CAWR Newsletter

March 2019

Our monthly newsletters are an easy way to keep up-to-date with new developments at our research centre. From successful project bids to upcoming events, our newsletter informs you on how we are 'driving innovative transdisciplinary research on resilient food and water systems.'

Professor Martin Wolfe was an esteemed colleague and a friend to us. Martin died peacefully at home earlier this month and we shall miss him dearly. 

 Martin did research on agroforestry, intercrops, crop populations, evolutionary plant breeding, and more at his Suffolk farm Wakelyns. Working with diversity was at the heart of Martin’s approach. This was evident on his farm where many fruit and nut bearing trees would divide annually cropped alleys of cereals. Reversing the dominant trend in industrial plant breeding, Martin encouraged high levels of diversity within annual crops themselves – most notably in the cereal populations that Martin developed in his role as Principal Scientific Advisor to the Organic Research Centre (ORC). 

Martin came to Wakelyns farm in Suffolk after a distinguished career as a plant pathologist, first at the Plant Breeding Institute in Cambridge and then in Zurich where he held the Chair of Plant Pathology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. He joined CAWR in 2016 and shared his expertise widely and with enthusiasm.

He was a great mentor full of ideas and energy. His pioneering research on evolutionary plant breeding will remain a guiding inspiration to us on how to generate the diversity we need to adapt to climate change and eat a healthy diet of diverse nutritious foods.  Martin’s generous spirit will continue to live in our hearts and minds.

If you wish to donate to St Elizabeth Hospice in memory of Martin, please click here. 

News

Focus on CAWR: Special Edition now available! 

AGM of the Organic Growers Alliance 

Francis Rayns attended the Annual General Meeting of the Organic Growers Alliance which is a network of growers from across the UK that organises regular events concerned with practical organic fruit and vegetable production, who publish a quarterly organic horticultural journal. We are collaborating with several of their members within the Organic-PLUS project and hope to use their networks to disseminate the findings. The AGM was held at Rhos Market Garden and after the meeting, despite the heavy rain, there was a farm tour, focussing on their polytunnel production.

Two recent pieces by AgroecologyNow! affiliate and CAWR Honorary Research Fellow Doug Gurian-Sherman

CAWR Honorary Research Fellow Dr. Doug Gurian-Sherman co-authored two recent pieces speaking to positive approaches to the climate crisis, food, and agriculture.

One piece, “Missing Pathways to 1.5°C: The Role of the Land Sector in Ambitious Climate Action”,  was prepared with CLARA, a consortium of advocates, faith-based organisations and scientists concerned with climate mitigation and adaptation. It emphasises climate solutions that put the needs of people and planet first, especially the role that forests and improved agricultural practices can play.

Another piece, done as part of the Agroecology Research-Action Collective (ARC) in North America, responds to recent transformative climate proposals in the U.S., outlining “The Need for a Food and Agriculture Platform in the Green New Deal”. Colin Anderson and Jahi Chappell are also members of ARC and signatories of the letter composed by Gurian-Sherman and colleagues.

Sustainable Flood Resilience in Refugee Camps: Combining Sustainable Drainage with WASH 

Watch this video to see how Sue Charlesworth is implementing sustainable drainage at Gawalian refugee camp in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq to address surface water.

Agroecology and Food Sovereignty: Multimedia Outcomes Now available Online at AgroecologyNow.com

Several multimedia publications/resources on agroecology and food sovereignty are now available for download including: an overview of community supported agriculture across Europe; an animation on agroecology and climate change; a documentary project on Millets in Africa; and a report by the Landworkers’ Alliance on agroecology, scale and farm productivity. Created through a collaboration with civil society organisations and researchers in Europe, these resources can be shared with your communities, networks, organizations, with policy-makers, in classrooms, social movements, etc. Browse through our full list of materials by clicking here.

Legumes to build fertility in glasshouses

Our work with legumes for the EU Horizon 2020 TRUE project continues. The TRUE team have been assessing novel green manure plants sown in a polytunnel in autumn for their ability to suppress weeds and build soil fertility. Green manure crops are somewhat underused in greenhouses and polytunnels which often rely on imported fertility, so we are investigating whether quick-growing legume crops could be a solution to this. Read more on the TRUE website by clicking here.

AgroecologyNow! at the American Association of Geographers Meeting in DC

We are co-organising a stream of sessions on agroecology transitions-transformations with ARC (Agroecology Research Action Collective) at the American Association of Geographers in Washington, DC in the first week of April 2019. Our AgroecologyNow! sessions will include 12 papers, a panel and a book launch featuring two CAWR books: Beginning to End Hunger and Everyday Experts: How People’s Knowledge can Transform the Food System. Our team is presenting three papers – on: 1) Mapping Agroecology; 2) The Three D’s of Deepening Knowledge for Agroecology; 3) Domains of Transition-Transformation. Visit our webpage for more information by clicking here. 

The International Terraced Landscapes Alliance 

CAWR was well represented at the recent IV World Congress of the International Terraced Landscapes Alliance in the Canary Islands. Since its foundation in 2010, the International Terraced Landscapes Alliance (ITLA) has been committed to recovering the memory of the terraces and reinventing them as places that can be used to meet new social demands for food, agriculture, leisure, education, social interaction, quality of life, and socio-ecological resilience in the face of rapid change, including climate change. The IV ITLA World Congress focused on Re-enchanting Terraces. CAWR’s Honorary Research Fellows Dr. Timmi Tilmann and Dr. Maruja Salas co-designed and facilitated a participatory learning process and field trips to different islands of the Canaries for participants to explore the links between terraces, livelihoods and culture. Professor Michel Pimbert joined them in La Gomera for a series of round table discussions and presentations of lessons learnt from field visits and other research. For more details click here. 

Congratulations to Margaret!

One of our PhD students, Margaret Mezue successfully resubmitted her thesis and has been awarded her Doctorate. The title of her thesis was 'Investigating the potential of using simple SuDS in informal settlements in Lagos, Nigeria to transition into a sustainable surface water management system'.

Congratulations from CAWR. 

Deccan Development Society

Whilst in South India, Professor Michel Pimbert participated in two events organised by the Deccan Development Society (DDS), one of CAWR’s participatory research partners. Both events celebrated peoples’ knowledge and their work to promote social and environmental justice:

1. The ‘Jai Chandiram Memorial 2nd National Community Media Film Festival. Launched by DDS Community Media Trust in 2017, this unique film festival invited more than 20 films made by the community filmmakers from across the country. The film festival created a unique platform for grassroots filmmakers from rural and urban communities to share their films and network with similar groups across India. Over a 150 students in Communications & Film from four major universities in Hyderabad participated in the event and its panel discussion on 'Can community media claim a space in global media?'

2. The 20 year anniversary of the Annual Mobile Biodiversity Festival of the Deccan Development Society. The Mobile Biodiversity Festival was celebrated over a period of one month throughout Medak district in the State of Telengana (South India). It took the form of a carnival in which women and men farmers decorated a number of bullock carts with seeds and other farming motives and paraded them through the streets of all the villages in this region. The Mobile Biodiversity Festival  was joined by singers, dancers, and other folk artists. Peoples’ knowledge, the conservation of biodiversity, and food sovereignty were foregrounded throughout the events. The concluding ceremony was held on 13th February 2019 at Machanoor village, with speeches and expressions of solidarity from guests from the Telengana Government, media and academia from India, Australia and the UK.

Environmental Justice workshop in India 

CAWR was a co-organiser of a workshop on Environmental Justice workshop as a follow up to a research project on hydropower and climate change in the Eastern Himalayas. The scope of the workshop included discussions on environmental justice and ecological economics as an overarching framework and water infrastructure in the Northeast India. 

Articles in the Media

Ezinne Merianchris Emeana wrote an article 'Developing Sustainable ICT Driven Solutions and Agroecology.' Click here to read. 

Innovative Farmers wrote an article about our BioRich project on how their trial works and what their future plans. Click here to read. 

University research to help save Britain’s ash trees. Click here to read.

Sustainable drainage systems project may address surface water management issues for refugees worldwide. Click here to read.

Improving Organic Animal Farming

Recently Awarded Projects 

Evaluating people-environment trade-offs through low-tech intensification of livestock management in communal grazing systems in South Africa

Funder: BBSRC | PI: James Bennett 

Value: £789,256 | Duration: 2 years starting 01/04/2019

Ash Dieback Biochar

Funder: Lob’s Charity | PI: Francis Rayns

Value: £75,000 | Duration: 4 years starting 01/05/2019

Power to Change 

Funder: The Real Farming Trust  | PI: Luke Owen

Value: £10,250 | Duration: 9 months starting 01/04/2019

Events 

SEMINAR: Artful Research Cultures: a global south-north exchange between Centre for Complex Systems in Transition (CST) at Stellenbosch University and CAWR with Dr Rika Preiser + Eben Appies

4th April 2019 | 11:00-13:00 

Live streamed via Facebook and recorded for our YouTube channel

Click here to book your place

SEMINAR: Topical Issues for the Transition to Agroecology with Robert Biel

18th April 2019 | 11:30-12:30

Live streamed via Facebook and recorded for our YouTube channel

Click here to book your place

Research in South America: Challenges and Opportunities

Join us for a day to discuss key challenges researchers and communities have to face in South America to support the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and promote Water and Food Sovereignty.

30th April 2019 | 09:00-16:00

Click here to book your place or find out more information here. 

Publications 

Dieppois, B., Pohl, B., Crétat, J., Eden, J., New, M., Rouault, M., Lawler, D. (2019) Southern African summer-rainfall variability, and its teleconnections, oninterannual tointerdecadal timescales in CMIP5 model. Climate Dynamics, in press.

Gwiriri, L. C., Bennett, J., Mapiye, C., Marandure, T., & Burbi, S. (Accepted/In press). Constraints to the sustainability of a ‘systematised’ approach to livestock marketing amongst smallholder cattle producers in South Africa. International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability, in press.

Michler, L.M., Treydte, A.C., Hayat, H., Lemke, S. (2019) Marginalised herders: social dynamics and natural resource use in the fragile environment of the Richtersveld National Park, South Africa. Environmental Development, Vol. 29, March 2019, 29-43.