CAPI Announces 2024-2025 Doctoral Fellows Cohort as part of PLAN initiative

CAPI’s Policies for Land Use, Agriculture and Nature (PLAN) project will highlight research findings of four doctoral candidates from across Canada.
(Ottawa, ON – October 31, 2024) – The Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute (CAPI) has recently launched Policies for Land Use, Agriculture and Nature (PLAN). This initiative aims to provide solutions that protect agricultural lands, preserve biodiversity within farmlands, and promote food security to ensure sustainable agricultural production.
As part of PLAN, four doctoral candidates will learn to develop skills and expertise to provide policy solutions for addressing land use challenges as they relate to agricultural lands and biodiversity, while delivering a research report.
The 2024-2025 fellowship cohort is as follows:
- Kwaku Twum, University of Waterloo. Kwaku will be assessing the impact of Digital Agriculture Technologies (DATs) on farmers’ ability to address climate change and biodiversity loss. This project will combine quantitative spatial analysis with qualitative policy research to understand the relationship between technological adoption, agricultural practices, and environmental outcomes.
- Ehsan Pashanejad, University of British Columbia. Ehsan will use a spatial system framework to balance agricultural productivity and conservation in the Canadian Prairies. The results will guide sustainable agricultural practices and policy development to enhance the resilience of ecosystems and economic outputs on the Prairies.
- Dislène Sossou, Laval University. Dislène’s project will assess the economic impacts of the adoption of soil conservation practices on agricultural land productivity. The goal of this research will be to identify more effective, region-specific conservation practices that improve both environmental and economic outcomes and to inform policies that promote adoption.
- Andu Berha, University of Alberta. Andu will investigate how climate change affects agricultural productivity in Canada and the role of federal and provincial farm insurance programs in mitigating the effect of climate change. The results will aim to inform policymakers about the effectiveness of these programs to promote sustainable productivity and food security.
“CAPI is thrilled to work with this, our fourth cohort of promising young doctoral students, to guide them in producing policy-relevant research on land use issues while connecting them to CAPI’s network of experts,” says Margaret Zafiriou, Senior Research Fellow with CAPI.
In addition to the Doctoral Fellowships, CAPI’s PLAN Policy Network will increase awareness and facilitate discussions around agricultural land use issues, by releasing research reports highlighting policy recommendations, and by making PLAN the topic of this season’s Ag Policy Connection Podcast as well as other content throughout the year.
This project is funded in part by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada under the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership’s AgriCompetitiveness Program and is supported in part by the RBC Foundation through RBC Tech for Nature and is part of CAPI’s larger environmental initiative, Spearheading Sustainable Solutions.