Thriving Ag Workshop: Celebrating Innovation and Insights to Build Thriving Ag Systems
May 28–29, 2025
Penn State University
Workshop Description
This was a final project workshop to celebrate success and accomplishments, share project findings with stakeholders, and discuss the future of Thriving Ag. We saw what opportunities and key findings the Thriving Ag project has given us for an economically and environmentally thriving agriculture in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed.
Meeting Agenda Day 1
Retrospective Discussion on Project – led by Dave Abler (9:00 am – 10:30 am)
Challenges encountered by the team (30 min)
What have we learned? (1 hr)
Do we want to pursue journal articles to articulate big-picture findings across a project? New review paper?
A perspective piece or a collaborative paper? What takeaways could come from the combined expertise?
Future Research Opportunities – led by Matt Royer (10:30 am – 12:30 pm)
Topic area and framing for Thriving Ag 2.0 (1 hr)
Set of stakeholders for Thriving Ag 2.0 (30 min)
Scenario spinoff projects or grants (30 min)
Meeting Agenda Day 2
Podcast-style Panel Sessions
Episode 1: Conservation Innovations
Episode 2: Preserving Farmland, Preserving Farmers
Episode 3: Ag in this Brave New World
Structured Discussion – Where Do We Go from Here?
Thriving Ag Project Team Meeting
Date: May 28, 2025
Attendees: Thriving Ag Project Team (only)
Facilitators: Dave Abler (Retrospective Discussion) and Matt Royer (Research Opportunities)
Day 1 Summary
Members of the Thriving Ag Project Team met to discuss project successes, challenges, and opportunities. Key accomplishments included investing in people, by training 23 graduate students, supporting 6 post-docs, and sustaining connections with original and new stakeholders; managing on-farm nutrient losses, by developing and sharing nitrogen tool recommendations in Pennsylvania and investigating cover crop practices in Maryland; improving models across scales, by simulating on-farm nutrient losses in the Bay model, state-wide manure management scenarios, system-wide supply chain changes, and nation-wide land use changes; estimating variation in value of best management practices and “local food” markets across rural and urban gradients; and making outreach more effective, by synthesizing best practices for practitioners conducting landowner outreach. One noted action item was to assure that we quantify successes through up-to-date metrics on outreach and publications.
Project team members noted that successes were not without challenges. Shared challenges included COVID and post-COVID disruptions, which limited in-person interactions; project complexity, which made concisely and accessibly sharing all aspects of such a broad project difficult; stakeholder burdens and changes in interest, including fluctuating engagement over time particularly for scenarios or outcomes that may not directly invest in stakeholder interests; issues of scale, including lacking micro-level data to capture farm heterogeneity for macro-level analyses; issues of state and federal policy changes, including loss of federal collaborators particularly from USDA, NRCS, and ARS; and outcome delays or loss after team members departed, such as pending or shelved publications from now-graduated trainees.
The discussion shifted from project reflections to opportunities. We first discussed opportunities to share findings from Thriving Ag. Plans included writing a Final Project Report both to NIFA and to the broader public as a web-based document through Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences. These efforts could be complemented with publications in regional stakeholder outlets (e.g., Bay Journal, Lancaster Farming, Delmarva Farmer) and in alternative formats (i.e., videos or podcasts), depending on the approval of the project’s second no-cost extension.
We concluded with opportunities to expand on these findings through future research in Thriving Ag 2.0. Building on prior discussions, we explored four potential themes:
Theme 1 BMP adoption. This theme would dive deeper into adoption behavior, examine slippage and unintended consequences, consider pay for conservation incentivization, and integrate adoption behavior into farm sustainability particularly as lands transition in use and ownership.
Theme 2 Measuring environmental benefits. This theme would consider how water quality protection and co-benefits differ across local scales, how these benefits change with targeted or clustered spatial arrangements of BMPs, and how to better quantify net benefits of conservation programs.
Theme 3 Larger systemic issues. This theme would scale to system-level issues such as how locals BMPs are (or are not) manifesting in system benefits, how legacy pollution complicates these benefits, how to shift towards policies in nonpoint source pollution that internalize externalities, and how to standardize uncertainty across the system.
Theme 4 Technological and industrial solutions. This theme would examine new or expansion of existing technology such as manure treatments (particularly for poultry litter), greenhouses, aquaculture, urban growing, and other alternative revenue streams related to more niche or non-arable land-based agriculture.
To explore these themes in Thriving Ag’s next iteration, we considered a few key questions on framing to keep or expand, namely (1) Should we keep the “urbanization interface” framing? (2) Should we keep our focus at the Chesapeake Bay scale? (3) Should we expand into industry-based solutions? and (4) Should we expand into collaborations with new stakeholders? These questions remain open for discussion, but we found broad support for deepening connections with existing stakeholders (Chesapeake Bay Foundation, The Nature Conservancy, and state agencies) as well as expanding to engage new stakeholders (including, but not limited to, Land and Litter, Maryland State Food Council, Global Food Institute in DC, the new Ag Advisory Committee to the Bay Program, Susquehanna River Basin Commission and Potomac equivalent, Energy Works). As we await the RFA for Thriving Ag 2.0, there may be an opportunity to talk with stakeholders first to distill ideas on our four themes before writing.
Thriving Ag Stakeholder Workshop
Date: May 29, 2025
Attendees: Thriving Ag Project Team and Project Stakeholders
Facilitators: Dave Abler (Introduction), Matt Royer & Matt Ehrhart (Panel Sessions), Nancy Nunn (Structured Discussion on Future Directions)
Day 2 Summary
Thriving Ag Project stakeholders and team members came together to share project findings with stakeholders and discuss the future of Thriving Ag. After a welcome and introduction from Project Director, Dave Abler, participants listened to three “podcast-style” panel sessions hosted by Matt Royer (Director, Agriculture and Environment Center, Penn State) and Matt Ehrhart (Director of Watershed Restoration, Stroud Water Research Center). Each panel session corresponded to a scenario explored in the Thriving Ag Project to create economically and environmentally thriving agricultural systems in urbanized landscapes:
Episode 1: Conservation Innovations offered insights into Thriving Ag’s Scenario 2: Incentivize ecosystems services and mass nutrient balance on farms. This panel featured Charlie White (Associate Professor and Extension Specialist, Soil Fertility and Nutrient Management, Penn State), Lisa Wainger (Professor of Environmental Economics, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science), Mark Dubin (Faculty Specialist, University of Maryland Extension), and Hans Schmidt (Assistant Secretary of Resource Conservation, Maryland Department of Agriculture).
Episode 1 began our discussion of conservation innovations at the farm-scale. Thriving Ag team members fine-tuned field nitrogen (N) recommendations to develop a farm-trialed N tool that is now live on the Penn State extension website. This transitioned into how such innovations are adopted by farmers, where technical service providers play a critical role in BMP outreach. Project members found that some best practices for farmer outreach included offering financial incentives to mitigate risk (the biggest factor), listening first, framing messaging around profitability, making the process of BMP adoption easier, sending trusted messengers, and showing before-and-after photos of BMPs. The idea of BMP affordability led to a highlight of the LEEF (Leaders in Environmentally Engaged Farming) program in Maryland, which credits farmers who are investing in assets to their community (e.g., food banks, rotary clubs) as a branding mechanism for other revenue streams. The audience was interested in how the LEEF program could be applied to existing frameworks in other states like Pennsylvania.
Episode 2: Preserving Farmland, Preserving Farmers offered insights into Scenario 3. Evaluate the role that land use regulations and other forms of land-based policies, such as farmland preservation, play in making agriculture successful or unsuccessful in an urbanizing environment. This panel featured Doug Wrenn (Associate Professor of Environmental and Resource Economics, Penn State), Nate Hu (PhD Graduate, Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Virginia Tech), Doug Wolfgang (Executive Secretary, PA State Conservation Commission), and Jeff Swinehart (President and CEO, Lancaster Farmland Trust).
Episode 2 focused on the Thriving Ag team that explored the marketability factors related to solar installations, farmland preservation, and BMP values. The team found that solar installations in a 2-mile radius increased (+20%) farmland value of the land but decreased (-5%) house values. The audience questions focused on these findings and on future solar research, which entailed agrivoltaics, Maryland’s bill on solar installation of farmland, and how to work with solar and data centers to save farmland. Relating to farmland preservation and preservation, the panel discussed successful models in Pennsylvania to match funding on certification and protection of farms (e.g., the Growing Greener Program), as well as how to integrate these models with plain-sect communities. The discussion ended with a conversation regarding the need to balance conservation practices with agricultural practices for economic viability.
Episode 3: Ag in this Brave New World offered insights into Scenario 4. Increase farm profitability through enhanced local food efforts and growing urban/rural relationships. This panel featured Ted Jaenicke (Professor of Agricultural Economics, Penn State), Dave Abler (Project Director and Professor of Agricultural Economics, Penn State), Caitlin Grady (Associate Professor, Engineering Management & Systems Engineering, George Washington University), and Mike Roth (Director of Conservation and Innovation, PA Department of Agriculture).
Episode 3 featured the team that explored the term “local food” and its value for consumers. The major takeaways were that defining “local food” is complex, and some consumers in urban areas may expect a discount on local foods rather than paying a premium. Other researchers contrasted the tradeoffs of keeping food local because, at the system-level in the Chesapeake Bay, nutrient flows in the supply chain export ~40 million tons of excess nitrogen through food. This sparked discussion on broader systems of food supply including the role of American agriculture in the global market, the role of imported food in American diets, and the role of new import tariffs in shifting local production and consumption. The panel ended with new innovations, such as AI for augmenting and supporting agricultural workers rather than replacing workers, and how this could conflict or synergize with energy needs. Audience questions related to gaps in all research topics, particularly on the methods for local foods and system models.
The workshop concluded with a structured discussion, led by Nancy Nunn (Assistant Director, Harry R. Hughes Center for Agro-Ecology), where small groups wrote answers to five questions:
What are some ideas that you’ve heard today that are ready to scale up? Shared ideas included widespread adoption of the N tool; preparation of warehouses, data centers, and brownfields to be solar ready; state certifications for farm sustainability (i.e., LEEF in Maryland and PACS in Pennsylvania); and innovation of waste (both food and manure) to generate energy and other co-products.
What is the impact of current events on these issues? Shared ideas included unlocking federal, state, and local innovation; changing crop patterns, BMP effectiveness, and water quality; changing regulations, enforcement, and perception (e.g., eroding farmers’ trust in programs and technical assistance); losing knowledge and long-term research; and, generally, facing uncertainty in funding, employment, and programs’ longevity.
What are future research needs, and what were some of the gaps in the research? Shared ideas included developing connections between environmental and economic models; incentivizing and motivating stakeholder engagement in research; understanding direct sale pricing and willingness to pay for local foods; understanding impacts of energy infrastructure changes (e.g., data centers), policy approaches, and ag land’s role in energy production; seeking resiliency in ag systems (e.g., shifting crop production in response to climate change); acquiring “better” data (longer term, finer scale) on BMPs, the value of ag land, and ag employment and farm financials; and learning from other countries.
Who else should hear about this? Who might benefit and how might it be disseminated? Shared ideas included telling consumers (particularly through labeling and certifying local foods), federal USDA staff and administration, farmers, policymakers at local and county levels, supply chain folks (e.g., co-ops, retailers, technical service providers, contractors), developers and investors (especially for energy sectors), and other academics across disciplines. Ideas on how to disseminate findings included through podcasts, influencers, formal media outlets (i.e., pop-science publications), and high school curricula (e.g., food system courses, CASE 4 Learning, Envirothon).
You can also download the workshop summary here.
Project funded by USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Copyright Thriving Agricultural Systems in Urbanized Landscapes – 2025