Ensuring Food Availability through agroecological Principles. A cross-scale Analysis



Wednesday, 15. October 2014 | 16:45 Uhr

Speaker

Johan Six

Organisation

ETH Zurich

Reporting

Johan Six of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, explained the importance of soil and its composition for food security. The increasingly scarce resource of land is not being managed optimally everywhere. Especially with respect to fertilization: „However, there is no universal solution that works everywhere; fertilization must be adapted to the respective region and conditions.”

In his presentation, Johan Six showed how agro-ecosystem management options (e.g. tillage, organic practices, integrated soil fertility, etc.), global change like for example increased CO2 levels, elevated ozone levels, and the effects of climate change, the biological function of soil, and the carbon and nutrition cycles, interact.
Using case studies, he showed how a better understanding of agro-ecosystems affects sustainable food security in practice.

Get additional information on this topic in the video of his presentation which he held at Academia Engelberg Foundation’s 13th Dialogue on Science.

Johan Six

1998 Ph.D., Soil Science, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado
1995 M.Sc. Bio-Engineering, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium

2013-present Professor of Sustainable Agroecosystems Department of Environmental System Science, ETHZ

2009-present Full Professor in Agroecology Department of Plant Sciences, University of California, Davis, CA

2008-2009 Associate Professor in AgroecologyDepartment of Plant Sciences, University of California, Davis, CA

2006-2008 Assistant Professor in Agroecology Department of Plant Sciences, University of California, Davis, CA

2002-2006 Assistant, Associate and Full Professional Researcher Department of Agronomy and Range Science, University
of California, Davis, CA

2001-present Research Scientist Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory, State University, Ft. Collins, CO

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