HUMAN PRACTICES
Human Practices is a crucial part of our project as we wanted to develop a deep understanding of how our project affects the world in terms of sustainable development, what the risks of RhyzUp are, who benefits from it, and how it could ultimately be implemented.
It was also important for us to contribute to education as part of our ongoing efforts in promoting synthetic biology.
Our work in Human Practices can be divided into the following categories: Sustainable Development, Integrated Human Practices, Entrepreneurship and Implementation, and Education. In all these areas, interviewing with stakeholders has been central in developing RhyzUp.
We had the chance to record many of these interviews. Through this, we were able to show the reality of farmers and expert opinions on screen and provide more engaging visual content, thus having a bigger impact with our Human Practices efforts. All the recordings can be found in the Interviews chapter.
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
By conducting extensive research on sustainability in agriculture and talking to farmers, a crop protection expert and an agrometeorologist, we were able to gain a thorough comprehension of how sustainability and agriculture are linked. Once we had a good understanding of sustainability in agriculture, we assessed our project’s effects on broader societal issues. As an innovative tool to combat drought and a range of other threats to agriculture, RhyzUp targets several of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
These can be found in the Human Practices subchapter on Sustainable Development.
INTEGRATED HUMAN PRACTICES
Talking with people who would ultimately be affected by RhyzUp helped shape our project. We assessed the needs of farmers through research and exchange, both in Switzerland and around the world. We also had a lot of input from scientists who provided valuable feedback and influenced the general direction of our project. In the Integrated Human Practices subfolder, you can find out how different stakeholders helped form our project. In addition, the Integrated Human Practices chapter includes several opinions on the regulation of GMOs in agriculture. We talked to associations critical of the commercial use of GMOs in agriculture, as well as associations pushing for the legalization of cisgenetically modified crops in Switzerland. To understand public attitudes towards GMO products, we spoke to an expert in consumer behavior. We also spoke to an ethics researcher to inquire about the ethical conflicts surrounding synthetic biology and sustainability in agriculture.
ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND IMPLEMENTATION
By talking to farmers, agronomy experts and a company that already sells products based on rhizobacteria, we were able to get a good idea of how RhyzUp could be used outside the lab. We also tried to estimated the current demand for a product like ours and whether this demand will increase in the future. Additionally, we checked the current regulation and approval in Switzerland for our project as a potential product. All of this can be found in the Entrepreneurship and Implementation subfolder.
EDUCATION
In terms of education, we wanted to target different demographics and age groups. We did this by organizing talks, school lessons, workshops, and presentations for a variety of people ranging from politicians to school students. You can read more about this on the Education subpage.
Interviews
The Interviews subfolder contains recorded interviews with a handful of the stakeholders we spoke to. The interviews provided valuable insights into topics such as consumers’ perceptions of GMOs, agroecology and meteorology, the ethics of synthetic biology, and current challenges in agriculture. Go check it out!