The speaker lineup is set for the fourth day of the July 2022 MSE virtual symposium, which is focused on “Community engagement and collaboration”. This session will feature three talks featuring researchers who have experience creating research with communities. This session will explore different styles of interdisciplinary collaborations centered on community needs, such as community advisory boards, community partnerships, community-led research design, and how to implement this into microbiome research. Our hope is that attendees for this session learn from different perspectives how foster their own community connections which would benefit their work.
Ashley M. Toney, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Research Fellow, UTHealth School of Public Health, El Paso. Translational/Clinical Nutrition Researcher focused on Latine Health Disparities.
Scope: Due to the interconnectedness of microbial processes and social justice, many types of microbial research could benefit from closer collaborations with communities impacted directly by the public health, environmental and climate justice implications of microbiomes. Some styles of microbiome research would yield more positive outcomes if the collaboration was built around mutual long-term goals, instead of specific projects, and if it was initiated during project conceptualization instead of after the project has been designed. This session will explore different styles of interdisciplinary collaborations centered on community needs, such as community advisory boards, community partnerships, community-led research design, and how to implement this into microbiome research.
Learning Objective of Session: Attendees will learn 1) approaches to community-centered collaborations, 2) how to leverage community professionals (e.g. health workers) in a ‘train the trainer model’, 3) how to start ethical conversations around environmental samples & broader experimental design, and 4) how to emphasize collaborations – including public health, government, policy makers, etc. as a collaborator and how to ask for their help/mindful collaborations.
Format of talks: Three 30-min lecture-style talks from researchers who have successfully built research collaborations with communities.
Format of breakout rooms: Each room creates a plan for engagement, and each room has a designated topic area (e.g. environmental restoration) to help audience members group by research discipline.
Session Speakers:
Dr. Pajau (PJ) Vangay, PhD. Science Community Manager, National Microbiome Data Collaborative, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
“Advancing microbiome science, in partnership with communities”
Dr. Arbor Quist, PhD., Postdoctoral Fellow in Environmental Justice & Community-Driven Epidemiology at the University of Southern California.
Dr. Rosie Alegado, PhD., Associate Professor of Oceanography & Sea Grant College Program at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
12:30 – 14:15 Introduction and Speakers
14:15 – 14:30 Break
14:30 – 16:00 Breakout room discussions based on skills development, in smaller groups
Topics in development
Prior to this session, you may want to watch these recorded talks:
The University of Maine Cooperative Extension invites applications for a full-time, fiscal-year, continuing contract eligible faculty appointment as Assistant Extension Professor and Assistant Professor of Animal Science.
This position is an 85% appointment with UMaine Extension and a 15% teaching appointment through the University of Maine School of Food and Agriculture.
The successful candidate will be located on the campus of the University of Maine in Orono, Maine.
The faculty member in this position will develop and lead educational outreach and applied research with an emphasis on dairy science; work with other UMaine faculty and professionals, advisory boards and volunteers to offer off-campus programs addressing the educational needs of the Maine dairy industry and other agricultural industries; teach undergraduate courses in the School of Food and Agriculture (SFA).
Search Timeline is as follows: Review of applications to begin: April 15, 2021 Screening interviews to begin no earlier than: April 30, 2021 On-site (or virtual visit) interviews to begin no earlier than: May 15, 2021 Tentative start date: July 1, 2021
Service can be a vaguely defined expectation in academia, but it’s an expectation to give back to our community; this can be accomplished in different ways and is valued differently by institutions and departments. Outreach is an easily neglected part of science, because so often it is considered non-essential to your research. It can be difficult to measure the effectiveness or direct benefit of outreach as a deliverable, and when you are trying to hoard merit badges to make tenure and your time is dominated by other responsibilities, you often need to prioritize research, teaching, advising, or grant writing over extension and service activities. Nevertheless, public outreach is a vital part to fulfilling our roles as researchers. Academic work is supported by public funding in one way or another, and much of our research is determined by the needs of stakeholders, who in this sense are anyone who has a direct interest in the problem you are trying to solve.
Depending on your research field, you may work very closely with stakeholders (especially with applied research), or not at all (with theoretical or basic research). If you are anywhere in agriculture, having a relationship with your community is vital. More importantly, working closely with the public can bring your results directly to the people out in the real world who will benefit from it.
A common way to fulfill your outreach requirement is to give public presentations. These can be general presentations that educate on a broad subject, or can be specifically to present your work. Many departments have extension specialists, who might do some research or teaching but whose primary function is to connect researchers at the institution with members of the public. In addition to presentations, extension agents generate newsletters or other short publications which summarize one or more studies on a specific subject. They are also a great resource for networking if you are looking for resources or collaborations, for example if you are specifically looking for farms in Montana that grow wheat organically and are infested with field bindweed.
For my new job, I’m shifting gears from agricultural extension to building science and health extension. In fact, the ESBL and BioBE teams at the University of Oregon have recently created a Health + Energy Research Consortium to bring university researchers and industry professionals together to foster collaborations and better disseminate information. The goals of the group at large are to improve building sustainability for energy and materials, building design to serve human use better, and building microbiology and its impact on human health. I have a few public presentations coming up on my work, including one on campus at UO on Halloween, and one in February for the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry Science Pub series in February. Be sure to check my events section in the side bar for details.
Even when outreach or extension is not specified in your job title, most academics have some level of engagement with the public. Many use social media outlets to openly share their current work, what their day-to-day is like, and how often silly things go wrong in science. Not only does this make us more approachable, but it’s humanizing. As hard as scientists work to reach out to the public, we need you to reach back. So go ahead, email us (please don’t call because the stereotype is true: we really do hate talking on the phone), tweet, post, ping, comment, and engage with us!!
A few months ago, I was invited to submit an article to the special issue “Plant Probiotic Bacteria: solutions to feed the World” in AIMS Microbiology on the interactions between agricultural plants and microorganisms. As my relevant projects are still being processed, I chose to write a review of the current literature regarding these interactions, and how they may be altered by different farming practices. The review is available as open-access here!
“Plant-microbial interactions in agriculture and the use of farming systems to improve diversity and productivity”
A thorough understanding of the services provided by microorganisms to the agricultural ecosystem is integral to understanding how management systems can improve or deteriorate soil health and production over the long term. Yet it is hampered by the difficulty in measuring the intersection of plant, microbe, and environment, in no small part because of the situational specificity to some plant-microbial interactions, related to soil moisture, nutrient content, climate, and local diversity. Despite this, perspective on soil microbiota in agricultural settings can inform management practices to improve the sustainability of agricultural production.
Citation: Suzanne L. Ishaq. Plant-microbial interactions in agriculture and the use of farming systems to improve diversity and productivity. AIMS Microbiology, 2017, 3(2): 335-353. doi: 10.3934/microbiol.2017.2.335
Yesterday I participated in the Expanding Your Horizons for Girls workshop at Montana State University! EYH brings almost 300 middle-school aged girls from all over Montana for a one-day conference in STEM fields. Twenty-seven instructors, including myself and other female scientists and educators, ran workshops related to our current research. My presentations were on “Unlocking the Hidden World of Soil Bacteria”, with the help of undergraduate Genna Shaia from the Menalled Lab.
Setting up a soil microbes workshop for Expanding Your Horizons for Girls.
Genna Shaia, undergraduate researcher.
I gave the girls a brief presentation on microbial ecology, and how bacteria and fungi can affect plants in agricultural soil. We talked about beneficial versus pathogenic microorganisms, and how different farming strategies can influence soil microbiota. This was followed by two hands-on activities that they were able to talk home with them. First, the girls made culture plates from living or sterile soil that was growing wheat or peas to see what kind of microbes they could grow. Then, they planted wheat seeds in either living or sterile soil so they could track which soil made the seeds germinate faster.
The girls were enthusiastic to learn, asked lots of insightful questions, and it was awesome being able to share microbiology with kids who hadn’t given it much thought before! If you are a woman in STEM, and have the opportunity to participate in a workshop or mentor a young scientist, it is not only rewarding but can make a huge impact on encouraging women into STEM.
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Slideshow photos: Genna Shaia, reproduced with student permission.
Today, the research team that I am a part of submitted a grant which I co-wrote with Dr. Tim Seipel, along with Dr. Fabian Menalled, Dr. Pat Carr, and Dr. Zach Miller. We submitted to the Organic Transitions Program (ORG) through the US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA). The culmination of months of work, and some 12+ hour days this past week to meet today’s deadline, this grant will hopefully fund some very exciting work in agriculture!
Research relies on grant money to fund projects, regardless of the type of institution performing the research, though commercial research centers may partially self-fund projects. Most new research hires to universities will receive a “start-up package” which includes some funding for a few years to buy equipment, pay for a small, preliminary project, or temporarily hire a technician. Start-up funds are designed to hold a researcher over for a year or two until they may apply for and receive grant funding of their own. Sooner or later, everyone in academia writes a grant.
Cartoon Credit
Grants may be available for application on a regular basis throughout the year, but some grant calls are specific to a topic and are made annually. These have one submission date during the year, and a large number of federal grants are due during in the first quarter of the year, a.k.a. Grant Season. University researchers find themselves incredibly pressed for time from January to March and will hole up in their office for days at a time to write complex grants. Despite the intention of starting your writing early, and taking the time to thoroughly discuss your project design with all your co-PDs well before you start writing to avoid having to rewrite it all again, most researchers can attest that these 20-30 pages grants can get written over from scratch 2 or 3 times, even before going through a dozen rounds of group editing.
The Bright Idea
Most large grants, providing several hundred thousand to over a million in funding over several years, require project teams with multiple primary researchers (called Principal Investigators or Project Directors) to oversee various aspects of research, in addition to other personnel (students, technicians, subcontractors). One researcher may conceptualize the project and approach other researchers (usually people they have worked with in the past, or new hires) to join the project. Project ideas may get mulled over for several years before they mature into full grant submissions, or go through multiple versions and submissions before they are perfected.
The grant I just co-wrote investigates the use of cover crops in Montana grain production. Briefly, cover crops are plant species which improve the soil quality but which you aren’t necessarily intending to eat or sell. They are grown in fields before or after the cash crop (ex. wheat) has been grown and harvested. Legumes like peas, beans, or alfalfa, are a popular choice because they fix nitrogen from its gaseous form in the atmosphere into a solid form in soil which other plants (like wheat) can use. Other popular cover crop plants are great at bio-remediation of contaminated soils, like those in the mustard family (1, 2, 3). Planting cover crops in an otherwise empty (fallow) field can out-compete weeds that may grow up later in the year, and they can prevent soil erosion from being blown or washed away (taking the nutrients with it). For our project, we wanted to know how different cover crop species affect the soil microbial diversity, reduce weeds, put nutrients back into soil, and improve the production of our crop.
We designed this project in conjunction with the Montana Organic Association, the Organic Advisory and Research Council, and Montana organic wheat farmers who wanted research done on specific cover crops that they might use, in order to create a portfolio of cover crops that each farmer could use in specific situations. As these organizations comprise producers from across the state, our research team was able to get perspective on which cover crops are being used already, what growing conditions they will and won’t work in (as much of Montana is extremely dry), and what production challenges growers face inherent to planting, managing, and harvesting different plant types.
Drafting Your Team
When you assemble a research team, you want to choose Project Directors who have different experiences and focuses and who will oversee different parts of the project. A well-crafted research team can bring their respective expertise to bear in designing a large and multi-faceted project. For our grant, I am the co-PD representing the microbial ecology and plant-microbe interaction facet, about a third of the scope of the grant. We will also be investigating these interactions under field settings, which requires a crop production and agroecology background, as well as expanding the MSU field days to include organic-specific workshops and webinars, which requires an extension specialty.
Because grant project teams are made up of researchers with their own projects and goals, in addition to providing valuable perspective they may also change the scope or design of your project. This can be extremely beneficial early on in the grant-writing phase, especially as you may not have considered the limitations of your study, or your goals are too unambitious or too lofty. For example, the cover crop species you want to test may not grow well under dry Montana conditions, do you have a back-up plan? However, as the submission deadline looms larger, changing the focus of your study can cost you precious writing time. Working in a research team requires a high degree of organization, a flair for communication, and an ability to work flexibly with others.
All grants center around a Project Narrative, and funding agencies will provide detailed instructions on how to format your project grant. Pay strict attention- in very competitive pools your grant can be flagged or rejected for not having the appropriate file names or section headers. The Narrative gives introductory background on your topic that details the research that has previously been published. Ideally, it also includes related studies that you and your team have published, and/or preliminary data from projects you are still working on. The aim is to provide a reasoned argument that you have correctly identified a problem, and that your project will fill in the knowledge gaps to work towards a solution. Grant panels are made up of researchers in a related field, but they may not be intimately aware of your type of research. So, you need to be very specific in explaining your reasoning for doing this study. If your justification seems weak, your project may be designated as “low priority” work and won’t get funded.
In our case, cover crops have been used by farmers already, but not much basic research has been done on the impacts of picking one species over another to plant. Thus, when cover crops fail, it may be unclear if it was because of unfavorable weather, because the previous crop influenced the soil in ways which were detrimental to your new crop, because you seeded your crop too sparsely and weeds were able to sneak in and out-compete, because you seeded too densely and your crop was competing with itself, or something else entirely.
You also need to identify the specific benefits of your project. Will you answer questions? Will you create a new product for research or commercial use? Will organic producers be able to use what you have learned to improve their farm production? Will you teach students? When you are identifying a need for knowledge and describing who or what will benefit from this study, you need to identify “stakeholders”. These are people who are interested in your work, not people who are directly financially invested. For us, our stakeholders are organic wheat farmers in Montana and the Northern Great Plains who want to integrate cover crops into their farming as an organic and sustainable way to improve crops and reduce environmental impact. Not only did our stakeholders directly inform our project design, but we will be working closely with them to host Field Day workshops, film informative webinars, and disseminate our results and recommendations to producers.
Crafting Your Experimental Plan
Once you have identified a problem or research question, you need to explain exactly how you will answer it. For experiments in the laboratory or field, you need to be incredibly specific about your design. How many samples will you take and when? Will you have biological replicates? Biological replicates are identical treatments on multiple individual organisms (like growing a single cover crop species in four different pots) to help you differentiate if the results you see are because of variation in how the individual grows or because of the treatment you used. Do you have technical replicates? Technical replication is when you analyze the same sample multiple times, like sequencing it twice to make sure that your technology creates reproducible results. Will you collect samples which will provide the right type of information to answer your question? Do your collection methods prevent sample deterioration, and how long will you keep your samples in case you need to repeat a test?
We then put each species into a bag to be dried and weighed.
We need to filter out the particles or they will clog the sprayer. Also pictured: Dr. Fabian Menalled.
The core sampler is used to collect soil from certain depths.
Climate change simulators.
In addition to describing exactly what you will do, you need to explain what might go wrong and how you will deal with that. This is called the Pitfalls and Limitations section. Because basic research needs to be done in controlled environments, your study may be limited by a “laboratory effect”: plants grown in a greenhouse will develop differently than they will in a field. Or, you might not be able to afford the gold-standard of data analysis (RNA sequencing of the transcriptome still costs hundreds of dollars per sample and we anticipate over 1,200 samples from this project) so you need to justify how other methods will still answer the question.
Supporting Documents
Even after explaining your research question in the Narrative and your design in the Methods sections, your grant-writing work is still far from complete. You will need to list all of the Equipment and research Facilities currently available to you to prove that your team can physically perform the experiment. If you will have graduate students, you need a Mentoring Plan to describe how the research team will train and develop the career of said student. If you will be working with people outside of the research team, you will need Letters of Support to show that your collaborators are aware of the project and have agreed to work with you, or that you have involved your stakeholders and they support your work. I was delighted by the enthusiasm shown towards this project by Montana organic producers and their willingness to write us letters of support with only a few days’ notice! You’ll also need a detailed timeline and plan for disseminating your results to make sure that you can meet project goals and inform your stakeholders.
Poster presentation at ASM 2016.
Perhaps the most difficult accessory document is the Budget, for which you must price out almost all the items you will be spending money on. Salary, benefits (ex. health insurance), tuition assistance, travel to scientific conferences, journal publication costs, travel to your research locations, research materials (ex. seeds, collection tubes, gloves, etc.), cost to analyze samples (ex. cost of sequencing or soil nutrient chemical analysis) cost to produce webinars, and every other large item must be priced out for each year of the grant. The Budget Narrative goes along with that, where you explain why you are requesting the dollar amount for each category and show that you have priced them out properly. For large pieces of equipment, you may need to include quotes from companies, or for travel to scientific conferences you may need airline and hotel prices to justify the costs.
On top of what you need to complete the study, called Direct Costs, you also need to request money for Indirect Costs. This is overhead that is paid to the institution that you will be working at to pay for the electricity, water, heating, building space, building security, or other utilities that you will use, as well as for the administrative support staff at the institution. Since nearly all grants are submitted through an organization (like universities), instead of as an individual, the university will handle the money and do all the accounting for you. Indirect costs pay for vital research support, but they run between 10-44% of the dollar amount that you ask for depending on the type of grant and institution, potentially creating a hefty financial burden that dramatically reduces the available funding for the project. On a $100,000 grant, you may find yourself paying $44,000 of that directly to the university.
The Budget is by far the most difficult piece to put together, because the amount of money you have available for different experiments will determine how many, how large, and how intensive they are. Often, specific methods or whole experiments are redesigned multiple times to fit within the financial constraints you have. If you factor in the experimental design changes that all your co-PDs are making on the fly, having to balance the budget and reconstruct your narrative on an hourly basis to reflect these changes, and the knowledge that some grants only fund 6-8 projects a year and if you miss this opportunity you may not have future salary to continue working at your job, it’s easy to see why so many researchers find Grant Season to be extremely stressful.
Great news: you can participate in science without going through a decade of higher education (sorry grad students, but thanks for your service!). There are two ways to do this: either you can volunteer to collect samples for a project, or you can volunteer to be the sample for a project. You can volunteer through the National Institutes of Health, third-party match sites that help recruit volunteers for large projects, independent research centers (that are usually under contract to run a study), and most universities and colleges have volunteer-recruiting websites.
Get out there and collect
There is a myriad of environmental science studies that rely on volunteers to collect samples, which may take place in very specific areas, or globally. Some are simple wildlife surveys, often through conservation societies like the Audubon Society, which use volunteers’ bird sightings to estimate populations. Humanitarian volunteer agencies may recruit volunteers for global research studies, as well. Some projects require more technical sampling, or require participants to travel to distant or difficult to reach places, and thus rely on outdoors-people with the gear and ability to safely retrieve water, soil, plants, animal hair or feces, you name it! There are some excellent examples of global projects which can be found through Adventure Scientists. AS recruits and trains volunteers for more difficult environmental sampling, and I am currently participating in their Gallatin Microplastics Initiative (year 1 and 2) along with my sampling team: Lee and Izzy.
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‘Host’ your own research
Volunteering to be the sample also allows you to participate on a sliding scale of involvement. For example, observational studies only collect information on what is already happening. These might be sociology (human behavior) studies which only require you to fill out surveys (often online) on your personal history or normal routines. You can also donate biological samples (hair, breathe, blood, urine, feces, skin scrapings, etc.) which are minimally invasive but don’t necessarily require any experimental treatments that you have to participate in. A study that I analyzed data for asked participants to use a breathalyzer and submit a fecal sample in a jar. That’s all, and they were financially compensated for their time. The study was trying to correlate microorganisms in the gut with how much hydrogen or methane was in the breath, and whether a breathalyzer test could be used as a rough measure of how many methanogenic archaea lived in your gut. Often, research centers which are focused on medical treatment for a specific disease will collect specific biological samples.
Studies which require actual treatments or testing are clinical medical studies that rely on human volunteers upon whom to test products. At a certain point in drug or vaccine testing, animal or computer models can no longer serve as a proxy and you need to test things in humans. Thanks to HIPPA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996) and other safety regulations, both at the federal and institutional level, there is a lot of transparency in these studies. You are told exactly what you will be required to do, what data will be collected and who will have access to it, and any possible health concerns that may arise from this study. Any release of tissue “ownership” will require you to sign consent.
I have participated in antibacterial product testing, a diet study investigating dairy fats during which I could only eat the prescribed diet for two solid months (boy, did I miss chocolate and Thai food!), and a study on chronic back pain (I was in the control group). For the back pain study, I had an EEG net put on my head to measure brainwaves and motion capture balls(examples below) attached all over my body to track my muscle movements as I performed simple tasks that required me to use my lower back muscles. I even had a functional MRI brain scan to measure how muscle pain might change brain function, unfortunately, I was not able to get a photocopy of my brain scan for posterity. The more invasive, time consuming, or risky a study may be, the higher the compensation (some vaccine studies compensate several thousand dollars).
You can participate in science in other ways, too. Try getting involved with science education! There are workshops, summer programs, or school events which encourage kids to learn about science and consider a career in it. Even if you aren’t a scientist yourself and can’t be a presenter, many programs still need people to chaperone, coordinate or market the event, and cater. Many science museums and educational centers have programs, as do many colleges. You can also find opportunities through local government to help clean natural sites or educate the public.
While you are out there collecting water samples from Arctic ice, counting wolves, or surveying land for public use, you are also perfectly situated to help with a little environmental restoration. The Global Microplastics Initiative looks for plastic in water sources from some very remote locations, and this study wouldn’t have been conducted if plastic in the environment wasn’t a concern. So while you are out there, try to leave the area a little cleaner than how you found it. You can volunteer for clean-up events to target specific locations that need help, but you don’t even need to organize for this one, just go out and start picking up trash!
I took it upon myself to clean a stream near my house in Bozeman one day last year.
Finally, most agricultural research studies rely on farmers, ranchers, growers, and producers as a source of project resources (like seeds, land, or cows) and project motivation. After all, federally and state-funded agricultural science exist to help local and national agriculture. You can participate in science by identifying problems that need to be solved and providing objectives for our studies, or by allowing research projects to use your land, animals, or facilities.
So far, you’ve educated yourself on science, and now you can go out and participate. Stay tuned in the next for weeks for Anyone can Science, Step 3: be supportive.
Agriculture is consistently Montana’s largest economic sector, but as an arid state we need to prepare for the challenges brought on by changing weather patterns. Yesterday, agricultural producers, scientists, special interest groups, lawmakers, and the general public came together at the Bozeman Public Library to talk about the future of climate change and what it means for people in the agricultural industry and research sector. The event was organized by Plowing Forward, a collaborative group to coordinate local Ag. education efforts.
“If you’ve eaten today, then you’re involved in agriculture.” -Chris Christiaens at the Plowing Forward meeting in Bozeman, MT, Feb 10, 2017
Opening remarks were led by Chris Christiaens, lobbyist and Project Specialist for the Montana Farmers Union, based in Great Falls, MT. Chris gave us some perspective on how Montana farming and ranching has changed over time, especially over the last 10 years,including changes to the growing season, harvest times, water usage, the types of plants which are able to survive here. He reminded us that the effect of climate on agriculture affects all of us.
Chris Christiaens, Project Specialist for Montana Farmers Union.
Next, we heard from Montana’s Senator Jon Tester, who runs a farm in northern Montana that has been in his family since 1912. The Senator spoke to his personal experiences with farming and how his management practices had adapted over the years to deal with changing temperature and water conditions. Importantly, he spoke about how agriculture is a central industry to the United States in ways that will become even more apparent in the coming years as the negative effects of climate change affect more and more areas. Food security, a peaceful way of life, and economic vitality (not just in Montana or the United States, but globally), were contingent upon supporting agricultural production under adverse events. He assured agricultural stakeholders that he continues to support production, research, and education, including the work we do in the laboratory as well as out in the field to promote agriculture.
Montana Senator Jon Tester
Next, we heard from three professors from Montana State University. Dr. Cathy Whitlock, a Professor of Earth Sciences, who is also the Director for the MSU Institute on Ecosystems, and a Lead Coordinator for the Montana Climate Assessment. The Montana Climate Assessment seeks to assemble past and current research on Montana climate in order to assess trends, make predictions about the future, and help both researchers and producers to tailor their efforts based on what is happening at the regional level. The Assessment is scheduled for release in August, 2017, and will allow for faster dissemination of research information online.
Dr. Whitlock’s introduction to the MCA was continued by Dr. Bruce Maxwell, a Professor of Agroecology, as well as the Agriculture Sector Lead for the Montana Climate Assessment. He summarized current research on the present water availability in Montana, as well as what we might see in the future. He warned that drier summers were likely, and while winters may get wetter, if they continue to get warmer that snow runoff will flow into rivers before the ground has thawed. This means snow melt will flow out of the region more quickly and not be added to local ground water sources for use here. To paraphrase Bruce, a longer growing season does you no good if you don’t have any water.
Dr. Bruce Maxwell, Montana State University
We also heard from my current post-doctoral advisor, Dr. Fabian Menalled, Professor of Weed Ecology Management and Cropland Weed Specialist (Extension). He presented some of the results from our ongoing project at Fort Ellis on the interactions between climate change (hot and dry conditions), farm management system (conventional or organic), disease status, and weed competition on wheat production. Increased temperatures and decreased moisture reduced wheat production but increased the amount of cheatgrass (downy brome), a weed which competes with wheat and can reduce wheat growth. My work on the soil bacterial diversity under these conditions didn’t make it into the final presentation, though. I have only just begun the data analysis, which will take me several months due to the complexity of our treatments, but here is a teaser: we know very little about soil bacteria, and the effects we are seeing are not exactly what we predicted!
Here is the video of Dr. Menalled’s presentation (just under 9 minutes):
Lastly, we heard from a local producer who spoke to his experience with ranching on a farm that had been run continuously for well over 100 years. His talk reflected the prevailing sentiment of the presentations: that farm practices had changed over the last few decades and people in agriculture were already responding to climate change, even if previously they wouldn’t put a name to it. The presentations concluded with a question and answer session with the entire panel, as well as a reminder that we all have the right and the obligation to be invested in our food system. Whether we grow produce or raise livestock for ourselves or others, whether we research these biological interactions, whether we set the policy that affects an entire industry, or whether we are just a consumer, we owe it to ourselves to get involved and make sure our voice is heard. To that end, I wrote a letter to my legislators (pictured below), and in the next few weeks I’ll be writing posts about how I participate in science (and agriculture) on the local and national level.
