Research

Our research project sites span from small growers’ fields to intensively-farmed production systems to agricultural research stations. We are involved in a suite of international research projects in Africa, Europe, the US, and Central and South America.

In order to understand sustainable agriculture and implement it, we need to elucidate the feedbacks between ecosystem management options (e.g., tillage, cover cropping, green manuring, sustainable farming, and grazing), global change (e.g., elevated CO2 and climate change), and biogeochemical cycling. Hence, we need to unravel the complex interactions between plants (e.g., diversity, nutrient uptake, and root growth), soil (e.g, structure, texture and mineralogy), soil biota (e.g. fungi, bacteria, and earthworms), and the carbon and nitrogen cycles in agroecosystems across spatial and temporal scales. Furthermore, since agriculture is a human enterprise, not only biophysical aspects, but also social and economic dimensions of sustainable agriculture need to be elucidated. One approach to do so is bio-economic modeling through which the sustainability of agricutural practices is holistically assessed.