My general interest is to understand how, why and when interactions among species can contribute towards ecosystem functioning. I do this from the perspective of the plant, where I explore the responses that underlie plant interactions with their environment, and consequently quantify how these plant responses influence growth and ecosystem functioning. I combine experimental work, field measurements and modeling to scale from organ traits to plant responses and community performance.

Ik ben een sociaal actieve wetenschapper die graag in teams werkt en met veel verschillende mensen omgaat. Naast mijn werk aan diverse systemen – leef ik graag in een diverse gemeenschap. Ik heb over de hele wereld gereisd, een aantal jaar in het buitenland gewoond en ik ben blij dat ik nu in de diverse stad Wageningen woon.

I am spiritual father of the recent strip cropping development. Crop diversity in general has a lot of potential for the development of more sustainable agriculture. Therefore I am happy to advise Cropmix and its partners on the development of genetic diverse cropping systems and its practical, economical and social implications.

I am almost pensioned, but will still be available for CropMix after my pensioning as a member of the advisory board. Its great to see so many young researchers continuing the work I started about 15 years ago and developing a solid scientific base for the application of crop diversity in agriculture.

www.wur.nl/landbouw-van-de-toekomst

I like to contribute to developing sustainable crop systems that have a net positive effect on agrobiodiversity.

I like to contribute to developing sustainable crop systems that have a net positive effect on agrobiodiversity.

www.wur.nl/nl/personen/felix-dr.ir.-fjja-felix-bianchi

My motivation for the study of ecological interactions between plants, insects and microbes is to understand how plants respond to challenges. I am fascinated about the abilities of plants to cope with abiotic and biotic challenges by recruiting organisms that help plants to cope with such challenges. I aim to apply such knowledge to develop ecology-based crop production systems that do not rely on chemical pesticides.

Singing is a passion of mine, as is walking in nature, reading books and listening to classical music.

I am interested in understanding and modeling how plants interact with their physical environment. Previous researchers have hypothesized that the effect of mixing different crops on the physical environment is responsible for the advantages of intercropping on performance and/or resource use efficiency. I am interested in testing whether this is true and how we can use it to design more efficient cropping systems.

Trained as an engineer in both Agronomy and Forestry, I fell in love with computational modelling of plant growth, especially at the interface between ecophysiology, environmental physics and scientific modelling. I therefore decided to come to Wageningen (where plant growth modelling was born) and developed my research career here.

CropMix is an excellent match with my research interest which focus on addressing the important question of how to design sustainable agricultural systems that ensure supply of food, and bio-based products within a continuously changing world. More specifically, I develop optimization models that are able to systematically evaluate the economic and environmental consequences of interrelated change in climate, market, policy and technology (e.g. strip cropping) on agri-food supply chains. To improve the capacity of these models to predict how actors of the supply chain will react in future changes and to improve representation of the underlying decision making process, I explicitly account for the objectives, preferences and behaviour of individual supply chain actors. While current models of the agri-food supply chain focus on calculating supply chain designs that are optimal (e.g. the best from an economic or environmental point of view), my models aim to calculate alternative supply chain setups that are more sustainable than the current but also ensure benefits to all involved actors according to their specific objectives and preferences. These leads to more realistic improvements that can be embraced by key decision makers in the supply chain.

I'm working on the design of complex agricultural systems. Using different methods from engineering design, combined with social sciences, new sustainable farming systems (like intercropping systems and related machinery) are designed and implemented.

CropMix touches directly upon my professional drive: instead of focusing on everything that is wrong or difficult in current agricultural systems, we focus on identifying what is possible for future agricultural systems, to build knowledge about these systems, and to help farmers and other stakeholders gain access to that knowledge.

Although through the years I have become a hardcore scientist, originally I started off as a farm animal veterinarian, where I enjoyed being in practice. Because of an allergy I had to quit that job and I became, as I say, a 'scientist by accident'. Although I love what I do, the connection with practice and the contact with farmers is still really important to me. Coming from (and still living in) the fertile clay soils of Noord-Holland, arable farming has always been part of my every day life.

As Assistant Professor at the Athena Institute I hope to gain (and contribute to) a broader understanding of relevant aspects of social and ecological systems and how they contribute to sustainable change. For CropMix I aim to further insights into the interactions between the multiple aspects of the agri-food system (soil, animals, landscape, farmers, markets, consumers, etc) and the role that diversifying cropping systems play in the necessary changes to improve this system.

Researcher on policy and politics of sustainable transitions.