Undergraduate Research & Scholarships

Ty Shelton Social Science

Nova Agroecologia: Brazil’s Contemporary Public Policy Support for Agroecology, Challenges and Promises

Scholars Journal

Ty's research explores how agriculture can survive climate change by bridging the policy gap between our current global food system and what we know to be resilient and sustainable. Agriculture is a product of public policy and despite overwhelming and growing evidence that agroecological systems are far more resilient than industrial agriculture, almost no national government designs its food system that way. The biggest exception--and the central focus of my project--is Brazil, where the past decade has trialed the landmark National Plan for Organic Production and Agroecology. Ty will conduct ethnographic research in Brazil and work with policy makers, administrators of the plan, and most importantly farmers affected by it. Afterwards, they intend to publish the first and only paper explicitly detailing this policy in action with all of its challenges and successes.