1. Guiding Principles Major activities Information generated Integration
Community-engaged research focussing on producers at the farm level
Agroecological (AE) assessment and farm process development for
economic, and environmental improvement and resiliency
Interdisciplinary, innovative, imaginative and visionary
Inform practice and policy, expand knowledge and increase capacity
Guiding
Principles
Farm survey
On-farm evaluation
Manipulation for
resiliency testing
AE assessment
Direct farm
investigation
and surveys
Agroecological farm practices vs “business as usual” farm practices
Major
activities
Test and improve
resiliency of farm
system through AE
practice
-Identify patterns
-Establish AE baseline
and farmer AE
literacy
-How do AE practices
affect economic,
environmental and
production levels?
-Farm response to
various stresses
-Stress effects on
multiple indicators
Information
generated
-Patterns identified
inform and shape
network
-Early in network life
-On-farm AE practices
effect on indicators
-Tradeoffs among
indicators
-Analysis of multiple
indicator responses
-Optimization models
across network
Integration
into Network

3. On-farm indicator evaluation Experimental manipulations
Regional scale
Regional Assessment
Assess farming practices and key economic/ environmental indicators through on farm investigation and surveys
~300 farms across Prairies: range in farming practices
On-farm indicator evaluation
Assess sustainability and resiliency using multiple indicators measured along continuum of conventional to agro-ecological farms
Farm
scale
40 farms: BAU vs agroecologically intensive farms
9 farm fields: Field experiment
Experimental manipulations
Test stability and resiliency to flood/ drought stressors
Field scale
Models of multiple indicator responses
Optimize across network to improve agroecosystem design for resiliency