David I Gustafson, PhD

David I Gustafson, PhD Food & Ag Supply Chain Resilience

Dr. Dave Gustafson serves on the Earth Knowledge Science Advisory Council as an independent scientist, providing expertise based on his broad portfolio of work focused on climate adaptation and resilience challenges in Food & Ag supply chains.

Dave worked 30 years in industry (Shell, Rhône-Poulenc, Monsanto), before retiring from Monsanto in 2014 as a Senior Science Fellow. Dave’s early career focused on predicting agricultural impacts on water quality. He subsequently developed new modeling approaches to pollen-mediated gene flow and the population genetics of insect and weed resistance.

Beginning in 2007, Dave began leading efforts to understand climate adaptation and mitigation imperatives in the global agri-food system, including two internal advisory panels he led at Monsanto. He has served on various national and international teams working on this topic, including the Executive Secretariat of the US Government’s National Climate Assessment Development & Advisory Committee, which issued the third National Climate Assessment in 2014.

Dave is an Adjunct Research Faculty member in Biological Systems Engineering at Washington State University. He serves as a Project Director for the Conservation Technology Information Center, Chair of the Board of Directors at Stone Environmental, and Vice President of the Board of Directors of the Ag Innovations Institute.

Dave is now co-leading a USDA-funded research project at Colorado State University, Stakeholder-engaged modeling, data science, and machine learning for more resilient and sustainable animal protein food systems. The long-term goal is to develop an innovative data-driven modeling framework to evaluate interventions intended to mitigate trade-offs between resilience and sustainability in these systems.

During 2017-2022, Dave co-led a USDA-funded project at the Agricultural & Food Systems Institute, Fruit & Vegetable Supply Chains: Climate Adaptation & Mitigation Opportunities. He now serves on a follow-up USDA-funded project at Washington State University, which employs an innovative approach to climate analogs to better inform and train Extension personnel who advise US specialty crop growers.

Dave earned degrees in Chemical Engineering at Stanford University (BS, 1980) and the University of Washington (PhD, 1983).