Speaker on environmental issues at Siena Heights University

Personnel reports
| The Daily Telegram

ADRIAN – A Michigan State University agroecologist will discuss ending hunger, conserving biodiversity and halting climate change at Siena Heights University.

M. Jahi Johnson-Chappell will be the William Issa Endowment Speaker on the Environment for Winter 2024 at Siena Heights University on Thursday, April 25, according to a news release. His presentation at 7 p.m. in the Rueckert Auditorium is organized by SHU’s Sustainable College Committee. Rueckert Auditorium is located in the Dominican Hall.

Johnson-Chappell’s presentation will cover food sovereignty, food justice and agroecology and why these concepts support equitable sustainability, the release said.

“Building on his work in Brazil and the United States, he will emphasize the importance of understanding how change happens, discuss where important progress has been made in ending hunger and preserving biodiversity, and explore how each of us can act toward the positive change needed to end hunger and stop climate change by deepening our commitment to and understanding of what it means to be a democracy,” the statement said.

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Johnson-Chappell is director of the Center for Regional Food Systems and professor in the Department of Community Sustainability at Michigan State, where he also holds the WK Kellogg Foundation Endowed Chair in Food, Society and Sustainability. For the past 22 years, Johnson-Chappell has researched and advocated internationally, nationally and locally for participatory, socially just and environmentally sustainable agri-food systems that center the voices of farmers, workers and the communities they serve. He previously held faculty positions at Washington State University and the Center for Agroecology, Water and Resilience (CAWR) at Coventry University in the United Kingdom.

In the nonprofit sector, Johnson-Chappell previously served as executive director of the Southeastern African American Farmers Organic Network, which provides direct support and organization to Black sustainable farmers in the Southeastern United States and the U.S. Virgin Islands; as executive director of the think tank Food First; and as a senior scientist and director of agroecology and agricultural policy at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. In addition, he was a founding member of the Open Source Seed Initiative (OSSI) and previously served on the Executive Committee of the Agroecology Fund and as Vice Chairman of the Board of Thousand Currents, an international grassroots foundation.

Johnson-Chappell has a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering and a Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology, both from the University of Michigan.

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