food sector.

Balancing pest control and pollination is a dual challenge for pollinator-dependent crops and the producers that grow them. For organic cucurbit production, organic compliant insecticides underperform at suppressing pests and can have nontarget impacts on pollinators. One promising alternative is pest-protective row covers, which successfully exclude insect pests from damaging cucurbit crops. However, they also exclude pollinators. In this study across two years, four row cover pollination management strategies were compared for their efficacy for acorn squash (Cucurbita pepo L.). Row covers were installed at crop transplant and four treatments were initiated: on–off (row cover removed at flowering), on–off–on (row cover removed at flowering and reinstalled post-flowering), open ends (row cover tunnel ends opened at flowering and reclosed post-flowering), and full season (row cover installed through whole season, commercial bumble bee colonies installed at flowering). During the pre-flowering net stage (when row covers were installed), all treatments had low pest abundance and were not statistically different. In the post-flowering net stage, the full season and open ends treatments had statistically lower cucumber beetle pest abundance relative to the on–off–on treatment. The number of seeds per squash fruit weight, an indicator of pollination success, was statistically lower in the full season treatment relative to the on–off–on treatment in 2021, which may be explained by the statistically lower bee activity in the full season treatment relative to the on–off and on–off–on treatments. Squash seeds were not counted in 2020. The open ends treatment had statistically higher marketable yield than the full season and on–off–on treatments in 2020; in 2021, there was no difference in marketable yield across treatments. For the open ends treatment, increased distance from the opened tunnel ends significantly decreased the pest abundance, while it significantly increased marketable yield. However, there was no relationship between pollinator activity and distance to the tunnel opening. This two-year study suggests the open ends strategy had the most consistently high yields, while it reduced pollination management effort and eliminated the costs of commercial bee colonies compared to other treatments. Only minor pressure from insect-vectored diseases was observed during the study, thus, the advantages of each pollination strategy should be considered in relation to varying pest, pollinator, and disease conditions.