Position: Agriculture Symbiosis Research Assistant
Compensation: $18/hour
Hours: 10—15/week
Location: Olympia or remote/hybrid
Job Type: Paid Internship
Timeline: 1/30/23 – 6/2/23

About the Center for Sustainable Infrastructure
The Center for Sustainable Infrastructure’s (CSI) mission is to catalyze state-of-the-art sustainable infrastructure solutions that help communities of every kind thrive economically, socially, and environmentally. CSI is a nonprofit innovator that bridges divides to catalyze community-driven infrastructure solutions that broadly benefit people, local economies, and the planet.

We help diverse communities and policymakers in the Pacific Northwest design sustainable, practical infrastructure solutions that offer replicable models for advancing economic prosperity, environmental quality, and social equity together.

What is Agricultural Symbiosis?
Agricultural symbiosis is a 21st century term for a very old practice – using every resource to the fullest. As long as farmers have fed food scraps to livestock, or used manure to fertilize crops, they’ve been practicing agricultural symbiosis. But new science and understanding have revealed exciting new possibilities that offer greater economic value and sustainability for Washington agriculture.

The idea – that farms, forests, and downstream processors can generate economic value by sharing and re-using water, heat, and organic materials – is being taken to promising new levels, contributing to business growth, improving energy efficiency, addressing the climate crisis, and helping maintain the state’s clean water and air. New value can be created across a supply chain by broadening this symbiotic relationship across multiple companies through enabling infrastructure and contracts. Sometimes this comes in the form of new products and revenues and at other times in the form of decreased costs, waste, and pollution.

About This Project
In 2021 Washington legislators established on a bipartisan basis a new “industrial symbiosis” program at the Department of Commerce to support symbiosis projects across industries. Initial funding has supported Pasco and other promising agricultural projects. Seeing the value of symbiosis to specifically support agriculture, the 2022 Legislature directed Washington State University and partners to study agricultural symbiosis opportunities and make recommendations to the Legislature by June 2023.

Through partners at the Center for Sustainable Infrastructure (CSI), Washington State University (WSU), and Pacific Northwest National Laboratories in the Tri-Cities, the study, a combination of research and stakeholder consultation, will “develop recommendations for increasing the economic value and sustainability of Washington’s agriculture sector through the use of industrial symbiosis principles.”

WSU is leading on the technical research side. CSI will be engaged in a concentrated in-depth stakeholder engagement effort built primarily around interviews from which we will synthesize case studies, project profiles, and policy recommendations.

Job Duties

  • Extracting information from rough interview notes, including:
    • Policy recommendations
    • Specific details describing operations and symbiotic relationships between farm/ag producers, food processors and other local partners
    • References to other leaders and projects in the ag symbiosis field
  • Coding and organization of policy recommendations and operations notes
  • Researching projects, companies, and practices to inform profiles/case studies for the report to the WA Legislature (Primarily local projects, but also some that are international)
  • Helping to clean up and organize databases of key people and projects/case studies in a format that will be useful for the final report
  • Assisting in building the structure of final report based on data and other report elements from our partners WSU and PNNL, project profiles, and policy recommendations—includes organizing, formatting, and light initial copy-editing of data and text.
  • Other related tasks that may arise

Qualifications

  • Strong data management and organization skills/experience
  • Self-directed and confident working independently
  • Background or interest in any of the following: industrial ecology, sustainable agriculture, waste-to-energy, resource recovery, organic recycling
  • Passion/strong interest in sustainability

Other Details
The intern will work independently but will meet weekly with CSI Operations Manager, Terry Carroll (either in-person or via Zoom). They may have the option to also join other CSI staff in project-related meetings, or to join and take notes during Zoom-based interviews with stakeholders and experts.

To Apply
Please submit a resume and cover letter explaining your interest and why you are qualified to terry@centerforsi.org by 9AM on 1/23.

Interviews will be held at CSI’s downtown Olympia office, or via Zoom the week of 1/23 with work beginning on 1/30.

Please feel free to direct any questions to terry@centerforsi.org.