In attendance:  Matt Wilson (Past Chair-WVU), Puneet Srivastava (Maryland), Jody Jellison (Massachusetts), Margaret Smith (Cornell AES), Darrell Donahue (WVU), Calvin Keeler (Delaware), Jason White (Connecticut-New Haven), Jessica Leahy (Maine), Anton Bekkerman (UNH), Jan Nyrop (Cornell AgriTech), Anna Katharine Mansfield (Cornell), Blair Siegfried (Penn State), Bill Hoffman (USDA-NIFA), Rubella Goswami (USDA-NIFA), Chris Pritsos (WAAESD-UNR), Mario Machado (UVM-Fellow), Alicia Coleman (UMass-Fellow), Bret Hess (WAAESD Exec Dir), David Leibovitz (NERA)

 

Meeting administration – Matt Wilson and NERA

• Rick Rhodes (NERA Executive Director) was not feeling well and could not attend this meeting.  Rick sends his regards to the Directors.

• The USDA will host the first public meeting of the inaugural Federal Advisory Committee for Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production on March 23-24, 2022.  The public – including urban producers– is encouraged to attend.​

• The agenda for this meeting was approved unanimously.

• The minutes of December 15, 2021 NERA meeting were approved unanimously.

 

Multistate Activities Committee – Jan Nyrop (Report and recommendations enclosed)

• The MAC approved the following requests to write:

  • NE18940: A regional network of social, behavioral, and economic food systems research, 10/1/22-9/30/27. Submitted by Cristina Connolly, UConn

  • NE18946: Green Stormwater Infrastructure, 10/1/22-9/30/27. Submitted by Christopher C. Obropta (Rutgers) and Michael Dietz (UConn)

• The MAC recommends to NERA, the approval of the following peer reviewed proposals:

  • NE_TEMP2249: Sustainable and Inclusive Rural Economic Development to Enhance Housing, Health, Entrepreneurship, and Equity, 10/2022 – 09/2027 [Renewal of NE1749, AA: Peggy Brennan – Rutgers] [Primary reviewer: Jan Nyrop]

  • NE_TEMP2251: Tourism Resilience and Community Sustainability: Adaptation and Recovery of Rural Businesses and Destinations, 10/2022 – 09/2027 [New project, AA and Primary reviewer: Matt Wilson – WVU]

  • These two peer reviewed proposals were approved by NERA and will be approved as multistate projects in NIMSS.

•  ESS/Northeast Excellence in Multistate Research Award selection

  • The Northeast has not won this award in a long time.

  • The MAC recommends supporting NE1962 (Outdoor Recreation) as the 2022 nominee.

  • Matt Wilson (WVU) serves as administrative adviser and confirms this has been an active group in this project cycle.

  • The group is working toward publishing a book that describes its research and impacts.

  • NERA unanimously approves the nomination of NE1962 as the 2022 recipient.

• ESS/Northeast Excellence in Leadership Award selection

  • The MAC recommends nominating Jody Jellison (UMass) for this award in 2022.

  • Jody served an extended term on the NERA Executive committee, chaired the ESCOP Science and Technology Committee, and represented the Northeast on a national stage.

  • NERA fully approves the nomination of Jody Jellison as the 2022 recipient.

• NRSP_TEMP1 (Multistate Research Information Management and Impact Communications, 10/1/22-9/30/27. [Renewal of NRSP1, Northeast AA: Bill Miller, Massachusetts]

  • This is a “capacity/core” designated NRSP as opposed to a new/emerging initiative.  The proposal is not written with the intent for NRSP1 to sunset after its five-year term.

  • NRSP1 is off-the-top national research support project funding that supports NIMSS and the Multistate Research Fund Impacts Writing program.

  • NERA unanimously approves the NRSP_TEMP1 proposal.

• Request to Write process discussion

  • The MAC will be discussing the Northeast’s “request to write” requirements at a future meeting. We often receive submissions that look like full project proposals rather than just the issues and justification section – the additional information is helpful.  NERA will scan the other regions for their request to write requirements and set this discussion topic aside for the next MAC meeting.

 

NIFA Update – Rubella Goswami and Bill Hoffman

• NIFA Director Carrie Castille is leaving on April 9 to join the University of Tennessee.  An interim NIFA Director period should last up to one year.

• AFRI foundational RFA has been developed.  Three new program areas are included and new opportunities for climate change research.  NIFA is organizing webinars related to these programs.

• Upcoming hires being advertised: 

  • NPL positions for Social Sciences and Plant Protection division

  • Program specialists

• Coming soon:  AFRI Education and Workforce Development, pre- and post-doctoral fellowships, experiential education for undergraduates.

 

Station Research Profile:  Agriculture and Nanotechnology – Jason White, Director, CT AES

• Inaugural presentation to learn about the research happening across the region

• Nanomaterials as emerging contaminants; Nanotoxicology and its effect on agriculture

• Slides from this presentation are enclosed with these minutes.

 

NERA and ESCOP Updates – Matt Wilson

• Summer joint meeting:  June 5-7, Portland, Maine (Face-to-face only, no virtual component)

• NERA Leadership changes, replacing Mark Hutton

  • Puneet Srivastava (Officer-at-large) will shift to incoming chair

  • NERA is seeking a new Officer-at-large.  We are seeking volunteers or nominations soon but not necessarily during this meeting.

• ESCOP and the Northeast

  • Matt Wilson (WVU) will serve as the ESCOP Chair 2022-23, putting the Northeast in a leadership position.

  • Business practices and organizational structure ESS will be reviewed in the coming year.

  • ESCOP Budget and Legislative Committee is exploring a “moonshot” ask and has an active call for ideas, seeking research initiatives or legislation to target in the next moonshot.

  • 2022 Unified Ask was presented at the CARET/AHS meeting at the beginning of March

    • Jody reflected that during hill visits at CARET/AHS, legislators asked:  which should we support, infrastructure funding or capacity funding?

 

Final report, Northeast Ecosystems Services Inventory – Alicia Coleman and Mario Machado, NEED/NERA Postdoctoral Fellows

• NERA and NEED funded two fellowships to conduct an ecosystems services inventory and assessment, to inform the design and audience of a series of virtual listening sessions and a Northeast Ecosystems Services Symposium.  A slide deck will be enclosed with these meeting notes.

• Scope of work included:

  • Identifying the organizational scope of relevant programs and policies

  • Document ag-related practices that procure ecosystem functions/services

  • Report the breadth of direct and indirect incentives/rewards offered to ag-related producers for ecosystem function/service practices

  • Describe producers’ strategies to advertise function/service practices and boost revenue streams

• 1,300 programs in four categories are included in the generated database:

  • Food, farming, agriculture

  • Working forests and woodlands

  • Fisheries, aquaculture, and shellfish operations

  • Supporting landscapes and systems

• Recommendations:  Increasing farm profitability and sustainability

  • Producers and land managers operate according to the "safety-first" principle and are often risk-averse. In order to be successful, practices and programs must sufficiently and sustainably offset these risks in concrete ways.

• Recommendations:  Positioning agriculture and forestry as primary leaders in mitigating climate change

  • Programs are structured to either incentivize a single ecosystem service or multiple layered services.  Project design should account for those strengths and weaknesses as well as the potential to scale practices from individual farms to multifunctional landscapes.

• Recommendations:  Building resilience of rural and urban communities

  • Very few programs reviewed in this assessment directly address resilience and fewer directly address resilience beyond the farm scale.

• Recommendations:  Increasing the appeal of agricultural and working lands professions to a wide range of young people

  • Ecosystem service provisioning programs for young and beginner farmers, while important, may not be enough to entice young people into working lands-related careers.  Programs that couple ecosystem service provisioning with incentives that directly support livelihood provisioning such as cash-in-hand (basic income), land access/acquisition, free education/professional development, and healthcare, may help.

• A deliverable final report is set for completion in late March.

• Front-facing Ecosystem services database will be developed and made available to the public.

• Alicia and Mario are both conducting postdoctoral research at NERA institutions (UConn Applied Forest Ecology Lab and UVM Gund Institute for Environment).

 

Guided discussion with the ESCOP Chair – Chris Pritsos, Director of Nevada AES, Associate Dean of Research, University of Nevada, Reno

• Chris Pritsos shared some academic and professional background about himself, and presented the organizational structure of the Experiment Station Section and ESCOP.

• As NERA’s regional communications effort comes together, we can share our progress with ESCOP along the way.  The West and South have similar communications efforts in place.

• Slides from Chris Pritsos’s presentation, including ESCOP Chair’s Initiatives and Priorities, will be enclosed with these minutes.

 

This meeting adjourned at 11:58 am ET.