Seminar - September 2020

Biodiversity and Intensive Agriculture: Determining the Landscape for Win-Win Outcomes.

Assistant Professor Beckett Sterner, School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University

For the Food Values Research Group's September 2020 seminar, we are pleased to welcome Asst Prof Beckett Sterner.

This presentation is inspired by my participation in a recent collaborative grant proposal to Bayer, one of the largest global agricultural companies, which asked for a synthesis of scientific evidence addressing whether practices such as habitat creation and cover crops can produce win-win outcomes for farmers and biodiversity. The experience raised interesting questions for me about doing philosophy of science in practice at the intersection of science, policy, and for-profit business, which I'm hoping to explore in the discussion. The readings provide some background on Bayer's position on biodiversity and its work applying data-intensive modeling in the FieldView project to make individualized predictions about farming outcomes. In the talk, I'll provide a framing for how to engage based on analyzing the concept of a "win-win outcome" and how scientific research can contribute to the breadth and rigor of mutually beneficial changes to intensive agriculture for biodiversity and farmers.

When: Friday 25th September, 10-11 AM

Where: Online. Please RSVP to foodresearch@adelaide.edu.au

Assistant Professor Beckett Sterner is a researcher in the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University. Beckett studies the social epistemology of pluralism: what knowledge do we need to get things done together while differing in fundamental ways? He investigates this question in the context of the life sciences, where globally coordinating data-intensive research has taken on central importance for addressing societal challenges such as biodiversity loss and climate change.