Progress 09/01/22 to 08/31/23
Outputs
Target Audience:The in person workshop centered on the theme"Multispecies ethnographies in engineered agricultural ecologies', was held at the W.K. Kellogg Biological StationApril 27-30, 2022. Itwas the second of two workshops as part of the grant:Social Implications of Emerging Technologies in Agriculture #2020-67023-31635with the aim offacilitatinginterdisciplinary discussion among diverse scholars focusing on social, ethical, and philosophical considerations of the use of new biotechnologies for agriculture and its impacts on agricultural environments. The workshop brought seven interdisciplinary scholars together--most of whom had not met before--in focused conversations over the course of the workshop and in conversation with several KBS-based agricultural extension researchers. Participantscollaborating on research focusing on the social implications of emerging technology in agriculture and their impact on diverse species and ecologieswere international scholars from North America, Europe, and Australia based in sociology, history, science studies, agricultural and food ethics and integrated history and philosophy of agricultural sciences. Changes/Problems:I am sole PI for this project, sole administer and organizer. My original two co-PIs being were unable to continue work on the project due to COVID related hardships following the first workshop (which was held online during the pandemic). This past academic year 2022-2023, I single-handedly organized an exceptionally successful workshop held this Spring where I brought a different set of international and national scholars together for a second (this time, in person) workshop, entitled: "Multispecies ethnographies in engineered agricultural ecologies". In order to forge a relationship between social scientists and philosophers of agriculture with agricultural extension researchers to establish an even broader set of potential collaborators, I chose to hold the workshop at the W.K. Kellogg Biological Station. So far, such a set of scholars coming together to talk about social implications of emerging technologies in agriculture in conversation with junior and established agricultural extension researchers is unprecedented. It was an exceptionally successful workshop with lots of engagement and outreach activities, specified above. The USDA funding has been invaluable in allowing me to bringing the exact collection of scholars together that allowed for such productive innovative conversations. I have been delighted to be part of the process of growing this STS agricultural and extension community and I am excited about the future collaborative possibilities with them. I was able to devote so much time to the organization of the workshop and building the community this year because I was lucky enough to have my very first sabbatical and the organizing of the workshop was a top priority for me. But doing so impacted my ability to pursue my sabbatical research plan--the writing of a book on the Philosophy of Synthetic Biology, that I had been working on. Post-pandemic impacts are still affecting the speed to which publications that are the result of research on this project are coming out. In 2022 and 2023, I spearheaded thewriting of a multiauthored paper focusing on the social implications of gene editing and standards in agriculture, The paper was submitted November 2022 and it was only in August 2023 that I recieved the reviewers' recommendations.Journals in philosophy and social sciences are still feeling effects of the pandemic and so review times are very long. I am excited about working on the edited collection and have quickly secured a contract. I have chosen a publisher with a good track record for swift publication of manuscripts to ensure the earliest access to the research we have produced in the tenure of the grant funded project. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Workshop participants actively engaged in interdisciplinary research discussions in the contextwith KBS Long Term Agroecosystem Research (LTAR) and Long Term Ecological Research (LTER)field labs as part of their workshop experience. Including discussions with the Associate Dirctor of Engagement for LTAR, Tayler Ulbrich and Associate Director for Science & Agronomy for LTAR on agriculture and animal integration, workshop participants visiting field labs to discuss graduate student research projects including : o Corinn Rutkoski-prairie strips and soil health o Alice Puchalsky-prairie strips and pollinators o Grant Falvo-global warming impacts of agricultural land o Tvisha Martin-the soil food web in agricultural landscapes o Kevin Kahmark-precision agriculture and drone demo Engagement with the KBS-based researchersprovidedparticipants with real-world research and case studies currently being pursued. It lead tonew ways of answering some ofthe research questions the PI (Kendig) included in thepromptsthat sheprovided to participants when inviting themto participate: 1. How can we understand the effects gene technologies might have on the microbiome of the target crop? 2. What are current gene technologies and how should they be evaluated for agriculture to capture their entanglements in the environment--for instance--on pollinators? 3. What impact do/ can gene techologies have on the soil microbiome or of plant-related microbes? 4. What values, concepts and assumptions are framing the evaluation of the conceptual and social impacts of using CRISPR-based gene drives for agriculture? And how could they be expanded? 5. In what ways do crop plants matter and how are they differently conceived by First Peoples, early settlers, as well as current family-owned farms and large farms. In what ways might gene interventions change this? 6. How might technologies be used to maintain or increase ecosystem diversity, e.g., through planting methods such as planting in prairie strips or swales. This list was notintended to beexhaustive but was provided as a means to encourage participants to identify a topic that they wished to focus on. Participants in the second workshop were also invited to visit the website for the first workshop for more information on the research discussed there. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?In addition to the dissemination of the works-in-progress during the workshop, participants will continue to work on their papers integrated the comments and suggestions gathered during the workshop. Kendig has secured a book contract for an edited collection and is currently working with a coeditor (Paul Thompson) to edit the collection. There is a multiauthored paper that has been under review since November 2022 which Kendig, Selfa and Thompson are currently revising. These are substantial products and will provide broad dissemination of the research from the workshop as both are intended to be published open access. RIght now, work on both is in progress. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Work during the next reporting period will be: 1. Complete revisions to multiauthored journal article and hopefully (peer review willing) publish open access in a widely read international journal. 2. Shepard authors in their writing of their chapters for the edited collection, edit their chapters, write my own chapter, coauthor the Introduction and Chapter 1 with coeditor, and compile completed manuscript so that it can be pubished swiftly open access. 3. Complete website for research from second workshop which includes research, images, and information on upcoming edited volume as well as participant information. 4. Use social media to alert different research communities of the upcoming edited collection. 5. Pursue collaborative opportunities with participants for future international research projects, conference presentations, and new colloborative opportunities to maintain and to grow the STS of agriculture hub now formed as the result of the workshops and research pursued made possible by the current NIFA funded grant.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
The second in-person workshop builds on the work of the first virtual workshop (held virtually due to pandemic restrictions). The PI (Kendig) designed the workshop to be a smaller and more intensive and actively participatory workshop that brought internationalsenior scholars together withjunior scholars and postdocs working at Kellogg Biological Station's LTER and LTAR research field labs and projects focusing on a wide range of agricultural extension andenvironmental sustainability projects including soil health, pollinator-field interaction, soil-microbiome-plant based interactions, and AI-resourced precision agriculture. Prior to the workshop participants were asked to write abstracts and papers to present as works-in-progress during the workshop. Thenewly created STS of agriculture hub servedto provide an incubator for exploratory research and collaborative writing, community engaged projects, and other collaborative research products in the STS of agriculture. During the workshop, each participant presented their work-in-progress and all other participants, having read the papers prior to the start of the workshop, activelyevaluated thescientific, ethical, regulatory, and social consequences of developing agricultural use of genome editing technologies and emerging biotechnologies in the particular context of multispecies interactions and long term agroecological systems. One purpose for the workshop was to literally workshop these ideas together to aid in the research and writing process. Participants, following the workshop would continue to work on their separate (but related) research and write papers intended for publication in an open access edited collection following the same theme of the workshop. The overarching goal of the project has been to (over both workshops) and frequent email converations and Zoom conversations, facilitate interdisciplinary discussion focusing on social, ethical, and philosophical considerations of the use of new biotechnologies for agriculture. This year's workshop developed an idea that was muted in the first workshop--that one significant impact less discussed in biotechnological reseaerch in sociology and philosophy was that of the impact these technologies had on multispecies interactions in the agricultural environments in which they were used. Thefirst workshop included a one-dayopportunity to findresearchers actively interested in the sort ofcritical discussions that we were grappling with in the workshop'sproblem-solving break out sessions. The PI used this day to travel to KBS and discovered a community of like-minded scholars working in the LTER and LTAR field research projects. These experineces informed and reformed part of the goals for the project and laid the foundation for the second in-person workshop that ultimately was based in KBS. Ethical and sociological as well as philosophicaljustification for the workshop's focus on multispecies interactions in engineered agricultural ecologies was because agriculture relies on causal factors that are manipulatable by humans. Long-term agricultural research provides evidence of coevolved species, e.g. microbes and plant roots, wheat and pollinators. But there were open questions that also remained unanswered, such as:how does the deliberate modification of agricultural products through genetic engineering change the ecology, agricultural machinery and robotics, agronomy experiments, the landscape, us? This question shaped the discussion of the workshop and was the reason why it tookplace at the W.K. Kellogg Biological Station, Michigan State University, as it was the world-renowned field experimental research station in mid-Michiganfocusingon diverse managed and unmanaged ecosystems and long-term ecological research. The setting also offered a unique opportunity to engage with the scientific, ethical, regulatory, and social consequences of developing agricultural use of genome editing technologies in general, and various specific emerging bio-technologies alongside and in conversation with researchers conducting work in their LTAR and LTER field labs.
Publications
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
Workshop Social Implications of Emerging Technologies in Agriculture . Work-in-progress papers delivered include: Catherine Kendig (Michigan State University) Soil husbandry: Cultivating ethnographies of multispecies care and management ; Christopher Preston (University of Montana) Agency and Relationships in Engineered Agricultural Ecologies ; Christopher Henke (Colgate University) & Wyatt Galusky (Morrisville State College) Dreaming the Butterfly: Engineered Ecologies and Fragile Futures ; Paul Thompson (Michigan State University) A Risk-Based Ethnography of Food Animal Biotechnology in the Era of Gene Editing: What is New and What Is Not ; Per Sandin (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences) Nature, Plant Breeding and Focal Practices ; Theresa Selfa (SUNY-College of Environmental Science & Forestry) Unpacking Public Engagement in Emerging Biotechnology Use in Agriculture: Investigating the role of publics in decision-making and governance ; and Rachel Ankeny (University of Adelaide) If Gene Editing is the Solution, What Was the Question? Reframing Consideration of Gene-Editing Technologies in Agriculture .
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Progress 09/01/21 to 08/31/22
Outputs
Target Audience:Members of the workshop developed and published the following letter in Science published by AAAS on 16 June 2022. The letter was intended for researchers, policy makers and average citizens in response to the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Law (NBFDL) to extend the conversation on the social and ethical considerations of emerging biotechnologies for agriculture. Kendig, C., Selfa, T., and Thomspon, P.B. (2022) Biotechnology ethics for food and agriculture, SCIENCE. Vol 376, Issue 6599 pp. 1279-1280 DOI: 10.1126/science.add140 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add1403?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori:rid:crossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub%20%200pubmed Changes/Problems:Due to COVID preventing inperson activities, it has altered the orginial timeline. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?
Nothing Reported
How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?A letter was published in Science, and disseminated by authors on social media. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We propose to host an inperson workshop that will include 8 people (6 invited plus Kendig and Thompson) to be held in Michigan for 4 days and 3 nights. The goal is to extend the initial virtual converation and new email conversations into an intensive writing focused workshop to work on a series of papers that participants will write together at the workshop and be published in an edited volume. Dissemination of the publications will occur at professional conferences, on social media and in classrooms.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
It catalyized new networks between several of the participants of the workshop with a draft of a policy forum drafted and submitted to Science. It was later shorten to a short piece to be published as a letter in Science. There have been additional conversations between participants with plans for a more indepth piece on social implications of emerging technology in agriculture.
Publications
- Type:
Other
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2022
Citation:
Kendig, C., Selfa, T., and Thomspon, P.B. (2022) Biotechnology ethics for food and agriculture, SCIENCE. Vol 376, Issue 6599 pp. 1279-1280
DOI: 10.1126/science.add140
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