"GOT TREES? Building Climate-Ready Agriculture" - National Coalition for Food and Agricultural Research (“C-FAR”) hill seminar on Monday, September 9, featuring a leading-edge presenter sharing timely information made possible by federally funded food and agricultural research, extension and education. The seminar is being offered through TWO venues (Senate and House locations) for your scheduling convenience: • “Briefing” Seminar from 10:00 to 10:45 in Senate Russell 337 (RSOB) (offered as an option for those unable to attend the luncheon seminar). • “Lunch~N~Learn” Seminar from 12:00 to 12:55 in 1302 Longworth House Office Building (LHOB). Chick Fil-A Lunch (Veggie Wrap Option) will be provided. CLICK HERE to Register by c.o.b. Friday, September 6: ow.ly/ovFVZ Description: We keep looking at our agricultural lands to meet ever-increasing production and conservation targets. At the same time agriculture’s capacity to deliver these services is being challenged by highly dynamic climate, changing markets, and evolving environmental conditions. With recent extreme weather events and impacts still fresh in our minds and monetary pockets, predictions that these events are only going to get worse underscores the need for developing options to build more climate-ready farm and ranch operations. One promising option in ag’s ‘climate-ready toolbox’ is AGROFORESTRY—the deliberate integration of trees into agricultural operations in support of agriculture. Agroforestry is comprised of a wide suite of tree-based practices that farmers, ranchers, Tribes, and even communities can use to help them meet these growing targets, create profitable operations and rural health and vitality, and build more resilient operations and landscapes. From windbreaks to waterbreaks; producing income while mitigating impacts from droughts to floods when needed, to silvopasture systems; diversifying production and income while providing heat- and cold-stress protection to livestock, agroforestry can be an effective tool in boosting agriculture’s adaptive capacity. Advances in research are creating the basis for tools that can help farmers, ranchers and other land managers better design and locate these practices, to visualize multiple design options on their lands and compare benefits and trade-offs, and to be able to assess agroforestry’s contributions in order to guide their future decisions and to provide them access to future payments or markets (e.g., carbon sequestration) should they develop. Presenter: Dr. Michele Schoeneberger, is a US Forest Service research soil scientist with the USDA National Agroforestry Center (NAC) in Lincoln, Nebraska. More information about National C-FAR and the hill seminar series can be found at ncfar.org. The Hill Seminar Series helps demonstrate the value of public investment in food and agricultural research—investment that returns 45 percent per year on average.
Posted on: Tue, 03 Sep 2013 12:36:37 +0000
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