Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

PART 1— Why Think Resilience?
1. Waking Up to Climate Change
— Unprecedented — Running into Resilience — A Real-World Test of Resilience — A Word About Hope

2. Climate Change Is Changing the Weather
— Two Decades of Disaster — The Climate Change Challenge — Understanding Climate Vulnerability

3. Understanding Exposure
— Regional Changes and Expected Changes in Weather

4. Understanding Sensitivity
— Crops and Livestock — Soil and Water — Weeds, Insects and Disease — People, Community, Money

5. Understanding Adaptive Capacity
— Farms and Ranches Are Ecosystems — Cultivating Adaptive Capacity

6. Managing Climate Risk: Adaptation Stories
— Farmers and Ranchers in the Northwest and Southwest — Farmers and Ranchers in the Great Plains — Farmers in the Midwest — Farmers in the Northeast and Southeast— A New Path for American Agriculture?

PART 2— The Rules of Resilience?
7. A New Way to Think About Solutions
— Resilience Is Not What You Think — Describing a Social-Ecological System: Focal Scale, Identity and Desirability — More Than Bouncing Back

8. The Qualities and Behaviors of Resilient Systems
— The Raw Material of Resilience: Diversity — A Diversified Portfolio of Assets — Key Resilience Behaviors — Specified and General Resilience — Resilience Design Principles

9. The Rules of Resilience
— Diverse Networks of Reciprocal Relationship — Regional Self-Reliance — Accumulation of Community-Based Wealth — Moving Beyond Industrialism: A Just Transformation

10. Is Sustainable Agriculture a Resilient Agriculture?
— What is Sustainable Agriculture? — Cultivating Resilience with Sustainable Agriculture

11. Resilient Agriculture: New Tools for Shaping Change
— Navigating Uncertainty with Adaptive Management — Whole Farm Planning Is Adaptive Management — Nature-Based Solutions: Cultivating Healthy Ecosystems for Land, People and Community — The Adaptive Continuum: Protect, Adapt, Transform — Barriers to a Resilient Agriculture: From the Farm Gate to Your Plate

PART 3— What Path to Resilience?
12. The Light and the Dark of These Times
— From Land to Mouth: In Search of Sustainable Food — Indigenous Foodways — The Good Food Movement

13. Adding Resilience to the Menu
— The Regional Roots of Resilience — Metropolitan Foodsheds

14. The Way Forward
— Twelve Things That You Can Do to Cultivate a Resilient Agriculture

PART 4— Real World Resilience: Stories of Land, People and Community
15. Vegetables
— A.G. Kawamura, Fullerton, California — Hannah Breckbill, Decorah, Iowa — Rebecca Graff and Tom Ruggieri, Kearney, Missouri — Marc White, Keymah Durden and David Hester, Cleveland, Ohio — Ira Wallace and Mary Berry, Mineral, Virginia — Pam Dawling, Louisa, Virginia — C. Bernard Obie, Roxboro, North Carolina

16. Fruits and Nuts
— Mark Shepard, Viroqua, Wisconsin — Walker Miller, Six Mile, South Carolina

17. Grains
— Bryce Lundberg, Richvale, California — Gail Fuller, Severy, Kansas

18. Livestock
— Albert Straus, Marshall, California — Jordan Settlage, St. Mary's, Ohio — Jamie Ager, Fairview, North Carolina

Notes
Index
About the Author
About New Society Publishers

Promotional Information

Shares the adaptation stories of award-winning sustainable farmers and ranchers to explore practical steps to a climate-resilient food future

About the Author

Laura Lengnick is an award-winning soil scientist with 25 years of experience working as a researcher, policy maker, educator, and farmer to put sustainability values into action in agriculture and food systems. She is the founder and principal at Cultivating Resilience, LLC, in Asheville, NC.

Reviews

"Carefully addresses the major issues facing us in agriculture, and brilliantly argues that it isn't some vague notion of "technology" that will show us the way forward but people working together and carefully stewarding the land. This is both an old and a novel approach, and it's exactly what's needed."
— Mark Bittman, author, Animal, Vegetable, Junk and How to Cook Everything "Everyone who works a food-related job, or who just cares about what and whether our children and grandchildren will eat, should acquaint themselves with this path-breaking, delightfully informative book."
— Richard Heinberg, senior fellow, Post Carbon Institute, author, Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival "Whether you are just stepping onto the resilience thinking footpath to those of us that are well-versed in projected climate change impacts to our food and fiber systems, Resilient Agriculture offers guideposts to encourage our individual and collective journeys towards a hopeful agriculture production vision that leaves no one behind."
— Michelle Lovejoy, Landscapes Resilience, Environmental Defense Fund "Wonderfully concise, practical, and beautifully written compendium of how to deal with climate change's impacts on agriculture. This book should be on the shelf of every farmer in America and abroad."
— Dr. Sally Goerner, research director, Edinburgh University's Planetary Health Lab "Provides the conceptual guidebook and strategic road map for navigating through the perils of climate instability in the quest for economic viability and long-run food security."
— John Ikerd, Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Economics, University of Missouri "Gifts us practical insights and plenty of examples of how we can reshape our food system from being depleting to one that is resilient and regenerative. Thank-you Laura for your practical guidance and inspiration."
— Mathis Wackernagel, Ph.D., Founder and President, Global Footprint Network, co-author Ecological Footprint "Mixing specific stories from current farmers with theory and analysis, Lengnick lays out a path for systemic, practical, and realistic transformation."
— Peter H. Lehner, managing attorney, Sustainable Food & Farming, Earthjustice, and co-author, Farming for Our Future: The Science, Law, and Policy of Climate-Neutral Agriculture. "A brilliant, hopeful book and a call to action."
— Marianne Landzettel, journalist and author, Regenerative Agriculture: Farming with Benefits