Effective community co-creation approaches for livestock manure management

Purpose

Climate solutions are often talked about in a vacuum and conversation participants can sometimes overlook unintended consequences upon local environment and health. Solutions to mitigate methane from livestock agriculture are no exception to these climate discussions, and can impact other potential pollutants including ammonia, nitrous oxide, and odors. Moreover, it can be a particularly difficult space to work in climate and environmental justice, as many different communities are seemingly villainized and pit against each other, which make climate solutions even harder to implement.

What Did We Do?

Environmental Defense Fund is in the midst of an ongoing pilot project to engage communities in workshops around solutions regarding manure management. The goal of these workshops is to demonstrate best practices for effective collaboration and solution co-creation between farmers/producers and communities that can then be taken to local policymakers and stakeholders to implement. In this way, we can co-create solutions that align with community concerns, climate change mitigation, and feasibility for farmers.

What Have We Learned?

Community co-creation is possible, and even stakeholders who may seem hyper-polarized can still sit together at the same table to work together with ample time, transparency, and trust. Policy implications are enormous here and this session will discuss learnings we have regarding common misconceptions and myths around working with different affected stakeholders, as well as necessary guardrails surrounding commonly discussed methane mitigation technologies.

Future Plans

We will continue to work with the affected communities, including community groups and producer groups, to find common ground, with the hope of making these processes shareable across the country.

Authors

Presenting & corresponding author

Mindi W. DePaola; Senior Manager, Community and Equity, Ag Methane; Environmental Defense Fund, mdepaola@edf.org

Acknowledgements

We’d like to thank groups who have continued to give us time, as time is the biggest resource. These groups include White Earth Nation, EJCAN, Leadership Counsel for Environmental Justice, and MN Milk. NOTE: these are not necessarily official partners but again, want to acknowledge their time spent meeting with EDF.

The authors are solely responsible for the content of these proceedings. The technical information does not necessarily reflect the official position of the sponsoring agencies or institutions represented by planning committee members, and inclusion and distribution herein does not constitute an endorsement of views expressed by the same. Printed materials included herein are not refereed publications. Citations should appear as follows. EXAMPLE: Authors. 2025. Title of presentation. Waste to Worth. Boise, ID. April 7–11, 2025. URL of this page. Accessed on: today’s date.