Dr. John Corbett Presents on Weather Variability at Pardee Center

On January 11, 2017, as part of the Pardee Center Brown Bag Series, Dr. John Corbett, founder of aWhere, presented his findings regarding weather variability and its impact on global agriculture and food security. Founded in 1999, aWhere operates a global-scale agronomic model dedicated to helping small-scale farmers face complex agricultural challenges. Dr. Corbett was joined by aWhere staff members Hanna Camp (Korbel School and Pardee Center alumna) and Jacklyn Ward (MBA, Daniels College of Business) for this discussion of global and localized weather data, how shifts in weather patterns impact current and future crop yields, and the agricultural industry’s response to distributed intelligence.

To an audience of Korbel students and staff, Dr. Corbett illustrated the increasing importance of food security strategies and investigation: “Extreme weather events that used to occur once in 1,000 days now occur once in 200 days. Think of the effects on humans...on cocoa trees,” he urged. The aWhere staff also met with researchers at the Pardee Center to discuss the integrated, data-driven nature of our work.