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abstract: Farmers have time and again adopted new methods or technologies. However, recent increases in global temperatures and occurrences of extreme weather events, call for an urgency to address and reduce the risks associated with climate change. Irrigation is a key adaptation that reduces crop heat stress and enhances agricultural production. Alabama is considered water-rich but lately has experienced increased rainfall variability and temperature extremes. Various state-wide initiatives to increase irrigation have been implemented, but adoption remains limited. Existing studies have explored factors influencing irrigation uptake, but none have engaged in a state-level assessment of its adoption potential. In this study, we provide spatially explicit estimates of the potential to implement irrigation practices across the state. Moreover, we derive an irrigation adoption index map for Alabama to identify areas where implementation is more or less likely based on a multi-criteria analysis. The results highlight a large potential for expansion in areas that have high shares of existing irrigation. Such an analysis can enable targeted mobilization of resources towards areas where uptake is currently low but feasible through increased adaptation efforts. Additionally, these estimates can be further used to evaluate future water demands or conduct other regional analyses. 

Many contemporary social and environmental problems are increasingly ‘wicked.’ Convergence research offers an effective approach to tackle wicked problems by integrating diverse epistemologies, methodologies, and expertise. Yet, there exists little discussion of how to develop and employ a convergence research approach. This article describes our collaborative research efforts to achieve convergence research and team science. For over a decade, we have sought to understand how drug trafficking activities, and the counternarcotics efforts designed to thwart them, catalyze catastrophic changes in landscapes and communities. We first discuss how understanding our wicked problem called for epistemological convergence of diverse data through a team science approach. We then unpack the potential insights and challenges of methodological convergence by drawing upon examples from our land cover and land use change analysis. Third, we argue that the nature of complex, pressing problems requires convergence research to be politically engaged and accountable to the multiple communities affected. This article aims to provide research teams insight into how to pursue epistemological and methodological convergence while attending to the inherent politics of producing knowledge about wicked problems. 

The US corn area footprint has changed significantly since the 20th century, declining in the southeastern states while exhibiting an increase or stable variations in the Midwest. As harvested acreage directly impacts the total corn production, understanding the influencing factors is crucial. This study assesses the role of potential drivers on the contrasting trajectories of harvested corn acreage between midwestern and southeastern US. Profit acreage analysis reveals that antecedent profits/losses have a statistically significant influence on corn acreage changes, with southeastern US, which experienced more loss-making years, also experiencing more frequent reductions in corn acreage. The high number of loss-making years in the Southeast is primarily attributed to the region’s low corn yield, influenced by climate and other agro-environmental factors. Using a panel regression model, we find that the loss-making years in the Southeast could have reduced to fewer than 26 out of the considered 45 years, or almost similar to the average in the Midwest, by just increasing the irrigated corn area to 50 %, a realistic irrigated corn area fraction already achieved in several Georgia counties. This underscores the potential for early policy interventions like irrigation facilitation to sustain and expand cropped acreage. However, we also find that this would only be economically feasible with incentives for both the installation and sustained operation of irrigation infrastructure. 

Abstract Achieving large-scale, transformative climate change adaptations in agriculture while mitigating further climate impacts and supporting sustainable and equitable rural livelihoods is a grand challenge for society. Transformation of the agri-food system is necessary and inevitable, but the extent to which transformation can be intentionally guided toward desirable states remains unclear. We argue that instead of targeting leverage points in isolation, coordinated interventions multiple leverage points and their interactions are necessary to create broader system transformation towards more adaptive futures. Using the Southeastern U.S. as a case study, we conceptualize a way of doing transformation research in agri-food systems that integrates multiple theoretical and practical perspectives of how transformative pathways can be constructed from ‘chains’ of interacting leverage points. We outline several principles for transformative research; the core of which are participatory, transdisciplinary, and convergence research methods needed for articulating a shared vision. These principles embrace an action-oriented approach to research in which the act of assembling diverse networks of researchers, stakeholders, and community partners itself can activate community- and regional-level leverage points to scale-up changes. Finally, we present tangible examples of specific leverage points and their interactions targeted by agri-food systems interventions currently underway or planned. This work offers an ‘anticipatory’ vision for agri-food systems transformation research that recognizes the need to normatively create an enabling environment to build momentum toward shared visions of secure, equitable, and sustainable regional agri-food systems. 

Responding to the challenges of societal transformation in the face of climate change, efforts to integrate behaviorally rich models of adaptation decision-making into large-scale macroeconomic and Earth system models are growing and agent-based models (ABMs) are an effective tool for doing so. However, behavioral richness in ABMs has been limited to implementations of single decision models for all agents in a simulated population. The main goals of this study were to: 1) implement the ‘building-block processes’ (BBPs) approach for decision model heterogeneity; 2) demonstrate the application of sensitivity and uncertainty analyses to quantify the scope of structural uncertainty produced by alternative decision models under variable price and climate conditions; and 3) apply the Observing System Simulation Experiment (OSSE) approach to validate such a behaviorally rich BBPs model at the level of individual agent decisions. Using an ABM of agricultural producers’ decision-making, we demonstrated that uncertainty in crop and farm management decisions introduced by heterogeneous decision models was equal to and in some instances greater than that due to variable price or precipitation conditions. Unrealistically rapid or stagnant behavioral dynamics were evident in model versions implementing single decision models for all agents. Moreover, interactions among agents with diverse decision models in the same population produced consistently more accurate outcomes and realistic behavioral dynamics. The BBPs framework and accompanying sensitivity and uncertainty analyses demonstrated here offer a path forward for increasing behavioral richness in ABMs, which is key to understanding processes of adaptation central to societal responses to climate change. 

For decades, nations around the world have been promoting irrigation expansion as a method for improving agricultural growth, smoothing production risk, and alleviating rural poverty. Despite its apparent advantages, suboptimal adoption rates persist. According to the existing literature, determinants of irrigation adoption are often highly dependent on cultural, contextual, and/or local institutional factors. Yet, studies from diverse geographies identify a consistent set of factors. Thus, to be able to make generalizable inferences from such studies, a global geographic representativeness assessment of irrigation adoption studies was conducted to determine whether identified factors influencing irrigation were the result of geographic, epistemological, or disciplinary biases. The results indicate that multiple geographic biases exist with respect to studying farmers’ irrigation adoption decision-making. More research on this topic is being conducted in regions that have little to a high percentage of irrigation (>1%), are readily accessible, receive moderate amounts of average annual rainfall, and have moderate amounts of cropland cover. The results suggest the need to expand research efforts in areas with little to no irrigation to identify constraints and help accelerate economic growth, poverty reduction, and food and livelihood security for rural communities in these regions.