Improving diet quality while simultaneously reducing environmental impact is a critical focus globally. Metrics linking diet quality and sustainability have typically focused on a limited suite of ...indicators, and have not included food waste. To address this important research gap, we examine the relationship between food waste, diet quality, nutrient waste, and multiple measures of sustainability: use of cropland, irrigation water, pesticides, and fertilizers. Data on food intake, food waste, and application rates of agricultural amendments were collected from diverse US government sources. Diet quality was assessed using the Healthy Eating Index-2015. A biophysical simulation model was used to estimate the amount of cropland associated with wasted food. This analysis finds that US consumers wasted 422g of food per person daily, with 30 million acres of cropland used to produce this food every year. This accounts for 30% of daily calories available for consumption, one-quarter of daily food (by weight) available for consumption, and 7% of annual cropland acreage. Higher quality diets were associated with greater amounts of food waste and greater amounts of wasted irrigation water and pesticides, but less cropland waste. This is largely due to fruits and vegetables, which are health-promoting and require small amounts of cropland, but require substantial amounts of agricultural inputs. These results suggest that simultaneous efforts to improve diet quality and reduce food waste are necessary. Increasing consumers' knowledge about how to prepare and store fruits and vegetables will be one of the practical solutions to reducing food waste.
COVID-19 has disrupted food access and impacted food insecurity, which is associated with numerous adverse individual and public health outcomes. To assess these challenges and understand their ...impact on food security, we conducted a statewide population-level survey using a convenience sample in Vermont from March 29 to April 12, 2020, during the beginning of a statewide stay-at-home order. We utilized the United States Department of Agriculture six-item validated food security module to measure food insecurity before COVID-19 and since COVID-19. We assessed food insecurity prevalence and reported food access challenges, coping strategies, and perceived helpful interventions among food secure, consistently food insecure (pre-and post-COVID-19), and newly food insecure (post COVID-19) respondents. Among 3219 respondents, there was nearly a one-third increase (32.3%) in household food insecurity since COVID-19 (
< 0.001), with 35.5% of food insecure households classified as newly food insecure. Respondents experiencing a job loss were at higher odds of experiencing food insecurity (OR 3.06; 95% CI, 2.114-0.46). We report multiple physical and economic barriers, as well as concerns related to food access during COVID-19. Respondents experiencing household food insecurity had higher odds of facing access challenges and utilizing coping strategies, including two-thirds of households eating less since COVID-19 (
< 0.001). Significant differences in coping strategies were documented between respondents in newly food insecure vs. consistently insecure households. These findings have important potential impacts on individual health, including mental health and malnutrition, as well as on future healthcare costs. We suggest proactive strategies to address food insecurity during this crisis.
A growing body of work aims to understand the impacts of climate change on agriculture as well as farmer’s perceptions of climate change and their likeliness to adopt adapting and mitigating ...behaviors. Despite this, little work has considered how intention to adopt differs from actual adoption of climate change practices in agriculture. Applying the Theory of Planned Behavior we aim to assess whether different factors affect intended versus actual adoption of climate behaviors among farmers in New Zealand. Data were collected through mixed methods (37 interviews and a telephone survey of 490 farmers) in two regions of New Zealand 2010–2012. Through multiple regression models we test hypotheses related to the Theory of Planned Behavior around the role of attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived capacity in affecting intended and actual adoption. Results suggest that there are different drivers of intended and actual adoption of climate change practices. Climate change attitudes and belief is only associated with intended not actual adoption. We find no evidence that subjective norms (climate change policy support) significantly influence either intention or actual adoption. Only perceived capacity and self-efficacy were important predictors of both intended and actual adoption. These results suggest a disconnect between intended and actual behavior change and that using data about intention as a guiding factor for program and policy design may not be prudent. Furthermore, fostering perceived capacity and self-efficacy for individuals may be crucial for encouraging both intended and actual adoption of climate adapting and mitigating behaviors.
In response to agriculture's vulnerability and contribution to climate change, many governments are developing initiatives that promote the adoption of mitigation and adaptation practices among ...farmers. Since most climate policies affecting agriculture rely on voluntary efforts by individual farmers, success requires a sound understanding of the factors that motivate farmers to change practices. Recent evidence suggests that past experience with the effects of climate change and the psychological distance associated with people's concern for global and local impacts can influence environmental behavior. Here we surveyed farmers in a representative rural county in California's Central Valley to examine how their intention to adopt mitigation and adaptation practices is influenced by previous climate experiences and their global and local concerns about climate change. Perceived changes in water availability had significant effects on farmers' intention to adopt mitigation and adaptation strategies, which were mediated through global and local concerns respectively. This suggests that mitigation is largely motivated by psychologically distant concerns and beliefs about climate change, while adaptation is driven by psychologically proximate concerns for local impacts. This match between attitudes and behaviors according to the psychological distance at which they are cognitively construed indicates that policy and outreach initiatives may benefit by framing climate impacts and behavioral goals concordantly; either in a global context for mitigation or a local context for adaptation.
•Farmer’s climate change adaptation is dependent upon farm systems heterogeneity.•The limiting factors hypothesis can be applied to farm systems to understand adaptation.•Water and temperature are ...different limiting factors depending on climate and farm systems.•Future work can use the limiting factors hypothesis to test for regional differences.
Consensus is growing that agriculture is vulnerable to climate change and adaptation responses are necessary to minimize impacts. Nonetheless, the diversity of potential impacts, agro-ecological contexts and regional capacity for change make understanding adaptation behaviors challenging and ensure that climate change adaptation will not be the same across all contexts. Considering this heterogeneity, this paper aims to develop a theoretical approach to connect agro-ecosystem diversity with farmer decision-making in the context of agricultural adaptation to climate change. We combine the ecological principle of Liebig’s Law of the Minimum with the Psychological Distance Theory to suggest how adaptation behaviors vary across regional contexts. We argue with our limiting factors hypothesis that limiting factors within a farm system (water or temperature impacts) influence the adoption of adaptation practices differently across regions and farm systems. Limiting factors varied across farm systems and regions, based on historical climate changes, agro-ecological contexts, infrastructure and adaptation capacity. Using farmer survey data from New Zealand we show that limiting factors mediate the effect of past climate experiences on the adoption of adaptation strategies differently in two regions with water acting as a limiting factor in Hawke’s Bay and water and temperature as a limiting factor in Marlborough. This suggests that farmers perceive and respond to climate change in part due to their personal experiences with climate change and the limiting factors within their system. Such results are relevant for the development of regional adaptation strategies, effective policies and targeted climate change communication.
Using an online survey of academics at 55 randomly selected institutions across the US and Canada, we explore priorities for publishing decisions and their perceived importance within review, ...promotion, and tenure (RPT). We find that respondents most value journal readership, while they believe their peers most value prestige and related metrics such as impact factor when submitting their work for publication. Respondents indicated that total number of publications, number of publications per year, and journal name recognition were the most valued factors in RPT. Older and tenured respondents (most likely to serve on RPT committees) were less likely to value journal prestige and metrics for publishing, while untenured respondents were more likely to value these factors. These results suggest disconnects between what academics value versus what they think their peers value, and between the importance of journal prestige and metrics for tenured versus untenured faculty in publishing and RPT perceptions.
Abstract
Nutritional stability – a food system’s capacity to provide sufficient nutrients despite disturbance – is an important, yet challenging to measure outcome of diversified agriculture. Using ...55 years of data across 184 countries, we assemble 22,000 bipartite crop-nutrient networks to quantify nutritional stability by simulating crop and nutrient loss in a country, and assess its relationship to crop diversity across regions, over time and between imports versus in country production. We find a positive, saturating relationship between crop diversity and nutritional stability across countries, but also show that over time nutritional stability remained stagnant or decreased in all regions except Asia. These results are attributable to diminishing returns on crop diversity, with recent gains in crop diversity among crops with fewer nutrients, or with nutrients already in a country’s food system. Finally, imports are positively associated with crop diversity and nutritional stability, indicating that many countries’ nutritional stability is market exposed.
Understanding how perceptions around motivation, capacity, and climate change's impacts relate to the adoption of adaptation practices in light of experiences with extreme weather events is important ...in assessing farmers' adaptive capacity. However, very little of this work has occurred in islands, which may have different vulnerabilities and capacities for adaptation. Data of surveyed farmers throughout Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria (n = 405, 87% response rate) were used in a structural equation model to explore the extent to which their adoption of agricultural practices and management strategies was driven by perceptions of motivation, vulnerability, and capacity as a function of their psychological distance of climate change. Our results show that half of farmers did not adopt any practice or strategy, even though the majority perceived themselves capable and motivated to adapt to climate change, and understood their farms to be vulnerable to future extreme events. Furthermore, adoption was neither linked to these adaptation perceptions, nor to their psychological distance of climate change, which we found to be both near and far. Puerto Rican farmers' showed a broad awareness of climate change's impacts both locally and globally in different dimensions (temporal, spatial, and social), and climate distance was not linked to reported damages from Hurricane Maria or to previous extreme weather events. These results suggest that we may be reaching a tipping point for extreme events as a driver for climate belief and action, especially in places where there is a high level of climate change awareness and continued experience of compounded impacts. Further, high perceived capacity and motivation are not linked to actual adaptation behaviors, suggesting that broadening adaptation analyses beyond individual perceptions and capacities as drivers of climate adaptation may give us a better understanding of the determinants to strengthen farmers' adaptive capacity.
Home food procurement (HFP) (i.e. gardening, fishing, foraging, hunting, backyard livestock and canning) have historically been important ways that people obtain food. Recently, some HFP activities ...have grown (e.g. gardening), while other activities (e.g. hunting) have become less common in the United States. Anecdotally, COVID-19 has sparked an increase in HFP evidenced by increased hunting licenses and shortages in seeds and canning supplies. HFP may have positive benefits for food security and diet quality, though research beyond gardening is especially limited in high-income countries.
We examine HFP activities since the COVID-19 pandemic began, and their relationship to food security and dietary quality using multivariable logit models and matching analysis with a statewide representative survey (n = 600) of residents of Vermont, United States.
We find 29% of respondent households classified as food insecure since COVID-19, and higher prevalence of food insecurity among those experiencing a negative job change since COVID-19, households earning less than $50,000 annually, Hispanic and multi-race respondents. Nearly 35% of respondents engaged in HFP activities since the COVID-19 pandemic began; the majority of those gardened, and more than half pursued HFP activities more intensely than before the pandemic or for the first time. Food insecure households were more likely to pursue HFP more intensely, including more gardening, fishing, foraging, and hunting. Respondents who were food insecure, Black, Indigenous, People of Color, those with a negative job disruption, and larger households all had greater odds of increased intensity of HFP during the COVID-19 pandemic. HFP was significantly associated with eating greater amounts of fruits and vegetables; however, this effect was only significant for food secure households.
Overall, these results suggest that HFP activities have increased since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and may be an important safety net for food insecure households. However, HFP for food insecure households does not translate into the same higher fruit and vegetable intake as found among food secure HFP households, suggesting this population may be trying to maintain intake, or that they may have potential important resource or technical assistance needs. Long-term, HFP activities may have important food security and diet quality impacts, as well as conservation implications, which should be more thoroughly explored. Regardless, the increased interest and intensity of HFP demonstrates opportunities for educational and outreach efforts.
Future climate changes will affect smallholder farmers in the developing world, posing threats to household food security. Nevertheless, there remains limited comparable evidence across multiple ...countries and regions regarding the global extent of climate shocks affecting smallholder food security. We examine data from 5,299 household surveys across 15 countries in Latin America, Africa and South Asia to assess the extent of climate shocks and their association with food insecurity, as well as what strategies may help buffer against climate shocks. We find that 71% of households reported experiencing a climate shock in the previous five years. Fifty-four percent reported experiencing food insecurity during one or more months annually. A multilevel statistical model estimated factors correlated with food insecurity as well as factors correlated with food insecurity among households that had experienced a climate shock. Households that reported experiencing a climate shock were 1.73 times more likely to be food insecure. As well, larger and poorer households were associated with higher odds of food insecurity while using pesticides, keeping large livestock, and being more educated are associated with lower odds of food insecurity. Among households that had experienced a climate shock, additional factors are correlated with lower odds of food insecurity when compared to otherwise similar households: use of fertilizers, pesticides, veterinary medicines, large livestock, and household assets. Together, these results demonstrate the extent of existing climate shocks affecting smallholder farmers and how interventions may potentially support adaptation and reduce food insecurity.
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