Policy- and Decision-making at the Nexus: An Assessment of Integrated Food-Energy Systems

Policy- and decision-making at the food-energy-water (FEW) nexus entails additional complexities due to the multi-objective nature of FEW socio-technical systems: policies and decisions meant to improve one facet of the... [ view full abstract ]

Policy- and decision-making at the food-energy-water (FEW) nexus entails additional complexities due to the multi-objective nature of FEW socio-technical systems: policies and decisions meant to improve one facet of the nexus might be less beneficial, or even detrimental, to achieving goals for other facets. In addition, implementing policies and decisions may be more difficult due to increasing coordination required among stakeholders across each nexus facet.

We highlight these issues in an economic, material/energy flow, and institutional assessment of dairy farms that produce power from anaerobic digestion of cow manure. This socio-technical system is an example of an integrated food-energy system (IFES), which co-produces food and energy. Our assessment asks the questions (i) of whether or not adopting an IFES improves farm resilience under potential economic and environment futures and (ii) how decisions and policies can best be tailored to the FEW nexus.

Our study consists of semi-structured interviews of 50 farms split between the US states of New York and Vermont. Each interview asks farmers about their material and energy flows, costs, and decision-making process for adopting (or not) an anaerobic digester. In addition, farmers are asked questions about challenges and barriers they might have faced and future drivers of change.

Preliminary results highlight that policies designed to address one problem, such as greenhouse gas mitigation through renewable power production, might be less advantageous than policies designed to address multiple problems, inherently allowing for consideration of economic and environmental trade-offs of solutions.