Multi-stakeholder advocacy on climate change and agriculture policy

Background/Question/Methods

The California Climate and Agriculture Network (CalCAN) is a coalition of food and farming organizations serving as the voice of sustainable agriculture on climate policy. We seek to accelerate on-farm renewable energy generation, strengthen farmland protection policies, secure investments of cap-and-trade revenue in agriculture and enhance agricultural resilience to climate impacts.

In spite of the grave threats that climate change poses to food production, there have been insufficient resources devoted to supporting agricultural adaptation. Likewise, the role farms and ranches can play to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and sequester carbon is poorly understood by policymakers.

Farmers, agriculture leaders and scientists are among the most effective and credible spokespeople in advocating for policies that support climate adaptation and mitigation in agriculture. Therefore, in addition to traditional lobbying, CalCAN cultivates farmer leaders, builds relationships with "grasstops" allies and mobilize stakeholders on targeted campaigns. We employ science-based information on climate-friendly practices, and we facilitate ongoing dialogue between farmers and ranchers, researchers, advocates and policymakers—all with the aim of winning policies that unleash the potential for agriculture to respond productively to the climate crisis.

Results/Conclusions

We employed our multi-stakeholder strategy on several recent initiatives, including these examples:

1. “Blueprint for a California Program on Climate and Agriculture” —CalCAN advocates for the investment of cap-and-trade revenue in sustainable agriculture. To bolster our case, we produced the Blueprint which makes recommendations on the design of a competitive grants program to fund sustainable agriculture research, technical assistance, incentives and farmland protection. We employed an intensive consultative process involving interviews, roundtable discussions and input from academic researchers, agriculture conservation professionals and farmers.

2. “From Science to Storytelling: Effective Communication for Policy Change” — This workshop was developed in partnership with several CalCAN science advisors, aimed at researchers interested in strengthening their communications skills with policymakers.

3. Farm field days — We organize farm field days on climate change and agriculture for agriculture conservation professionals, farmers, environmentalists and others. We often rely on experts in ecological sciences to present.

Partnerships with scientists, farmers and others enhances the credibility of our efforts, groundtruths our positions and has contributed to our successes. Challenges remain and include finding experts who understand the importance of and will prioritize policy work, who are willing and able to modify their communications to effectively speak to laypeople and policymakers, who focus on the nexus of climate science and agriculture and who take a whole systems approach.