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The overall goals of the proposed project are to further to the development of the understandings of coupled human and natural systems and sustainability by contributing to these literatures. Within those overall goals, the specific objectives of the project are to: <OL> <LI> To ascertain the ways in which the structure and processes of governance, science, social discourse, and community affect the sustainability of the halibut fishery in southeast Alaska. <LI> To analyze the ways in which social structures and processes influence the sustainability of animal agriculture in Michigan. <LI> To explore the ways in which food safety in the U.S. can be usefully conceptualized as a coupled-human natural system and the ways in which food safety affects the sustainability of the U.S. agrifood system. <LI> To identify the extent to which and the ways in which different groups of social actors are adapting to current and expected climate change, and to understand the factors that influence those decisions and behaviors.
NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARY: The concept of coupled human and natural systems will provide the principal scientific framework for the proposed Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station (MAES) project. The four case studies to be conducted as part of this project will analyze their respective focal areas as coupled human and natural systems. At the same time, each case study will investigate the outcomes of the activity and behavior of the particular system, and specifically will ask how the operation of the system contributes to sustainability. For the purposes of this aspect of the project, the research will draw on recent work in sustainability science (Kates 2001; Ostrom 2009). Emerging in the past decade, sustainability science attempts to move the earlier and somewhat prejudiced study of sustainable development toward a more scientific basis in order to develop generalized understandings about the substantive content of sustainability and about the conditions which foster its realization. The proposed MAES project will address both a basic science question and a general question of applied science, and will contribute to the solution of four specific problems in Michigan. By showing that analyzing food safety, animal industry, fisheries management, and climate change as coupled human and natural systems generates new and more powerful understandings of those problems, the proposed project will contribute to the elaboration of the socio-ecological systems paradigm. By elucidating what sustainability means in food safety, animal industry, fisheries management, and climate change, and identifying the conditions that foster sustainability in each of those systems, the proposed project will strengthen the corpus of sustainability science. By developing and validating a clearer understanding of each problem, the proposed project will make it possible for state, regional and national stakeholders to discuss ways to move toward solutions of the problems. Although not part of the proposed MAES project, the principal investigator will collaborate on parallel research efforts in Mexico. Each of the four problems (food safety, fisheries management, animal industry, climate change) is a social problem. The discourse over food safety among industry leaders, regulators, politicians, and civil society organizations is increasingly rancorous; conflicts over fisheries management and animal industry cause deep divisions within rural communities; and global climate change will increase competition for water between agriculture, industry, recreation and household interests. While only food safety is explicitly a health problem, the other three have health implications. All four are definitely economic problems. While fisheries management, animal industry, and climate change have explicit biophysical environmental dimensions, food safety is connected to the environment through water quality, wildlife and animal husbandry practices. Agricultural producers, food processors and distributors, agricultural and environmental policy makers, and consumers are all stakeholders for the proposed research project.
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APPROACH: Objective #1. Interviews will be conducted with purposive samples of members of the several key social groups in the southeast Alaska halibut fishery system - management agencies (international, national, regional, state, local), advocacy groups (commercial fishery, charter fishery, environmental), community leaders (mayor, chamber of commerce, newspaper editor, faith-based organizations), commercial fishers, charter fishing operators. When organizations have science roles designated separately from management roles, both groups will be interviewed. The interviews will be semi-structured and open-ended; they will be recorded when the participants give permission. Objective #2. With the collaboration of county and regional extension educators, two communities where animal agriculture is significant will be selected. In one community agriculture will not be the dominant social element; in the other community agriculture and non-farm interests will be relatively balanced. To replicate the study done already in one county, interviews will be conducted with community leaders, environmental and agricultural advocacy groups, animal enterprise operators, and non-farm rural residents. Interviews will be semi-structured and open-ended, and will be recorded for transcription when permission is given. Objective #3. Interviews will be conducted with leaders in the various segments of the U.S. agrifood system - farm production, food processing and manufacturing, wholesale and retail distribution, retail and institutional food service, and consumer organizations. Interviews will be conducted by telephone, and will be recorded and transcribed if permission is given. Interviews will be relatively unstructured with mostly open-ended questions and follow-up probes. Objective #4. We focus on four kinds of data: (1) historical data, from aerial photographs and secondary records, to begin drawing "long-term" conclusions relatively quickly; (2) quantitative survey data and qualitative ethnographic data, collected from populations and communities around experimental sites and selected comparative locations; (3) systematic first-hand or observational data, collected using comparable research protocols across sites; and (4) publicly available or secondary data, ranging from sociodemographic or census-type data, to local and regional economic and land-use data, to information on water use policies and trends.