External Advisory Board
Professor Jules Pretty – Chair
University of Essex
Jules Pretty is Professor of Environment and Society at the University of Essex, and Director of the Centre for Public and Policy Engagement. He is formerly Deputy Vice-Chancellor (2010-19). His sole-authored books include Sea Sagas of the North (forthcoming, 2022), Green Minds and a Good Life (forthcoming, 2022), The East Country (2017), The Edge of Extinction (2014), This Luminous Coast (2011, 2014), The Earth Only Endures (2007), Agri-Culture (2002) and Regenerating Agriculture (1995).
He is a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology and the Royal Society of Arts, former Deputy-Chair of the UK government’s Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment, and has served on advisory committees for BBSRC and the Royal Society. He was presenter of the 1999 BBC Radio 4 series Ploughing Eden, a contributor and writer for the 2001 BBC TV Correspondent programme The Magic Bean, and a panellist in 2007 for Radio 4’s The Moral Maze. He received a 1997 award from the Indian Ecological Society, was appointed A D White Professor-at-Large by Cornell University from 2001, and is Chief & Founding Editor of the International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability. He received an OBE in 2006 for services to sustainable agriculture, an honorary degree from Ohio State University in 2009, and the British Science Association Presidential Medal (Agriculture and Food) in 2015. He is among the top 1% most cited scientists in the world, and is host of the podcast Louder Than Words.
John Dixon
University of Queensland, Australian National University and Gansu Agricultural University
John Dixon is Adjunct Professor focused on farming systems at the University of Queensland, Visiting Fellow on sustainable development policy at the Australian National University and Guest Professor on farming systems at Gansu Agricultural University. Dixon has 40 years developing country experience with agricultural research and sustainable development with FAO and the CGIAR in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. He has worked on many aspects of ecologically, economically and socially sustainable intensification for food security and poverty reduction, including systems research, innovation, environment and natural resource management, systems agronomy, conservation agriculture, participatory methods, market access and value chain function, policy analysis, M&E, impact assessment, knowledge sharing. He was presented with the M S Swaminathan Award for leadership in agriculture and was elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technology Science and Engineering. The Global Evergreening Alliance has selected him as a Senior Fellow and as Chair of the Technical Advisory Board of the Restore Australia Program. Dixon is a graduate from the University of New England with a Ph.D. (agricultural economics), Masters (natural resources), Masters (economics) and Bachelor of Rural Science and has published more than 100 books, articles, chapters and reports on the above subjects.
Cornelia Flora
Iowa State University
Cornelia Flora is an Emeritus Distinguished Professor in the Department of Sociology at Iowa State University. Her research interests include international and domestic development, community, and the sociology of science and technology, particularly as related to agriculture and participatory change. Socio-technical regime change and capitals transformations (natural, cultural, human, social, political and financial/built capitals) guide her current research includes work on the community development, sustainable agriculture and natural resource management, with particular attention to how class, gender, and ethnicity influence and are influenced by technology and policy. She has published 14 books, with a 15th co-authored book in preparation. She has served as president of the Rural Sociological Society, the Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society, and the Community Development Society. Her B.A. degree is from the University of California at Berkeley and her MS and PhD degrees are from Cornell University.
Peter Thorne
International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI)
Peter Thorne coordinates the Africa RISING project in the Ethiopian Highlands. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Nottingham in animal nutrition, with a part of his research conducted at the University of the Philippines in Los Banos. His career has allowed him to work in both public and private sectors, focusing largely on the evolution of mixed farming systems in Africa and Asia. Prior to joining ILRI, Thorne was responsible for the national dairy benchmarking service in Britain.
Jemimah Njuki (2014-2019)
Canada's International Development Research Center (IDRC)
Jemimah Njuki has 15 years of experience overseeing gender-responsive and women-targeted research and development projects that link women smallholder farmers to markets, integrate gender in cooperatives, apply participatory gender-responsive research, and more. As senior program officer at the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), she manages the Cultivate Africa's Future program.
Deborah Bossio (2014-2019)
The Nature Conservancy
Deborah Bossio is the Lead Soil Scientist for The Nature Conservancy, where she is an integral member of the Global Lands team and an active member of the Science Cabinet, a collaborative group of Conservancy Lead Scientists contributing topical expertise to cross-cutting science issues for the organization. In this role she integrates new soil science expertise to support and advance existing climate, agriculture, forestry and conservation priorities and to better understand how we can scale our impact through improved soil management.