Simon Cook Begins Work as Director of the Consortium Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems

Cook believes strongly in the role of science to support sustainable development and contests the view of agriculture as a ‘sunset activity’, preferring to consider it a ‘sleeping giant’. He believes that agriculture has the potential to solve global-scale demands for food, energy and income and that research for development can play a key role to achieving this. Simon Cook specializes in the analysis of the food and water systems that underpin agricultural development. With the Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF), Cook coordinated the Basin Focal Projects and served on the management team. He has worked for CIAT-International Center for Tropical Agriculture and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia, where he led research on precision agriculture. Simon trained at universities in the U.K., where he obtained degrees in geography, soil science and agronomy.

Watch Cook discuss some of the key findings from the CPWF Basin Focal Research Project in this video.