OOS 4: Emerging Pursuits in Agroecology: Forging New Interdisciplinary Research Connections and Collaborations

Session Organizer(s)

• Aidee Guzman

  University of California Berkeley
  Berkeley, CA, USA

Moderator(s)

• Theresa Wei Ying Ong

  Environmental Studies, Dartmouth College
  Hanover, NH, USA

Volunteer(s)

• Rounak Patra

  Department of Biosystems Engineering & Soil Science, University of Tennessee
  Knoxville, TN, USA

Climate change, biodiversity loss, and social inequities pose simultaneous, current and future, challenges to food production. Agriculture is inherently both an ecological system and a socioeconomic system where all the socio-ecological components of an agricultural system, from the farm to the surrounding landscape, are tightly interlinked – influencing each other, negatively or positively, through multiple divergent pathways. Accordingly, novel and innovative trans-disciplinary research approaches that connect ecological principles to socially constructed landscapes are required to meet the various environmental and socioeconomic challenges facing agriculture. As a response, agroecology – defined as simultaneously a science, movement, and a practice – bridges natural and social sciences as a way to meet these complex challenges. Agroecology involves the critical connections between the environment and humans through multiple disciplines and perspectives in the natural and social sciences. In this session, we will bring together agroecologists at the forefront of emerging and innovative research who are tackling critical research gaps in agricultural sustainability. Specifically, the session will cover interdisciplinary perspectives from multiple geographies (in the U.S. and beyond) and multiple disciplines (i.e. soil science, insect ecology, environmental sociology, and policy) to illustrate the vital connections between natural science and social science and between research and community engagement needed to meet the challenges facing agricultural production. Altogether, this session will highlight the agroecological pathways to more just and sustainable food systems.

Presentations:

• ON DEMAND

  Agroecology: A path to reach out environmental justice in peasant territories
  

  Presenting Author: Alejandra Guzmán Luna – University of VermontUniversity of Vermont
• ON DEMAND

  Diversifying maize cropping systems increases drought resilience and productivity
  

  Presenting Author: Leah L.R Renwick – University of California, Davis Universidad de Chile
• ON DEMAND

  Ecological impacts of organic pasture raised poultry on cover crop and arthropod communities
  

  Presenting Author: Karina Garcia – University of Kentucky
• ON DEMAND

  Enacting everyday resistance: Food and agricultural practices of Mexican migrant farmworker women in North Carolina
  

  Presenting Author: Emila Cordero Oceguera – North Carolina State University
• ON DEMAND

  Highlighting complex processes for managing soils
  

  Presenting Author: Nicholas Medina – University of Michigan
• ON DEMAND

  Life in the Plantationocene: Biodiversity conservation and political ecologies in shade grown coffee plantations in Mexico
  

  Presenting Author: Esteli Jimenez-Soto – University of California Santa Cruz