CAWR Newsletter

June 2020

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.'

The views and opinions expressed in this newsletter are those of the contributors at the Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience (CAWR) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Coventry University.

News

Transition Theory and the states of transition enabling the development of a circular economy 

This webinar was held on 17 April, 2-4pm UK time and was based on a discussion of the circular economy and was given by Gijs Diercks from Drift, The Netherlands. The webinar focused on Transition Theory and the states of transition enabling the development of a circular economy. The Netherlands were used as the case study, but consideration was also given to its application elsewhere in the world. In an interesting presentation, Gijs used the X-curve concept to describe the multiple phases, and effort needed, to resolve chaos and eventually lead to stabilisation in the circular economy. 

Click here to view the webinar.

No Time for Justice? Food Policy and Emergency Thinking in the Brexit Moment  

This blog entry summarises a newly published journal article on our research on policy discourse on food and farming in the 18 months following the Brexit referendum. We found a lack of direct attention to many of the issues and dynamics that are central to food justice. Despite this, there were important examples that we found in our study that signalled to us five questions that can help policy actors and advocates reflexively “read for justice” in their work. Read this post to learn about the main results of our study. A video and other materials are also available here.

The BOND Project identifies good food practices in COVID-19

Many BOND beneficiaries such as COAG in Spain, KLT in Hungary, and Ecoruralis in Romania. are actively working with farmers and governments to establish COVID-19 agreeable systems and processes to facilitate local farmers. A new working group ‘to collect and share the good practices during the crisis and recommendations for after the crisis which could be shared with policy makers in food and farming systems’, envisioned by BOND Project’s ethical committee, was endorsed by the Board on 23 April 2020. A collective article was posted in the News section of the BOND website, and an increasing number of COVID-related stories are appearing in The Barn including immune-boosting honey deliveries in Moldova, a drive-in farmers’ market in Hungary and an agroecological food distribution system to socially excluded families in Spain.

A BOND MOU bringing together CUMA from France, CNA from Portugal, Ecoruralis from Romania and KLT from Hungary, grounded on the idea of relocalising agriculture (proximity agriculture) to produce transform and sell locally, is now active on COVID-19, and a ‘communiqué' is being drafted for wide circulation in the countries concerned, and at EU level. BOND is an H2020 EU funded project.

Slow Food Drive-Thru

The BOND Project, led by CAWR, seeks to bring organisation and networking to higher levels in Europe’s farming sector. BOND’s Hungarian partner, Kislépték, showcased this fantastic example of how networking and creative thinking has allowed nimble adaptation of a farmer’s market to operate within COVID-19 restrictions.

Instead of a fast food drive-thru, Kispaic Farmers Market has developed a drive-thru for slow food. The market in Dunakezi, Pest, was popular before the restrictions, but now it’s become famous for its drive-in system. Consumers can pre-order online, drive into the market, where an employee, wearing gloves and a mask, loads their ordered items into the car boot. The payment is made via a transparent packet through the car window, to minimise personal contact.

In this way farmers are still able to sell their produce and consumers still have access to quality, healthy food. A spokesperson for Kispaic states: ‘Every challenge can teach something about the adaptability of human nature. If it is needed the food supply can be solved during crises like the one that COVID-19 caused.’

For the full story, please visit BOND’s story repository ‘The Barn’ by clicking here. 

 Join the Plant Alert project

Plant Alert, a citizen science project run by CAWR in collaboration with the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland, has recently been highlighted in the news (The Times, the Daily Express, the Daily Telegraph, BBC Gardener’s Question Time, Horticultural Week) and on the Coventry University webpage.

The campaign has resulted in an increase in records of invasive ornamental plants in gardens that will be used for risk assessments and the prevention of future plant invasions. For more details and how to submit records please visit the website.

Liberate research and technology from growth-first ideology

Check out this new video and blog entry from Barbara Van Dyck that takes a critical view on research and technology to advocate for an orientation that enables “the pursuit of food-justice and the flourishing of all life”. Barbara joined the team in April 2020. 

EU Farm to Fork Strategy: Collective response from food sovereignty scholars

On June 5th, 23 scholar-activists from various academic institutions in the EU released their collective analysis of the EU Farm to Fork Strategy. The document (available in English, French, Spanish) commends the European Commission for putting together a vision for the future of our food systems but identifies a number of shortcomings that stand in the way of a fair, healthy and rights-based transition. It covers a range of issues including production, consumption, trade, research and innovation, and international cooperation. It points to key steps to put agroecology really at the centre of an ambitious EU Strategy. Relatedly, supporting the advocacy work of the Nyéléni Food Sovereignty Movement in Europe and Central Asia, this academic brief co-written by Jessica Duncan, Priscilla Claeys and CAWR HRF Marta Rivera-Ferre, prepared highlights the importance of food sovereignty for the EU Farm to Fork Strategy and the European New Green Deal.

Invisible urban farmers and a next season of hunger - participatory co-research during lockdown in Cape Town, South Africa

Local farmers distribute food to communities in Gugulethu. Photo: Vuyani Qamata, 2020

This Opinion Piece, published online in Critical Food Studies, An Observatory and Knowledge Commons through Text, Creativity and Action on 12th June 2020, reports on urban small-scale farmers' experiences during the Covid-19 lockdown in South Africa in April 2020. As this group of independent urban farmers are not regarded as part of essential services and therefore were not granted travel permits to reach their food gardens, they could not harvest their produce and vegetables were left rotting – at a time when local food needs and especially the demand for vegetables increased. The collective of urban farmers decided to unite and take action, in their quest to be seen, heard, and supported as suppliers of locally produced fresh food - not only during the pandemic, but also in future. South Africa imposed one of the strictest lockdowns in the world. This resulted in massive job losses, especially in the informal sector, with particularly people of colour depending on these informal jobs to meet their daily food needs. This case study sheds light on how the current crisis links to broader issues of ongoing racial, gender, and socio-economic inequalities and injustice.

This participatory co-research was initiated and driven by a collective of urban farmers from the townships Mfuleni, Gugulethu, Khayelitsha, and Philippi, organised in the Cape Town Urban Agriculture Forum, in collaboration with South African and international researchers and scholar-activists from the University of the Western Cape, South Africa, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany and Coventry University, UK.

The Opinion Piece presents preliminary findings from an international, digital covid-coping research project in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Indonesia. Results of the larger project will be published in the coming months.

Abstract compiled by Stefanie Lemke, co-author in this article. Click here to read the full article.

Coronavirus exposed fragility in our food system – it’s time to build something more resilient

Emma Burnett and Luke Owen wrote an article for The Conversation: Coronavirus exposed fragility in our food system – it’s time to build something more resilient.

Collaborative research on Women’s Communal Land Rights (WCLR) in Africa

Participants at the workshop Governing natural resources for food sovereignty, Entebbe Uganda, March 2019. Photo: Stefanie Lemke.

Collectively held land accounts for as much as 65% of the world’s land. An increasing number of African States are recognising customary land tenure in their legal and policy frameworks, and land tenure issues are gaining traction globally. Efforts to provide secure land tenure for communities through the formalisation of communal land ownership, while valuable and important, often have negative outcomes especially for women as their interests are not properly considered. In most customary land systems in Africa, women are still not recognised independent rights to land and rarely participate in decisions about communal land governance. Women are often not compensated for their losses in case of land dispossession, and may lose access if the relationship with a male partner no longer exists (in case of divorce or death of the husband). Further, individual land titling triggers competition between men and women - and between generations - over productive resources.

The objective of this collaborative action research project is to draw lessons from and scale up efforts to advance Women’s Communal Land Rights in East and West Africa, including a focus on the youth, with the longer term aim to achieve greater self-determination and participation of women and youth in communal land governance. It integrates four areas of work: capacity building, participatory research, horizontal dialogues, and action for social change. The main project activities entail: co-developing the research agenda and process; strengthening gender-transformative approaches and organisational capacity for research; documenting achievements and challenges with advancing WCLR; identifying role models and success stories; facilitating dialogue and social cohesion within households and communities, between generations, and with different actors; and achieving legal and policy change.

The project includes four partners: the farmers’ organisation Kenyan Peasants League (KPL); the Maasai pastoralist organisation Pastoral Women’s Council (PWC), Tanzania; the farmers’ organisation CNOP-Guinea; and the women farmers’ organisation COFERSA, Mali. An advisory board will be established with key actors in the food sovereignty and women’s rights and feminist movements to facilitate peer review and reflections.

This research lead by Priscilla Claeys and Stefanie Lemke builds on the exploratory project Governing natural resources for food sovereignty conducted in 2018 and 2019. Click here for the video documenting the project process and participatory workshops. The project will run for 18 months from 1st July 2020 and is funded by the 11th Hour and Agroecology Fund. 

In Solidarity With Anti-racist Struggles in the US and Beyond: A Statement from AgroecologyNow

The murder of George Floyd has laid bare, once again, the abhorrent anti-black racism within policing in the USA. The video of the killing of George Floyd captured one instance of the racist and violent conditions that African Americans live with daily. The widespread hurt and pain of centuries of anti-blackness in policing and more broadly in society, forms the basis of sustained and powerful African American-led protests across every state in the USA. Click here to read more. 

Plastics, disposables, and sustainability in the post-recycling era

The Waste FEW ULL project second webinar was held on 4th June. The speaker was Professor Kevin Bell at the University of California Santa Cruz, US whose title was Plastics, disposables, and sustainability in the post-recycling era. Professor Bell is a Principal at Convergence Research, Seattle and Santa Cruz, and is a co-founder of the Sustainable Systems Research Foundation.

The webinar justified the title including “post-recycling” of plastic in that much of the plastic waste taken away for recycling isn’t possible due to the variety of plastics, developed for different purposes, with various toxic additions (there are 20,000 plastic additives), and in a variety of colours. Some of these can be separated out, but the costs can be prohibitive. This does mean that large amounts of plastic are still landfilled. Replacing plastic with other materials may also not be the answer, with the Teflon coating paper plates for example being toxic and therefore the waste produced is also not recyclable. Professor Bell argued that recycling or replacing is not necessarily the answer, but the development of compostable materials is, although some so-called “compostable” plastics can cross-contaminate both the recycling and compost streams. The future is probably in smaller developments, liaising with restaurants and retail outlets, and probably not with municipal governments, whose approach, Professor Bell argues can be “obtuse”.

TRansition paths to sUstainable legume based systems in Europe

2020 is the final year of field trials for the TRUE project (TRansition paths to sUstainable legume based systems in Europe). Part of CAWR’s role in this project is to lead a case study to compare heritage and modern varieties with regard to their agronomic performance, the nutritional characteristics of the crop and their ability to provide resources for pollinating insects. Two trials were planted last week at the Ryton Organic Gardens site to test ten varieties each of climbing French beans (Phaseolus vulgaris) and runner beans (Phaseolus coccineus). 

Chattel slavery in the British Empire

Iain MacKinnon’s work features in an article that links the brutal killing of George Floyd in America with Scotland’s involvement in chattel slavery in the British Empire. The article, which appeared in the ‘Press and Journal’ regional newspaper for the north and north-east of Scotland, describes how wealth acquired from slavery was used at home in Britain and Scotland, referring to Iain’s research investigating plantation owners in the Caribbean who bought and then cleared the people from estates in Scotland. Click here to read the article. 

Article on the Revista Colombiana de Ciencias Hortícolas

PhD student Rovier Verdi published an article on the Revista Colombiana de Ciencias Hortícolas. This article studied the vegetative propagation of a Brazilian native medicinal plant who has been endangered by anthropogenic activities. This article is a result of Rovier’s Master degree research at UDESC – Brazil. Click here to read the article. 

Resource Use Efficiency in UA webinar   

Dr Dennis Touliatos attended a webinar on urban agriculture (UA) and invited the attendees for contributions to CAWR’s special issue of the journal Agronomy on UA and Agroecology.

The  Resource Use Efficiency in UA webinar was organised by Lancaster University and the N8 UA cluster. It was attended by academics and practitioners and sparked interesting discussions on the potential and challenges of UA. During the webinar, CAWR was given a slot to present this special issue on UA that is co-edited by Dennis Touliatos, Francis Rayns and Ulrich Schmutz. The Special Issue invites original research and review papers, and opinion pieces on UA. Deadline: 21 December 2020.

Call for papers: Advanced Materials in Environmental Chemistry

Call for papers in Special Issue "Advanced Materials in Environmental Chemistry" of Molecules journal (ISSN 1420-3049). For more information please click here. 

PhD Success

Tom Lavers successfully defended his PhD this month with minor corrections. His thesis was Co-designing opportunities and modelling performance of catchment scale Natural Flood Risk Management: Stour Valley, Warwickshire-Avon, UK. Congratulations Tom!

Events 

Short course: Social Psychology of Conservation
and the Environment - online 

Date: 13th July 2020 for 5 weeks

Fee: External to the university - £50.00/Coventry University Group staff or students - free

The aim of this short course is to develop participants’ knowledge of how we can apply psychological concepts and theory to facilitate more sustainable human relationships with the natural world. Humans and animals are facing environmental changes such as global warming, flooding, loss of wildlife, air and water pollution. Urgent action is needed to reconnect people with the natural world and facilitate behavioural change for environmental sustainability. Understanding human behaviour is fundamental to do this. Throughout the course we'll draw on some key psychological topics which can help us to live in a more environmentally sustainable world.

Click here to find out more and to book your place. 

 Online seminar: What the transition to capitalism in the Scottish Uplands means for the agroecology and food sovereignty movements with Elise Wach

16 July 2020 11:30-12:30 BST  

The agroecology movement has pitted itself against industrial agriculture, and more recently has indicated a need to consider not just production processes but also consumption, in a ‘food systems’ approach.  Based on a historical analysis in the Scottish uplands, this presentation argues that agroecological food systems are not feasible within a capitalist society.  It demonstrates that the transition to capitalism in the Scottish uplands led to a departure from agroecological food systems, both in the uplands themselves and in the lowlands and abroad. This case of the Scottish uplands, where agricultural practice is not considered industrial but is definitively counter to the principles of an agroecological food system, indicates the need for the agroecology movement to explicitly challenge the capitalist social property relations which drive the commodification of agriculture. 

Click here to register your place.

MSc in Agroecology, Water and Food Sovereignty 

Are you thinking or joining us in September on our MSc in Agroecology, Water and Food Sovereignty but have some questions before applying, then look no further!

Our cohort from last year answer your questions in this video. 

Click here to find out more about the course. 

Publications

Anderson, C.R. (2020) Confronting the Institutional, Interpersonal and Internalized Challenges of Performing Critical Public Scholarship in the Elite Academy. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geography 19: 270-302

Buthelezi, N., Karriem, R., Lemke, S., Paganini,N., Stöber, S. and H. Swanby. (2020) Invisible Urban Farmers and a Next Season of Hunger– Participatory Co-research during Lockdown in Cape Town, South Africa 

Lederer J., Šyc M., Simon F., Quina M., Hyks J., Huber F., Funari V., Fellner J., Braga R., Bontempi E., Bogush A., Blasenbauer D. (2020) What waste management can learn from the traditional mining sector: towards an integrated assessment and reporting of anthropogenic resources. Waste Management, 113, 154-156

Maughan, C., Anderson, C.R. and Kneafsey, M. (2020) A Five Point Framework for Reading for Social Justice: A Case Study of Food Policy Discourse in the Context of Brexit Britain. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems and Community Development.

Moeller, N. and Pedersen, J.M. (2020) Pandemic in the Amazon. Subsistence Matters blog post on how indigenous people in the Amazon are coping with the coronavirus pandemic and its socio-economic consequences. Click here for an abridged version of this article in The Conversation and here for a related podcast (4’38”) on the Australian Radio National.

Owen, L. Udall, D., Franklin, A. and Kneafsey, M. (2020) Place-Based Pathways to Sustainability: Exploring Alignment between Geographical Indications and the Concept of Agroecology Territories in Wales. Sustainability, 12, 4890.

Pingault, N., Caron, P., Kolmans, A., Lemke, S., Kalafatic, C., Zikeli, S., Waters-Bayer, A., Callenius, C. and Qin, Y. (2020)  Moving beyond the opposition of diverse knowledge systems for food security and nutrition. Journal of Integrative Agriculture 19 (1): 291-293 

Roman-Alcalá, A., Chappell, M.J., Hazard, E., Iles, A., Graddy-Lovelace, G., Montenegro. M., and Shattuck, A. (2020) Can radical researchers get their act together? Food First Backgrounder, Spring 2020: Vol. 26(1). Oakland, CA: Food First / Institute for Food and Development Policy.

Tilzey, M. (2020) Capitalism, imperialism, nationalism: agrarian dynamics and resistance as radical food sovereignty. Canadian Journal of Development Studies

Van Dyck, B. (2019) Blog entry and video Liberate research and technology from growth-first ideology as a key step to support food-justice and the flourishing of all life.

Warne M,St,J., Smith R,A., and Turner R,D,R. (2020) Analysis of Mixtures of Pesticides Discharged to the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. Environmental Pollution.