Through the Goldsmith Sustainable Agriculture Fund at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, Penn researchers are responding to a significant science-to-policy gap.
2 min. read
According to the United Nations, about a third of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are connected to agricultural systems. Since 2022, the Goldsmith Sustainable Agriculture Fund at Penn’s Kleinman Center for Energy Policy has convened researchers, planners, and designers at Penn and around the globe in an effort to illuminate the links between agriculture and energy.
As part of a 2024 landscape architecture studio at Weitzman, students traveled to Kisumu and visited the Donga boardwalk and overlook with students from the University of Maseno and Great Lakes University of Kisumu.
(Image: Courtesy of Weitzman News)
The Goldsmith Sustainable Agriculture Fund (Ag Fund) was established in 2022 with a gift from Wharton alumnus Carl H. Goldsmith, setting out an agenda for research on sustainable agriculture. “Energy and agriculture have responded to the big policy frameworks of the last few years in parallel, and real gains live in the gap between them,” says Thabo Lenneiye, managing director of the Goldsmith Sustainable Agriculture Fund. “That’s the space the Fund is aiming to fill.”
The fund has hosted visiting scholars, global site visits to study the pressures of urbanization on agricultural land, and a review of indigenous regenerative agriculture practices in Africa. Closer to home, over the last two years the Ag Fund has sponsored late-stage research by Penn faculty and affiliates on the links between agriculture and clean energy, with land use emerging as a recurring theme.
One such Penn faculty project explores how public policy can support—or hinder—the development of agrivoltaics, the twin use of land for agriculture and solar energy. Tom Daniels, the Crossways Professor in City and Regional Planning at the Weitzman School, who is leading the research, says solar panels can produce about 30 times more energy than corn grown for ethanol on the same area of land. Additionally, the Ag Fund and Penn Climate are finalizing a collaboration, titled The Climate + Agriculture Exchange, to develop and co-fund projects, host convenings, and champion work at the intersection of climate and agriculture.
“We’re in a moment where the energy-agriculture relationship has been brought into sharp focus; land-use conflicts, food-versus-fuel debates, shocks in oil markets propagating across fertilizer markets,” Lenneiye says. “The research shows it. Our part is figuring out how the evidence and potential solutions can be translated outside the walls of academia, and into real-world policy and practice.”
This story is by Jared Brey. Read more at Weitzman News.
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