Dr Simon Cook:

Dr Cook leads research to support change in agriculture. He has lived in the UK, Australia, Colombia and Sri Lanka and brings over 20 years experience from research and practice in Australia, Latin America, South-East Asia, Africa and the UK. He offers an ability to define complex conceptual problems and a specialization in spatial information technologies to help solve them. These are implemented through many contacts in academic, industrial, government and non-government institutes. His current focus is on global and regional scale problems of food and water, but he also has expertise in solving operational problems of soil science and agronomy at local to sub-field scale. 

Dr Cook’s research is outcome-focused. To meet the challenges of the 21st century, agriculture must change more rapidly than the world is changing around it, or be destined to become the last refuge of the poor or incompetent. Change in agriculture is enabled by reducing uncertainties caused by complexity and spatial variation. To tackle complexity, it is usually essential to use a strongly inter-disciplinary approach to re-examine the agricultural system from new perspectives, since prevailing views generally omit crucial elements that are necessary to move forward. To remove uncertainty caused by spatial variation, decision makers need instruments that use spatial information in practical decision making.  

The following four areas describe 4 areas of Dr Cook's research:

Defining water food and poverty

For the past 5 years Dr Cook has been coordinating projects in 10 river basins in Africa, Asia and Latin America (see map below). These basins contain a collective population of approximately 1 billion. The purpose of research is to identify the complex interactions between water and food systems, in order to identify specific interventions to support development.

These activities are known as the Basin Focal Projects of the CGIAR Challenge Program

for Food and Water (CPWF, www.waterandfood.org/). Details can be found at http://cpwfbfp.pbwiki.com/ These have produced almost 50 papers to date, with many more in the pipeline. One special journal issue has already been produced from the, and two further special issues of Water International are in preparation [for publication later in 2010], together with a book, Water, Food and Poverty, to be published by Taylor and Francis in March 2011. 

These projects are strongly inter-disciplinary and provide technical advisers to policy-makers with geographically specific advice about the water related causes of poverty and opportunities for change. Projects analyze the complex relationships between people, agriculture and water in major river basins of the world. Dr Cook's duties are to coordinate project teams from over 30 institutes. He is responsible for the overall vision and coherence of research that is essential to make a significant contribution to solving the global problems relating to water and food.

Dr Cook is able to develop this insight through a broad understanding of issues ranging from the biophysical, social and political sciences. Moreover, he has become able to apply these insights to change-supporting processes within basins.

The basin focal projects started in 2005 with a budget of approximately US$10m. They are delivering critical research insights to support global efforts to tackle the emerging problems of water and food crisis. In September 2008, several aspects of this research - from the Mekong, Volta, Sao Francisco and Karkheh basins - were presented at a highly acclaimed session of the World Water Congress in Montpellier. They appeared in March 2009 in a special issue of Water International. See Basin focal projects at World Water Congress 2008. Teams in the Indo-Ganges, Limpopo, Andes, Niger, Nile and Yellow River basins will deliver results at the end of 2009. These insights are needed urgently to help focus research and development towards the needs of the billions of people who are affected by worsening water and food crises.

Dr Cook has been involved in the Challenge Program for Water and Food since its inception in 2002. He contributed to the original proposal for this Challenge Program. Prior to coordinating the basin focal projects, he was the Leader for Theme 2 of the CPWF – Water and People in Catchments - and responsible for the oversight of approximately 20 projects.

 Site-specific crop insurance:

Dr Cook also leads a small team developing a novel method of Site specific insurance that is suitable for poor farmers in the tropics. Drought hits millions of poor farmers each year, and the risk of drought deprives many more of access to micro-finance, without which they cannot make basic investments in fertilizer, seed or infrastructure. Micro-finance is spreading fast throughout the world but farmers are excluded from because what they do is viewed as risky by insurers. By supporting the development of low-cost insurance, he hopes to enable micro-lending to many more small farmers who need it.

The method uses two sets of models to estimate drought risk. A climate generator provides simulated long-run weather data for virtually any site in the tropics. This is coupled to crop simulation models to indicate the correlation with yield loss. The method has been trialled in Central America and South East Asia. Negotiations are under way with a large NGO to investigate how to use it to outscale insurance beyond trial areas.

For more information go to Site specific insurance

Precision agriculture

Between 1993 and 2000, Dr Cook led the CSIRO Precision Agriculture Research Group in Australia. sutralia

Natural Resource mapping

to be completed

Background

Dr Simon Cook has a background in geography, soil science and agronomy. He trained at the Universities of Cambridge, Reading and Swansea in the U.K.  Since that time, has spent much of his career developing spatial information products to support agricultural decision-making at field, basin and global scale. He has over 17 years experience managing research projects.

Dr Cook joined CIAT in 2001 to lead the Land Use Project, a group of over 50 GIS specialists with projects in Latin America, South-East Asia and Africa. Since 2002, he has developed expertise in the area of food and water systems, as they affect rural development and poverty alleviation. Although based in Cali, Colombia, he has spent substantial periods in Asia and Africa and was based in Colombo, Sri Lanka, for 2 years.

Prior to joining CIAT, Dr Cook led the precision agriculture research group in CSIRO, Australia, based in Perth. With colleagues, his research there focussed on the development of precision agriculture techniques for the grains industry. See Precision Agriculture. Since 1991, he has researched innovative methods of soil and land resource mapping in Australia, S.E. Asia and Central America.

Academic qualifications

Dr Cook has the following qualifications:

• Bachelor of Science with Honours in Physical Geography from the University of Wales, UK, 1981
• Master of Science with Distinction in Pedology and Soil Survey from the University of Reading, UK, 1982.
• Doctor of Philosophy in Soil Science from the University of Cambridge, UK, 1989.

Applied research highlights

• Basin focal projects
• Bayesian network mapping. Poverty, soil variation
• Gamma radiometric soil mapping
• On-farm experimentation for precision agriculture

Related topics

Basin focal projects. Go to cpwfbfp.pbwiki.com/

BFP working papers Go to www.waterandfood.org/research/basin-focal-projects/bfp-publications.html

Site-specific insurance. Go to Site specific insurance

Precision agriculture. Go to Precision Agriculture

Contact:

s.cook@cgiar.org

simonernest@gmail.com

30 December 2008

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