A multi-scale and co-ordinated disciplinary approach for sustainable agriculture

Professor Johan Six from ETH Zürich will give this seminar "A multi-scale and co-ordinated disciplinary approach for sustainable agriculture" which has been organised by the Scottish Food Security Alliance - Crops. It takes place at the King's Conference Centre, University of Aberdeen and advance booking is not required.

Abstract

One of the greatest challenges facing humanity is to provide food security across the world and in the long term. One of the prerequisites to tackle this great challenge is to understand how sustainable agroecosystems function.

In Professor Six’s talk he will present how we have and hope to continue to elucidate the feedbacks between agroecosystem management options (for example, tillage, organic practices, integrated soil fertility management, etc.), global change (for example, elevated CO₂, elevated O₃, and climate change), and carbon and nutrient cycling.

He will make the argument, based on some case studies, of how we need to conduct experimental work from the micro- to landscape scale over day to decadal times scales and subsequently integrate the experimental results within simulation models to interpolate and extrapolate them to the regional and global scale over decadal to century-long time scales.

Furthermore, he will present some collaborative work on bio-economic modelling in order to holistically assess the sustainability of agriculture. Finally, he will present some case studies of how to bring our improved understanding into practice to ensure a better food security.