Miguel A. Altieri received a BS in Agronomy from the University of Chile, a M.Sc from the National University of Colombia and a Ph.D in Entomology from the University of Florida. He has been a Professor of Agroecology at UC Berkeley since 1981 in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management. In 2015, he received a Doctor Honoris Causa from the Catholic University of Lorain, Belgium. Dr. Altieri served as a Scientific Advisor to the Latin American Consortium on Agroecology and Development (CLADES), Chile an NGO network promoting agroecology as a strategy for small farm sustainable development in the region. He also served for 4 years as the General Coordinator for the United Nations Development Programme’s Sustainable Agriculture Networking and Extension Programme which aimed at capacity building on agroecology among NGOs and the scaling-up of successful local sustainable agricultural initiatives in Africa, Latin America and Asia.

In addition, he was the chairman of the NGO committee of the Consultative Group on International Agriculture Research. He also was Director of the US-Brasil Consortium on Agroecology and Sustainable Rural Development (CASRD) an academic-research exchange program involving students and faculty of UC Berkeley, University of Nebraska, UNICAMP and Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. He was advisor to the FAO-GIAHS program (Globally Ingenious Agricultural Heritage System) a program devoted at identifying and dynamically conserving traditional farming systems in the developing world. He  also served for 6 years as the President of the Latin American Scientific Society of Agroecology. He is the author of more than 250 publications, and numerous books including Agroecology: The Science of Sustainable Agriculture and Biodiversity, Pest Management in Agroecosystems and Agroecology and the Search for a Truly Sustainable Agriculture.