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Marney Isaac

@marneyisaac.bsky.social
5K followers 578 following 64 posts

University of Toronto professor | Canada Research Chair in Agroecosystems | agroecology, crop diversity, soil fertility, agroforestry, sustainable food systems, urban agriculture

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Marney Isaac @marneyisaac.bsky.social · 03/04/2026
Glad to see agroforestry based papers hitting the top cited list! #agroforestry #agrobiodiversity #traits #agroecology Adding to our understanding of farm biodiversity in achieving farm sustainability. besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...
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Marney Isaac @marneyisaac.bsky.social · 30/03/2026
Agriculture in the middle- large scale agriculture, small scale farms but what about midsized farm transitions? What policies, infrastructure, markets, and training are needed for agroecological transitions? Tackled this issue in Toronto with both production and distribution stakeholder input.
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Brent Toderian @brenttoderian.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
According to the City of Paris, in the last 10 years 150K trees have been planted, and 45ha of parks created in the already hot city, all intended to not only improve quality-of-life today, but also help the city adapt to & manage summer heatwaves of 50℃ (122F) by 2050. Keep going with this, Paris.
Before-and-after green street transformation in ParisTransformation of urban Square into forest in front of Paris City HallStreet transformation of “School Street“ in central Paris, including greening
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Marney Isaac @marneyisaac.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
In first research meetings from our Frontiers Planet Prize award. Our goal remains to provide local to global scale evidence for agrobiodiversity effects on environmental and social outcomes. Focused on positive changes in the midst of all the acute negatives right now. Plus artist documenting!
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Jennifer Clapp 🇨🇦 @jennifer-clapp.bsky.social · 07/03/2026
Food prices were already rising before this latest war began... with oil and fertilizer prices rising, food prices are likely to rise further and drive up world food insecurity. www.fao.org/newsroom/det...
fao.org
FAO Food Price Index rises in February for first time in five months
New forecasts also point to reduced wheat plantings in 2026 as farmers respond to lower prices.
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Marney Isaac @marneyisaac.bsky.social · 23/12/2025
Now out! New paper on plant facilitation in rooftop agriculture. We disentangling plant interactions for sustainable crop production on green roofs. Roofs offer so much potential for #urbanagriculture - we apply ecological principles to achieve positive outcomes. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
cambridge.org
Plant facilitation in rooftop agriculture: disentangling plant interactions for sustainable crop production on extensive green roofs | Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems | Cambridge Core
Plant facilitation in rooftop agriculture: disentangling plant interactions for sustainable crop production on extensive green roofs - Volume 40
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Marney Isaac @marneyisaac.bsky.social · 15/12/2025
Canadian Society of Soil Science is on bluesky! Give them a follow: @cssssoils.bsky.social
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Marney Isaac @marneyisaac.bsky.social · 09/12/2025
Agricultural money laundering at its finest. How about a shift to some non-fertilizer based crop nutrient acquisition strategies (organic amendments, intercropping, bio-inputs) to free farmers from this agriculture welfare state being created.
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Marney Isaac @marneyisaac.bsky.social · 03/11/2025
New paper out on soil quality along an agroecological transition. Our findings show that transitioning to natural farming, even after just 2 years of removing pesticides and adding bio-inputs, had positive detectable effects on soil health. #agroecology #soil www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
Soil quality changes along an agroecological transition: Evidence from natural farming in Madhya Pradesh, India
The scale and intensity of current agricultural practices have negative impacts on soil quality. Shifting to agroecological and natural farming practi…
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Marney Isaac @marneyisaac.bsky.social · 29/10/2025
“…develop a non-market farmland acquisition program in the peri-urban areas of every province to ensure Class 1 and 2 farmland is available for food production at rental/lease rates aligned with the land’s food production value” YES PLEASE 🙏 www.policyalternatives.ca/news-researc...
policyalternatives.ca
Alternative federal budget 2026: Agriculture - CCPA
What the Canadian government should do on agriculture. Because true independence needs a new economic model.
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Agronomy for Sustainable Development @asd-inrae.bsky.social · 10/10/2025
Proud to launch Agronomy for Sustainable Development (ASD) on Bluesky. This international journal, ranked second worldwide in Agronomy, publishes novel experimental, empirical and theoretical research, review and meta-analysis articles aimed at improving agricultural and food systems sustainability.
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GAIN alliance @gainhealth.org · 08/10/2025
Ever wondered what your food really costs? Behind every bite lies a web of invisible costs to people & planet. This #WorldFoodDay2025, join GAIN, True Price Foundation, ATNI & the Netherlands Food Partnership for a deep dive into #TrueCostAccounting. @stefanbnilsson.bsky.social
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Brent Toderian @brenttoderian.bsky.social · 08/10/2025
“In a city once choked with cars and infamous for its traffic snarls, Paris has pulled off a remarkable turnaround…the French capital has officially become Europe’s best city for children to walk, cycle, and move around independently.” Via @momentummag.bsky.social A victory for FAST leadership.
momentummag.com
Paris Pedals to the Top: How the City of Light Became Europe’s Best for Young Cyclists
The French capital has officially become Europe’s best city for children to walk, cycle, and move around independently
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Marney Isaac @marneyisaac.bsky.social · 05/10/2025
A new paper out in Land Use Policy - “Land tenure (in)security in the context of urban flood risk in Ghana.” We show that flood risk management through post-flood land use planning has potential to have dual impacts on community resilience and tenure security. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
Land tenure (in) security in the context of urban flood risk in Ghana
The increasing incidence of floods driven by urbanization and climate change destabilizes urban social, economic and environmental systems where land …
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Brent Toderian @brenttoderian.bsky.social · 05/10/2025
According to the City of Paris, in the last 10 years 150K trees have been planted & 45ha of parks created in the already hot city, all intended to not only improve quality-of-life today, but also help the city adapt to & manage summer heatwaves of 50℃ (122F) by 2050. Just the start. Common sense.
Paris before and after street transformationNew urban forest planted in front of Paris City HallA Paris “School Street” where cars are removed and people space/tree planting are added
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Marney Isaac @marneyisaac.bsky.social · 04/10/2025
Currently at the La Baldi artist residency working on integrating science into art. My collective uses an ecological lens to make art that explores climate change, following in the literary genre of cli fi. An honour to have the space and time to do this. #clifi #climatechange #interdisciplinaryart
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Marney Isaac @marneyisaac.bsky.social · 22/09/2025
CULTIVATE is an evolving collection of interdisciplinary artists, writers, and researchers driven by investigations of land, place, and the commons. I will be joining CULTIVATEs La Baldi Residency as part of a collective next week. Such an honour. More to come… www.cultivateprojects.net/la-baldi
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Marney Isaac @marneyisaac.bsky.social · 18/09/2025
Exploring Rooftop Agriculture Research at the University of Toronto! This event brings together research teams to showcase ongoing work and explore future opportunities for integrating rooftop agriculture into Toronto’s green infrastructure. Register here: www.eventbrite.ca/e/exploring-...
eventbrite.ca
Exploring Rooftop Agriculture Research at the University of Toronto
Guided tour and presentations on field research conducted at UofT
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Marney Isaac @marneyisaac.bsky.social · 16/09/2025
Our research program on urban and peri-urban agriculture is now on IG. Give us a follow! @urbanagroecology And for more info on research progress and outputs, check: utsc.utoronto.ca/foodandfarm/... @sshrc-crsh.canada.ca @utsc.utoronto.ca #urbanagriculture #climatemitigation #agroecology
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Megan Blake @geofoodie.bsky.social · 10/09/2025
New starter pack! go.bsky.app/9mZrrpQ
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Marney Isaac @marneyisaac.bsky.social · 17/07/2025
Great day sampling our new agricultural trials. Gas fluxes, leaf physiology, and crop trait strategies under various organic amendments in different urban and peri-urban environments… #agroecology #urbanagriculture
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IPES-Food @ipes-food.org · 07/07/2025
Industrial food systems are driving fossil fuel use – and vice versa. @foodtank.bsky.social covers our #FuelToFork report, unpacking how food's fossil fuel addiction drives risks for climate, ecology, health, and food access – and how we can break the cycle. 🔗 foodtank.com/news/2025/07...
foodtank.com
The Food System’s Fossil Fuel Crisis
From fertilizer to packaging, fossil fuels are flooding the food system—this report shows what it will take to stop it.
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Agroecology-Transect @agtransect.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
🌱 How can we grow a more resilient future, together? Join Roots of Resilience – Enhancing #Biodiversity through #Agroecology 📅 Wed 9 July ⏲️ 10–12 CET 🔗 www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/agroecolog... Explore research, farmer insights & policy with #AgroecologyTRANSECT #HorizonEurope
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Stockholm Environment Institute @sei.org · 23/06/2025
Agroecology and degrowth are more than ideas at Jonai Farms – they shape how food is grown, shared and valued. This story looks at what it takes to build a just food system, starting from the ground up. Read the full feature by SEI's Aziliz Le Rouzo: www.sei.org/features/agr...
sei.org
Agroecology can’t grow on broken ground: farmers leading the degrowth transition
Jonai Farms shows how agroecology and degrowth can work hand in hand to build just, resilient food systems rooted in care, community and ecological balance.
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Agroecology-Transect @agtransect.bsky.social · 24/06/2025
How can agroecology build a more biodiverse, resilient EU food system? 🌱Join our #AgroecologyTRANSECT Virtual Roadshow! 📅 Wed 9 Jul, 10–12 CET👇 www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/agroecolog... 🦋 Explore real-world solutions for #biodiversity & #ClimateResilience with visual storytelling & dynamic discussion
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Marney Isaac @marneyisaac.bsky.social · 24/06/2025
Honoured to share that our paper on the environmental and social benefits of diversified agriculture won the Frontiers Planet Prize! Proud of the team & thrilled that these important agricultural systems are recognized. www.frontiersplanetprize.org #agroecology www.science.org/doi/full/10....
science.org
Joint environmental and social benefits from diversified agriculture
Agricultural simplification continues to expand at the expense of more diverse forms of agriculture. This simplification, for example, in the form of intensively managed monocultures, poses a risk to ...
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Marney Isaac @marneyisaac.bsky.social · 30/05/2025
Shame on Metrolinx for not having the foresight to plan for urban trees. My neighbourhood tree is coming down today. This is not NIMBYism, this is just bad planning and lack of any actual serious consultation. @toronto.ca @petertabuns.bsky.social ‪@juliedabrusin.bsky.social #metrolinx
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Marney Isaac @marneyisaac.bsky.social · 03/05/2025
A mayor, a provincial minister and a member of parliament, all out to support the expansion of urban agriculture in hydro corridors! 👏 #agroecology #toronto
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Prof Ian Hall @ianhall.bsky.social · 03/05/2025
Increasing urban vegetation by 30% could have prevented 30% of all heat-related deaths, potentially saving up to ~1.1 million lives globally from 2000 to 2019, according to a study of over 11,000 urban areas. Any lessons for the future… www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...
thelancet.com
Estimating the urban heat-related mortality burden due to greenness: a global modelling study
This modelling study suggests that increased greenness could substantially reduce the heat-related mortality burden. Preserving and expanding greenness might be potential strategies to lower ambient t...
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Marney Isaac @marneyisaac.bsky.social · 24/04/2025
New field site visits today! Launching research trials in urban and peri-urban agriculture with amendment and crop diversity trials in hydro corridors, next to major highways and right in the city, sampling everything from microbial communities, to soil health, to pollinators, to yield. #toronto
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Marney Isaac @marneyisaac.bsky.social · 22/04/2025
Great to see our paper on diversified agricultural systems, published in Science, selected as a 2025 national Frontiers Planet Prize champion! This global dataset was curated by an amazing team of researchers working in agriculture and sustainability. www.frontiersplanetprize.org/news/nsh4fah...
frontiersplanetprize.org
A More Diverse Agriculture for the Future of Our Planet — Frontiers Planet Prize
Zia Mehrabi from the University of Colorado Boulder, National Champion for the USA, presents groundbreaking research from a global collaboration showing how increasing on-farm diversity improves both ...
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Jennifer Clapp 🇨🇦 @jennifer-clapp.bsky.social · 15/04/2025
CAUT writes: “Travellers leaving or returning to Canada, particularly those traveling to the U.S., are increasingly vulnerable to preclearance zones and border searches that may compromise research confidentiality and academic freedom,” www.politico.com/news/2025/04...
politico.com
Canada professors association tells academics to stay away from US
The announcement comes as President Donald Trump continues to crack down on higher education and international students.
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Marney Isaac @marneyisaac.bsky.social · 04/04/2025
“Coffee companies around the world… have been hit by record coffee prices owing to unfavourable weather conditions in growing regions” Lessen the pain of tariffs with agroforestry - with the right management #agroforestry can reduce climatic stressors in coffee farms. www.ft.com/content/a3ce...
ft.com
US coffee drinkers in for double shot of pain from tariffs
Beans and chocolate prices set to rise as a result of new levies
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Marney Isaac @marneyisaac.bsky.social · 01/04/2025
I appreciate this article as it weaves a thread through multiple ideologies merging in the current chaos of the US. But the article ends where it could have started, effective nature based approaches to agriculture- conservation agriculture (or agroecology- moving past top-down solution narratives)
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Wolfgang Cramer @cramer-bondeau.fr · 22/03/2025
J'ai créé un pack de démarrage de mes journalistes, médias et communicateurs francophones préférés qui s'engagent à fournir des informations sur la crise de la biodiversité, le changement climatique et l'environnement en général. go.bsky.app/Djzs6VD
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Marney Isaac @marneyisaac.bsky.social · 19/03/2025
This is excellent advice! I’ve found myself in some of these situations when talking with journalists, and this article clearly outlines these tensions and why they may arise. Those interested in communicating your scientific findings to the public will find this useful!
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Marney Isaac @marneyisaac.bsky.social · 15/03/2025
Crop traits are altered through domestication. This shapes crop suitability to the soil environment, and informs variety selection. Data in our new paper 👇 It’s time for serious investment into breeding seed supplies for organic and agroecological systems. link.springer.com/article/10.1...
link.springer.com
Interacting effects of crop domestication and soil resources on leaf and root functional traits - Planta
Main Conclusion Domestication altered wheat leaf functional trait expression, and soil amendments altered root trait expression. These alterations shape crop suitability to stressed environments, and ...
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Marney Isaac @marneyisaac.bsky.social · 08/03/2025
As a women scientist, I know very well that many women carved a path for me. As a member of Lebanese diaspora, I know very well that women in my family struggled for me to make my own life. As a mother, I try to instil fortitude. Reflection is critical. #IWD2025 for all cis and trans women
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IPES-Food @ipes-food.org · 08/03/2025
♀️🌍 #InternationalWomensDay reminds us WOMEN FEED THE WORLD! Women produce 60% of food in the Global South—yet are denied land, finance & power. “If we don’t get more gender equality in #foodsystems, we’ll keep skewing toward profit—away from sustainability & feeding people.” #IWD2025
youtube.com
WOMEN GROW, COOK & SUSTAIN OUR FOOD. IT'S TIME TO RECOGNIZE THEM
YouTube video by IPES-Food
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Katharine Hayhoe @katharinehayhoe.com · 05/03/2025
Climate change is an environmental issue – but it’s not only an environmental issue. It affects our health, and the economy. It impacts food, water, and resources. It contributes to geopolitical instability and even conflict. Here are the Canadian scientists who study this.
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Marney Isaac @marneyisaac.bsky.social · 24/02/2025
Great article covering how Toronto’s Black farmers are tackling Toronto’s food crisis. And an important call to include urban farmers in the city’s food agenda! #urbanagriculture #agroecology #Toronto Read here 👇 nowtoronto.com/news/how-tor...
nowtoronto.com
How Toronto’s Black farmers are tackling the city’s food crisis, one farm at a time - NOW Toronto
As Toronto faces a food insecurity crisis, Black communities are overwhelmingly impacted by the emergency despite their role in agriculture.
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Marney Isaac @marneyisaac.bsky.social · 19/02/2025
I’ll be a science storyteller at @storycollider.bsky.social next week! In their live recorded shows, the Story Collider reveals the role that #science plays in all of our lives through the art of personal storytelling. Happy to be sharing a #research story spanning multiple years on mapping #roots!
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Jennifer Clapp 🇨🇦 @jennifer-clapp.bsky.social · 18/02/2025
Today is publication day! I explain how agricultural inputs - which weren't even widely traded market goods 200 years ago - have become giant industries dominated by just a handful of transnational firms today. mitpress.mit.edu/978026255170... Many thanks to those who helped me along the way!
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IPES-Food @ipes-food.org · 12/02/2025
Important piece by our @jennifer-clapp.bsky.social Only political will can end world #hunger & confront its major drivers : conflict, poverty, inequality, economic shocks & escalating climate change. There's enough food to go around. But a lack of political will to get it to the hungry.
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Marney Isaac @marneyisaac.bsky.social · 31/01/2025
Lawsuit recasts agriculture’s role in climate policy. Kudos to these farmers for centring “…farmers as crucial advocates for protecting the climate.” Article by ‪ @charlotteblattner.bsky.social @kariningold.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
Why farmers are beginning to take their government to court over climate change
How a Swiss lawsuit is recasting agriculture’s role in climate policy.
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Global Alliance for the Future of Food @futureoffood.bsky.social · 28/01/2025
What’s next for #agroecology at #COP30? We’re unpacking lessons from the 2024 biodiversity, climate, and desertification COPs—and exploring pathways to link food security, biodiversity, and climate action. 📅 Don’t miss our webinar with @agroecology.bsky.social on 18 Feb: zoom.us/webinar/regi...
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Jennifer Clapp 🇨🇦 @jennifer-clapp.bsky.social · 24/01/2025
go.bsky.app/GykU1LD Sharing this starter pack again on #politicaleconomy of #food with new folks on the list! Let me know if you should be added to the list.
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Journal of Applied Ecology @jappliedecology.bsky.social · 23/01/2025
Intercropping generates trait plasticity, which corresponds with year-to-year stability in productivity 📊 Suggests that results have implications for applying intercropping in the sustainable management of food-production systems 🌾🌏 🧪 🔗 buff.ly/4gVeKeQ
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Richard Waite @waiterich.bsky.social · 20/01/2025
If you’re interested in finding people who post about food, land, nature, and/or climate, and not only call out problems but also talk about solutions, check out this starter pack:
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Marney Isaac @marneyisaac.bsky.social · 17/01/2025
With the winter comes farm planning, administrative work and other responsibilities. I’m reposting our work on #farmer #well-being. And how important aspects of farmer well-being are overlooked when measuring indicators in #agriculture. Multidimensionality is key. link.springer.com/article/10.1...
link.springer.com
Multidimensional measures of farmer well-being: A scoping review - Agronomy for Sustainable Development
Determinants of farmer well-being can be derived from objective and subjective measures of social components, environmental sustainability indicators, and quality of life indices, as well as the multi...
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