Bachelor's degree in agronomy, University of Chile
PhD in entomology, University of Florida
Occupation(s)
Professor of Agroecology, University of California, Berkeley in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management
Known for
Agroecology, agroforestry and urban agriculture
Miguel Altieri is a Chilean born agronomist and entomologist. He is a Professor of Agroecology at the University of California, Berkeley in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management.
Altieri served as a Scientific Advisor to the Latin American Consortium on Agroecology and Development (CLADES) Chile, an NGO network promoting agroecology as a strategy for small farm sustainable development in the region. He also served for 4 years as the General Coordinator for the United Nations Development Programme’s Sustainable Agriculture Networking and Extension Programme which aimed at capacity building on agroecology among NGOs and the scaling-up of successful local sustainable agricultural initiatives in Africa, Latin America and Asia. He was the chairman of the NGO committee of the Consultative Group on International Agriculture Research whose mission was to make sure that the research agenda of the 15 International Agricultural Research Centers benefited poor farmers. He was Director of the US-Brasil Consortium on Agroecology and Sustainable Rural Development (CASRD), an academic-research exchange program involving students and faculty of UC Berkeley, University of Nebraska, UNICAMP and Universidad Federal de Santa Catarina. AS of 2011 he has been advisor to the Food and Agriculture OrganizationGlobally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS) program, which is devoted at identifying and dynamically conserving traditional farming systems in the developing world.[2][3][4] He is the President of the Latin American Scientific Society of Agroecology.[5]
In 2012, he supported farming the Gill Tract, a UC owned part of land.[6] in 2017, he became Honorary Professor of the University of La Frontera[7]
Publications
Altieri is the author of more than 200 publications, and more than a dozen books[5] including Agroecology: The Science of Sustainable Agriculture (1987, 1995, 2018),[8]Biodiversity and pest management in agroecosystems (1994, 2004)[9] and Agroecology and the Search for a Truly Sustainable Agriculture (with Clara I. Nicholls, 2005).[10]