Rachel Schattman – Mitchell Center Leadership Council
Assistant Professor of Sustainable Agriculture
Rachel Schattman is an assistant professor of sustainable agriculture at the School of Food and Agriculture, and associate at the Climate Change Institute. She has been a faculty fellow at the Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions since 2020.
Schattman’s research focuses on the intersection between agriculture and climate change, with a particular eye towards making farms more resilient to the adverse effects of climate change. She uses both quantitative and qualitative research methods, including applied Participatory Action Research, a research approach that actively collaborates with community members or stakeholders—mainly farmers, but also agriculture advisors, federal agencies, and private companies—to identify and address research topics. Schattman’s research aims to lead to agricultural resilience in a changing climate while protecting natural resources.
As the head of the UMaine Agroecology Lab, she researches how intercropping can reduce the uptake of PFAS into edible crops, and how home food production can help alleviate hunger. Schattman also leads an interdisciplinary team of researchers studying the impacts of climate change on wild blueberry ecosystems and economics. This research will deliver management recommendations to the wild blueberry industry, particularly in socioeconomically challenged rural communities.
Growing up in rural Vermont, Schattman spent a lot of time outside with her family, hiking and cross country skiing, and as a high schooler she worked on dairy and vegetable farms. Through her childhood experiences, she became interested in the intersection between people and the environment, which led her to pursue a career in sustainability research.
Schattman said that she appreciates the Mitchell Center’s commitment to working with humanities, and the way that the center lifts up different types of knowledge both inside and outside of academia to solve sustainability problems collaboratively. She joined the Mitchell Center Leadership Council to continue their work with graduate student research, mentorship, and networking, and brings her perspective as a researcher who straddles both natural and social sciences, and one of the only members who focuses on agricultural research.
Schattman teaches cropping systems and sustainable food systems. She leads the Climate Adaptation and Mitigation Fellowship, where she works with farms to develop adaptation and mitigation plans for their farms. She continues to work with the robust network of farmer alumni that developed through the program, and is currently leading three active programs across the Midwest and Northeast. She also works closely with the Wild Blueberry Commission of Maine, and companies like Wyman’s Blueberries and is a researcher at the Maine Agricultural and Forest Experiment Station.