[COLUMBUS] Chen-Ti Chen and Seungki Lee, both Assistant Professors with Ohio State’s Department of Agricultural, Environmental and Development Economics, were recognized with Emerging Scholar Best Conference Paper at this year’s Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association (NAREA) annual meeting in Burlington, Vermont.
The paper is a result of collaboration with Cornell Lab Ornithology ecologists Amanda Dumin Rodewald and Christopher Wood, and AEDE alumni Wendong Zhang, examines the relationship between bird biodiversity and crop yields in 12 Midwestern U.S. states.
By combining data on corn and soybean spatially explicit corn and soybean yields with avian biodiversity indices, the researchers find the greater bird biodiversity is associated with higher crop production. Importantly, they observe that conventional corn varieties benefit more from this biodiversity than insect-resistant ones, suggesting that birds may play a key role in natural pest control.
“I was honored to present our joint work at this year’s annual meeting,” said Chen. “While it is still very preliminary, we are encouraged by these initial findings and look forward to continuing to explore the impact.”
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