Expanding disciplinary and international research training in global agroecosystems

Agricultural sustainability is one of the most unifying challenges facing all regions, all cultures, and all communities throughout the globe. We have come to learn that this challenge is composed of extremely diverse issues ranging from societal questions about food access, to solving the issue of increasing production levels for the crops that provide most of the world’s food resources. There is an approach to researching these agricultural science issues that was historically strong in the past, but fell out of favor nearly four decades ago. This discipline is known as agroecology which can be defined as the scientific discipline that integrates ecological and agricultural principles that result in optimizing resource conservation, productivity, societal benefits, and profitability. The strength of this approach lies in its inherent multi-disciplinary balance between natural resource preservation, meeting production needs for increasing food resources, and mitigating the negative societal impact that food systems often have.  At the University of Florida we have met this challenge by forming new graduate programs that apply the rigorous ecological scientific principles to the study of agroecosystems.  Through a range of programs formed jointly with domestic and international institutions, we have focused research training opportunities that allow students from all institutions hands on experiences within domestic and global cropping systems.  We will present a few case studies of these partnerships as well as data from stakeholders indicating the need for a shift in training paradigms to more diverse, interdisciplinary foundations with alternative delivery options.