AgricultureBridge.org was founded in the belief that resolving the world’s food and conservation issues requires more than technology and novel practices. It requires that these innovations be shared so they can multiply. AgricultureBridge.org has been established as a hub for sharing knowledge among people and organizations who are dedicated to solving the world’s food and conservation problems.
AgricultureBridge.org therefore has been built for two main uses. The first is for use within university level courses. The second is for networking between farmers, innovators, conservation practitioners, funding agencies and researchers in order to facilitate better knowledge exchange.
Education
AgricultureBridge.org has a suite of tools for use within university level courses. Professors can help build case studies, choose existing case studies to use in their courses, and assign students to answer practitioner-directed questions. A workspace is provided that allows students to collaborate with each other and with practitioners to answer research questions. Students can also post documentation and multi-media [documents, images, video] to better answer the questions they have been charged with answering and provide better support to practitioners in the field.
Networking
AgricultureBridge.org has a suite of tools to aid in the exchange of knowledge within the fields of agriculture and conservation. Field-based practitioners and university-based researchers can post multi-media case studies of their projects and landscapes as a way to share them with collaborators, and connect directly to others whose work is of interest.
If you are interested in becoming part of the AgricultureBridge.org network, please contact us for support at: help@agriculturebridge.org
AgricultureBridge.org a collaboration between Cornell University, EcoAgriculture Partners and the University of California at Berkeley. HabitatSeven has built the web technology. Funding is provided by the USDA’s Higher Education Challenge (HEC) program.
Project Leaders
AgricultureBridge.org brings together a diverse team of leaders in the fields of agriculture and conservation.
Dr. James P. Lassoie has been a professor in the Department of Natural Resources (DNR), CU since 1976. As Project Director, Lassoie will provide direction, coordination, and oversight for this interdisciplinary, multi-institutional project by serving as the chief liaison between project leaders, advisors, and consultants. He will chair the Steering Committee. Lassoie has extensive experience directing collaborative activities similar to those outlined in this proposal. In 1985 started the Cornell Agroforestry Study Group, which continues to coordinate campus wide agroforestry activities as the Cornell Ecoagriculture Working Group (see L.E. Buck below). In 1991, Lassoie and others developed an interdisciplinary graduate minor in conservation and sustainable development. He helped to establish the Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture, and Development (CIIFAD) in 1990 and served on its program committee for many years. In addition, Lassoie helped establish the Cornell Center for the Environment (http://environment.cornell.edu/) in 1991 and served as its second Director. He was the Chair of DNR for two terms (1988-1993 and 1996-2002).
Dr. David Zilberman is a Professor of Environmental Economics and holds a Robinson Chair in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ARE) at UCB. He co-directs the Center for Sustainable Resource Development (CSRD) (http:// www.cnr.berkeley.edu/csrd/) and the Beahrs Environmental Leadership Program (ELP) (http://beahrselp.berkeley.edu/). He has been on the faculty since 1979, was the Chair of his department from 1994 to 1999, and is a Fellow of the American Agricultural Economics Association. Zilberman's research focuses on the economics of agriculture, natural resources, and the environment, and technological change and risk with specialization in water, pest control, and technology adoption and transfer issues. He has served as a consultant to the EPA, USDA, the World Bank, FAO, and OECD.
Dr. Sara J. Scherris an agricultural and natural resource economist specializing in land and forest management policy in tropical developing countries. She is the President of EcoAgriculture Partners (EP), (http://www.ecoagriculturepartners.org/) an international partnership that promotes increased productivity jointly with enhanced biodiversity, ecosystem services and livelihood security in agricultural landscapes. She also serves as Director of Ecosystem Services for Forest Trends, an NGO that promotes forest conservation through improved markets. She is a member of the UN Millennium Project Task Force on Hunger, and a member of the Board of Directors of the World Agroforestry Centre.
Dr. Louise E. Buck is Senior Extension Associate in Cornell University’s Department of Natural Resources and a faculty associate in the Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture and Development (CIIFAD). She leads Cornell’s multi-departmental Ecoagriculture Working Group (http://ecoag. cals.cornell.edu/), and is the Director of EcoAgriculture Partner’s Landscape Program. . She has extensive experience in developing multi-disciplinary on-line curricula and case studies. She developed a cross-departmental, multi-institutional initiative called the How, What and Why of Forest Farming, an instructional platform for facilitating distributed learning communities of educators and landowners. Between 2000 and 2005 Buck was the Curriculum Coordinator for the Global Seminar where she worked with faculty from multiple disciplines at universities worldwide to create a reality-based decision case study format for facilitating learning about agriculture and environmental sustainability issues. She also oversaw the development of about 20 case studies, and authored or co-authored many of them.
Dr. Robin R. Marshis an agriculture and natural resource economist at UCB, the Academic Coordinator for the Center for Sustainable Resource Development (CSRD) and Co-Director of the Environmental Leadership Program (ELP) (see D. Zilberman above). Her work on agriculture innovation in California relates to water and drought management, alternative pest management, organic horticulture, farm labor, and NAFTA.
Dr. David G. Way specializes in curriculum development, instruction, and assessment, and is the Director of Instructional Support in the Center for Learning and Teaching (http://www.clt.cornell.edu/) at CU. He is responsible for designing and carrying out individualized programs throughout the university for both faculty and teaching assistants aimed at the improvement of teaching and learning through the development of instructional knowledge and skills and the integration of learning theory into teaching practice. Way also works with college administrators and senior faculty members by helping them better evaluate teaching for tenure and promotion decisions. His work has focused on methods for evaluating knowledge retention, creating methods for increasing student engagement, and assessing the effectiveness of web-based learning systems.
Mr. Jamie Herring is the President of HabitatSeven, Inc. (http://www.habitatseven.com/). He oversees the production of the AB.org technological platform and all multimedia content. Herring has two Master’s Degrees (one in Sociology from the University of Ottawa and one in Development Sociology from CU) where he focused on development and environmental issues. He also has an extensive background in on-line database creation for collaborative tools, and video production.