Integrating the Wedge Stabilization Game into Agricultural Education and Outreach Initiatives

The existing situation in the U.S regarding climate change understanding and knowledge is that many people with direct or indirect stakes in agriculture do not clearly understand the basics of climates and climate change. This in turn impedes the process of making informed decisions, and preparing the workforce for mitigating risks related to climate change in agriculture. In light of the above, climate change education emerges as a crucial area for K-12 educators, students, college students, as well as agricultural communities. Agricultural universities are of profound importance to the respective local communities they serve, specifically in the areas of education and community engagement. As part of this effort, the University of Tennessee at Martin (UT-Martin) and Murray State University are in the third year of a collaborative grant to build capacity to introduce climate change education into the agriculture curriculum at the secondary and post-secondary levels. UT-Martin hosted a Future Farmers of America (FFA) event in February 2019 where we utilized the Wedge Stabilization Game to enlighten the 120 students from rural west Tennessee who attended on the possible means of mitigating one of the root causes of climate change, anthropogenic carbon emissions.

Wedge Stabilization Theory, developed by the Carbon Mitigation Initiative by Princeton University, suggests that to avoid a dangerous rise in global temperatures, 200 billion tons of carbon that are emitted each year must be reduced to carbon-neutral levels. The Wedge Stabilization Game, designed as a tool to interactively teach students the sources and sinks of carbon that exists in the global economy, divides these sources and sinks into 8 wedges, each representing 25 billion tons of emissions. Since the global agricultural input of emissions is around 18 billion tons of emissions by itself, we modified this game to focus on reducing the agricultural component to one of the wedges, dividing it up into sectors of the agricultural economy that would be the sources and sinks of carbon. These sectors include the following: Livestock, Crop Production, Food Processing, Agricultural Transportation, Agricultural Industry Inputs, and Alternative Energy Adoption. Within each sector were strategies based on the amount of carbon saved and the corresponding implementation costs. As in the regular Wedge Stabilization Game, the goal is to adopt the most cost efficient set of strategies that would mitigate the emission of carbon by agriculture. During our demonstration, we incorporated the Wedge Stabilization Game in a unique and challenging way. After a brief introduction into the natural and anthropogenic causes of climate change, we divided the students in groups and asked each group to work together to think of possible combinations of the sectors of the agricultural economy that could be used to reduce these emissions to nearly carbon-neutral levels at the least possible cost. The students were already familiar with these sectors based on their classes in agriculture. The demonstration was widely received by both the students and the teachers who accompanied them. Feedback from participants revealed an interest in a plethora of topics such as the use of renewable energy in agriculture, evaluating local and direct marketing potential for agricultural products, and reducing fertilizer use and livestock emissions. We plan to continue using the wedge stabilization game in future events that involve high school and college students and educators, as well as incorporate it in classes taught on campus and online. Such intuitive games can promote learning for both students and educators, and help bridge the gap that exists in understanding climatic events and changes that impact agricultural production.