Jordan, N., L. A. Schulte, C. Williams, D. Pitt, C. S. Slotterback, R. Jackson, D. Landis, B. Dale, D. Becker, and M. Rickenbach. 2013. Landlabs: An integrated approach to creating agricultural enterprises that meet the triple botom line. Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement 17:175-200.
Global demand is increasing for food, feed, and fiber; for addi- tional agricultural outputs, such as biofuels; and for ecosystem services, such as clean water and outdoor recreation. In response, new agricultural enterprises are needed that produce more out- puts from existing lands while meeting the “triple bottom line” of high performance in economic, environmental, and social terms. Establishing such enterprises requires coordination and development within three critical domains: landscape configu- rations (i.e., types and arrangements of land uses), supply/value chains (i.e., processing and utilization), and policy and gover- nance. In this essay, we describe our efforts, as land-grant univer- sity scientists, to support coordinated innovation and enterprise development in integrated place-based institutions, which we term landlabs. We describe our experiences in three prototyping efforts and outline key features of landlabs that are emerging from these efforts. Land-grant universities have a central and crucial role to play in organizing and operating landlabs.
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