What are the affects (good, bad, and otherwise) of the use of new biotechnologies in agriculture?
Biotechnologies such as gene drives, genome editing technologies (like CRISPR-Cas9), and related emerging biotechnologies offer new approaches to old problems of plant breeding, disease and drought resistance, and increasing crop yield, but how can the affects of these be understood fully?
What can interdisciplinary collaborative approaches among social scientists, humanities, and agricultural scientists do to identify these implications in ways that promote scientific innovation, farmer’s economic viability, and healthy agroecological ecosystems?
Two interdisciplinary workshops are planned for the tenure of the project. The focus of the first workshop is on different aspects of the social dimensions of emerging agricultural technologies in use in agriculture. The second workshop focuses on multispecies ethnographies in engineered agricultural ecologies. Senior and junior scholars and postdocs working in agriculture, agronomy, ethnobiology, communication studies, landscape architecture, philosophy of biology, history of agriculture, STS, sociology and sustainability studies will engage in active problem-solving within multidisciplinary teams over the scientific, ethical, regulatory, and social consequences of developing agricultural use of genome editing technologies and emerging biotechnologies.
National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) /United States Department of Agriculture (USDA): $62,510 Grant #2020-67023-31635. https://portal.nifa.usda.gov/web/crisprojectpages/1022860-conference-social-implications-of-emerging-technologies-in-agriculture.html