My research seeks to increase our understanding of the environmental impacts of agriculture and create solutions to mitigate these impacts.
My main research project is HESTIA which I started in 2019. HESTIA provides the fundamental science and data to scale up outcome‑based environmental management in agriculture.
Outcome‑based management focuses on quantifying and reducing environmental impact indicators (such as greenhouse gas emissions or biodiversity) rather than encouraging farmers to adopt or cease certain practices. It represents a major change in how we manage food’s environmental impacts today.
Specifically, HESTIA provides:
- Data on how agricultural products are produced in different countries. There are currently data from ~150,000 farms on HESTIA, uploaded by our team and by researchers worldwide.
- ~2000 environmental impact and gap-filling models. We orchestrate these models to allow our team and our users to undertake comprehensive multi-indicator Life Cycle Assessments. Our users are deploying our models on data from ~120,000 farms.
- A data standard, allowing environmental impact data to be exchanged in supply chains and between researchers. Our data standard is increasingly forming the basis of policy to harmonise agricultural and environmental data.
We are also testing the effects of HESTIA with farmers using randomised controlled trials in four countries over the coming years to explore how our models and data affect behaviour.
My other research areas include:
- Quantifying the effects of providing environmental information on consumers and the rest of the food supply chain.
- Pesticide toxicity, biodiversity, and animal welfare quantification in Life Cycle Assessment.
- Environmental impact model development (including aquaculture emissions, nitrate leaching, and soil emissions).
- Novel technologies to change the food system, with a particular focus on landless and land-efficient agriculture.
