ASHS 2024 Conference

Roland Ebel has a Ph.D. in Organic Farming, granted by the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna. His dissertation project on the diversification if organic tomato systems was conducted in Gran Canaria, Spain. From 2008 to 2014, Dr. Ebel was a member of the Agroecology faculty of the Intercultural Maya University of Quintana Roo on the Yucatan Peninsula, an institution committed to traditional ecological knowledge and participatory research. There, he learned about “quelites”, associated edible plants in traditional Mesoamerican agroecosystems, and conducted a study on chaya, an underutilized semi-domesticated species. Together with peers, local farmers, and his students, Dr. Ebel also co-developed diversified farming systems including corn, habanero pepper, and dragonfruit. From 2014 to 2018, Dr. Ebel worked as a lecturer at the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico and taught an online Agroecology course for the University of Massachusetts Amherst. After his postdoctoral work at Montana State University (MSU) on food systems education (2019-2020), Ebel became a faculty member of the Sustainable Food Systems program at MSU, where he teaches an Ethnobotany course, among others. His research centers on biofertilizers made of food residues, local food systems and their responses to shocks, edible weeds, and underutilized horticultural crops in general.