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The emerging movement to deepen and expand higher education's civic mission and work is calling on scholars to enter the public realm and become actively engaged in civic life. To heed the call, scholars will need to embrace and pursue a view of scholarship as a public rather than a private craft, one that brings them into public space and relationships in order to facilitate knowledge discovery, learning, and action relevant to civic issues and problems. In this paper, we tell the story of one scholar who has helped us understand and appreciate the craft of public scholarship in land-grant education. Drawing from the findings of an action research project we have launched, we then identify some of the practical skills, value commitments, and institutional supports that public scholars need in order to be successful in their work.

This article explores the need for diversification in agriculture in the Upper Midwest region of the United States, emphasizing an agroecological approach. The consolidation of the agricultural industry, along with cultural diversity and environmental degradation, poses challenges for the region. The article suggests that academic agroecologists can contribute to diversification by engaging in civic arenas, supporting place-based projects, and addressing supply chain challenges. Examples of ongoing projects, such as sustainable aviation fuel development and hybrid hazelnut production, are provided. The text also discusses steward ownership in agriculture, collaborative efforts, and responsible innovation. Collaboration among different sectors and scales, reducing social and economic inequities, and working with dominant agricultural firms and organizations are highlighted as important factors in addressing the complex issue of agricultural diversification in the Upper Midwest. [Extracted from the article]

Managing annual row crops on marginally productive croplands can be environmentally unsustainable and result in variable economic returns. Incorporating perennial bioenergy feedstocks into marginally productive cropland can engender ecosystem services and enhance climate resiliency while also diversifying farm incomes. We use one of the oldest bioenergy-specific field experiments in North America to evaluate economically and environmentally sustainable management practices for growing perennial grasses on marginal cropland. This long-term field trial called 9804 was established in 1998 in eastern Nebraska and compared the productivity and sustainability of corn (Zea mays L.) --both corn grain and corn stover--and switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.) bioenergy systems under different harvest strategies and nitrogen (N) fertilizer rates. This experiment demonstrated that switchgrass, compared to corn, is a reliable and sustainable bioenergy feedstock. This experiment has been a catalyst for other bioenergy projects which have also expanded our understanding of growing and managing bioenergy feedstocks on marginal cropland. We (1) synthesize research from this long-term experiment and (2) provide perspective concerning both the knowledge gained from this experiment and knowledge gaps and how to fill them as well as the role switchgrass will play in the future of bioenergy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agriculture is offering new forms of support to society, as evidenced by rapid development of an agricultural "bio-economy," and increasing emphasis on production of ecological services in farmed landscapes. The advent of these innovations will engage agricultural professionals in critical civic debates about matters that are complex and that will often be controversial, and thus demand new sets of professional capacities that extend significantly beyond technical expertise. Specifically, agriculturalists will need a capacity to facilitating challenges to, and where appropriate, changes in prevailing worldviews--their own as well as those of others. In this article we report on pedagogy that aims to build such capacity, via a semester-length course on critical engagement in sustainable development of agricultural and other managed ecosystems. In the course we aimed to help prepare students to engage as professionals in critical discourse under circumstances where prevailing worldviews about agricultural development vary significantly among different stakeholders. We used experiential learning to encourage students to critically examine individual and collective worldviews and "mental models" relevant to sustainable development challenges. Experiential learning was particularly featured in an extended exercise in "scenario planning," a method of systemic analysis of alternative scenarios of future development in which the students began to function as a critical learning system. In reflective and evaluative essays, students indicated favorable evaluations of their learning experience and provided evidence of increased capacities highly relevant to civic professionalism within the context of the quest for sustainability as agriculture offers new forms of life support to society. (Contains 2 figures.)

We describe our pedagogical approaches and experiences with a novel course in agroecology (one semester, three credit-hours, for graduate students and upper level undergraduates). Our course responds to recent proposals that agroecology expand its disciplinary focus to include human factors as well as ecological factors, thus taking a more holistic and systemic perspective. the course structure and service-learning component are organized around the focal concept of "transformation," that is, a systemic change that addresses a certain ecological problem in an agricultural system. Our goal is to help train agricultural professionals who can work effectively in collaborative efforts to implement such transformations. toward this end, we have integrated methods from systems thinking, soft-systems methodology, and agroecosystems analysis, and used a service-learning component to provide students with an opportunity to apply and evaluate these methods in practice. Most students favorably evaluated the course. Ultimately, we expect that the course will help our students to develop a civic professionalism through which they apply their professional skills to complex public problems in agriculture. (Contains 2 tables.)