Adaptive Strategies for the Anthropocene: Suburban Lawns into Agroecosystems.

Anthropogenic climatic changes will be experienced very differently around the globe, with social and economic consequences being unevenly distributed between those with the means to adapt and those without. In the Midwestern United States we are fortunate to currently have access to resources we can use to begin to experiment towards resilience and self-sufficiency in food production and clean water through the adoption of practices such as agroforestry. Suburban metropolitan areas in particular have both the land area and market potential to sustain large growth in the number of small stakeholder farmers, permaculturists, and market gardeners. Through increased use of perrenial for-profit farming systems suburban areas offer an opportunity to mitigate and restore damage to watersheds, as they are enormous contributors to nutrient loading downstream, and can also provide an opportunity to lower resource demands through food production self-sufficiency. There are many potential avenues for the adoption of agroforestry practices including for-profit and non-profit farming initiatives, home-owners associations, suburban governments, and city-wide gleaning gardens. Findings will be presented based on three years of an experimental agroforestry cropping system changing a one-acre suburban yard of wet Midwestern clay soil, into a perennial for-profit farming system. This was designed to mimic small stakeholder and home-garden practices from around the world, utilizing site-specific advantages and native crop species while attempting economic and food-production self-sufficiency. Small scale farming close to markets was found to provide sustainable yields and returns while enhancing ecosystems, and that self-sufficiency relies not on individuals but on communities of practice.