Miguel A Altieri is Professor Emeritus at University of California, Berkeley, Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management. Co-Director of the Centro Latino Americano de Investigacionbes Agroecologicas (CELIA -www.celia.agroeco.org). Currently, an Invited Scholar at the FEAST Project, at the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, Kyoto, Japan.
He received his BS in agronomy at the University of Chile, Masters at the National University of Colombia, and Ph.D. in entomology from the University of Florida. In 1981 he became Professor of Agroecology at the University of California, Berkeley in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management where he taught agroecology and urban agriculture for 37 years.
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 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. Furthermore, he was the Director of the US-Brazil Consortium on Agroecology and Sustainable Rural Development (CASRD), served as scientific advisor to the Food and Agriculture Organization Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS) program, and served as the President of the Latin American Scientific Society of Agroecology ( www.socla.co).
He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the Universidad Nacional de Cajamarca, Peru in 2006, and the Universite Catholique du Lovain, Belgium in 2015. In 2017, he became an Honorary Professor at the University of La Frontera in Chile. In 2018, he was inducted to the Earth Hall of Fame by the Kyoto Prefecture, Japan.
He has written more than 250 scientific articles and more than 20 books among them Agroecology: the science of sustainable agriculture, Biodiversity and pest management in agroecosystems and Agroecology: science and politics.