CLIMATE ADAPTATION AND MITIGATION IN FRUIT AND VEGETABLE SUPPLY CHAINS

• Sponsoring Institution: National Institute of Food and Agriculture
• Project Status: COMPLETE
• Funding Source: AFRI COMPETITIVE GRANT
• Reporting Frequency: Annual
• Accession No.: 1012818
• Grant No.: 2017-68002-26789
• Cumulative Award Amt.: $3,414,911.00
• Proposal No.: 2016-11551
• Project Start Date: Jul 1, 2017
• Project End Date: Jun 30, 2022
• Grant Year: 2017
• Program Code: [A3171]- Climate and Land Use

Recipient Organization
UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA
G022 MCCARTY HALL
GAINESVILLE,FL 32611

Performing Department
Ag & Bio Engineering

Non Technical Summary
Fruits and vegetables play essential roles in nutritious diets, but prospects for continued increases in production are threatened by the combination of ongoing climate variability and change, loss of freshwater availability, and competition for other resources. Such concerns occur nationally, but are especially acute in California, the leading US source of fruits and vegetables. While several model-based assessments have assessed climate variability and possible land use change for staple crops, none have focused on fruits and vegetables. The absence of such information prevents decision makers from acting to maintain these essential components of a nutritious national food supply.This project fills that gap by using a holistic, systems approach based on crop, economic, and environmental modeling to identify and test climate adaptation and mitigation intervention strategies that can be applied to enhance sustainability and resilience of fruit and vegetable supply chains in the US. The focus is on adaptation strategies and land use change resulting from relocation of such crops from California to production regions in the Pacific Northwest and Southeast.The research will identify critical points of intervention along supply chains that have the greatest climate adaptation and mitigation potential, accounting for the behavior of both biophysical and socio-economic systems. Stakeholders and decision makers will be engaged throughout, to ensure models reflect realistic practices and that outputs provide useful, actionable information to produce sustainable fruit and vegetable supply chains - thereby enhancing the environment and maintaining nutritious food - while mitigating risks and consequences resulting from increasing climate variability and change.Up until now, most research on climate adaptation and mitigation opportunities in the agriculture has focused on the major grain staple crops: corn, rice, soybeans, and wheat. Fruit and vegetable production systems dramatically differ from such grain production systems in many important ways. They tend to be higher-value, irrigated systems, and have evolved in the US to become highly "vertically integrated," such that food items picked in the morning (often by hand, requiring a large seasonal labor force) will either be sent to market, or otherwise processed/packaged later that same day. Another important distinguishing feature of nearly all fruits is that they are perennial crops, which undergo a lengthy juvenile period prior to bearing fruit and require extensive irrigation.In the US, and particularly in California, these features have caused fruit and vegetable systems to become concentrated in areas where irrigation water and labor are plentiful, and which are located near processing and packing facilities. Such a high concentration of fruit and vegetable production in a region with recurring and increasing concerns about water availability raises serious questions about the long-term sustainability of such a production strategy.Earlier in the nation's history, the crops that are now based in California were grown primarily in the Northeastern US, but several factors prevent their return. Fruits and vegetables are now grown by a relatively small number of highly experienced individuals who possess the necessary levels of motivation, financial resources, and risk management expertise. The extensive built infrastructure that supports production of these food crops (efficient irrigation systems, market access, cooling plants, packing sheds) is no longer present in non-production regions. In addition, modern cultivars are based on seeds locally adapted for the environment of the current production regions. Despite the difficulty of shifting these production systems, current climate model projections suggest that such relocation is likely to become a necessary adaptation strategy, due to expected extreme temperatures and water resource constraints.The specialized and integrated character of the fruit and vegetable sector requires consideration of the entire system when evaluating climate mitigation and adaptation responses to climate change-driven shifts in production. Thus, a life-cycle perspective, considering both upstream inputs (irrigation water, fertilizer, fuel, seeds, etc.) and downstream outcomes (loss and waste, processing, transport, markets) is a natural paradigm for evaluation of the entire production and consumption supply chain.Sustainability and resilience in agriculture are multidimensional, encompassing not only environmental but also economic and social aspects. Evaluation of both mitigation and adaptation strategies must include consideration of the costs and benefits and be transparent in identification of trade-offs. As an example, if climate change leads to the relocation of production away from California, a potential forced trade off will be increased costs and emissions from longer transport distances, due to the lack of processing infrastructure immediately available in the new location. Thus, mitigation strategies focusing on transportation logistics and fuel efficiency may become more important.It is with all this in mind that the University of Florida and the ILSI Research Foundation assembled a skilled, multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional team of researchers, educators, and extension specialists to develop a project proposal to USDA/NIFA entitled, "Climate Adaptation and Mitigation in Fruit and Vegetable Supply Chains." The other partner organizations are the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), University of Arkansas, University of Illinois, Washington State University, and the World Agricultural Economic and Environmental Services (WAEES). The overall goal of the project is to identify and test climate adaptation and mitigation intervention strategies that can be applied to enhance sustainability and resilience of fruit and vegetable supply chains in the US, thereby providing actionable strategies to maintain a nutritious, reliable, affordable and environmentally-sound food supply.The researchers will use crop modeling to determine current and future climate and water availability impacts on yield and quality of selected fruit and vegetable crops in current and potential future production states, with a focus on adaptation strategies and land use change resulting from relocation of crops from California to new production regions in the Pacific Northwest and Southeast. Economic modeling will be coupled to crop modeling results to determine current and future prices and production costs of selected fruit and vegetable crops: carrots, green beans, oranges, potatoes, spinach, strawberries, sweet corn, and tomatoes.A particular form of environmental modeling (Life-cycle Assessment or LCA) will be linked to the crop and economic modeling and thereby used to examine current and potential future fruit and vegetable value chains to identify and evaluate cost-effective climate adaptation and mitigation opportunities. The team will engage stakeholders and decision makers throughout the modeling activities to ensure that the models reflect realistic practices and that the outputs provide useful, actionable information, which will then be communicated throughout fruit and vegetable supply chains. The communication strategy will also include the traditional Education and Extension functions of both the University of Florida and Washington State University.Using this integrated, collaborative approach, the team members involved in the project will identify and test climate adaptation and mitigation intervention strategies that can be applied to enhance sustainability and resilience of fruit and vegetable supply chains in the US, thereby providing actionable strategies to maintain a nutritious, reliable, affordable and environmentally-sound food supply.?

Animal Health Component

10%

Research Effort Categories

Basic

70%

Applied

10%

Developmental

20%

Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)	Subject of Investigation (SOI)	Field of Science (FOS)	Percent
131	6220	1060	40%
132	0120	3010	30%
205	0210	1020	30%

Knowledge Area
205 - Plant Management Systems; 132 - Weather and Climate; 131 - Alternative Uses of Land;

Subject Of Investigation
0120 - Land; 0210 - Water resources; 6220 - Marketing, processing, and supply firms other than cooperatives;

Field Of Science
1060 - Biology (whole systems); 3010 - Economics; 1020 - Physiology;

Keywords

climate change

crop/economic modeling

life-cycle assessment

nutrition

resilience

sustainability

Goals / Objectives
The overall goal of this project is to identify and test climate adaptation and mitigation intervention strategies that can be applied to enhance sustainability and resilience of fruit and vegetable supply chains in the US, thereby providing actionable strategies to maintain a nutritious, reliable, affordable and environmentally-sound food supply.Objective 1. Use crop modeling to determine current and future climate and water availability impacts on yield and quality of selected fruit and vegetable crops in current and potential future production states, with a focus on adaptation strategies and land use change resulting from relocation of crops from California to new production regions in the PNW (Idaho, Oregon, Washington State) and SE (Alabama, Florida, Georgia).Objective 2. Use economic modeling coupled to crop modeling results to determine current and future prices and production costs of selected fruit and vegetable crops, with a focus on California, PNW, and SE.Objective 3. Use life-cycle assessment (LCA) modeling of current and potential future fruit and vegetable value chains to identify and evaluate cost-effective adaptation and mitigation opportunities (as informed by crop modeling linked with economic models).Objective 4. Engage stakeholders/decision makers throughout the modeling activities to ensure models reflect realistic practices and model outputs provide useful, actionable information, which will then be communicated throughout the fruit and vegetable supply chains.The specific fruit and vegetable crops that were in the original project proposal were apples, broccoli, carrots, grapes, green beans, oranges, potatoes, spinach, strawberries, sweet corn, and tomatoes. Based on a USDA/NIFA request to reduce the original project budget by 15%, the team determined that decreasing the number of crops would be the simplest and preferred approach for achieving the needed 15% reduction. Accordingly, the team decided to drop the following three crops: apples, broccoli, and grapes. The rationale for selecting each of these three crops for removal from the project is as follows:Apples: Apples are not a major crop in California, the state from which potential relocation of production systems is a major focus of the project. It was determined that it would be most efficient to retain just one perennial tree crop, with oranges being the logical choice because they are currently an important crop in California.Broccoli: The available mechanistic models for broccoli are very limited, and it was determined that project deliverables could be maximized by choosing crops for which the best mechanistic models were available.Grapes: Grapes were not on the first list of crops developed by the team, as they are not a significant source of nutrients in the American diet, and they would be challenging to model, due to the large number of varieties and the very diverse use pattern: e.g. fresh, raisins, jam/jelly, juice, wine, etc. Also, just as with broccoli, the available mechanistic models for grapes are limited.Accordingly, the crops that will be retained in the project are: carrots, green beans, oranges, potatoes, spinach, strawberries, sweet corn, and tomatoes. Based on this shorter list of crops, each of the teams has developed a revised budget with a 15% cost reduction, keeping all other project elements and timelines intact, including the balance between education, extension, and research. The revised budgets include travel to an annual project review meeting with USDA/NIFA.

Project Methods
The project will use an integrated assessment methodology based on crop, economic, and LCA modeling to investigate climate adaptation and mitigation scenarios for fruit and vegetable supply chains, starting with current conditions through the year 2050. The team has direct access to relevant climate and shared socio-economic development pathways (RCPs and SSPs) due to several team members' participation in AgMIP, REACHH, and SECC. Both biophysical and socio-economic systems and their interactions will be assessed using an advanced integrated modeling methodology, coupled with food system performance metrics recently published by the ILSI Research Foundation. The modeling will identify points of greatest vulnerability in fruit and vegetable supply chains, as well as mitigation opportunities - all within the context of an integrated modeling framework that directly accounts for economic realities and major physical constraints, such as freshwater availability and crop-specific heat stress, cooling needs, etc. The chosen modeling framework is intrinsically applicable across all relevant geographic scales - local, regional, national, international - and will also enable direct evaluation of behavioral and social responses to policy or private sector interventions intended to incentivize desirable outcomes.Education, extension, and research are all integrated components of this project, and will be resourced at levels of 13%, 22%, and 65%, respectively. Comprehensive educational modules will be developed for use in relevant interdisciplinary academic curricula - linking fruit and vegetable crop modeling, economics, LCA, policy, and supply chains. Extension services will be utilized, facilitated by both the Extension team members from University of Florida and Washington State University as well as by the ILSI Research Foundation, which collaborates directly with private-sector supply-chain and production entities in the fruit and vegetable sectors.Modeling Methodology: Both crop simulation models and statistical models will be utilized for each of the selected fruit and vegetable crops. The team will also evaluate the use of a new crop modeling framework called CSM-Simple for the development of new crop models that are relevant for this project. Climate change is expected to affect the productivity of fruit and vegetable crops and could therefore affect the ability to produce crops in each studied area. Accordingly, the potential impact of climate change on fruit and vegetable productivity (yield) will be calculated, as well as where climate change could potentially limit crop acreages, resulting in regional shifts in fruit and vegetable production. The availability and costs of inputs needed to support fruit and vegetable production, such as irrigation, fertilizers and pesticides, could also be affected by climate change and/or mitigation strategies. Combining the potential climate change impacts and mitigation strategies suggests that including both the yields and the costs of producing fruit and vegetable crops is critical to the analyses.The crop production and economic modeling efforts in this project directly support LCA of fruit and vegetable production chains, in terms of inputs and emissions. After construction of the inventory model, life-cycle impact assessment can be conducted to identify hotspots and/or vulnerabilities in the fruit and vegetable supply chains. In addition, beneficial management practices identified through expert knowledge and opinion inputs will be applied in the process models to create Best Management Practice (BMP)-specific life-cycle inventory to evaluate potential environmental benefits associated with these BMPs. The scenario analyses outcomes will be used to perform a full cradle-to-grave assessment, including farm-to-processer transport, processing and packaging, distribution through retail, consumption and final disposal. These assessments will be compliant with ISO standards.Education: Computer models provide an outstanding platform for introducing complex topics such as the interaction between climate, land use and food production. The team will create a combination of lecture materials and learning modules which can be adapted for inclusion in horticulture and agricultural economics courses, as well as courses in sustainability or life-cycle assessment. These will include background material on the importance of sustainable intensification, and classroom activities that will be designed to demonstrate to students the interactions among the different components of the production and consumption system. The modules will also enable the evaluation of "what-if" mitigation and adaptation scenarios with learning objectives such as: fostering an understanding of system complexity and trade-offs among sustainability metrics.Extension with Growers: The team will engage with growers to explore which of the potential fruits and vegetables they would grow and how to manage these in the future. University of Florida staff will work with growers in the SE and Washington State University staff will work with growers in the PNW. Regular workshops will be set up with growers to receive input to the project and assist the development of decision support tools, such as mobile apps and other products. Additional stakeholder meetings will be organized as needed. Input will be sought from growers throughout the life of the project to ensure modeling activities reflect grower realities and that project deliverables are meaningful to the growers in terms of increased and applicable knowledge and added resources for decision making.4-H: The University of Florida will lead efforts to develop a 4-H training module for educating middle and high school students on climate change as related to fruit and vegetable production and water supply. The developed material will be accessible to all 4-H agents nationwide and will be integrated into summer 4-H activities conducted at the University of Florida in the Agricultural and Biological Engineering Department.Engagement with Fruit and Vegetable Supply Chain Actors: The ILSI Research Foundation will lead engagement with domestic players across fruit and vegetable supply chains to explore which of the potential fruits and vegetables they would grow and how to manage these in the future. IFPRI will lead communications of the research findings with relevant international players. Assessment findings on crop-specific vulnerabilities and available resilience options will be communicated to a broad set of stakeholders through regular webinars and newsletters.Project Management and Communications: The Management Plan describes the procedures that will be used to ensure progress is being made on all project objectives. Progress will be measured against annual milestones. Results generated in this study will be analyzed for significance using both standardized statistical tests and more qualitative "weight of evidence" approaches based on the considerable interdisciplinary expertise of the overall project team. When communicating results to growers and other key stakeholders, the project team will fully disclose any caveats associated with the model-based conclusions, to ensure their proper use and interpretation. It is important to acknowledge that some stakeholders may have limited experience with the use of such models to support decision-making. The project proposes to proactively address this through capacity-building workshops, and by ensuring effective two-way communication between interested parties and the modelers to maximize the eventual utility and impact of the work.

Progress 07/01/17 to 06/30/22

Outputs
Target Audience:The projects primary target audiences are stakeholders in the fruit and vegetable (FV) production sectors, logistics management in the FV supply chain, farmers and extension agents, industry consultants, and academics, as well as undergraduate and graduate students. The COVID pandemic dramatically curtailed our ability to reach stakeholders during years 3 and 4 (2020-2021) of the project. Nevertheless, we developed and implemented an on-line strategy for stakeholder-engagement, holding workshops and webinars. In addition to annual meetings with our Advisory Committee (AC), during year 5 of the project we conducted online webinars and workshops on the new topic of Climate Analogs (January through June, 2022) as well as a series of three project close-out webinars during March 2022. Members of the AC represent all portions of supply chains, possess different kinds of technical expertise, and collectively have good local knowledge of all production regions (current and future) that are of interest to the project. AC members served on a volunteer basis and received no remuneration for their service. During the course of the project, the following individuals served on the AC or were invited to the calls: Sergio Alvarez (U Central Florida, previously FL DACS) Ian Crawford (Simplot) AJ Foster (Lamb Weston) Lisa Francioni (CA Sustainable Winegrowing Alliance) Hank Giclas (Western Growers Association) Kris Johnson (The Nature Conservancy) Wendy Reinhardt Kapsak (Produce for Better Health Foundation) Shaun Lough (Westbridge Ag Products) James McFarren (Wyckoff Farms) John Mesko (Potato Sustainability Alliance) Kevin Morgan (FL Farm Bureau Foundation) Steven Ostoja (USDA Climate Hub) Sambhav Sambhav (Driscolls) Alejandra Sanchez (Taylor Farms) Laura Scandurra (Potato Sustainability Alliance) Dan Sonke (Blue Diamond, previously with Campbells) Tannis Thorlakson (Driscolls) Victor Verlage (Walmart) Ryan Vroegindewey (Campbells) Kevin Walsh (Germains Seed Tech, previously with Seminis) In addition webinars were held with individual stakeholder organizations: Campbells (March 2, 2021) Driscolls (March 11, 2021) Florida DACS (February 1, 2021) Lamb Weston (November 11, 2021) Other target audiences engaged during the final years of the project included those involved in various workgroups hosted by the Potato Sustainability Alliance, particularly the one exploring Soil Carbon sequestration opportunities in the rotated crop production systems where potatoes are produced. Dr. Gustafson also participated in the recruitment and organization of a new community of experts associated with a January 2021 kickoff workshop for PRICE, a new initiative from the American Society of Nutrition, and co-led by Dr. John Finley (USDA/ARS) and Dr. Dan Raiten (NIH). Dr. Finley had earlier been a close collaborator of Dr. Gustafson on the 2018 AGCI/Keystone workshop, held at the Keystone Policy Center in Keystone, Colorado, on July 30 through August 3, 2018. The workshop was entitled: Innovating global fruit and vegetable food systems to help bring sustainable nutrition security. Project co-lead Dave Gustafson co-organized this workshop with a small team at the Aspen Global Change Institute (AGCI, www.AGCI.org), and additional workshop co-chairs: Alison Edwards (Stewardship Index for Specialty Crops), John Finley (USDA/ARS), Franklin Holley (Keystone Policy Center), Dominik Klauser (Syngenta Foundation), and Jerry Nelson (U Illinois). The purpose of the workshop was to assemble global practice and thought leaders to create a future vision for more sustainable and resilient FV food systems. Workshop participants and co-authors on the position paper included the following individuals: Abhishek Chaudhary (ETH Zurich, Switzerland) Ahmed Kablan (USAID) Alison Edwards (Stewardship Index for Specialty Crops) Anne Elise Stratton (U Michigan) Caroline Otto (Syngenta Foundation, Switzerland) Claudio Stockle (Washington State U) Colin Khoury (CSU/CIAT) Dan Sonke (Campbells) Dave Gustafson (ILSI Research Foundation) Dominik Klauser (Syngenta Foundation, Switzerland) Franklin Holley (Keystone Policy Center) Greg Thoma (U Arkansas) Hans Blonk (Blonk Consultants, The Netherlands) Jen Otten (U Washington) Jerry Nelson (U Illinois, emeritus) Jessica Bogard (CSIRO, Australia) John Finley (USDA/ARS) Kaiyu Guan (U Illinois) Kate Schaffner (WWF) Keith Wiebe (IFPRI) Kerri Steenwerth (USDA/ARS) Kevin Bryan (Keystone Policy Center) Lindewe Sibanda (AGRA, Zimbabwe) Markus Frank (BASF, Germany) Naomi Fukagawa (USDA/ARS) Roz Naylor (Stanford U) Senthold Asseng (U Florida) Sumira Phatak (Utah State U) Sylvia Rowe (SR Strategy) Tim Benton (U Leeds, UK) Tim Hess (U Cranfield, UK) Tim Sulser (IFPRI) Wei-Ting Chen (U California, Ag and Nat Res) Yan Li (U Illinois) Zach Conrad (USDA/ARS) On September 11, 2018, a major stakeholder-engagement side-event was convened alongside the Global Climate Action Summit held in San Francisco, CA, and hosted at the offices of The Climate Corporation. The event was entitled: More Fruitful Food Systems for a Changing Climate. The format included a read-out from the AGCI workshop, with the perspective provided by four workshop attendees: project co-lead Dave Gustafson, Alison Edwards (Stewardship Index for Specialty Crops), Dan Sonke (then still at Campbells), and Wei-Ting Chen (U California, Ag and Nat Res). Brief presentations from the four participants, were followed by an extensive Q AND A session. Attendees included the following individuals: Aaron Dorman (Northwestern U) Amanda Stone (WWF) Alex Wood (Santa Clara U) Brandon Holmes (Dartmouth U) Carla Curle (Food Minds) Carolyn Hricko (Johns Hopkins U) Danielle Lee (U California, Ag and Nat Res) Erin Biehl (Johns Hopkins U) Honor Eldridge (Sustainable Food Trust) John Gearen (The Nature Conservancy) Jay Rossiter (Perkins Coie) Karen Tam Wu (Pembina) Katherine Oaks (U Vermont) Laura deTar (Fresh Approach) Mark Lipson (UC Santa Cruz) Matthew H Lurie (Millken Institute) Griffin Smith (MIT) Steven Ostoja (UC Davis) A major peer-reviewed paper arising directly from the AGCI/Keystone workshop was published in Environmental Research Letters in 2021: Mitigating Tradeoffs as Global Fruit and Vegetable Systems Expand to Meet Dietary Recommendations. Dr. Finley joined Dr. Gustafson as co-author on this paper, and the other co-authors included additional scientists who had not previously engaged in our FV work: Anne-Elise Stratton (University of Michigan, convening lead author) Elizabeth Mitcham (UC Davis) Sam Myers (Harvard) Roz Naylor (Stanford) Jennifer Otten (University of Washington) Cheryl Palm (University of Florida) Dr. Gustafson also co-led two major stakeholder-engagement events at the Sustainable Ag Summit, one in November 2017 (Kansas City) and the other in November 2019 (Indianapolis). The 2017 workshop focused on introducing this new project to Summit attendees, who include hundreds of key private- and public-sector stakeholders. The 2019 workshop was entitled: Busting Food Sustainability Myths: Climate Adaptation and Mitigation Opportunities in Fruit and Vegetable Supply Chains. In April 2019, Dr. Gustafson attended the annual meeting of the Produce for Better Health Foundation (PBHF), at the personal invitation of their CEO, Wendy Reinhardt Kapsak. Some of the other key individuals engaged during the project included the following: Howard Goldstein (FoodMinds) Dr. John Ingram (Food Systems Program leader, University of Oxford) Dr. Jim Jones (University of Florida - emeritus, also serving at the National Science Foundation) Julia Kurnik (Director, Innovation Startups, Markets, World Wildlife Foundation) Sean McCoy (Sr Manager, Global Procurement of Oranges at PepsiCo/Tropicana) Dr. Max Teplitski (Chief Science Officer, Produce Marketing Association) Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The project has provided cross-training between the crop modeling, economic modeling, and LCA modeling teams during the Annual Project Workshops. Washington State U: Provided training in extension product development to an undergraduate summer intern, Nicole Bell, through the development of blog posts for https://www.agclimate.net/. U Florida: Postdoctoral fellow Dr. Chuang Zhao attended the AGU Meeting in December 2019 to present research results and to interact with colleagues and was involved in scientific publication writing. He also coordinated some of the interactions with Washington State U and U Illinois in data management and data analysis for new vegetable crops within the project and liaised with U Arkansas WAEES/U Missouri regarding data exchange and data formats. Washington State U: Invited webinar on resources available to teachers on climate change and agriculture (C. Kruger) for the Washington ClimeTime K-12 Educators series. January 2, 2019, Puyallup, WA. Guest Lecture on Climate Change and PNW Agriculture (C.Kruger) for the WSU AFS 101 course. October 31, 2019, Pullman, WA. Undergraduate, Graduate, and Post-doctoral students have participated in extension programming through the development of blog posts for https://www.agclimate.net/. U Florida: Postdoctoral fellow Dr. Chuang Zhao attended the ASA, CSSA, and SSSA International Annual Meeting, November 4-7, 2018 to present research results and was involved in scientific publication writing. He also coordinated some of the interactions with Washington State U and U Illinois in data management and data analysis for new vegetables crops within the project and liaised with U Arkansas WAEES/U Missouri regarding data exchange and data formats. Washington State U: Invited webinar on resources available to teachers on climate change and agriculture (C. Kruger) for the Washington ClimeTime K-12 Educators series. January 2, 2019, Puyallup, WA. Guest Lecture on Climate Change and PNW Agriculture (C.Kruger) for the WSU AFS 101 course. October 31, 2018, Pullman, WA. The project has provided cross-training between the crop modeling, economic modeling, and LCA modeling teams during the Kick-off Workshop in 2017 and a pair of mini-workshops hosted by the University of Florida in February 2018. Ranjan Parajuli (PhD) worked with project PIs to compile the LCI and modeled them to calculate the potential environmental footprints. Dr. Parajuli is co-working with Dr. Greg Thoma and Dr. Marty Matlock to evaluate the environmental sustainability of fruit and vegetable supply chain. He also co-worked with Andrew Shaw (an undergraduate student from the Univ. of Arkansas) to organize the preliminary data related to raw material inputs (at the farm level) for the selected Year-1 crops. He also worked with Jacob Allen Hickman (a graduate student at the University of Arkansas) to develop a program to automate the life cycle inventory simulations. This enabled the simulation of multiple LCI scenarios, including future production systems. Andrew Shaw worked with PIs on the water gap analysis. WAEES has worked with IFPRI to understand their analysis of climate change scenarios and the details of their IMPACT model. On February 21-22, 2018, the University of Florida hosted a pair of mini-workshops which provided multiple opportunities for cross-training and professional development. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?More recent activities have already been highlighted, including the release of new webtools (UF and WSU), the agclimate.net blog series, the March 2022 webinar series, and the Climate Analog webinar/workshops. Presentations were made at the Far West Agribusiness Association Annual Meeting, and as part of the 2021 Washington Agriculture Legislative Tour. A short segment on agricultural carbon and greenhouse gas management was included as part of the Washington Grown Television Series (Season 9, Episode 10 Stewards of the Land). A final extension publication on the state of the science of agricultural carbon sequestration in the PNW has been accepted for publication. D. Gustafson was interviewed by a Washington Post reporter, Laura Reiley, who included mention of project findings in a subsequent article, How climate change and extreme weather are crimping Americas pie supply published on November 17, 2021. The publication of that widely-read article resulted in D. Gustafson being video-interviewed about the project by Spokanes ABC News Affiliate, KXLY-TV, which first broadcast the interview in a story titled, Weve tried really hard: Climate change impacts holiday pies this year on November 24, 2021. The Agriculture and Food Systems Institute newsletter is sent monthly to a mailing list of over 4,800 subscribers, and has regularly highlighted project findings. In Summer 2019, team member Layla Tarar (Agriculture and Food Systems Institute) produced a video that highlights the project and is available at the following link: https://foodsystems.org/what-we-do/nutrition/fruit-vegetable-supply-chains/ The following presentations referenced the project and cited NIFA funding: Kruger, C.E. and G.G. Yorgey. Agricultural Carbon Sequestration in the PNW. Far West Agribusiness Association 12-15-21 Kruger, C.E. Ag and Natural Resources Policy Guest Lecture. AFS 201. 10-4-21 Kruger, C.E. Soil Health and Carbon. Washington Agriculture Legislative Tour. 9-27-21 D. Gustafson, Fruit and Vegetable Supply Chains: Climate Adaptation and Mitigation Opportunities, 11 November 2021, in-person presentation to Lamb Weston, Kennewick WA. D. Gustafson, Fruit and Vegetable Food Systems: Climate Adaptation and Mitigation Opportunities, Technical University of Munich, Germany, 12 April 2022. D. Gustafson, Carbon Market Opportunities for Fruit and Vegetable Growers, on-line FV-CAMO Webinar Series (https://foodsystems.org/event/fvcamo-2022/), 15 March 2022. D. Gustafson, Climate Adaptation and Mitigation Opportunities in Fruit and Vegetable Supply Chains: Key Findings, on-line FV-CAMO Webinar Series (https://foodsystems.org/event/fvcamo-2022/), 8 March 2022. D. Gustafson, Climate Change, on-lecture at Washington State University, Pullman, WA, 9 December 2021. D. Gustafson, Fruit and Vegetable Supply Chains: Climate Adaptation and Mitigation Opportunities, 11 November 2021, in-person presentation to Lamb Weston, Kennewick WA. D. Gustafson, Integrated Approach to Climate Adaptation and Mitigation: Application to Fruit and Vegetable Supply Chains, 15 December 2020, virtual. R. Parajuli, Evaluating Sustainability of Fresh and Processed Potato and Tomato Products, 15 December 2020, virtual. D. Gustafson, Climate Adaptation and Mitigation Opportunities in Fruit and Vegetable Supply Chains, U Illinois, 11 Dec 2019, San Francisco, CA. D. Gustafson, Mitigating Tradeoffs as Global Fruit and Vegetable Systems Expand to Meet Dietary Recommendations, U Illinois, 9 Mar 2020, Champaign/Urbana, IL. Kruger, C. E., K. Rajagopalan, and G. Yorgey. 2020. The effects of climate change on agriculture and plant production in the PNW. WSU Urban IPM Pesticide Education Program 2020 Series (4 lectures - Vancouver, Tacoma, Puyallup, Lynnwood, WA). Kruger, C.E. and K. Rajagopalan. 2019. The Effects of Climate Change on Pacific Northwest Agriculture. Pierce County Master Gardeners. Puyallup, WA. November 16, 2019. Kruger, C.E. and K. Rajagopalan. What does the science currently tell us about climate change, variability and risk on PNW cropland agriculture?. AFS 101 Seminar. Pullman, WA. October 31, 2019. Chad Kruger participated in a panel discussion on Climate Change and Agriculture in the Pacific Northwest at the Northwest Climate Conference, Portland OR; October 2019 Matlock, M., G. Thoma, (2019). Keynote Presentation: Climate Change Impacts on Sustainable Agriculture. The International Egg Congress Global Leadership Conference, København, Denmark Matlock, M., G. Thoma, (2019). Keynote Presentation: Climate Change Impacts on Sustainable Agriculture. The National Mexican Agricultural Council Global Agri-Food Forum 2019, September 26th - 27th, León, Guanajuato, Mexico Matlock, M., G. Thoma, (2019). Panel Discussion: Climate Change and Food Security. Borlaug Dialogue International Symposium, by The World Food Prize Foundation, Des Moines, IA AgClimate.net blog posts are contributing to the FV Extension Effort: Sonia A. Hall. August 2020. Check it out: Climate Change Could Enhance Trade-Offs Between Yields and Volatility in Revenue https://www.agclimate.net/2020/08/20/check-it-out-climate-change-could-enhance-trade-offs-between-yields-and-volatility-in-revenue/ Fidel Maureira. July 2020. Managing for Washingtons Future: A Bigger Player in Veggie Production https://www.agclimate.net/2020/07/31/managing-for-washingtons-future-a-bigger-player-in-veggie-production/ Adrienne Marshall. May 2020. Are There More Multiyear Snow Droughts in Our Future? https://www.agclimate.net/2020/05/26/are-there-more-multiyear-snow-droughts-in-our-future/ Mengqi Zhao. April 2020. How Can Long-Term Water Storage Management Mitigate Problems in an Era of Water Resource Deficits? https://www.agclimate.net/2020/04/20/how-can-long-term-water-storage-management-mitigate-problems-in-an-era-of-water-resource-deficits/ Paris Edwards. April 2020. An Integrated View of Water Vulnerability Across the Northwest https://www.agclimate.net/2020/04/01/an-integrated-view-of-water-vulnerability-across-the-northwest/ Sonia A. Hall. March 2020. Check it out: Using the Climate Toolbox to Explain This Winters Snowpack Dynamics https://www.agclimate.net/2020/03/23/check-it-out-using-the-climate-toolbox-to-explain-this-winters-snowpack-dynamics/ Fidel Maureira. March 2020Greenhouse Production of Vegetables: Implications for the Region. https://www.agclimate.net/2020/03/05/greenhouse-production-of-vegetables-implications-for-the-region/ Fidel Maureira. February 2020. Exploring Whether Washington State Could Become the New California in Vegetable Production. https://www.agclimate.net/2020/02/06/exploring-whether-washington-state-could-become-the-new-california-in-vegetable-production/ Chris Schnepf. December 2019. Check it out: Skeptical Science a Climate Science Resource for Extension Professionals. https://www.agclimate.net/2019/12/10/check-it-out-skeptical-science-a-climate-science-resource-for-extension-professionals/ Paris Edwards, Haley Case-Scott, and Holly R. Prendeville. December 2019. Climate Adaptation: USDA Programs and Resources That Can Help. https://www.agclimate.net/2019/12/03/climate-adaptation-usda-programs-and-resources-that-can-help/ Lauren Parker. November 2019. What Specialty Crops Might Thrive in the Northwest in the Future? https://www.agclimate.net/2019/11/07/what-specialty-crops-might-thrive-in-the-northwest-in-the-future/ Antoinette Avorgbedor. October 2019. The Modern Apple Orchard: What Does It Entail? https://www.agclimate.net/2019/10/31/the-modern-apple-orchard-what-does-it-entail/ Sonia A. Hall. October 2019. Check it out: Measuring Water Use Rather Than Water Diversions. https://www.agclimate.net/2019/10/15/check-it-out-measuring-water-use-rather-than-water-diversions/ Keyvan Malek. September 2019. Are Efficient Irrigation Technologies a Winning Solution in the Yakima River Basin? https://www.agclimate.net/2019/09/30/are-efficient-irrigation-technologies-a-winning-solution-in-the-yakima-river-basin/ / What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Nothing Reported

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Objective 1: The three crop modeling teams at the University of Florida, University of Illinois, and Washington State University have continued to use a protocol that governs the conduct of crop modeling for the project: Protocol for US Fruit and Vegetable Simulations (Zhao et al., 2019). Each crop is simulated with 30 years of historical weather data and 30 years of future climate scenarios based on daily downloads from five general circulation models (GCMs) for the 2030s and 2050s and the 32 counties of interest (high FV production areas). The following vegetable crops were simulated: potatoes, tomatoes, sweet corn, carrots, spinach, and green beans. In addition, strawberry and oranges were simulated. Following the standards of the Agricultural Models Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP), multiple crop models are being used, including up to six crop models for potatoes: SIMPLE (University of Florida), CropSyst (Washington State University), LINTUL-POTATO-DSS (Wageningen University), EPIC (USDA), CSM-Substor-Potato (University of Minnesota), and Statistical (University of Illinois). The models estimate yield and water use and enable quantification of model uncertainty. Algorithms have also been developed to estimate crop N, P, and K uptake. Crop simulation outputs are used as input to the economic and LCA modeling. For the time frame of interest, the simulation results suggest mild effects of climate change on unstressed yields (crops grown with abundant water and nitrogen supply and free of weeds, pests, and diseases) and some reduction in crop water use due to elevated CO2. This outcome appears to be due to more optimal temperatures early in the season, allowing earlier planting and avoidance or mitigation of heat stress during yield formation, and stimulated biomass growth from elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Fully integrated results (corrected for the contribution of the technology trend - see below) were completed for all crops. Objective 2: WAEES completed final adjustments to the partial equilibrium model development for all 8 crops. IFPRI analysis of the impacts of the same climate change scenarios on specialty crop yields in other countries were included as assumptions. US yield impacts with adaptation for the 8 fruit and vegetable crops were provided by the crop modeling team. Three yield scenarios were provided including the median, 25th percentile, and 75th percentile scenarios. Following the protocol of the biophysical models, the multiyear simulation results were used to construct average yield impacts for 2030 and 2050 under each yield scenario. The biophysical models were also simulated historically in order to provide an estimate of yield impacts from climate change. These yield impacts were subtracted from observed trend yield growth to isolate the growth in yields from technology and/or management practices. Simulated biophysical model yields were scaled to observed yields from USDA. The biophysical models also simulated changes in fertilizer requirement based on yield changes which were used to adjust cost of production in the economic model. For each scenario, annual yields (2017-2050) including both the climate impact on yields and trend impact on yields were constructed for the primary producing crop reporting districts (CRDs) for each of the 8 crops. The 31 primary producing CRDs accounted for at least 80 percent of production across the 8 crops although not all of the 8 crops are produced in each of the 31 CRDs. The partial equilibrium model estimates changes in crop area for each of the 31 CRDs based on the ratio of expected gross returns to variable costs of production. Changes in yields and cost of production cause the ratio to change resulting in changes in crop area affecting the supply of the fruit or vegetable. Total US supply was calculated based on the 31 CRDs and an additional rest of the US region. The economic model then solves for the level of prices that balance supply and demand for each yield scenario. International impacts on US trade were also simultaneously determined including the IFPRI international yield impacts on fruits and vegetables. WAEES used cost of production budgets developed by extension economists across different Universities cross checked with USDA estimates of fertilizer input use. While the data are not as robust as those produced from USDAs ARMS survey, they appear to be representative based on comparison across sources and consultation with Extension economists. A timeseries of historical and projected costs of production was constructed using input price indices and relatively stable inputs unless changed by biophysical model input. The yield impact scenarios with adaptation from the biophysical crop models were relatively small for some crops minimizing the crop area change. The net return data across some CRD suggested possibilities where specialty crop production might shift, but no substantial shift was suggested at this point. Under severe water shortages a larger shift may be possible but water availability constraints were not included in this analysis. Objective 3: For LCA modeling, documentations included: (i) a protocol, explaining the details life cycle inventory and methods of evaluating the life cycle environmental impacts and (ii) a cradle-to-grave LCA of potato and tomato products. Both documents were published in peer-review journals. Life Cycle Inventory (LCI)--A detailed illustration of raw materials (resource flows) was completed for all the prioritized crops. In the published studies, environmental life cycle impact assessments were calculated for potato products (fresh, chips, frozen fries, and dehydrated flakes) and tomato products (fresh and pasta sauce). The evaluation was performed from farm to-consumer plate. The publications (finished and in-progress) that covered the LCIA of selected FV crops are listed in the publication section of this report. Full life cycle impact assessments (LCIA) of the remaining crops (green beans, sweet corn, carrots, spinach, strawberries, and orange juice) were also performed. Farm based inputs were partly based on literature, and the crop yields, NPK inputs and irrigated water were based on the crop and economic models. Post-harvest data were based on the literature and engineering estimates. All LCIA data are being made available through the USDA/NAL LCA Commons. Objective 4: A story-line guide was produced and disseminated to the entire team. Products included the Climate Friendly Fruits and Vegetable blog post series listed above, the culminating FV CAMO webinar series, and of course scientific publications/presentations. In addition to these outreach products, the storyline approach has facilitated more informal consultative discussions with FV producers and industry members. The products often act as introductory material for more nuanced conversations with producers that enable us to dig deeper into an issue, including presentations to the Far West Agribusiness Association (the largest association of crop consultants in the Western US) and a brief spot on climate and carbon in ag on the award winning Washington Grown Television Series (Season 9, Episode 10 Stewards of the Land). As USDA announced and rolled out its Climate Smart Commodities program the level of interest on climate impacts of FV production increased. While tree fruits were not one of the target fruit and vegetables from the project, interest really expanded in late 2021 and early 2022, and co-PI Kruger moderated a discussion panel on the science and policy carbon in tree fruit for the Western Growers Association, and has facilitated continued conversations between co-PI Thoma and the Northwest Hort Council regarding the carbon footprint of apples. Plans are under development for an apple industry focused educational event on carbon footprints.

Publications

• Type: Journal Articles Status: Submitted Year Published: 2022 Citation: DI Gustafson et al. In Pursuit of More Fruitful Food Systems. Nature Communications
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Submitted Year Published: 2022 Citation: S Chaudhary et al. Analogs for dialogs: a network to catalyze climate change adaptation for US specialty crops, Nature Communications.

Progress 07/01/20 to 06/30/21

Outputs
Target Audience:The project's primary target audiences are stakeholders in the fruit and vegetable production sectors, logistics management in the fruit and vegetable (F&V) supply chain, farmers and extension agents, industry consultants, and academics, as well as undergraduate and graduate students. The COVID pandemic dramatically curtailed our ability to reach stakeholders during this project period. Nevertheless, we developed and began to implement on on-line strategy for stakeholder-engagement, holding a workshop dedicated to this topic in October 2020, to which we invited Dr. Jim Dobrowolski (USDA/NIFA), who was an active participant. A key group of stakeholders is being reached via their participation on the project Advisory Committee, which held a Zoom call with the full project team on February 2, 2021. Members of this committee represent all portions of supply chains, possess different kinds of technical expertise, and collectively have good local knowledge of all production regions (current and future) that are of interest to the project. Advisory Committee members serve on a volunteer basis and receive no remuneration for their service. The current members of the Advisory Committee (AC) are: Sergio Alvarez (U Central Florida) Hank Giclas (Western Growers Association) Kris Johnson (The Nature Conservancy) Wendy Reinhardt Kapsak (Produce for Better Health Foundation) Shaun Lough (Westbridge Ag Products) James McFarren (Wyckoff Farms) Kevin Morgan (FL Farm Bureau Foundation) Steven Ostoja (USDA Climate Hub) Dan Sonke (Blue Diamond, previously with Campbell Soup) Tannis Thorlakson (Driscolls), who replaced Sambhav Sambhav during this reporting period Victor Verlage (Walmart) Kevin Walsh (Germains Seed Tech.) During the Advisory Committee call, Dr. Sonke said he'd like to dig into the data on fresh vs. processed tomato and potato a bit more with the LCA team. He added that the project should consider presenting to Campbell's internal sustainability team, as it could stimulate thought on how to improve the environmental footprint, particularly for potato, and he thinks that Campbell might be in the position to reduce waste in the potato supply chain. When asked for clarification by Dr. Gustafson regarding places where potatos are currently grown, Dr. Sonke elaborated that potato production is spread over 20 states. A webinar was indeed held with the entire Campbell sustainability team on March 2, 2021. Advisory Committee member Sambhav Sambhav (Driscoll's) also reached out to schedule a similar webinar with his colleagues (held March 11, 2021), including Dr. Tannis Thorlakson, who subsequently replaced Sambhav on the Advisory Committee, due to his change in internal responsibilities to become their PNW District Manager. Dr. Thorlakson serves there as Senior Manager, Environment, and has subsequently entered into an agreement with our research team at the University of Arkansas, to help improve the accuracy of our LCA modeling. Also during the Advisory Committee call, Dr. Alverez stated that he'd like to follow up on the project's results with Dr. Gustafson over email, as he thinks a lot of the findings would be very interesting to stakeholders in Florida. This resulted in a conversation with interested representatives of the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services on February 1, 2021. Dr. Alvarez also stated that the adaptation strategy of switching planting dates is very interesting--in Florida, growers currently take advantage of the winter-time growing window to get higher prices for fruits and vegetables, and if growers in other areas of the U.S. are projected to move their planting dates as a mitigation strategy, it would be a development that the state's economists might be interested in modeling. Dr. Stöckle commented that extreme weather events and market considerations factor into decision making, and either may deter growers from planting earlier, even if it means slightly lower yield. Dr. Alvarez added that it was interesting to see the division of environmental impact based on different resources (land, power, water, etc.), which he thinks presents a very compelling story and should be useful for extension. Mr. Walsh advised that the team may want to scratch the surface further and dig deeper into processing methods to see what other interesting findings might emerge. Some of the other target audiences engaged by Dr. Gustafson during this reporting period included those involved in various workgroups hosted by the Potato Sustainability Alliance, particularly the one exploring Soil Carbon sequestration opportunities in the rotated crop production systems where potatoes are produced. Dr. Gustafson also participated in the recruitment and organization of a new community of experts associated with a kickoff workshop for PRICE, a new initiative from the American Society of Nutrition, and co-led by Dr. John Finley (USDA/ARS) and Dr. Dan Raiten (NIH). Although PRICE is primarily focused on the complexity of sustainably and equitably meeting human protein needs, the kickoff workshop was modeled after a previous analogous workshop focused on F&V (held in the summer of 2018), which had been organized by Dr. Gustafson and co-hosted by the Keystone Policy Center and the Aspen Global Change Institute. A major peer-reviewed paper arising directly from this workshop was published in Environmental Research Letters during this period: "Mitigating Tradeoffs as Global Fruit and Vegetable Systems Expand to Meet Dietary Recommendations." Dr. Finley joined Dr. Gustafson as co-author on this paper, and the other co-authors included additional scientists who had not previously engaged in our F&V work: Anne-Elise Stratton (University of Michigan, convening lead author) Elizabeth Mitcham (UC Davis) Sam Myers (Harvard) Roz Naylor (Stanford) Jennifer Otten (University of Washington) Cheryl Palm (University of Florida) Some of the other organizations/individuals engaged during the reporting period included the following: Organizations Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services J. R. Simplot Company Keystone Policy Center Individuals Liz Carver (Aspen Global Change Institute) Howard Goldstein (FoodMinds) Dr. John Ingram (Food Systems Program leader, University of Oxford) Dr. Jim Jones (University of Florida - emeritus, also serving at the National Science Foundation) Julia Kurnik (Director, Innovation Startups, Markets, World Wildlife Foundation) Steve Mantle (Founder & CEO, innov8.ag) Sean McCoy (Sr Manager, Global Procurement of Oranges at PepsiCo/Tropicana) Dr. Max Teplitski (Chief Science Officer, Produce Marketing Association) Changes/Problems:Objective 1 Crop modeling activities were slowed in the beginning by the challenges of developing an appropriate ("AgMIP-style") multi-modeling approach due to the absence of available literature for most of these crops. Even potatoes, which probably had the greatest body of available crop modeling literature, was very difficult due to multiple parameterization issues (shifts in planting date, which counties to include, etc.). However, now that the crop modeling protocol has been finalized, a robust approach is available for application to all the crops. Team members have been cautious not to "over-promise" within the team or to external stakeholders, given the extreme complexity of the underlying technical issues and the novelty of the project's integrated (crop/economic/LCA) and systems-level approach (overall supply chains). Another challenge is the fact that "fresh market" and "for processing" fruit and vegetable crops are very different from each other in multiple ways for all the target crops. For instance, there is a myriad of fresh market tomato varieties (i.e., heirloom, grape, roma, etc.). It has recently been proposed that this issue will be addressed by focusing most of the modeling efforts on "for processing" varieties (which tend to be more homogenous and larger acreage) in order to determine "climate deltas" in yield and water use, and then to apply those same "climate deltas" to each of the various "fresh market" varieties. Statistical analysis of climate change impact was now added to the multi-model approach to further improve the precision of the climate change impact estimates. Regional and national climate change impacts for potato, tomato, sweet corn, bean, and spinach. Limited data availability did not allow us to build statistical models for carrots, strawberries and oranges. The crop and water used simulations feed into the farm economics and LCA modeling. A web-based extension tool, as part of the AgroClimate website, has been designed to easily visualize for stakeholder climate change impacts on vegetable crops across the US. This tool will be implemented, tested and improved in year 4 of the project. Simulating oranges is becoming challenging for crop modelers. Not only climate "niches" to grow oranges are limited, but the impact of diseases has become a dominant factor for orange production, for which suitable process-oriented models simulating climate impacts on relevant diseases and their mechanistic link to orange production are not available. However, an initial attempt to simulate disease-free orange production driven by solar radiation and temperature has been promising and will be continued and applied in the impact analysis in year 4 with two crop models. Objective 2 Extensive research was dedicated to the efforts to include irrigation water constraints in the economic models. Washington State University worked on downscaling large watershed scale water availability estimates from the IMPACT model (from the International Food Policy Research Institute) to the smaller scale of analysis of this project - Crop Reporting Districts. Washington State University worked to downscale the IFPRI irrigation water data to provide estimates by CRD. Utilizing irrigation water application rates and the number of acres irrigated, WAEES attempted to cross validate with the downscaled IFPRI irrigation data. The inconsistencies in the data suggest we will not be able to include this as a constraint at this time. Another difficulty has been assembling the fruit and vegetable supply data at the CRD level for the 2000 to 2019 period. There are a considerable number of missing observations and/or CRD's that USDA cannot report because there are too few producers causing a disclosure issue. The census data provided the most observations but still remained incomplete. Census data also had to be reconciled to USDA-NASS estimate so that supply and demand estimates for each commodity aligned historically. Objective 3 The major problem that the LCA modeling team faced was the lack of detailed, consistent, and quantitative data, to evaluate the life cycle environmental impact in a "cradle-to-grave" perspective. However, many of the constraints were addressed through inter-project ream work, like by extending the coordination with the related extension and economic modeling teams; and cooperating with the stakeholders working in the specific product supply chain. The LCA modeling team also cooperated with scientists and experts in the sector to identify best practices to cover data gaps and delineate the best methods to conduct life cycle inventory analysis. Supply chain diagrams and process flow charts for the crops were prepared to delineate the major stages of the F&V supply chain and support preparing data collection checklists. Due to the lack of detailed and representative data for all crop production regions, geographically specific data were not necessarily always incorporated into the analysis. Identified data gaps were primarily aimed filled through the use of the Ecoinvent v3.6 database, and other related publications (particularly for specific raw material inputs at the farm and post-harvest stages). Objective 4. Current travel restrictions may reduce the number of opportunities for project members to participate in trade shows and conferences. An effort will be made to share project results and engage stakeholders via virtual conferences and seminars. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The project has provided cross-training between the crop modeling, economic modeling, and LCA modeling teams during the Annual Project Workshops. U Florida: Postdoctoral fellow Dr. Chuang Zhao attended the AGU Meeting in December 2019 to present research results and to interact with colleagues and was involved in scientific publication writing. He also coordinated some of the interactions with Washington State U and U Illinois in data management and data analysis for new vegetable crops within the project and liaised with U Arkansas WAEES/U Missouri regarding data exchange and data formats. Washington State U: Invited webinar on resources available to teachers on climate change and agriculture (C. Kruger) for the Washington ClimeTime K-12 Educators series. January 2, 2019, Puyallup, WA. Guest Lecture on Climate Change and PNW Agriculture (C.Kruger) for the WSU AFS 101 course. October 31, 2019, Pullman, WA. Undergraduate, Graduate, and Post-doctoral students have participated in extension programming through the development of blog posts for https://www.agclimate.net/. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The Agriculture & Food Systems Institute's newsletter is sent monthly to a mailing list of over 4,800 subscribers. The project's results were featured in the following editions: (1) the July 2020 edition featured the publication "Towards a Multiscale Crop Modeling Framework for Climate Change Adaptation Assessment," published in Nature Plants, (2) the August 2020 edition featured the outcomes of the project's 4th Annual Workshop, which took place virtually on June 23-24, 2019, (3) the December 2020 edition featured the paper "Cradle to Grave Environmental Impact Evaluation of the Consumption of Potato and Tomato," published in Science of the Total Environment, (4) the January 2021 edition featured the final update to the project's "Protocol for US Fruit and Vegetable Crop Modeling" and Dr. Gustafson's presentation about the project at the 2020 Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union, and (5) the May 2021 edition featured the paper " Mitigating Sustainability Tradeoffs as Global Fruit and Vegetable Systems Expand to Meet Dietary Recommendations," published in Environmental Research Letters. Project team members participated in the Fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union held virtually on 9-13 Dec 2020. This is an international conference with over 24,000 attendees. Presentations given there included the following, which cited NIFA funding: D. Gustafson, "Integrated Approach to Climate Adaptation and Mitigation: Application to Fruit & Vegetable Supply Chains," 15 December 2020, virtual. R. Parajuli, "Evaluating Sustainability of Fresh and Processed Potato and Tomato Products," 15 December 2020, virtual. The following presentations also referenced the project and cited NIFA funding: D. Gustafson, "Fruit & Vegetable Supply Chains: Climate Adaptation & Mitigation Opportunities," 2 March 2021, Webinar presentation to Campbell Soup Company. D. Gustafson, "Fruit & Vegetable Supply Chains: Climate Adaptation & Mitigation Opportunities," 11 March 2021, Webinar presentation to Driscoll's. On May 5, 2021, Dr. Gustafson was interviewed by a representative of the Keystone Policy Center about the project findings, and this interview was subsequently released as part of the Keynotes Podcast series. The episode can be found at the following links: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1579477/8538463 or on the Keystone website at: https://www.keystone.org/keynotespodcast/ What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Objective 1 U Florida: Multi-model ensemble simulations for yield, water, and NPK use will be completed for carrots, strawberries and oranges in close collaboration with Washington State U and U Illinois. Results will be discussed and made available to the other teams for full integration. The UF team will assist the integrated analysis and preparation of an integrated publication. UF will also lead a detailed analysis of the potato crop results and assist in the multi-crop analysis for preparing for publication. An additional crop model publication on the combined other crops and climate change impact will be led by Washington State U. Data visualization tools are currently designed by Dr. C. Fraisse and tested with other extension experts at UF to be implemented on the AgroClimate website as a test version in the next reporting period. The current prototype will be expanded to include yield projections under alternative climate and adaptation scenarios for additional commodities (tomato). Washington State U: Crop modeling team plans for next year include adding models for strawberries and either oranges or blueberries to complete a total of 8 crops proposed for this project. Specific protocols, simulations, and data analysis for these two new crops will be completed. In addition, the team is still searching for additional models to be included in the multi-model platform. The integration of statistical models is becoming more challenging due to the paucity of available data, but efforts in this direction will be continued. An article on potato yield and water use projections for the US (represented by the 32 counties in this project) based on an ensemble of 8 models will be prepared. Plans for a second article including all the crops in this project will be developed. U Illinois: The UIUC modeling team will develop and deploy a statistical model for predicting climate impacts on oranges. Objective 2 Development of the economic partial equilibrium models will be completed for the 6 remaining specialty crops. With the structure of these economic models already set up, WAEES will finalize the elasticities and utilize crop modeling results to complete scenarios similar to the first 2 crops. Costs of production for each of the 6 remaining specialty crops will be reviewed with extension personnel and finalized. International models for the remaining 6 crops specialty crops have been underway for the past year. These will be finished for use in the simulations of the 6 remaining crops. There are also pending revisions to the water constraints section. The documentation will be formalized into a protocol and released in a document entitled: "Protocol for annual US vegetable crop economic model development and simulation" (Kruse et al., 2021). The protocol includes an overview of the data used in this project and its limitations, the structural modeling framework, the model specifications, and the economic model interaction with the results of the other disciplines. WAEES will also discuss with the with the other disciplines whether the supporting data on CRD specific specialty crop costs and returns would be useful to specialty crop producers and, if so, how best to release this information. WAEES will also be working with the various teams to design a 16 week college course describing the multidisciplinary approach, protocols, problems encountered, and results of the integrated approach. The course will be designed as a set of PowerPoint slides with supporting readings and simplified analysis tools so that students can experience the process. The plan for IFPRI in the coming year is to focus on continued updates to the above outputs (2.5.1, 2.7.1, 2.8.1, 2.8.2) as needed and provide support to the broader project research team to use and interpret these results in their own analyses or extensions. Also, IFPRI will engage in further prototype development and systematic application of the DSSAT-Simple model in the IMPACT modeling framework to enable more precise climate impact signals on yields of a variety of crops. Participation in team meetings, communications activities, and drafting of manuscripts will round out IFPRI's portfolio of activities under this project. Objective 3 U Arkansas: The LCA modeling framework for year-2-4 crops will include sweetcorn, green beans, carrots, spinach, strawberries and orange juice. A preliminary market study has been carried out to identify and prioritize the types of each product for LCA modeling. The selected processed product category for spinach is a canned product (covering 33% of the market volume). Since 61% of the spinach is consumed as a fresh product, and the rest is canned, it has been concluded that fresh spinach is important to select for the detailed LCA modeling. Carrots have the following consumption pattern in the US: 73% is consumed as fresh, followed by frozen (14%) and 12% (canned). As for strawberries, more than 40% of the strawberries produced in the US were for the processing market over many decades, but this has reduced to 20% in recent years. The plan is also to prepare a journal paper covering the full environmental life cycle impact evaluation of all the remaining crops selected in the project. An LCI modelling framework, which is flexible enough to accommodate all the remaining crops has been partially prepared and will be replenished with necessary process data in the planned period. Necessary modifications on the LCI modelling framework will be carried out based on the information and learning acquired during data collection and while setting the overall scope of the evaluation. Objective 4: U Florida Extension: Data visualization tools are currently designed by Dr. C. Fraisse and tested with other extension experts at UF to be implemented on the AgroClimate website as a test version in the next reporting period. A prototype of the proposed online information system will be shared with project members in November of 2019 for evaluation and feedback. It will include basic information about the project including objectives, desired impact, approach, and any other relevant project-related information. For each commodity with available simulation results, the system will contain graphs and tables showing the distribution of the projected yield changes based on alternative emission scenarios and projected period of time. WSU Extension: Washington State University and the University of Florida will collaborate to develop a series of blog posts, a presentation on climate and vegetable production, and a web interface to disseminate project results. Analog based characterization of results will also be completed. WSU will be developing a new webinar/seminar style presentation focused on updated information on fruit and vegetable production issues in the Pacific Northwest.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? All project research deliverables remain on target. We have a couple of key personnel changes to report. In December 2020, Dr. Asseng moved from the University of Florida to his home nation of Germany, where he now leads Digital Agriculture at the Technical University at Munich. Dr. Fraisse (UF) replaced Dr. Asseng as the co-lead. During the last year we started focusing on Extension and Outreach activities, primarily led by our Extension Team at WSU (under Chad Kruger). Due in part to COVID-19, our rate of expenditure on extension-related activities was slowed. A NCE from NIFA was requested and approved -- allowing outreach activities to continue beyond June 2021, for an additional 12 months. We developed and start implementing on-line strategy for stakeholder-engagement, holding a workshop dedicated to this topic in October 2020. The team prepared a detailed description of its novel integrated modeling methodology, used to derive integrated estimates of crop yield, applied nutrient and irrigation water requirements for the years 2017, 2030, and 2050. Objective 1: The three crop modeling teams at the UF, University of Illinois, and WSU have continued to update a protocol that governs crop modeling activities: "Protocol for US Fruit and Vegetable Simulations" (Zhao et al., 2019). Each crop is being simulated with 30 years of historical weather data and 30 years of future climate scenarios for the 2030s and 2050s for the 32 counties of interest (high F&V production areas). Following AgMIP standards, multiple crop models are being used, including up to six crop models for potatoes: SIMPLE, CropSyst, LINTUL-POTATO-DSS, EPIC, CSM-Substor-Potato, and Statistical. The models estimate yield and water use and enable quantification of model uncertainty. Routines have been developed to also estimate N, P and K use and are being used as input to the economic and LCA modeling. Current simulations results suggest only rather mild effects of climate change on the yields of the crops simulated to date: potatoes, tomatoes, sweet corn, carrots, spinach, and green beans, despite increased heat stress towards harvest. This outcome appears to be due to more optimal temperatures early in the season (with currently sub-optimal temperatures) allowing earlier panting and stimulated biomass growth from elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations, assumed to be not limited by nutrient supply due to high fertilizer inputs. Fully integrated results were completed for potatoes and tomatoes during the reporting period. Preliminary results were completed for carrots, green beans, spinach, and sweet corn. Objective 2: WAEES made considerable progress on documenting the economic modeling methodology and completed the crop specific sections for tomatoes and potatoes. An innovative method was developed by the economic modeling team to correctly account for the contribution of the "technology trend" to the preliminary results coming from the crop modeling team. The methodology is discussed in greater detail within the "Integrated Paper" manuscript, but (in brief) a regression line was fitted to the observed yield trends (based on USDA NASS), and the slope of this line has two components: (1) Technology: The technology trend is a combination of improved seeds, more effective use of fertilizer, water, and various inputs, as well as better equipment and other improvements. It was determined as the difference in slopes between the overall observed trend and the climate component during that same time period. Based on available literature, the assumption was made that the technology component will be attenuated from its current 100% contribution to 90% by 2030 and 70% by 2050, causing a flattening of the yield curves over time. (2) Climate: The effects of climate were determined based on the percentage linear increase in simulated crop yields from the baseline period through the 2030s and then removed from the observed historical yield trend (to create a climate-corrected technology trend). The future climate impact was added to the future technology yield trend. Note: In order to help characterize overall modeling uncertainty, this same methodology was applied to the 25th- and 75th-percentile results across the entire crop modeling ensemble, in addition to the ensemble median, which is being treated as the best single estimate of future yields. The economic models for potatoes and tomatoes were completed and used for economic simulation of the adaptive management scenarios using results from the crop models as well as climate change yield impacts for countries and crops not included in this study. This accomplished was significant in that it represented the integration of work across all disciplines and finalized the iterative process of exactly how the various disciplines and models would interact. Objective 3: For LCA modeling, documentations included: (i) a protocol, explaining the details life cycle inventory and methods of evaluating the life cycle environmental impacts and (ii) a cradle-to-grave LCA of potato and tomato products. Both documents were published in peer-review journals. Life Cycle Inventory (LCI)--A detailed illustration of raw materials (resource flows) was completed for all the prioritized crops. In the published studies, environmental life cycle impact assessments were calculated for potato products (fresh, chips, frozen fries, and dehydrated flakes) and tomato products (fresh and pasta sauce). The evaluation was performed from farm to-consumer plate. The publications that covered the LCIA of selected F&V crops are listed in the publication section of this report. A preliminary life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) of year 2 crops (green beans, sweet corn, carrots, strawberries, and orange juice): For the first three crops/products, coordination was established with Seneca Foods. With their support, the project was benefited by having access to necessary data to develop LCI (both on-farm and processing stages). Other data gaps were fulfilled through reviews of similar studies. A preliminary result for strawberries-fresh and packed are also calculated with the support of related stakeholders. Work has also been initiated for orange juice production, preliminary estimates are however developed, which still needs to be validated for the completeness and robustness for the data quality. LCA team received preliminary estimates of from crop and economic modeling team (on yields, irrigation water and fertilizer inputs). After the crop and economic modeling outputs are finalized, the LCA modeling frameworks (including the related life cycle inventory data) will be updated and execute the full LCIAs of the remaining crops/products. Objective 4: A story-line guide was produced and disseminated to the entire team. Dr. Gustafson, Dr. Fraisse, and Ms. Tarar (AFSI) met with Mr. Kruger and a number of his WSU Extension colleagues to build out the plans framed during the October 2020 workshop. The team initiated a matrix to organize plans for product development and outreach strategy. The goal was to develop a series of storylines from the research results for which we can develop outreach products that target different stakeholder audiences across the food system. Products can range from blog posts, 1-2 page fact sheets, podcasts, infographics, webinars, web tools, videos, technical briefs, op-ed's, etc., and of course scientific publications/presentations. Ultimately, we want to layer products that can reach many people with high level material, but have more detailed products for those stakeholders who want greater detail. This all resulted in the April 2021 launch of a monthly blog series: "Climate Friendly Fruits and Vegetables," via a WSU Extension website (AgClimate.net).

Publications

• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: ⿿Mitigating Tradeoffs as Global Fruit and Vegetable Systems Expand to Meet Dietary Recommendations,⿝ Environmental Research Letters, 16 055010 (2021). AE Stratton, JW Finley, DI Gustafson, E Mitcham, S Myers, R Naylor, J Otten, C Palm.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2021 Citation: ⿿Supply Chains for Processed Potato and Tomato Products in the US will have Enhanced Resilience with Planting Adaptation Strategies,⿝ manuscript accepted for publication by Nature Food, DI Gustafson, S Asseng, J Kruse, G Thoma, K Guan, G Hoogenboom, M Matlock, M McLean, R Parajuli, K Rajagopalan, C Stöckle, TB Sulser, L Tarar, K Wiebe, C Fraisse, C Gimenez, P Intarapapong, T Karimi, C Kruger, Y Li, E Marshall, RL Nelson, A Pronk, R Raymundo, AA Riddle, M Rosenbohm, D Sonke, F van Evert, L Xiao, G Wu, C Zhao.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: ⿿Protocol for Life Cycle Assessment Modeling of US Fruit and Vegetable Supply Chains- Cases of Processed Potato and Tomato Products,⿝ Data in Brief, 34 106639 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dib.2020.106639, R Parajuli, S Asseng, DI Gustafson, CO Stöckle, J Kruse, C Zhao, P Intrapapong, MD Matlock, G Thoma.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: ⿿Cradle to grave environmental impact evaluation of the consumption of potato and tomato products⿝, STOTEN 758(1) (2021) doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.143662, R Parajuli, MD Matlock, G Thoma.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Corrigendum to ⿿Protocol for life cycle assessment modeling of US fruit and vegetable supply chains- cases of processed potato and tomato products⿝ [Data in Brief 34 (2021) 1-24/ 106639]. doi.org/10.1016/j.dib.2021.107223, R Parajuli, S Asseng, DI Gustafson, CO Stöckle, J Kruse, C Zhao, P Intrapapong, MD Matlock, G Thoma.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Corrigendum to ⿿Cradle to grave environmental impact evaluation of the consumption of potato and tomato products⿝ [Sci. Total Environ. 758 (2021)143662]. doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.149117, R Parajuli, MD Matlock, G Thoma

Progress 07/01/19 to 06/30/20

Outputs
Target Audience:The project's primary target audiences are stakeholders in the fruit and vegetable production sectors, logistics management in the fruit and vegetable (F&V) supply chain, farmers and extension agents, industry consultants, and academics, as well as undergraduate and graduate students. The major stakeholder-engagement effort during this period was hosting a workshop during the Sustainable Ag Summit in Indianapolis on November 21, 2019. The workshop was entitled: "Busting Food Sustainability Myths: Climate Adaptation & Mitigation Opportunities in Fruit & Vegetable Supply Chains." Project co-lead Dave Gustafson developed the workshop proposal and hosted the event once it was approved by the summit organizers. He was joined on-stage by team members Greg Thoma (U Arkansas) and Kaiyu Guan (U Illinois). Approval of the workshop concept by the summit's committee was based on a number of premises included in the submission. For instance, Americans are encouraged to eat more F&V as part of a balanced diet, and they have come to accept as true many tenuous precepts about the sustainability of F&V food systems (examples: local means more sustainable, water use is high and getting worse, organic is healthier, etc.). Another assertion often heard is that both climate change and decreased availability of irrigation water will make it increasingly difficult to meet future F&V demand. However, industry stakeholders report that relatively minor management practice changes have so far been sufficient to adapt to these challenges. These same stakeholders report that the significant innovation and transformation of F&V supply chains now underway is actually dominated by primarily socioeconomic considerations: consumer preference for fresh produce grown locally; increased competition for natural resources; cost and availability of labor; efforts to improve sustainability profiles; and the rise of protected and peri-urban production. Our NIFA-funded project speaks directly to many of these issues. During the workshop we employed a creative approach in which we first administered a "pre-test" to all 39 of the workshop attendees, asking them a series of 10 true-false questions about the sustainability of F&V supply chains. 1) Climate change is expected to reduce future potato yields in current US production regions, lowering them by an average of ~10% as we reach the 2050s. 2) By the 2050s, the lack of irrigation water availability will severely constrain future processing tomato production capacity throughout most of California. 3) The nutritional value of potatoes & tomatoes will not be detectably impacted by atmospheric and climatic conditions in future environments. 4) The most cost-effective climate adaptation measure likely to be employed by future potato & tomato growers will be to increase the amount of applied irrigation water. 5) The land area needed to produce potatoes & tomatoes will expand and shift northward as climate change intensifies, with very little production in CA, FL & TX. 6) Nitrogen fertilizer use is responsible for around half the carbon footprint of the key foods derived from potatoes & tomatoes (e.g. chips, fries, pasta sauce, ketchup, etc.). 7) Water footprints for potatoes & tomatoes will increase as temperatures continue to rise in current production areas, forcing farmers to apply more irrigation water. 8) The choice of oil used for frying is far more important than supply-chain packaging considerations with respect to the carbon footprint of consumed French fries. 9) The use of renewable energy as a power source can nearly halve the carbon footprint of processed tomato products, such as pasta sauce and ketchup. 10) Decisions on the method of potato and tomato food preparation have far larger impacts on both carbon & water footprints than any farmer decisions. After collecting completed answer sheets from all of the attendees, Kaiyu and Greg gave presentations on project results that covered the majority of these questions. Meanwhile, Dave "graded" all of the answer sheets and gave "gag" awards (e.g. a bag of potatoes and a jar of pasta sauce) to the two attendees with the most correct answers (8 out of 10). Only around half (20) of the attendees (generally "experts" on food sustainability issues) got more than 4 answers correct, demonstrating that our project is generating surprising ("myth-busting") results of major significance to the stakeholder community. Another key set of stakeholders is being reached via their participation on the project Advisory Committee, which held two conference calls with the full project team during the reporting period, on July 10, 2019 and April 28, 2020. Members of this committee represent all portions of supply chains, possess different kinds of technical expertise, and collectively have good local knowledge of all production regions (current and future) that are of interest to the project. Advisory Committee members serve on a volunteer basis and receive no remuneration for their service. The current members of the Advisory Committee (AC) are: Sergio Alvarez (U Central Florida) Hank Giclas (Western Growers Association) Kris Johnson (The Nature Conservancy) Wendy Reinhardt Kapsak (Produce for Better Health Foundation) Shaun Lough (Westbridge Ag Products) James McFarren (Wyckoff Farms) Kevin Morgan (FL Farm Bureau Foundation) Steven Ostoja (USDA Climate Hub) Sambhav Sambhav (Driscolls) Dan Sonke (Campbell Soup) Victor Verlage (Walmart) Kevin Walsh (vegetable seed breeding expert) Three additional stakeholders were invited as guests to the April 2020 conference call: Lisa Francioni (CA Sustainable Winegrowing Alliance) Alejandra Sanchez (Taylor Farms) Laura Scandurra (Potato Sustainability Alliance) Changes/Problems:Objective 1 Crop modeling activities were slowed in the beginning by the challenges of developing an appropriate ("AgMIP-style") multi-modeling approach due to the absence of available literature for most of these crops. Even potatoes, which probably had the greatest body of available crop modeling literature, was very difficult due to multiple parameterization issues (shifts in planting date, which counties to include, etc.). However, now that the crop modeling protocol has been finalized, a robust approach is available for application to all the crops. Team members have been cautious not to "over-promise" within the team or to external stakeholders, given the extreme complexity of the underlying technical issues and the novelty of the project's integrated (crop/economic/LCA) and systems-level approach (overall supply chains). Another challenge is the fact that "fresh market" and "for processing" fruit and vegetable crops are very different from each other in multiple ways for all the target crops. For instance, there is a myriad of fresh market tomato varieties (i.e., heirloom, grape, roma, etc.). It has recently been proposed that this issue will be addressed by focusing most of the modeling efforts on "for processing" varieties (which tend to be more homogenous and larger acreage) in order to determine "climate deltas" in yield and water use, and then to apply those same "climate deltas" to each of the various "fresh market" varieties. Statistical analysis of climate change impact was now added to the multi-model approach to further improve the precision of the climate change impact estimates. Regional and national climate change impacts for potato, tomato, sweet corn, bean,and spinach. Limited data availability did not allow us to build statistical models for carrots, strawberries and oranges. The crop and water used simulations feed into the farm economics and LCA modeling. A web-based extension tool, as part of the AgroClimate website, has been designed to easily visualize for stakeholder climate change impacts on vegetable crops across the US. This tool will be implemented, tested and improved in year 4 of the project. Simulating oranges is becoming challenging for crop modelers. Not only climate "niches" to grow oranges are limited, but the impact of diseases has become a dominant factor for orange production, for which suitable process-oriented models simulating climate impacts on relevant diseases and their mechanistic link to orange production are not available. However, an initial attempt to simulate disease-free orange production driven by solar radiation and temperature has been promising and will be continued and applied in the impact analysis in year 4 with two crop models. Objective 2 Extensive research was dedicated to the efforts to include irrigation water constraints in the economic models. Washington State University worked on downscaling large watershed scale water availability estimates from the IMPACT model (from the International Food Policy Research Institute) to the smaller scale of analysis of this project - Crop Reporting Districts. Washington State University worked to downscale the IFPRI irrigation water data to provide estimates by CRD. Utilizing irrigation water application rates and the number of acres irrigated, WAEES attempted to cross validate with the downscaled IFPRI irrigation data. The inconsistencies in the data suggest we will not be able to include this as a constraint at this time. Another difficulty has been assembling the fruit and vegetable supply data at the CRD level for the 2000 to 2019 period. There are a considerable number of missing observations and/or CRD's that USDA cannot report because there are too few producers causing a disclosure issue. The census data provided the most observations but still remained incomplete. Census data also had to be reconciled to USDA-NASS estimate so that supply and demand estimates for each commodity aligned historically. Objective 3 The major problem that the LCA modeling team faced was the lack of detailed, consistent, and quantitative data, in a form suitable for the LCA work to proceed. However, these were addressed via work with the related extension and economic modeling teams. The LCA modeling team also cooperated with scientists and experts in the sector to identify best practices to cover data gaps and delineate the best methods to conduct life cycle inventory analysis. Supply chain diagrams and process flow charts for the crops were prepared to delineate the major stages of the F&V supply chain and support preparing data collection checklists. Due to the lack of detailed and representative data for all crop production regions, geographically-specific data could not always be incorporated into the analysis. Identified data gaps were primarily aimed filled through the use of the Ecoinvent v3.6 database, and other related publications (particularly for specific raw material inputs at the farm and post-harvest stages). Objective 4. Current travel restrictions may reduce the number of opportunities for project members to participate in trade shows and conferences. An effort will be made to share project results and engage stakeholders via virtual conferences and seminars. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The project has provided cross-training between the crop modeling, economic modeling, and LCA modeling teams during the Annual Project Workshops. U Florida: Postdoctoral fellow Dr. Chuang Zhao attended the AGU Meeting in December 2019 to present research results and to interact with colleagues and was involved in scientific publication writing. He also coordinated some of the interactions with Washington State U and U Illinois in data management and data analysis for new vegetable crops within the project and liaised with U Arkansas WAEES/U Missouri regarding data exchange and data formats. Washington State U: Invited webinar on resources available to teachers on climate change and agriculture (C. Kruger) for the Washington ClimeTime K-12 Educators series. January 2, 2019, Puyallup, WA. Guest Lecture on Climate Change and PNW Agriculture (C.Kruger) for the WSU AFS 101 course. October 31, 2019, Pullman, WA. Undergraduate, Graduate, and Post-doctoral students have participated in extension programming through the development of blog posts for How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?In Summer 2019, team member Layla Tarar (Agriculture & Food Systems Institute) produced a video that highlights the unique integrated approach that has been developed and implemented within the project. The video utilized footage gathered from project team members during the 3rd Annual Workshop, held in July 2019 at the University of Illinois (Champaign/Urbana IL). The video cites NIFA funding and has been promoted via each of the collaborating organization's social media networks and is available at the following link: https://foodsystems.org/what-we-do/nutrition/fruit-vegetable-supply-chains/ In addition to the Sustainable Ag Summit mentioned above, project team members participated in the Fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union held in San Francisco CA on 9-13 Dec 2019. This is an international conference with over 24,000 attendees. Presentations given there included the following, which cited NIFA funding: D. Gustafson, "Climate Adaptation & Mitigation Opportunities in Fruit & Vegetable Supply Chains," U Illinois, 11 Dec 2019, San Francisco, CA. The following presentations also referenced the project and cited NIFA funding: D. Gustafson, "Mitigating Tradeoffs as Global Fruit & Vegetable Systems Expand to Meet Dietary Recommendations," U Illinois, 9 Mar 2020, Champaign/Urbana, IL. Kruger, C. E., K. Rajagopalan, and G. Yorgey. 2020. The effects of climate change on agriculture and plant production in the PNW. WSU Urban IPM Pesticide Education Program 2020 Series (4 lectures - Vancouver, Tacoma, Puyallup, Lynnwood, WA). Kruger, C.E. and K. Rajagopalan. 2019. The Effects of Climate Change on Pacific Northwest Agriculture. Pierce County Master Gardeners. Puyallup, WA. November 16, 2019. Kruger, C.E. and K. Rajagopalan. What does the science currently tell us about climate change, variability and risk on PNW cropland agriculture?. AFS 101 Seminar. Pullman, WA. October 31, 2019. Chad Kruger participated in a panel discussion on Climate Change and Agriculture in the Pacific Northwest at the Northwest Climate Conference, Portland OR; October 2019 Matlock, M., G. Thoma, (2019). Keynote Presentation: Climate Change Impacts on Sustainable Agriculture. The International Egg Congress Global Leadership Conference, København, Denmark Matlock, M., G. Thoma, (2019). Keynote Presentation: Climate Change Impacts on Sustainable Agriculture. The National Mexican Agricultural Council Global Agri-Food Forum 2019, September 26th - 27th, León, Guanajuato, Mexico Matlock, M., G. Thoma, (2019). Panel Discussion: Climate Change and Food Security. Borlaug Dialogue International Symposium, by The World Food Prize Foundation, Des Moines, IA These https://www.agclimate.net/ blog posts are contributing to the Fruit & Veg CAMO Extension Effort: Sonia A. Hall. August 2020. Check it out: Climate Change Could Enhance Trade-Offs Between Yields and Volatility in Revenue https://www.agclimate.net/2020/08/20/check-it-out-climate-change-could-enhance-trade-offs-between-yields-and-volatility-in-revenue/ Fidel Maureira. July 2020. Managing for Washington's Future: A Bigger Player in Veggie Production https://www.agclimate.net/2020/07/31/managing-for-washingtons-future-a-bigger-player-in-veggie-production/ Adrienne Marshall. May 2020. Are There More Multiyear Snow Droughts in Our Future? https://www.agclimate.net/2020/05/26/are-there-more-multiyear-snow-droughts-in-our-future/ Mengqi Zhao. April 2020. How Can Long-Term Water Storage Management Mitigate Problems in an Era of Water Resource Deficits? https://www.agclimate.net/2020/04/20/how-can-long-term-water-storage-management-mitigate-problems-in-an-era-of-water-resource-deficits/ Paris Edwards. April 2020. An Integrated View of Water Vulnerability Across the Northwest https://www.agclimate.net/2020/04/01/an-integrated-view-of-water-vulnerability-across-the-northwest/ Sonia A. Hall. March 2020. Check it out: Using the Climate Toolbox to Explain This Winter's Snowpack Dynamics https://www.agclimate.net/2020/03/23/check-it-out-using-the-climate-toolbox-to-explain-this-winters-snowpack-dynamics/ Fidel Maureira. March 2020Greenhouse Production of Vegetables: Implications for the Region. https://www.agclimate.net/2020/03/05/greenhouse-production-of-vegetables-implications-for-the-region/ Fidel Maureira. February 2020. Exploring Whether Washington State Could Become the New California in Vegetable Production. https://www.agclimate.net/2020/02/06/exploring-whether-washington-state-could-become-the-new-california-in-vegetable-production/ Chris Schnepf. December 2019. Check it out: "Skeptical Science" a Climate Science Resource for Extension Professionals. https://www.agclimate.net/2019/12/10/check-it-out-skeptical-science-a-climate-science-resource-for-extension-professionals/ Paris Edwards, Haley Case-Scott, and Holly R. Prendeville. December 2019. Climate Adaptation: USDA Programs and Resources That Can Help. https://www.agclimate.net/2019/12/03/climate-adaptation-usda-programs-and-resources-that-can-help/ Lauren Parker. November 2019. What Specialty Crops Might Thrive in the Northwest in the Future? https://www.agclimate.net/2019/11/07/what-specialty-crops-might-thrive-in-the-northwest-in-the-future/ Antoinette Avorgbedor. October 2019. The Modern Apple Orchard: What Does It Entail? https://www.agclimate.net/2019/10/31/the-modern-apple-orchard-what-does-it-entail/ Sonia A. Hall. October 2019. Check it out: Measuring Water Use Rather Than Water Diversions. https://www.agclimate.net/2019/10/15/check-it-out-measuring-water-use-rather-than-water-diversions/ Keyvan Malek. September 2019. Are Efficient Irrigation Technologies a Winning Solution in the Yakima River Basin? https://www.agclimate.net/2019/09/30/are-efficient-irrigation-technologies-a-winning-solution-in-the-yakima-river-basin/ What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Objective 1 U Florida: Multi-model ensemble simulations for yield, water, and NPK use will be completed for carrots, strawberries and oranges in close collaboration with Washington State U and U Illinois. Results will be discussed and made available to the other teams for full integration. The UF team will assist the integrated analysis and preparation of an integrated publication. UF will also lead a detailed analysis of the potato crop results and assist in the multi-crop analysis for preparing for publication. An additional crop model publication on the combined other crops and climate change impact will be led by Washington State U. Data visualization tools are currently designed by Dr. C. Fraisse and tested with other extension experts at UF to be implemented on the AgroClimate website as a test version in the next reporting period. The current prototype will be expanded to include yield projections under alternative climate and adaptation scenarios for additional commodities (tomato). Washington State U: Crop modeling team plans for next year include adding models for strawberries and either oranges or blueberries to complete a total of 8 crops proposed for this project. Specific protocols, simulations, and data analysis for these two new crops will be completed. In addition, the team is still searching for additional models to be included in the multi-model platform. The integration of statistical models is becoming more challenging due to the paucity of available data, but efforts in this direction will be continued. An article on potato yield and water use projections for the US (represented by the 32 counties in this project) based on an ensemble of 8 models will be prepared. Plans for a second article including all the crops in this project will be developed. U Illinois: The UIUC modeling team will develop and deploy a statistical model for predicting climate impacts on oranges. Objective 2 Development of the economic partial equilibrium models will be completed for the 6 remaining specialty crops. With the structure of these economic models already set up, WAEES will finalize the elasticities and utilize crop modeling results to complete scenarios similar to the first 2 crops. Costs of production for each of the 6 remaining specialty crops will be reviewed with extension personnel and finalized. International models for the remaining 6 crops specialty crops have been underway for the past year. These will be finished for use in the simulations of the 6 remaining crops. There are also pending revisions to the water constraints section. The documentation will be formalized into a protocol and released in a document entitled: "Protocol for annual US vegetable crop economic model development and simulation" (Kruse et al., 2021). The protocol includes an overview of the data used in this project and its limitations, the structural modeling framework, the model specifications, and the economic model interaction with the results of the other disciplines. WAEES will also discuss with the with the other disciplines whether the supporting data on CRD specific specialty crop costs and returns would be useful to specialty crop producers and, if so, how best to release this information. WAEES will also be working with the various teams to design a 16 week college course describing the multidisciplinary approach, protocols, problems encountered, and results of the integrated approach. The course will be designed as a set of PowerPoint slides with supporting readings and simplified analysis tools so that students can experience the process. The plan for IFPRI in the coming year is to focus on continued updates to the above outputs (2.5.1, 2.7.1, 2.8.1, 2.8.2) as needed and provide support to the broader project research team to use and interpret these results in their own analyses or extensions. Also, IFPRI will engage in further prototype development and systematic application of the DSSAT-Simple model in the IMPACT modeling framework to enable more precise climate impact signals on yields of a variety of crops. Participation in team meetings, communications activities, and drafting of manuscripts will round out IFPRI's portfolio of activities under this project. Objective 3 U Arkansas: The LCA modeling framework for year-3 crops will include carrots, spinach, and strawberries. A preliminary market study has been carried out to identify and prioritize the types of each product for LCA modeling. The selected processed product category for spinach is a canned product (covering 33% of the market volume). Since 61% of the spinach is consumed as a fresh product, and the rest is canned, it has been concluded that fresh spinach is important to select for the detailed LCA modeling. Carrots have the following consumption pattern in the US: 73% is consumed as fresh, followed by frozen (14%) and 12% (canned). As for strawberries, more than 40% of the strawberries produced in the US were for the processing market over many decades, but this has reduced to 20% in recent years. The plan is also to prepare a journal paper covering the full environmental life cycle impact evaluation of all the remaining crops selected in the project. An LCI modelling framework, which is flexible enough to accommodate all the remaining crops has been prepared, and will be replenished with necessary process data in the planned period. Necessary modifications on the LCI modelling framework will be carried out based on the information and learning acquired during data collection and while setting the overall scope of the evaluation. Objective 4: U Florida Extension: Data visualization tools are currently designed by Dr. C. Fraisse and tested with other extension experts at UF to be implemented on the AgroClimate website as a test version in the next reporting period. A prototype of the proposed online information system will be shared with project members in November of 2019 for evaluation and feedback. It will include basic information about the project including objectives, desired impact, approach, and any other relevant project-related information. For each commodity with available simulation results, the system will contain graphs and tables showing the distribution of the projected yield changes based on alternative emission scenarios and projected period of time. WSU Extension: Washington State University and the University of Florida will collaborate to develop a series of blog posts, a presentation on climate and vegetable production, and a web interface to disseminate project results. Analog based characterization of results will also be completed. WSU will be developing a new webinar/seminar style presentation focused on updated information on fruit and vegetable production issues in the Pacific Northwest.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? All major project activities are on-track, with details provided below on each of the objectives. During the second annual workshop, the team had identified the need to prepare a keystone publication highlighting the unique capabilities of our integrated modeling effort. That paper was largely completed during this most recent reporting period and is entitled: "Integrated Approach to Climate Adaptation and Mitigation: Processed Potato and Tomato." The paper is targeted for submission to Nature Sustainability and the abstract (as of June 30, 2020) was drafted as follows: "Food systems are increasingly challenged to meet the growing demand for specialty crops due to the effects of climate change and increased competition for resources. We apply a novel integrated methodology that includes climate, crop, economic, and life cycle assessment (LCA) models to US potato and tomato supply chains. We assess the effectiveness of changing management strategies to address climate change and the opportunity to relocate away from regions with increased water scarcity. We find that supply chains for two popular processed products in the United States, French fries and pasta sauce, will be remarkably resilient, through planting adaptation strategies that avoid higher temperatures. Land and water footprints will decline over time due to higher yields, and GHG emissions can be mitigated by waste reduction and process modification. Our integrated methodology can be applied to other crops and geographies, and the results could inform decision-making at multiple steps along supply chains." Objective 1: The three crop modeling teams at the University of Florida, University of Illinois, and Washington State University have continued to update a protocol that governs the conduct of crop modeling for the project: "Protocol for US Fruit and Vegetable Simulations" (Zhao et al., 2019). Each crop is being simulated with 30 years of historical weather data and 30 years of future climate scenarios for the 2030s and 2050s for the 32 counties of interest (high F&V production areas). Following AgMIP standards, multiple crop models are being used, including up to six crop models for potatoes: SIMPLE (University of Florida), CropSyst (Washington State University), LINTUL-POTATO-DSS (Wageningen University), EPIC (USDA), CSM-Substor-Potato (University of Minnesota), and Statistical (University of Illinois). The models estimate yield and water use and enable quantification of model uncertainty. Routines have been developed to also estimate N, P and K use and are being used as input to the economic and LCA modeling. Current simulations results suggest only rather mild effects of climate change on the yields of the crops simulated to date: potatoes, tomatoes, sweet corn, carrots, spinach, and green beans, despite increased heat stress towards harvest. This outcome appears to be due to more optimal temperatures early in the season (with currently sub-optimal temperatures) allowing earlier panting and stimulated biomass growth from elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations, assumed to be not limited by nutrient supply due to high fertilizer inputs. Fully integrated results were completed for potatoes and tomatoes during the reporting period. Preliminary results (not yet corrected for the contribution of the "technology trend" - see below) were completed for carrots, green beans, spinach, and sweet corn. Objective 2: WAEES made considerable progress on documenting the economic modeling methodology and completed the crop specific sections for tomatoes and potatoes. An innovative method was developed by the economic modeling team to correctly account for the contribution of the "technology trend" to the preliminary results coming from the crop modeling team. The methodology is discussed in greater detail within the "Integrated Paper" manuscript, but (in brief) a regression line was fitted to the observed yield trends (based on USDA NASS), and the slope of this line has two components: (1) Technology: The technology trend is a combination of improved seeds, more effective use of fertilizer, water, and various inputs, as well as better equipment and other improvements. It was determined as the difference in slopes between the overall observed trend and the climate component during that same time period. Based on available literature, the assumption was made that the technology component will be attenuated from its current 100% contribution to 90% of that value by 2030 and 70% by the year 2050, causing a flattening of the yield curves over time. (2) Climate: The effects of climate were determined based on the percentage linear increase in simulated crop yields from the baseline period through the 2030s and then removed from the observed historical yield trend (to create a climate-corrected technology trend). The future climate impact was added to the future technology yield trend. Note: In order to help characterize overall modeling uncertainty, this same methodology was applied to the 25th- and 75th-percentile results across the entire crop modeling ensemble, in addition to the ensemble median, which is being treated as the best single estimate of future yields. The economic models for potatoes and tomatoes were completed and used for economic simulation of the adaptive management scenarios using results from the crop models as well as climate change yield impacts for countries and crops not included in this study. This accomplished was significant in that it represented the integration of work across all disciplines and finalized the iterative process of exactly how the various disciplines and models would interact. The scenario results were used to facilitate development of a multidisciplinary paper. Objective 3: The LCA methodology has been documented in a finalized protocol entitled: "Protocol for Life Cycle Assessment Modeling of US Fruit and Vegetable Supply Chains-Cases of processed potato and tomato products," (Parajuli et al., 2020-unpublished). Life Cycle Inventory (LCI)--a detailed illustration of raw materials (resource flows) was completed for all crops. Environmental life cycle impact assessments were calculated for fresh and processed potato and tomato products. Processed products included: potatoes (chips, frozen fries, and dehydrated) and tomatoes (pasta sauce). For the evaluation, the LCIs were formulated considering multiple sources, such as, at farm level: (i) outputs from Crop models (e.g. crop yield, crop nutrients and irrigation water), (ii) crop budget reports that were synthesized after working with the Economic Modeling team (e.g. macro-nutrient data at farm level). Likewise, LCA modeling also coordinated with the related stakeholders, such as Campbell Soup, to collect data on the processing of tomatoes. Data gaps, mainly for the post-harvest stages were replenished through literature reviews. With all these, life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) of the fresh and processed tomato products was completed. The publications (finished and in-progress) that covered the LCIA of selected F&V crops are listed in the publication section of this report. A preliminary life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) of year 2 crops (green beans, sweet corn, carrots): For this work, coordination was established with Seneca Foods. With support from Seneca Foods, the project was benefited by having access to necessary data to develop life cycle inventory (both on-farm and processing stages). Other data gaps were fulfilled through reviews of similar studies. Work has also been initiated for strawberry production. It includes the identification of stakeholders for the necessary coordination and development of LCI frameworks. After the completion of crop and economic modeling works, a full LCIA will be carried out for the year 2 crops. A preliminary LCIA is however already made. Objective 4: Due to space constraints, extension & outreach efforts are covered elsewhere in this report.

Publications

• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Peng B, Guan KY, Tang JY, Ainsworth EA, Asseng S, Bernacchi CJ, Cooper M, Delucia EH, Elliott JW, Ewert F, Grant RF, Gustafson DI, Hammer GL, Jin ZN, Jones JW, Kimm H, Lawrence DM, Li Y, Lombardozzi DL, Marshall-Colon A, Messina CD, Ort DR, Schnable JC, Vallejos CE, Wu A, Yin XY, Zhou W (2020) Towards a multiscale crop modelling framework for climate change adaptation assessment. Nature Plants 6: 338-348. doi: 10.1038/s41477-020-0625-3..
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2020 Citation: Citation: Parajuli R., Gustafson D., Asseng S., St�ckle C.O., Kruse J., Zhao C., Matlock M.D., Thoma G. Protocol for Life Cycle Assessment Modeling of US Fruit and Vegetable Supply Chains- cases of processed potato and tomato products (unpublished) 133.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2020 Citation: Citation: Parajuli R., Matlock M.D., Thoma G. Actually eating 1 kg potato and tomato products-what would be environmental footprints?
• Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Citation: Matlock, M., G. Thoma, K. Le, E. Cummings, Z. Morgan, and A. Shaw (2020). Projected surface water for fruit and vegetable irrigation under a changing climate in the US. UA Resiliency Center Publication WR-0120, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2020 Citation: Citation: Parajuli R., Asseng S., St�ckle C.O., Gustafson D., Zhao C., Kruse J., Hickman J., Matlock M.D., Thoma G. Environmental life cycle impact of processed potato and tomato products - now and in the future. 12th International Conference on Life Cycle Assessment of Food 2020 (LCA Food 2020). Towards Sustainable Agri-Food Systems13-16 October 2020, Berlin, Germany
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Parajuli R., Matlock M.D., Thoma G. Life cycle assessment of potato and tomato supply chain of the United States. ACLCA 202 Virtual Conference, September 22-24, 2020 https://www.conftool.org/aclca2020/index.php?page=browseSessions&search=Ranjan+Parajuli
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Awaiting Publication Year Published: 2020 Citation: Parajuli R., Matlock M.D., Thoma G. Evaluating Sustainability of Fresh and Processed Potato and Tomato Products. AGU Fall Meeting 2020.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Other Year Published: 2020 Citation: Chaudhary S., et al. Fruit and vegetable production under climate change: analogs as an extension tool.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Other Year Published: 2020 Citation: Chaudhary S., et al. Earlier planting as a climate change adaptation strategy may be overestimating adaptive potential: a soil moisture perspective.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Other Year Published: 2020 Citation: Noorazar H., et al. What is the right historical baseline for climate impact projections?: observation-based vs. modeled products and the role of model bias.

Progress 07/01/18 to 06/30/19

Outputs
Target Audience:The project's primary target audiences are stakeholders in the fruit and vegetable production sectors, logistics managements in the fruit and vegetable supply chain, farmers and extension agents, industry consultants, and academics, as well as undergraduate and graduate students. The first major stakeholder-engagement effort during this period was a workshop held at the Keystone Policy Center in Keystone, Colorado, on July 30 through August 3, 2018. The workshop was entitled: "Innovating global fruit and vegetable food systems to help bring sustainable nutrition security." Project co-lead Dave Gustafson co-organized this workshop with a small team at the Aspen Global Change Institute (AGCI, www.AGCI.org), and additional workshop co-chairs: Alison Edwards (Stewardship Index for Specialty Crops), John Finley (USDA/ARS), Franklin Holley (Keystone Policy Center), Dominik Klauser (Syngenta Foundation), and Jerry Nelson (U Illinois). The purpose of the workshop was to assemble global practice and thought leaders to create a future vision for more sustainable and resilient fruit and vegetable (F&V) food systems. The objectives included: (1) identify challenges and opportunities for existing and future F&V food systems; (2) prioritize among the leverage points for change and knowledge gaps; (3) outline approaches (changes in the food system itself & research needs) to sustainably provide healthy, nutritious food to a growing, more urban world population, based on the principles of diversity, equity & inclusion. The workshop outputs included a self-published (www.AGCI.org) position paper on needed innovations in F&V food systems, and a strawman proposal on next steps, including identification of who can implement the needed system changes and conduct the needed research. At the conclusion of the workshop, the gathered participants drafted the "Aspen/Keystone Declaration," which announces the formation of a new "Community of Practice," with a shared mission to synthesize data and generate the knowledge needed to better inform actions and interventions leading to more diverse, equitable, nutritious, resilient, and sustainable global F&V food systems. The position paper describes the agenda in more detail and is organized into five sections based on primary points of intervention in global F&V systems: (1) research and development, (2) information needs to better inform policy & investment, (3) production (farmers, farming practices, and supply), (4) consumption (availability, access, and demand), and (5) sustainable & equitable F&V food systems and supply chains. Workshop participants and co-authors on the position paper included the following individuals: Abhishek Chaudhary (ETH Zurich, Switzerland) Ahmed Kablan (USAID) Alison Edwards (Stewardship Index for Specialty Crops) Anne Elise Stratton (U Michigan) Caroline Otto (Syngenta Foundation, Switzerland) Claudio Stöckle (Washington State U) Colin Khoury (CSU/CIAT) Dan Sonke (Campbell Soup) Dave Gustafson (ILSI Research Foundation) Dominik Klauser (Syngenta Foundation, Switzerland) Franklin Holley (Keystone Policy Center) Greg Thoma (U Arkansas) Hans Blonk (Blonk Consultants, The Netherlands) Jen Otten (U Washington) Jerry Nelson (U Illinois, emeritus) Jessica Bogard (CSIRO, Australia) John Finley (USDA/ARS) Kaiyu Guan (U Illinois) Kate Schaffner (WWF) Keith Wiebe (IFPRI) Kerri Steenwerth (USDA/ARS) Kevin Bryan (Keystone Policy Center) Lindewe Sibanda (AGRA, Zimbabwe) Markus Frank (BASF, Germany) Naomi Fukagawa (USDA/ARS) Roz Naylor (Stanford U) Senthold Asseng (U Florida) Sumira Phatak (Utah State U) Sylvia Rowe (SR Strategy) Tim Benton (U Leeds, UK) Tim Hess (U Cranfield, UK) Tim Sulser (IFPRI) Wei-Ting Chen (U California, Ag & Nat Res) Yan Li (U Illinois) Zach Conrad (USDA/ARS) On September 11, 2018, a second major stakeholder-engagement side-event was convened alongside the Global Climate Action Summit held in San Francisco, CA, and hosted at the offices of The Climate Corporation. The event was entitled: "More Fruitful Food Systems for a Changing Climate." The format included a read-out from the AGCI workshop, with the perspective provided by four workshop attendees: project co-lead Dave Gustafson, Alison Edwards (Stewardship Index for Specialty Crops), Dan Sonke (Campbell Soup), and Wei-Ting Chen (U California, Ag & Nat Res). Brief presentations from the four participants, were followed by an extensive Q&A session. Attendees included the following individuals: Aaron Dorman (Northwestern U) Amanda Stone (WWF) Alex Wood (Santa Clara U) Brandon Holmes (Dartmouth U) Carla Curle (Food Minds) Carolyn Hricko (Johns Hopkins U) Danielle Lee (U California, Ag & Nat Res) Erin Biehl (Johns Hopkins U) Honor Eldridge (Sustainable Food Trust) John Gearen (The Nature Conservancy) Jay Rossiter (Perkins Coie) Karen Tam Wu (Pembina) Katherine Oaks (U Vermont) Laura deTar (Fresh Approach) Mark Lipson (UC Santa Cruz) Matthew H Lurie (Millken Institute) Griffin Smith (MIT) Steven Ostoja (UC Davis) On April 22, 2019, project co-lead Dave Gustafson attended the annual meeting of the Produce for Better Health Foundation (PBHF), at the invitation of their CEO, Wendy Reinhardt Kapsak. Other invited participants included PBHF collaborators: Sylvia Rowe, Jason Riis, Taylor Wallace, Michelle Kijek, and Katie Toulouse. The discussion centered on opportunities for greater collaboration between the project team and PBHF, including the possibility that PBHF could serve as an ongoing co-convener of the "Community of Practice" that had initially formed at the AGCI workshop. Conversations continue with PBHF on this topic and other opportunities for collaboration. Another key set of stakeholders is being reached via their participation on the project Advisory Committee, which held one conference call with the full project team during the reporting period, on October 23, 2018. Members of this committee represent all portions of supply chains, possess different kinds of technical expertise, and collectively have good local knowledge of all production regions (current and future) that are of interest to the project. Advisory Committee members serve on a volunteer basis and receive no remuneration for their service. The current members of the Advisory Committee (AC) are: • Sergio Alvarez (U Central Florida) • Bill Dean (AgriNorthwest) • Hank Giclas (Western Growers Association) • Kris Johnson (The Nature Conservancy) • Wendy Reinhardt Kapsak (Produce for Better Health Foundation) • Shaun Lough (Westbridge Ag Products) • James McFarren (Wyckoff Farms) • Kevin Morgan (FL Farm Bureau Foundation) • Steven Ostoja (USDA Climate Hub) • Sambhav Sambhav (Driscolls) • Dan Sonke (Campbell Soup) • Victor Verlage (Walmart) • Kevin Walsh (Seminis) Changes/Problems:Objective 1 Crop modeling activities were slowed in the beginning by the challenges of developing an appropriate ("AgMIP-style") multi-modeling approach due to the absence of available literature for most of these crops. Even potatoes, which probably had the greatest body of available crop modeling literature, was very difficult due to multiple parameterization issues (shifts in planting date, which counties to include, etc.). However, now that the crop modeling protocol has been finalized, a robust approach is available for application to the other crops. Team members have been cautious not to "over-promise" within the team or to external stakeholders, given the extreme complexity of the underlying technical issues and the novelty of the project's integrated (crop/economic/LCA) and systems level approach (overall supply chains). Another challenge is the fact that "fresh market" and "for processing" fruit and vegetable crops are very different from each other in multiple ways for all the target crops. For instance, there are a myriad of fresh market tomato varieties (i.e., heirloom, grape, roma, etc.). It has recently been proposed that this issue will be addressed by focusing most of the modeling efforts on "for processing" varieties (which tend to be more homogenous and larger acreage) in order to determine "climate deltas" in yield and water use, and then to apply those same "climate deltas" to each of the various "fresh market" varieties. Statistical analysis of climate change impact was now added to the multi-model approach to further improve the precision of the climate change impact estimates. Regional and national climate change impacts for potato, tomato, sweet corn, bean beans and spinach have been completed now, carrots and strawberries are in preparation. The crop and water used simulations feed into the farm economics and LCA modeling. A web-based extension tool, as part of the AgroClimate website has been designed, to easily visualize for stakeholder climate change impacts on vegetable crops across the US. This tool will be implemented and tested in year 3 of the project. Simulating oranges is becoming challenging for crop modelers. Not only climate "niches" to grow oranges are limited, but the impact of diseases has become a dominant factor for orange production, for which suitable process-oriented models simulating climate impacts on relevant diseases and their mechanistic link to orange production are not available. On the other hand, production of blueberries has been increasing rapidly driven by market demand for nutritious foods. The team is currently considering the possibility of replacing oranges with blueberries for this project. Objective 2 Given water availability for irrigation is a critical dimension for the continued viability of fruit and vegetable production in the US, we have been working on downscaling large watershed scale water availability estimates from the IMPACT model (from the International Food Policy Research Institute) to the smaller scale of analysis of this project - Crop Reporting Districts. This is a challenging aspect to estimate, and we are performing an evaluation the usability of available data, and appropriateness of downscaling alternatives. We have currently utilized county level data from the USGS Water Use surveys and USDA Census of Agriculture to aid in this analysis. The principal difficulty over the past year has been identifying future water constraints at the CRD level. Although we are close, there is still more work to do to reconciled estimated disappearance and water availability. A large amount of time was spent on reconciling the irrigation water data. Washington State University worked to downscale the IFPRI irrigation water data to provide estimates by CRD. Utilizing irrigation water application rates and the number of acres irrigated, WAEES attempted to cross validate with the downscaled IFPRI irrigation data. There were some inconsistencies which are still being resolved but with efforts from Washington State University we are nearing a solution. Another difficulty stems from the simultaneous nature of partial equilibrium models which require supply and demands to balance both in the US and internationally. Since we are aggregating supply from 31 CRD's and are rest of the US region, any redefinition of the CRD's to be included in the study creates significant work to adjust the aggregations. In addition, historical data updates require significant time to recalibrate to be consistent with NASS state data. Changes of this nature appear less intrusive in the other disciplines. Objective 3 The major problem that the LCA modeling team faced was the lack of detailed, consistent and qualitative data, in a form suitable for the LCA work to proceed. However, these were addressed via work with the related extension and economic modeling teams. The LCA modeling team also cooperated with scientists and experts in the sector to identify best practices to cover data gaps and delineate the best methods to conduct life cycle inventory analysis. Supply chain diagrams and process flow charts for the crops were prepared to delineate the major stages of the F&V supply chain, and hence to prepare data requests from the related stakeholders. Due to the lack of detailed and representative data for all crop production regions, geographically-specific data could not always be incorporated into the analysis. Identified data gaps were primarily filled through the use of the Ecoinvent data base, and other related publications (particularly for specific raw material inputs at farm). What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The project has provided cross-training between the crop modeling, economic modeling, and LCA modeling teams during the Annual Project Workshops. U Florida: Postdoctoral fellow Dr. Chuang Zhao attended the ASA, CSSA, and SSSA International Annual Meeting, Baltimore, MD, November 4-7, 2018 to present research results and to interact with colleagues and was involved in scientific publication writing. He also coordinated some of the interactions with Washington State U and U Illinois in data management and data analysis for new vegetables crops within the project and liaised with U Arkansas WAEES/U Missouri regarding data exchange and data formats. Washington State U: Invited webinar on resources available to teachers on climate change and agriculture (C. Kruger) for the Washington ClimeTime K-12 Educators series. January 2, 2019, Puyallup, WA. Guest Lecture on Climate Change and PNW Agriculture (C.Kruger) for the WSU AFS 101 course. October 31, 2018, Pullman, WA. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The project team reached academia and NIFA staff during the USDA/NIFA/AFRI Bioeconomy Agroecosystems Annual Project Director Meeting held in Washington DC, 6-7 Dec 2018, where both D. Gustafson and S. Asseng gave plenary presentations. Project team member K. Rajagopalan also presented at the Fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union held at Washington DC on 10-14 Dec 2018. This is an international conference with over 24,000 attendees. Other guest lectures that referenced the project and cited NIFA funding: D. Gustafson, "Pursuing More Fruitful Food Systems," WSU, 27 Sep 2018, Pullman WA. C. Krueger, "Climate Change and PNW Agriculture," WSU, 31 Oct 2018, Pullman WA. D. Gustafson, "Food System Innovations for Sustainable Nutrition," Nutrition 2018, 22-23 Nov 2018, Paris, France. K. Rajagopalan, "Impacts of climate change on crop yields and water demand in the irrigated areas of the Columbia River Basin," Hermiston Farm Fair, 27 Nov 2018, Hermiston OR. C. Krueger, "Resources available to teachers on climate change and agriculture," Washington ClimeTime K-12 Educators series, 2 Jan 2019, Puyallup WA. C. Krueger, "The Effects of Climate Change on Pacific Northwest Agriculture," Washington Food Policy Forum, 7 Jan 2019, Puyallup WA. C. Krueger, "Climate change and ag resiliency," Washington DNR convened community resiliency forum, 21 Jan 2019, Wenatchee WA. C. Krueger, "What might climate change mean for Western Washington agriculture?" Western Washington Annual Potato Workshop, 22 Feb 2019, Mount Vernon WA. S. Asseng, "Impact and adaptation of cropping systems to climate change," 3rd Agriculture and Climate Change Conference, 24-26 Mar 2019, Budapest, Hungary. D. Gustafson, "Food System Performance Metrics to Improve Health and Sustainability Outcomes," 3rd Agriculture and Climate Change Conference, 24-26 Mar 2019, Budapest, Hungary. S. Asseng, "Crop and Livestock Modeling," Next-Generation Food Shock Modeling, 20-24 May 2019, Aspen CO. C. Krueger, "Climate Change and Regenerative Agriculture in the Pacific Northwest," Regenerative Agriculture Conference, 27 May 2019, Pendleton OR. S. Asseng, "Impact of climate change at country scale," International Workshop on Intercomparison of crop simulation models for the assessment of climate change risks, 10-12 Jun 2019, Valdivia, Chile. In summer 2018, the University of Florida produced the video Climate Change Impacts on Agricultural Crops, encapsulating the work performed and planned by the Fruit and Vegetable Supply Chains: Climate Adaptation and Mitigation Opportunities project. Featuring interviews with project co-lead, Dr. Senthold Asseng, the video is prominently featured on the project's web page and has proved to be a very useful tool for summarizing the project's methods and objectives to a new audience. On July 18, 2018, ILSI Research Foundation co-organized the scientific symposium: Protected Production of Fruits and Vegetables for Nutrition Security in Urban and Peri-Urban Environments with Food and Agriculture Global Practice, World Bank. The approach, objectives, and progress made in the Fruit and Vegetable Supply Chains: Climate Adaptation and Mitigation Opportunities project were outlined by Dr. Morven McLean, ILSI Research Foundation Executive Director, during the symposium's introductory speech. Dr. Greg Thoma, University of Arkansas, also delivered a presentation on Life-Cycle Assessment of Fruit and Vegetable Production. While the symposium focused on protected agriculture, all presentations touched on the essential role fruits and vegetables play in nutritious diets, as well as their potential contribution to addressing health and nutritional challenges. The need to increase productivity to meet growing demand and address the impact of climate variability was also a key point in the majority of presentations. In addition to Dr. McLean and Dr. Thoma, symposium speakers included experts from the World Bank, Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Horticulture, International Food Policy Research Institute, International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas, CGIAR Global Program on Urban and Peri-Urban Agriculture, and American Ag Energy. The symposium took place at the World Bank main building in Washington, DC, and the in-person audience included World Bank staff, government employees, private sector representatives, and NGO workers. A livestream of the event was broadcast globally via the World Bank's internal web portal, as well as on the ILSI Research Foundation website. Video recordings of the presentations and panel discussion were also made available on the ILSI Research Foundation website and ILSI YouTube channel after the event. On January 10, 2019, the ILSI Research Foundation delivered a poster presentation about the Fruit and Vegetable Supply Chains: Climate Adaptation and Mitigation Opportunities project at the 2019 ILSI Annual Meeting in Clearwater, Florida. Attended by over 200 individuals, with international representation from industry, academia, and government, the ILSI Annual Meeting provided an opportunity for the project to gain exposure with an audience already interested in the fields of nutrition and food safety. During this reporting period, work done by the Fruit and Vegetable Supply Chains: Climate Adaptation and Mitigation Opportunities project featured prominently in the ILSI Research Foundation newsletter, which is published monthly and broadcast to a mailing list of over 5000 individuals and organizations representing governments, academia, the private sector, and NGOs. Newsletter articles about the project touched on the Protocol for US Potato Simulations (July 2018), presentations at the scientific symposium Protected Production of Fruits and Vegetables for Nutrition Security in Urban and Peri-Urban Environments (August 2018), Position Paper: Sustainable and Equitable Increases in Fruit and Vegetable Productivity and Consumption are Needed to Achieve Global Nutrition Security (December 2018), Protocol for US Fruit and Vegetable Crop Modeling: Tomato Appendix (April 2019), and the presentation Interdisciplinary Science to Solve Real World Problems at the University of Florida (June 2019). Co-PI Kruger has communicated project specifics in formal and informal settings to multiple grower, processor, and agency groups in the region. In addition, co-PI Chad Kruger is part of the advisory committee for the Washington Department of Natural Resources (WADNR)- the largest agricultural land holder in Washington State with significant holdings in irrigated fruit and vegetable production areas. DNRinitiated a climate resilience planning process (phase 1: 2014-2016, phase 2: 2018-2020) focused on acquiring and evaluating climate change information to better plan and prepare for climate resiliency across its land portfolio. Co-PI Kruger has served on the science advisory committee for both phases with a focus on the ag and water investment questions. Participation in this process has helped to refine our theory of extension and reinforced the value of analog-based information for planning on the investment horizon. This process is further enhancing our understanding of the decision-lenses that managers are operating under when it comes to incorporating climate change information. Co-PI Kruger is WSU's appointed member to the Washington Food Policy Forum. The Forum provided a comprehensive report and set of recommendations to the Washington Legislature in 2019. Kruger served on the sub-committee that drafted the report and recommendations regarding policy actions the state could consider for improving agricultural and food system resiliency to climate change. These recommendations focused on investments in securing water supply to benefit large and small-scale fruit and vegetable production systems. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Objective 1 U Florida: Multi-model ensemble simulations for yield, water and NPK use will be completed for carrots, strawberries and oranges in close collaboration with Washington State U and U Illinois. Results will be discussed and made available to the other teams for the full integration. The UF team will assist the integrated analysis and preparation of an integrated publication. UF will also lead a detailed analysis of the potato crop results and assist in the multi-crop analysis for preparing for publication. Data visualization tools are currently designed by Dr. C. Fraisse and tested with other extension experts at UF to be implemented on the AgroClimate website as a test version in the next reporting period. Washington State U: Crop modeling team plans for next year include adding models for strawberries and either oranges or blueberries to complete a total of 8 crops proposed for this project. Specific protocols, simulations, and data analysis for these two new crops will be completed. In addition, the team is still searching for additional models to be included in the multi-model platform. Integration of statistical models is becoming more challenging due to the paucity of available data, but efforts in this direction will be continued. An article on potato yield and water use projections for the US (represented by the 32 counties in this project) based on an ensemble of 8 models will be prepared. Plans for a second article including all the crops in this project will be developed. U Illinois: For the 2-3rd of the project, U Illinois will train a PhD graduate student on using statistical models to predicting climate impacts on crop yield. Objective 2 WAEES will complete the simulation of the scenarios for tomatoes and potatoes to finish the economic contribution for the integrated paper. In addition, four more specialty crops will be added to the economic models including corresponding international models as appropriate. As data from the crop modeling teams becomes available for these crops, WAEES will generate scenarios for these crops. WAEES will develop the sample farm model designed to simulate the impacts of climate variation at the farm level. We will discuss the best method to provide the crop specialty crop budgets and corresponding sample farm model results via the internet. WAEES will work also be working with the various teams to design the college course describing the multidisciplinary approach, protocols, problems encountered, and preliminary results of the projects. The plan for IFPRI in the coming year is to focus on continued updates to the above outputs (2.5.1, 2.7.1, 2.8.1, 2.8.2) as needed and support to the broader project research team to use and interpret these results in their own analyses or extensions. Also, IFPRI will engage in further prototype development and systematic application of the DSSAT-Simple model in the IMPACT modeling framework to enable more precise climate impact signals on yields of a variety of crops. Participation in team meetings, communications activities, and drafting of manuscripts will round out IFPRI's portfolio of activities under this project. Objective 3 U Arkansas: The LCA modeling framework for year-3 crops will include carrots, spinach and strawberries. A preliminary market study has been carried out to identify and prioritize the types of each product for LCA modeling. The selected processed product category for spinach is a canned product (covering 33% of the market volume). Since, 61% of the spinach is consumed as a fresh product, and the rest are canned, it has been concluded that fresh spinach is important to select for the detailed LCA modeling. Carrots have the following consumption pattern in the US: 73% is consumed as fresh, followed by frozen (14%) and 12% (canned). As for strawberries, more than 40% of the strawberries produced in the US were for processing market over many decades, but this has reduced to 20% in the recent years. In addition to carrying out detailed LCA modeling, the plan is to continue to actively pursue publication of the LCA results for potatoes and tomatoes in related scientific journals. Objective 4: U Florida Extension: Data visualization tools are currently designed by Dr. C. Fraisse and tested with other extension experts at UF to be implemented on the AgroClimate website as a test version in the next reporting period. A prototype of the proposed online information system will be shared with project members in November of 2019 for evaluation and feedback. It will include basic information about the project including objectives, desired impact, approach and any other relevant project-related information. For each commodity with available simulation results the system will contain graphs and tables showing the distribution of the projected yield changes based on alternative emission scenarios and projected period of time. WSU Extension: Washington State University and University of Florida will collaborate to develop a series a blog posts, a presentation on climate and vegetable production, and a web interface to disseminate project results. Analog based characterization of results will also be completed. WSU will be developing a new webinar / seminar style presentation focused on updated information on fruit and vegetable production issues in the Pacific Northwest. The indicated team members currently plan to attend the following conferences: Kirti, Chad: Northwest Climate Conference, Portland OR; October 2019 Dave, Greg, Kaiyu: Sustainable Agriculture Summit, Indianapolis IN, November 2019 Claudio, Gerrit, Senthold: Tri-Society Meeting, San Antonio TX, November 2019 Dave, Kaiyu, Kirti: American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, San Francisco CA; December 2019

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? All major project activities are on-track, with details provided below on each of the objectives. During the second annual workshop, the team identified the need to prepare a keystone publication highlighting the unique capabilities of our integrated modeling effort. The draft title for that paper is "Climate Adaptation and Mitigation for Solanaceae Crops in the US: Potatoes and Tomatoes," with Greg Thoma identified as the Convening Lead Author. An extended outline and several figures for the paper have been completed, with further work awaiting completion of the economic and LCA modeling, which are both contingent on finalization of a method for downscaling irrigation water availability data. This latter topic is now the subject of a draft protocol: "Protocol for Downscaling of Hydrology Data for US Fruit and Vegetable Modeling," (Rajagopalan et al., 2019). Objective 1: The three crop modeling teams at University of Florida, University of Illinois, and Washington State University have continued to update a protocol that governs the conduct of crop modeling for the project: "Protocol for US Fruit and Vegetable Simulations" (Zhao et al., 2019). Each crop is being simulated with 30 years of historical weather data and 30 years of future climate scenarios for the 2030s and 2050s for the 32 counties of interest (high F&V production areas). Following AgMIP standards, multiple crop models are being used, including up to six crop models for potatoes: SIMPLE (University of Florida), CropSyst (Washington State University), LINTUL-POTATO-DSS (Wageningen University), EPIC (USDA), CSM-Substor-Potato (University of Minnesota), and Statistical (University of Illinois). The models estimate yield and water use and enable a quantification of model uncertainty. Routines have been developed to also estimate N, P and K use and are being used as input to the economic and LCA modeling. Current simulations results suggest only rather mild effects of climate change on the yields of the crops simulated to date: potatoes, tomatoes, sweet corn, carrots, spinach, and green beans, despite increased heat stress towards harvest. This outcome appears to be due to more optimal temperatures early in the season (with currently sub-optimal temperatures) and stimulated biomass growth from elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations, assumed to be not limited by nutrient supply due to high fertilizer inputs. Simulation results have been passed to the economics modeling team at WAEES, with some of these passed through to the LCA team at the University of Arkansas. Protocols, simulations, and data analysis were completed for sweet corn, green beans, and spinach. A protocol was prepared for carrots, but simulations were not conducted in the reporting year. Objective 2: The economic modeling methodology has been documented in a protocol entitled: "Protocol for annual US vegetable crop economic model development and simulation" (Kruse et al., 2019). The protocol is 80 percent complete because there is still some uncertainty regarding how irrigation water constraints will be introduced. Much of the project's second year was focused on developing the econometric model and determining the interrelationships with the biophysical models, irrigation water data, lifecycle analysis, and the connections with the IFPRI analysis regarding the impact on international crop yields of various IPCC climate scenarios. While the core of the work focused on tomatoes and potatoes, the model equation infrastructure was setup for the other 6 study crops to facilitate ease of incorporation in future years, but the equations for these crops have not yet been estimated. There have been several changes in the inputs to the economic models resulting in some repeated restructuring. With the release of the 2017 Census of Agriculture, the historical data on all specialty crop acreage were updated and the crop reporting district data was reconstructed from the county data. The crop reporting district data was aligned to the aggregate specialty crop data report by NASS so that total supply is consistent with NASS reports. Demand data was collected from the Economic Research Service and is consistent with the NASS total supply estimates. The US costs of production models for tomatoes and potatoes are complete. The projected costs of production feed into the expected net returns equations which drive the crop area estimates for tomatoes and potatoes. US tomato and potato area and yield equations were estimated for each of the 31 CRD's and one rest of the US region. National level demand equations were estimated for each demand category of processed and fresh tomatoes. The econometric model was designed to utilize yield impacts, fertilizer changes, and irrigation water constraints resulting from climate variation. In addition to US models, international models for potatoes and tomatoes were developed and updated to the latest supply and demand information as reported by FAO. The international models sync with the US models through prices and trade. The importance of having the international models is to include the international yield impacts from the same climate scenarios but also to capture how much of the change in US production might be filled by imports rather than domestic production. Finally, in order to provide detailed estimates of land use change, the WAEES global agricultural and biofuels model is being modified to allow impacts from specialty crop area changes and irrigation water constraints to impact row crop area. These effects are expected to be small but they will allow the life cycle analysis team to see the exact land use tradeoffs. The IFPRI team delivered updated data outputs from IMPACT model for core deliverables 2.5.1 and 2.7.1 for baseline projections and climate change impacts on crop yields of interest. Also accomplished by IFPRI was general training for WAEES in IMPACT modeling methodology (2.8.1) with specific focus on treatment of water in the IMPACT modeling framework along with extensive IMPACT hydrology modeling details (2.8.2) for both University of Washington and WAEES. Several additional outputs can also be attributed to work under this project including (i) extensive support to the team (led by U of WA) for detailed translation of irrigation water availability at a subnational scale and generation of hydrology protocol; (ii) initial tests of DSSAT-Simple across a variety of crops (banana, carrots, and cassava); and (iii) participation in project workshops and paper development and editing as needed? Objective 3: The LCA methodology has been documented in a draft protocol entitled: "Protocol for Life Cycle Assessment Modeling of US Fruit and Vegetable Supply Chains," (Parajuli et al., 2019). Preliminary Life Cycle Inventory (LCI)--a detailed illustration of raw materials (resource flows) was completed for the Year-1 crops. Environmental life cycle impact assessments were calculated for processed products. These included: potatoes (chips, frozen fries and dehydrated) and tomatoes (pasta sauce). LCIs were developed based on multiple sources, such as, at farm level: (i) outputs from Crop models (particularly for inputs such as, crop nutrients, irrigation water) , (ii) crop budget reports that were synthesized after working with the Economic Modeling team. In order to fill the data gaps, a generic raw material intensity (inputs per kg farm product) representing the U.S./global agricultural system (as needed) was adopted from Ecoinvent database. Objective 4: Due to space constraints, extension & outreach efforts are covered elsewhere in this report.

Publications

• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Li, Y., Guan, K., Schnitkey, G. D., DeLucia, E., & Peng, B. (2019). Excessive rainfall leads to maize yield loss of a comparable magnitude to extreme drought in the United States. Global Change Biology, 25(7), 23252337. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.14628.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Li, Y., Guan, K., Yu, A., Peng, B., Zhao, L., Li, B., & Peng, J. (2019). Toward building a transparent statistical model for improving crop yield prediction: Modeling rainfed corn in the U.S. Field Crops Research, 234, 5565. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fcr.2019.02.005
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Parajuli, R., Thoma, G., Matlock, M. (2019). Environmental sustainability of fruit and vegetable production supply chains in the face of climate change: A Review, Science of the Total Environment, 650:28632879.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Zhao, C., Asseng, S., Hoogenboom, G., St�ckle, C., et al. (2019). A SIMPLE Crop Model, European Journal of Agronomy, 104:97106.
• Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Lois Yoksoulian. (2019, Apr 30). Excessive rainfall as damaging to corn yield as extreme heat, drought. Illinois News Bureau.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Rajagopalan et. al. Climate Adaptation and Mitigation Opportunities for the Two Largest Solanaceae Crops in the US: Potatoes and Tomatoes. AGU Fall Meeting, Washington D.C., December 10-14, 2018.

Progress 07/01/17 to 06/30/18

Outputs
Target Audience:The project's primary target audiences are stakeholders in the fruit and vegetable production sectors, logistics managements in the fruit and vegetable supply chain, farmers and extension agents, industry consultants, and academics, as well as undergraduate and graduate students. Growers in the Pacific Northwest were particularly interested in the crop budget assembled by the economic modeling team and the potential for an online tool providing an analysis of the profitability and risk of producing fruits and vegetables in the 31 key crop reporting districts in this study. Life cycle analysis (LCA) outreach was predominantly conducted through conference and workshop presentations, as well as through scientific publications in high ranking international peer-review journals. Multiple channels were used to communicate via an on-line communications strategy managed by the ILSI Research Foundation: USDA NIFA, USDA Govdelivery, University of Florida, ILSI RF, Vegetable and Specialty Crop News, Southeast Ag Net Radio Network, Foreign Affairs Publisher, News Wise, Growing Produce, Morning Ag Clips, Fresh Produce Journal, The Packer, and Fresh Plaza. In addition to the on-line communications, there was direct communication with key stakeholders by project co-director, Dr. Dave Gustafson, during meetings in August 2017, as detailed below. Field to Market: Field to Market (FtM) is the leading US player for defining and measuring sustainability in the production of row crops, which they have defined to include potatoes, one of the target crops. On 22-Aug-2017, project co-director Dave Gustafson met with FtM's President, Rod Snyder, and its Science & Research Director, Dr. Allison Thomson. The meeting was very productive, with the key highlight that Dr. Gustafson was invited to submit a breakout session proposal to a broad stakeholder engagement venue: the Sustainable Agriculture Summit. This invitation resulted in an additional collaboration with another important stakeholder, the Stewardship Index for Specialty Crops, a group that covers all of the F&V crops in the project. As explained in greater detail below, this breakout session ultimately became a great opportunity to expand project impact by creating expanded awareness and adding to the ever-growing list of stakeholders. World Bank: On 23-Aug-2017, Dr. Gustafson met with Chris Brett (Lead Agribusiness Specialist), who joined the World Bank in November 2016 after nine years leading the development of sustainable supply chains for Olam International, a leading globally integrated processor of agricultural products and food ingredients. Chris now runs at least two projects that are highly relevant to the project, both relating to the use of irrigation water for F&V crops, one in Egypt and one in Mexico, a key exporter to the US. Chris is also studying urban and peri-urban production systems as a way to efficiently deliver F&V foods to the urban poor in mega-cities. World Wildlife Fund: On 23-Aug-2017, Dr. Gustafson was hosted primarily by Franklin Holley (Manager, Sustainable Food), but several others joined the meeting, including David McGlaughlin (Vice President & Managing Director, Agriculture). The primary area of overlap between the project and the interests of WWF is their work on supply chain food loss, particularly a new study (initially two years in duration) looking at the loss of four crops (leafy greens, peaches, potatoes, tomatoes). The project is being funded through a grant from the Walmart Foundation, matched by the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research (FFAR). Another key set of stakeholders are being reached via their participation on the project Advisory Committee, which held two lengthy conference calls with the full project team during the reporting period, on 26-Sep-2017 and on 20-Mar-2018. Members of this committee represent all portions of supply chains, possess different kinds of technical expertise, and collectively have good local knowledge of all production regions (current and future) that are of interest to the project. Advisory Committee members serve on a volunteer basis and receive no remuneration for their service. The current members of the Advisory Committee (AC) are: • Sergio Alvarez (FL DACS Fruit & Veg Division) • Bill Dean (AgriNorthwest) • Hank Giclas (Western Growers Association) • Kris Johnson (The Nature Conservancy) • Wendy Reinhardt Kapsak (Produce for Better Health Foundation) • Shaun Lough (Westbridge Ag Products) • Kevin Morgan (FL Farm Bureau Foundation) • Steven Ostoja (USDA Climate Hub) • Sambhav Sambhav (Driscolls) • Victor Verlage (Walmart) • Kevin Walsh (Seminis) The project team reached academia and NIFA staff during the USDA/NIFA/AFRI Bioeconomy Agroecosystems Annual Project Director Meeting held in Tampa FL on October 20-23, 2017. Our project team was the first to accept an open invitation issued by NIFA for an additional plenary presentation, which was ultimately given jointly by Dr. Gustafson and Dr. Asseng on 22-Oct-2017. Excellent feedback and questions were received during the well-attended plenary presentation, and a number of other NIFA-funded projects were identified that would be relevant for follow-up. On 16-Nov-2017 at the Sustainable Agriculture Summit in Kansas City, Dr. Gustafson and project PI Dr. Marty Matlock (Executive Director, Office for Sustainability & Professor of Ecological Engineering, University of Arkansas co-led a breakout session entitled: "Innovating Resilient US Fruit & Vegetable Supply Chains: Exploring Climate Adaptation & Mitigation Opportunities," which was attended by approximately 40 key stakeholders in academia, government agencies, and the private sector. Among the most vocal of the participants were representatives from: • Campbell Soup (Dan Sonke, based in California) • Farmer's Daughter Consulting (Amy Myrdal Miller, MS/RDN/FAND, based in California) • Florida Fruit & Vegetable Association (Jill Dunlop) • IHS Global Insight (Stewart Ramsey, based in Delaware, active in Field to Market) • Lipman Family Farms (Kevin Yue, based in Florida) • Smuckers (Ben Johnson, based in Ohio, also a grower) • Taco Bell (Jessica Rosen, Sustainability Manager) Additional stakeholders interacted with the project team at mini-workshops organized by the University of Florida (February 2018) and Washington State University (June 2018): Florida Stakeholders: Dr. Stephen Futch (UF Extension Agent IV, Citrus) Dr. Gene MacAvoy (UF Multi County Agent, Vegetables) Dr. Gary England (UF Central Florida Agent) Dr. Rhoda Broughton (UF Suwanee County Agent) Dr. Robert Hochmuth (UF Regional Specialized Agent, Vegetables) Washington State Stakeholders: Dr. Tim Waters (WSU Extension) Dr. Carrie Wohleb (WSU Extensio) Dr. Don McMoran (WSU Extension) Dr. Michelle Moyer (WSU Extension) Dr. Gwen Hoheisel (WSU Extension) Taren Hartley, Hartley Produce, Prosser, WA) Mike Madsen (AgriNorthwest, Prosser, WA) Mr. Kevin Corliss and Ms. Yun Zhang (Ste. Michelle Wine Estates) Dr. Wade Wolfe (Thurston Wolfe Winery) Mr. James McFerran (Wyckoff Farms) Mr. Rick Hamman (Hogue Ranches) Ms. Melba Salazar (AgWeatherNet) Changes/Problems:Objective 1 Crop modeling activities were slowed by the challenges of developing an appropriate ("AgMIP-style") multi-modeling approach due to the absence of available literature for most of these crops. Even potatoes, which probably had the greatest body of available crop modeling literature, was very difficult due to multiple parameterization issues (shifts in planting date, which counties to include, etc.). However, now that the potato crop modeling protocol has been finalized, a robust approach is available for application to the other crops. Team members have been cautious not to "over-promise" within the team or to external stakeholders, given the extreme complexity of the underlying technical issues and the novelty of the project's integrated (crop/economic/LCA) and systems level approach (overall supply chains). Another challenge is the fact that "fresh market" and "for processing" fruit and vegetable crops are very different from each other in multiple ways for all the target crops. For instance, there are a myriad of fresh market tomato varieties (i.e., heirloom, grape, roma, etc.). It has recently been proposed that this issue will be addressed by focusing most of the modeling efforts on "for processing" varieties (which tend to be more homogenous and larger acreage) in order to determine "climate deltas" in yield and water use, and then to apply those same "climate deltas" to each of the various "fresh market" varieties. However, none of the current modeling challenges are expected to impact overall project deliverables in a negative way, merely resulting in a short delay in some of the Year 1 deliverables that is not currently expected to impact the timing of deliverables in Year 2 or during the remainder of the project. Objective 2 As expected, specialty crop cost of production data is very sparse and does not conform to an annual time series of information. By assembling the quantity of inputs used and prices of inputs through time, WAEES has developed a times series of cost of production data for each crop and each of the 31 locations identified in the study. This process has been very time-intensive since the data has been verified with extension personnel whenever possible. About 70% of this data is now assembled across the eight crops in the study for both fresh and processed production. In the process of determining the needs for the crop growth models, it became necessary to move from assessing impacts at a state level to a more granular level to reflect differences in impacts on geographies. The extension team also thought that the higher level of granularity would make the results more relevant for farmers. The shift was made from state level detail to the crop reporting district for the 31 most important crop reporting districts for the crops included in this study. Developing a historical time series of the specialty crop area, yield, and production data at a crop reporting district level has been more challenging than expected primarily because NASS does not maintain the yield and production data in QuickStats for all the specialty crops and some crop reporting districts are not reported because of potential disclosure issues. Data was compiled using county NASS reports in California, Florida, and other states to fill in these gaps. In addition, crop area estimates are not always available for all crops in all crop reporting districts. To fill in these gaps, USDA satellite data was used to allocate area to counties allowing the crop reporting district total to be calculated. (This process was used to identify the key crop reporting districts to focus on for the crop modeling portion of the project.) The Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) process requires more detailed data on input use than is normally tracked within the economic models. Often, crop budgets simply list the total cost and do not necessarily provide details on the quantity of inputs used. For example, specific herbicides, pesticides, and fungicides are often reported as "chemical expense" rather than detailing the specific chemical name or active ingredient and the quantity used. Of course, the issue of precisely identifying the inputs used does not only apply to chemicals, but all inputs. To assist the LCA process and ensure consistency across the project results, WAEES has worked closely with extension personal and specialty crop producers to identify the exact inputs they use and verify that what has been reported in historical specialty crop budgets is accurate. This discussion also included some geographic nuances with specific growing areas at the crop reporting district level. In addition, extension personnel might often know that a particular chemical was used but not necessarily know the quantity used. To cover this gap, WAEES utilized a chemical engineer on staff to develop a database of crop protection chemicals, their active ingredients, and the recommend dosage levels for the pest they are designed to control. Both of these adjustments were outside the scope of the original proposed work. A key point in the analysis of geographical crop area shifts is water supply and demand. Essentially, there are three source of water variation affecting the analysis: (1) the crop growth models indicate changes in water needs specific to each crop, (2) precipitation patterns change by geography affecting green water supply, and (3) the quantity of water available for irrigation may be reduced. The team discussed a variety of possible approaches to estimate this data at the needed granularity. While an approach has been identified, a more aggregated data set may be necessary until the more granular data becomes available. Changes in weather patterns are occurring globally, not just in the US, which affect fruit and vegetable production around the world. In evaluating the fruit and vegetable production changes in the US, it is important to consider production changes in the key trading partners with the US. WAEES maintains a set of international models for 13 specific vegetables and will be adding models for those commodities not covered but needed for this project. This was outside the scope of the original proposed work. Objective 3 The major problem that the LCA modelling team faced was lack of detailed, consistent and qualitative data, in a form for LCA models. However, these can be addressed via work with the related extension and economic modelling teams. The LCA modelling team is also cooperating with scientists and experts in the sector to identify best practices to cover data gaps and delineate the best methods to conduct life cycle inventory analysis. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The project has provided cross-training between the crop modeling, economic modeling, and LCA modeling teams during the Kick-off Workshop in 2017 and a pair of mini-workshops hosted by the University of Florida in February 2018. Ranjan Parajuli (PhD) worked with project PIs to compile the LCI and modeled them to calculate the potential environmental footprints. Dr. Parajuli is co-working with Dr. Greg Thoma and Dr. Marty Matlock to evaluate the environmental sustainability of fruit and vegetable supply chain. He also co-worked with Andrew Shaw (an undergraduate student from the Univ. of Arkansas) to organize the preliminary data related to raw material inputs (at the farm level) for the selected Year-1 crops. Currently, he is working with Jacob Allen Hickman (a graduate student at the University of Arkansas) to develop a program to automate the life cycle inventory simulations. This will enable the simulation of multiple LCI scenarios, including future production systems. Andrew Shaw is also working with PIs on the water gap analysis. WAEES has worked with IFPRI to understand their analysis of climate change scenarios and the details of their IMPACT model. It has also received approval to offer a course at the University of Missouri titled "Mitigation and Adaptive Strategies to Climate Change: A Multidisciplinary Approach." The course will be listed as a graduate/undergraduate special topics course and cross-listed in the relevant disciplines. The curriculum for the course will be shared with all universities involved in the project. On February 21-22, 2018, the University of Florida (UF) hosted a pair of mini-workshops which provided multiple opportunities for cross-training and professional development: Day 1: Integrating Mechanistic Crop & LCA Modeling • The key factors to be provided by the crop modeling team to the LCA modeling team will be future crop yields and irrigation water requirements. • Excellent progress has been made on mechanistic modeling of future (2050's) open-field potato yields for several important production areas of the US, taking into account expected changes in both climate and atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2). • In general, potato yields in current production areas are expected to continue to rise, due in part to an adaptation response (earlier planting dates), as well as additional CO2 fertilization • A procedure for selecting representative counties from across the US has been developed to support the open-field crop modeling analysis. The method was subsequently shared with the Advisory Committee and other key stakeholders to confirm that it is appropriate. • The "harvestable fraction" of the target crops is not something that today's mechanistic crop models are able to estimate. Accordingly, we will seek statistical approaches based on the considerable "Big Data" capabilities present within the project team at UIUC (Kaiyu et al.). • Another set of data that will be needed to support the overall analysis will be recent yield trends for the target crops, trends in the types of irrigation systems used (center pivot, drip, furrow, micro-sprinkler, etc.), and trends in production systems (open vs. closed, organic vs. conventional, etc.). Day 2: Meeting with UF Extension Personnel • FL orange production (virtually all for juice, rather than fresh market) has seen a drastic reduction of more than 80% from the peak levels of 2004. The primary problems are greening, hurricanes, irrigation, and labor. Orange prices are up but they are not offsetting the reduction in production. To make matters worse, the production costs, have doubled over the past 10 years. Considering all of these factors, even if an acceptable solution to greening were to be identified (e.g. biotech), the prospects for recovery of previous production levels are dim - and no clear food production alternative for abandoned groves has yet been identified • In stark contrast to oranges, FL tomato production is expanding, due to higher yields and is nearly all fresh market and are almost exclusively produced in open-field settings. Despite potential advantages on water use and pest control, greenhouses are not a viable option in FL because of their high vulnerability to tropical storm and hurricane damage. The availability of labor is a major constraint on production. About half the current labor force is from Haiti, and there are concerns that new policies may limit migrant labor. Competition from Mexican-sourced imports is intense, due to that country's much lower labor costs. • FL potato production is about half for fresh market and half for chipping. The fresh market demand is steady, but FL production for chipping is trending down due to competition from North Dakota (a GE variety that allows for longer storage). • Most other target crops for this project are produced in FL and production is increasing, especially green beans. Many other F&V are also produced in FL and further increases in demand are anticipated, due in part to the recent imposition of electronic monitoring of trucker drive-times. This is increasing both overall trucking costs and the distance-based differences in shipping costs, which are now ~$8,000 per semi-truck load from CA to NY vs. ~$3,000 from FL to NY. • Nearly all FL citrus and vegetable production is irrigated. Sweet potatoes are the only crop that might be viable in FL without irrigation. Irrigation methods are quite different in the northern part of the state (nearly all center pivot) vs. the southern areas (seepage irrigation/drainage from/to canals). Advanced methods (e.g. drip) are not common today but are increasing where water use is more heavily restricted, such as near larger cities. Northern FL is expected to see the largest increases in irrigated crop production over the coming years, as most of the rest of the state is already using nearly the maximum amount of irrigation that is possible without suffering such issues as salt water intrusion. Accordingly, large tracts of land are being purchased in northern FL, including a fairly recent purchase by Bill Gates. • In addition to concerns over water quantity, concerns over water quality may limit expansion of F&V production in FL. The presence of nitrates in ground water led to development of a Basin Management Action Plan (BMAP) that had its origins in a legal action involving EPA. Under the plan, major reductions in nitrogen leachate are being mandated, which is serving as an incentive for the use of novel techniques for enhancing the efficiency of crop nutrient utilization. Although the purpose of these rules is for improved water quality rather than mitigation of GHG emissions, such actions do represent a form of mitigation that is be tracked as part of our NIFA-funded project. • Accurate LCA modeling requires the identification of data sources on all inputs to crop production, processing, storage and transport - especially energy, crop nutrients, and irrigation water. This task is always challenging, and gathering such information in Florida will be no exception. However, an excellent list of supply chain contacts having access to such information has been started and will be further developed by reaching out to the Advisory Committee and other key stakeholders, such as individual growers, crop consultants, grower associations, extension, irrigation districts, processors, packers and other key players in these supply chains: academics, consumers, local F&V companies, other private sector players throughout F&V supply chains. Overall, the mini-workshops successfully accomplished all of the desired outcomes, provided excellent cross-training and professional development opportunities, and established a regional stakeholder community for future engagement. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?A media strategy was developed in anticipation of the grant's official announcement. Language for news releases by the ILSI Research Foundation and University of Florida were later submitted to the program officer for review, and the news releases were distributed shortly after the embargo ended on July 19, 2017. Communications collateral (web page, slide deck, informational flier, and poster), language for messaging ("supply chain" instead of "value chain"), and project branding were also strategized and later implemented. After the project's Kickoff Workshop in June 2017, the Terms of Reference for the Advisory Committee were finalized, and the Advisory Committee was assembled shortly thereafter, with the first meeting held via teleconference on September 26, 2017, followed by another on March 20, 2018. The Advisory Committee is composed of eleven members who represent all portions of the supply chains, has diverse expertise and geographic representation, and includes both industry and non-industry stakeholders. Key points of contact throughout the supply chains were identified and engaged. One-on-one stakeholder meetings were conducted in Washington, D.C. in August 2017, January 2018, February 2018, and April 2018. The project leads also conducted a special plenary presentation at the NIFA Project Directors meeting in Tampa in October 2017 and a breakout session at the Sustainable Ag Summit in Kansas City in November 2017 (see further detail below). In November, project team members from Washington State University organized a climate change impacts workshop and also presented at the Tilth Producers of Washington Workshop, a co-PI from WSU presented the Keynote Address at the Pacific Northwest Vegetable Association (PNVA) Conference, and project team members presented at the Oregon State University Farm Fair. In February 2018, the University of Florida hosted a two-day workshop on the specific inputs and outputs of the crop models and LCA models, which included meetings with Florida horticulture extension specialists regarding production methods and costs of production. Dr. Senthold Asseng also presented at the AgMIP7 Global Workshop in April 2018 in Costa Rica, and Dr. Dave Gustafson gave presentations related to the project at the Korea Nutrition Society Annual Symposium in May 2018. Finally, the project's Annual Workshop in June 2018 included sessions dedicated to stakeholder engagement with the Washington State Wine Commission. Breakout Session at the Sustainable Ag Summit (Kansas City, November 2017) Dr. Gustafson and Dr. Matlock began the one-hour session with very brief overview presentations presenting new and on-going efforts to enhance the productivity, resilience, and sustainability of domestic produce supply chains. All participants were then asked to join a strategic dialogue on future trends in these supply chains, which are now undergoing significant innovation and transformation as a result of multiple drivers: consumer preference for fresh produce grown locally; climate change & increased competition for natural resources; cost & availability of labor; efforts to improve sustainability profiles; and the rise of protected & peri-urban production. Discussion questions were distributed as hand-outs and shown on-screen during the dialogue. The major themes that dominated the Q&A were as follows: • Loss & Waste: both pre- and post-consumer, is seen as a huge opportunity for F&V supply chains. Consumers are generally not aware of the magnitude of the very high percentage of produced F&V that are never eaten. There are multiple new initiatives to make progress, but some of the losses (especially in the fresh produce sector) seem completely unavoidable, at least with today's production systems. There is a major new initiative on this topic, the Food Waste Reduction Alliance, who should be approached. The topic of food loss & waste is now widely recognized within the food service industry as something that must be addressed and is yet another opportunity that should be pursued. • There was extensive discussion of what all of this means for growers. One example that was discussed is a new certification standard created by the California Sustainable Winegrowers Alliance. In general, F&V growers don't like such certification systems and feel like they are already being over-audited. Most prefer some type of an anonymous system that allows for continuous improvement (like Field to Market or the Stewardship Index for Specialty Crops). Certified Crop Advisors may be the best way to collect and aggregate such information locally. • Multiple participants commented on the major challenges associated with labor availability and the exploding interest in the use of robotics. Some crops (e.g. fresh tomatoes, but not processed tomatoes) still require hand-labor and there is still no technology on the horizon for that to change. Overall, despite the fact, that time was very short, the session achieved the objectives that had been originally proposed to the summit organizers: • Create broad awareness about new efforts to innovate US F&V supply chains • Receive broad stakeholder input on the scope and focus of current research • Connect with others already conducting relevant research on this topic • Establish an interested stakeholder community for future engagement, especially with supply chain and sustainability managers It is recommended that the project maintain close contact with the summit organizers and consider the possibility of holding a full stakeholder engagement session alongside the next gathering of this group, scheduled for November 2018 in Denver CO. Maintaining close contact with Allison Thomson (Field to Market) and Alison Edwards (SISC) will help ensure this plan is successful. WSU extension of this project is also linked to the WSU project extension team who continues to host AgClimate.net. The site is a Pacific Northwest collaborative site focused on providing relevant content on climate change and agriculture and natural resource science issues in partnership between WSU, OSU and UI Extension and the USDA Northwest Regional Climate Hub. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Objective 1 The crop modeling teams will start simulating potatoes and prepare and simulate tomatoes and sweet corn during the next year and feed these results to the economics and LCA teams for further processing. In addition, the crop modeling teams will interact in year two, as planned, with the statistical modeling group at the University of Illinois to further improve the accuracy of model outputs for potatoes, tomatoes, and sweet corn by applying multiple methods in the impact assessments. Objective 2 WAEES has been gathering data across all eight crops simultaneously to finish this stage as quickly as possible. With the data in place final estimation can be made. We are collaborating with the team to produce an initial publication report on the study results for tomatoes and potatoes. Moving through the entire research to publication submission process will streamline completion of the remaining crops. Objective 3 The LCI and preliminary LCA for the Year-1 crops were prepared and were based on the available crop budget data. The next task is to carry out detailed and updated LCAs of the selected crops, including the entire supply chain. The economic modelling group and the entire project team have already decided on the numbers of crop reporting districts that can be selected for the considered fruit and vegetable crops. Other tasks that are underway include: (a) prepare and finish a detailed LCIs for all selected Year 1 crops and run the LCA tool to calculate the potential environmental footprints, (b) prepare a detailed LCIs of the Year-2 crops and execute the preliminary simulations for calculating the environmental footprints, (c) prepare manuscripts for each selected fruit and vegetable crop, covering the entire supply chain (production to consumption), and (d) prepare a manuscript to deal with the functional unit (FU) issues in LCA studies of food crops. In this study, a method of defining FU will be based on nutritional content. Objective 4: (pasted from Communications Strategy, check for additional ones with Chad and Kati) Given the first set of project results are getting finalized, the Extension teams at Washington State University and University of Florida will start developing a plan for web-based outreach tools that disseminate information to the local target audiences in an effective way. In addition, plans for Extension factsheets and other durable products will be finalized. Winter 2018/19 grower meeting presentations have been set for potatoes, berries, and vegetable seed producers. Continued lay-person articles will be published on AgClimate.net. ILSI RF Scientific Symposium: Protected Production of Fruits and Vegetables for Nutrition Security in Urban and Peri-Urban Environments AGCI: Innovating Global Fruit and Vegetable Food Systems to Help Bring Sustainable Nutrition Security (July 29 - August 3, 2018) Side-Event at Global Climate Action Summit (September 11, 2018) Panel Session on Innovating Global Fruit and Vegetable Food Systems Towards Climate and Nutrition Resilience LCA Food 2018 and LCA?AgriFood?Asia 2018: Environmental LCA of fruits and vegetable supply chains: a case of synchronizing with the climate?change adaptation and mitigation measures? ASA/CSSA Annual Meeting: "Enhancing Productivity in a Changing Climate USDA-NIFA AFRI Bioeconomy Agroecosystems Annual Project Director Meeting Dave Seminar at WSU (September 27, 2018) Dave presentation in Paris (November 22, 2018) Greg Thoma to present at the AGU Fall 2018 Meeting in Washington DC (December 2018) "Climate Adaptation and Mitigation Opportunities for the Two LargestSolanaceaeCrops in the US: Potatoes and Tomatoes"

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? All major project activities are on-track, with details provided below on each of the objectives. Objective 1 The two crop modeling teams at University of Florida and Washington State University have developed a Protocol for US Potato Simulations (available on the project website, http://ilsirf.org/publication/zhaoetal2018/), laying out the regions, data and data sources, and proposed simulation scenarios for estimating the impact of climate change on yield, water and nutrition use. During the project, this protocol will be extended to the other fruit and vegetable crops. 31 districts have been identified as representing the highest acreage crop reporting districts necessary to capture 80% of all acreage for the project's eight crops. Each of these districts will be simulated with 30 years of historical weather data and 30 years of future scenarios for the 2030s and 2050s. Following AgMIP standards, multiple crop models will be used (up to five crop models for the first crop of potatoes, including SIMPLE (University of Florida), CropSyst (Washington State University), LINTUL-POTATO-DSS (Wageningen University), EPIC (USDA) and CSM-Substor-Potato (University of Minnesota) to estimate yield and water use and to enable a quantification of model uncertainty. Routines have been developed to also estimate N, P and K use of a potato crop and will be added to the simulation results. Initial simulations results, using two crop models, indicated that future climate change might increase potato yields in some US regions, despite increase heat stress towards harvest. This outcome appears to be due to more optimal temperatures early in the season (with currently sub-optimal temperatures) and stimulated biomass growth from elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations, assumed to be not limited by nutrient supply due to high fertilizer inputs. Initial simulation results have been passed to the economics team at WAEES, with some of these passed through to the LCA team at the University of Arkansas, to establish a clear procedure for data flows between the project's teams. Objective 2 Much of the project's first year was focused on the input and output needs of the LCA crop modeling and extension. Data gaps were identified, and the economic modeling process was adjusted to accommodate interactions with other disciplines. Cost of production data has been assembled on 70% of the eight crops in the study for the 31 crop reporting districts of interest. The data was reviewed with extension personnel in the Pacific Northwest and Florida to ensure it represents current production practices. Historical specialty crop cost of production is reported sporadically so data gaps are filled in using the same input quantities but varying price data historically. Due to gaps in the details of chemical quantities, prices, and costs, a database of chemical products was assembled, which provides details on the quantity of inputs that should be applied to specific crops. An annual timeseries of data for each crop in the 31 crop reporting districts over the 2000 to 2016 period has been constructed. Historical data on area, yield, and production at the county level has been collected for each of the 31 crop reporting districts over the 2000 to 2017 period. Counties that were placed under disclosure by NASS were filled in using satellite data. The most recent data on yield and production for specialty crops has been populated to the extent possible based on data released by the county offices. County data has been aggregated to crop reporting districts, and crop reporting district data is consistent with USDA-NASS state totals. County and crop reporting district data was used to prioritize the choice of crop reporting districts to focus on in the study. This list was disseminated to other disciplines, revised slightly, and the final list distributed. The list then defined the 31 crop reporting districts for the detailed supply side breakout. Historical data on US demand, trade, and prices (farmgate and wholesale) for each of the eight crops over the 1990 to 2017 period (as available) has been assembled. International historical data from FAO has been compiled for each of the eight crops, and data reconciliation (supply = demand) is about 20% complete. Data on the area, yield, and production of fruits and vegetables produced in greenhouses was collected and arranged in tables. NASS data on traditional planting dates was provided to the crop modeling team, and locations of county crop yield and production data were provided to the University of Illinois team. Econometric models projecting the cost of production for tomatoes, potatoes, and sweet corn in each of the 31 crop reporting districts are 70% complete. The literature review on partial equilibrium models for specialty crops is complete and tables of elasticities for comparison with estimation results have been complied. Flow diagrams of the structural economic model supply, demand, and prices mirroring available data have been constructed for tomatoes, potatoes, and oranges. Objective 3 Preliminary Life Cycle Inventory (LCI)--a detailed illustration of raw materials (resource flows) were completed for the Year-1 crops (potato, tomato and orange) was completed. LCI were developed based on crop budget reports that were synthesized after working with the Economic Modeling team. To ensure availability of qualitative, detailed, and comprehensive data (for the both on-farm and post-harvest stages of the supply chain), checklists were prepared and shared among team members. Co-ordination with extension agents were also extended, e.g. through the two different project meetings at (i) Gainesville, University of Florida and (ii) Prosser, Washington state University. Supply chain diagrams and process flow charts for the Year-1 crops were prepared to delineate the major stages of the F&V supply chain, and hence prepare for the requisitions of data from the related stakeholders. Preliminary LCA of the year-1 crops were also prepared. Due to lack of detailed and representative data, all the crop producing regions were not covered. Identified data gaps are expected to be filled through the data checklists and further working with the Economic Modelling group. Objective 4 From the beginning of the project, the team has had an impact through communications. Upon learning that the project had been selected for funding by USDA/NIFA, News Releases were prepared by both the ILSI Research Foundation (ILSI RF) and the University of Florida (UF). These were embargoed for release only after the formal announcement by USDA, which eventually took place on July 19, 2017. The News Releases were picked up by multiple media channels, some including interviews with project co-director, Dr. Senthold Asseng (UF). The communications strategy has subsequently included mentions in ILSI RF e-newsletters, a November News Release by the University of Arkansas, active social media participation via Twitter, launch of a project web-page, preparation of an attractive project slide-set, and a tri-fold brochure briefly describing the project. All of these communications activities have helped inform stakeholders about the project and paved the way for future greater impacts.

Publications

• Type: Journal Articles Status: Submitted Year Published: 2018 Citation: Citation: Ranjan Parajuli. Environmental sustainability of fruit and vegetable production supply chains in the face of climate change: A Review. Science of the Total Environment. NIFA Support Acknowledged: Yes
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Submitted Year Published: 2018 Citation: Citation: Yan Li, Kaiyu Guan, Albert Yu, Bin Peng, Lei Zhao, Bo Li, and Jian Peng. Toward building a transparent statistical model for improving crop yield prediction. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology. NIFA Support Acknowledged: Yes
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Submitted Year Published: 2018 Citation: Citation: Ranjan Parajuli. Environmental LCA of fruits and vegetable supply chains: a case of synchronizing with the climate change adaptation and mitigation measures. LCA Food 2018 (Bangkok).
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Submitted Year Published: 2018 Citation: Citation: Greg Thoma. Life Cycle Assessment of Fruit and Vegetable Production, Including Protected Systems. Protected Production of Fruits and Vegetables for Nutrition Security in Urban and Peri-Urban Environments. 18 July 2018.