5 Questions with Our New Editor-in-Chief
Get to know our founding Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Daniel Rodriguez, as he answers 5 questions about his research experience and becoming involved with the journal.
What is your research background?
I have a mixed cropping & grazing family farming background and understand that if our food and fiber production are not sustainable, farmers can’t be productive or profitable. Agriculture is known to contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions, and has been associated with land and water degradation, and biodiversity loss. However, agriculture can also contribute to mitigate, repair, and enhance our soil, air, and water resources. Untangling these complexities will require high quality evidence of actionable interventions and system transitions towards more nature positive and equitable food agricultural systems. I am primarily a quantitative systems analyst and graduated from de Witt’s old Department of Theoretical Production Ecology at Wageningen University under the wing of a brilliant biophysicist, Prof Jan Goudriaan. In my lab at The University of Queensland, we contribute to and collaborate in research that addresses multiple Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by applying quantitative systems research approaches to support decision-making at the crop, farm, and community levels.
Why are you passionate about sustainable agriculture?
We tend to underestimate how complex farming is; understanding and contributing to solve such complexities is what gets me up every morning. Farmers in their family farms manage multiple activities, they are the ultimate multitaskers. To remain profitable, they need to be on top of the most recent technological advances, understand input and output markets, manage the vagaries of the weather, manage the known unknowns of climate variability and market fluctuations, foreseeing the likely impacts of the unknown unknowns of long-term climate and policy shifts, while being productive, profitable, resilient to shocks, and foremost sustainable. A key common value is to leave the land in a better condition when they retire from farming. For all this they need information that is relevant, salient, and actionable. I am passionate about producing high-quality evidence that supports the transition of agricultural systems from the maintain and preserve into the repair and enhance while delivering across the multiple functions of agriculture i.e., healthy food production, environmental, socio economic and human outcomes.
How would you ensure the journal is inclusive and represents the diversity of the global research community?
The sustainability of agricultural systems is a global problem, though relevant dimensions, indicators, metrics, and likely solutions and trade-offs will change given the situation and operating environment – it is a systems problem. There are multiple diverging views and definitions on what sustainability is, or should be, in many cases adamantly defended. To mention a few: conservation agriculture, sustainable intensification, agro-ecology, ecological agriculture, regenerative agriculture, organic, conservation agriculture, climate smart agriculture etc. Though when dissected into their barebones, many of these views coincide in their basic principles. Therefore, I am not motivated by definitions of what sustainability is or is not, but by hypothesis-based research that tests, explores and designs the best fit combination of principles, practices and technologies more likely to positively contribute to solving a rather complex problem.
Sustainability being a global problem will require representation of Associate Editors and Editorial Board Members from across all continents. I see the role of the team to actively identify potential contributors from academia as well as from practice, and signal to the community that the journal welcomes research from across the world. Researchers from non-OECD countries are mostly a minority in the science literature, which needs to change.
What are you most looking forward to in your role as Editor in Chief?
In my role as EiC of npj Sustainable Agriculture I hope to contribute to shape a high-quality outlet of sustainability sciences in agriculture that also delivers evidence for downstream impact and adoption.
Why would you encourage authors to submit to the journal?
I do believe that more than ever before, research needs to be designed for impact. I strongly believe that journals that aim to highlight the impact of their research will attract more readers and more highly cited authors. A good example of this are the Nature journals, which in addition to selecting outstanding research, ensure the research is of importance and consequential. This is, it usually has significant implications for practice, businesses, society, the environment, and policy.
