Multifaceted research on the social and environmental impacts of diversified agriculture from institutions around the world, including the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences(CAES), has been named one of three International Champions of the Frontiers Planet Prize.

An initiative of the Frontiers Research Foundation, the Frontiers Planet Prize recognizes transformational research that shows the greatest potential to address the world’s most urgent environmental challenges.

“The 2025 International Champions embody the spirit of the Frontiers Planet Prize: bold science in service of humanity and the planet,” said Jean-Claude Burgelman, director of the Frontiers Planet Prize. “This prize is building a global community of researchers who are not only advancing knowledge but actively shaping the path to a sustainable future.”

Frontiers Planet Prize honors global sustainability research

The International Champions of the third annual Frontiers Planet Prize were announced on June 17 in Villars-sur-Ollon, Switzerland, during an awards ceremony at the 2025 Villars Symposium. As the world’s largest science competition to enhance planetary health and mobilize the academic community, the prize, established by the Frontiers Research Foundation in 2022, fosters interdisciplinary and intergenerational collaboration among communities, scientists and youth leaders to help scale real-world solutions.

The U.S. winner, led by Zia Mehrabi of the University of Colorado Boulder, included a team of 62 researchers from institutions across North America, South America, Europe, Africa and Asia who contributed to the winning article “Joint environmental and social benefits from diversified agriculture.”

Among the study’s authors are UGA entomologist William Snyder and former UGA postdoctoral researcher Olivia Smith, now an assistant professor of horticulture at Michigan State University and leader of the Smith BIRDS Lab.

The research, published in the journal Science in April 2024, examines the outcomes of agricultural diversification and its potential to deliver simultaneous environmental and social benefits. Diversification in this context involves practices such as growing multiple crops and animal species, conserving soil and water, and enhancing natural habitat on farms.

The study uses a massive dataset drawn from 2,655 farms across 11 countries and five continents, combining qualitative field insights with rigorous statistical modeling across 24 datasets. Farms spanned a range of diversification levels, allowing researchers to directly measure outcomes of different farming practices.

According to the international prize announcement from the Frontiers Research Foundation, the study “offers the first cross-cultural evidence that diversified farming systems can reduce environmental harm, strengthen rural livelihoods, and help agriculture operate within planetary boundaries.”

The nine planetary boundaries are climate change, ocean acidification, stratospheric ozone depletion, biogeochemical flows in the nitrogen cycle, excess global freshwater use, land system change, the erosion of biosphere integrity, chemical pollution, and atmospheric aerosol loading. This framework is based on scientific evidence that human actions, especially those of industrialized societies since the Industrial Revolution, have become the main driver of global environmental change, according to the Frontiers Research Foundation.

Birds and biodiversity for better yields

Former UGA postdoctoral researcher Olivia Smith, now an assistant professor in the Department of Horticulture at Michigan State University and leader of the Smith BIRDS Lab. (Submitted photo)

UGA’s involvement began with Smith’s CAES study that identified the food safety risks posed by wild birds due to agricultural intensification published in the Journal of Applied Ecology in August 2020. She is listed as a top contributor to the Frontier Planet Prize-winning article, helping with conceptualization, investigation, visualization, writing, review and editing.

“In my doctoral work, we were interested in how farm diversification — particularly integration of livestock and crop farming — influenced birds on farms and their impact on production and people. We were focusing on conservation of birds, specifically if birds can help control pest insects, which of course can help improve crop yields, and whether wild birds were causing food safety issues,” Smith said. “In the latter half of my Ph.D., we also surveyed farmers to see what they thought about the birds on the farm and how that influenced their well-being. That’s how we got the well-being data.”

Smith’s co-advisor on her doctoral project, Jeb P. Owen, an associate professor at Washington State University, was also a part of the co-author team on the award-winning paper.

“The project was looking for datasets conducted around the world that looked at biodiversity, crop diversification and human well-being. Our study had to fit into those criteria and was one of the couple dozen globally that did. That’s how we got involved in the first place," Smith said. "I got really interested in the project, so I started volunteering to do a little bit more. I joined the core team of five people (including me) and gathered landscape data for all the studies, among other things like making figures.”

Snyder, whose work focuses on in finding natural solutions to problems in species conservation, sustainable agriculture and human health, helped with collecting, analyzing and validating data; writing, review and editing work included in the winning paper.

The study finds that diversified farming systems — those that integrate multiple crops, animal species, and ecological practices like soil conservation and habitat enhancement — support higher biodiversity compared to monocultures. These practices did not reduce yield, often maintaining or improving yields, and diversification was also associated with improved food access and security, especially among small producers.

“This paper brought together different studies where researchers were looking at more than one diversification practice — no till, allowing natural habitats, livestock — and how humans benefit from that, whether it is in terms of yields, human well-being or social connection between farms,” Snyder said.

International collaboration on farm diversification

Smith is gratified that the wide-ranging research included in the final paper supports what she has seen in her own work.

"It shows, with a much larger dataset than before, that farm diversification can be beneficial environmentally and for people. It’s been thoroughly established that it’s good for the environment, but not as clearly connected to human well-being. People often think diversification will come at the expense of production and well-being, but we found that’s not really the case,” Smith added.

Working on a project with so many collaborators was both challenging and enlightening.

“Each study had its own objectives and things they looked at, so figuring out how to create a coherent dataset across them all was a big undertaking,” Smith said. “I think this also was an interesting template on how to do this type of collaborative work.”

Each of the three internationals award comes with a $1 million prize to be shared among the winning authors to expand their work. “That funding will allow the team to continue to work together in other ways,” Snyder said.

Learn more about research opportunities and programs of study in the UGA Department of Entomology at ent.uga.edu.