Produce Marketing Association Virtual Town Hall: Resource Scarcity

Our Senior Scientific Program Manager, Dr. Rachel Melnick, served as a panelist for a virtual town hall focused on soil and water health, hosted by the Produce Marketing Association (PMA). The town hall’s other panelists were Dr. Jo Handelsman, Director of the Wisconsin Institute of Discovery at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and Dr. Wendy Graham, Director of the Water Institute at the University of Florida Gainesville.

During the town hall, Dr. Melnick talked about the role of cover crops in improving soil health and also discussed the importance of encouraging researchers to look for more specific solutions to resource scarcity problems. She highlighted the limitations of one-size-fits-all approaches, particularly when it comes to the speciality crops in the produce and floral industries, adding that growers should be engaged from the beginning, and when there is research going on that focuses on something that they are looking for, they should get actively involved in furthering this research.

Additional details about virtual town hall were reported in articles published by Fresh Plaza and HortiDaily.