CAWR Newsletter

November 2018

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 battle for the future of farming: what you need to know

Michel Pimbert and Colin Anderson published an article in The Conversation to coincide with the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Symposium on Agricultural Innovation and Family Farming, which was held in Rome on 21 to 23 November 2018. Click here for a link to the article.

XIII Congress of the Spanish Society of Organic Agriculture (SEAE)

Organic-PLUS participated in the XIII Congress of the Spanish Society of Organic Agriculture (Sociedad Española de Agricultural Ecológica, SEAE) that took place in Logroño, La Rioja, Spain, from 14-17 November 2018. Dr Sara Burbi was invited to give a presentation about the project and engage with producers, policy-makers and NGOs that attend SEAE congresses. The event included workshops, roundtables, presentations and poster sessions. Organic-PLUS was included in the session on participatory work to highlight the transdisciplinarity of the project and present early results.

Although the material was in English, the presentation was given in Spanish to better engage with the audience.

Copper use was considered one of the most contentious inputs by the audience, followed by antibiotics and antiparasitics use in livestock production.

The event was a good opportunity to engage with a variety of stakeholders, primarily from Spain, but also from France, Italy and delegations from Chile, Mexico, Peru, Colombia and Venezuela, as several Latin American countries are embracing organic principles and aim to further promote sustainable farming practices, in particular adopting the agroecological framework. Agroecology and organic principles held an important role in the congress, as this year’s theme was focused on climate change, as well as the proposed changes to the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

Roundtable on agricultural systems and climate change

Panel discussion on draft EU CAP revisions.

Dr Burbi providing Spanish translation to Dražen Lušić (Croatia), President of IFOAM-ABM, during the opening panel session on “Upscaling Agroecology” on 14 November 2018

New edition of video film - Participatory Research with Women Farmers

Participatory Research with Women Farmers focuses on how farmers and scientists can be involved in the co-production of knowledge and agricultural innovations. Designed as a pedagogical tool, this 30 mn video identifies key steps in a participatory assessment of suitable food crop varieties in dryland India. 

Through its focus on research with marginalised women farmers, the video invites critical reflections on the following questions:

• How, - and under what conditions -, can formal plant breeding and local seed selection be integrated to enhance on farm biological diversity and ensure democratic control over seeds – the first link in the food chain?

• How do institutions, research methods, and behaviours need to change to allow scientists to co-create knowledge with farmers through a process of mutual dialogue, joint agenda setting, and action?

• What research methodologies and processes best support diversity as a means to resilience, sustainability and food security in complex risk-prone environments?

Participatory Research with Women Farmers was conceived by Professor Michel Pimbert and directed by P.V. Satheesh in 1991. This new video edition was done by the Television Trust for The Environment (TVE).

The video is available by clicking here.

RECOMS

RECOMS will be represented in the 25th International Sustainable Development Research Society Conference in June in Nanjing, China and host a session on Public Participation and Role of Stakeholders: Sustaining Resources for the Future. Deadline of abstract: 15th December. 

Also, our new RECOMS research fellow, Mai Abbas from Palestine arrived to work on urban agroecology focusing on women. Find out more about the project and the fellows here.

RECOMS is also looking for a new research fellow for the position on Transforming the Bavarian Forest: Socio-ecological Crises, Community Resilience, and Sustainability from a Historical Perspective in Munich, Germany. Find more details here.

Urban Food Futures

One of CAWR's post-doctoral researchers, Emma Burnett, has recently joined the Urban Food Futures team as a writer. Urban Food Futures is an online science magazine which publishes a new article biweekly summing up key results from scientific work. Its intention is to get academic research disseminated in digestible articles to practitioners on the ground. Articles are available in both English and French. Emma's two posts so far can be found here and here.

Please feel free to share the site round your networks, especially to those who may not have access to full journal articles, or time to read them. And if you have any publications you think would benefit from being written up, get in touch with Emma.

Organic-PLUS Livestock Survey

The CAWR-led Organic-PLUS project is currently mapping the use of and attitudes towards contentious inputs in organic agriculture.  The project’s livestock work-package is looking in particular at the use of non-organic bedding, antiparasitics and antibiotics, and an online survey has been devised. This is currently available in English, French, Italian, Spanish, Polish and Turkish, and we would welcome as many livestock farmers as possible to complete it by clicking here.

Highlighting the importance of power and governance in the debate on “innovation”: a contribution to the HLPE process

The High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE), science-policy interface of the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS), was created in October 2009 as an essential element of the CFS reform. The HLPE aims to facilitate policy debates and inform policy making by providing independent, comprehensive and evidence-based analysis and advice at the request of CFS. 

Agroecology when articulated as a transformative approach to food systems, is the most promising “innovation” (and set of “innovations”) at play at the global level.Yet, mainstream innovation systems are containing, undermining and suppressing agroecology by supporting problematic and risky approaches to innovation/technologies largely constructed within a neoliberal-economic development approach that undermines food sovereignty. Click here to see more on this issue in our comments on Version 0 draft of the High Level Panel of Experts report on Agroecological Approaches and Other Innovations,

Professor Michel Pimbert was a member of the Steering Committee of the High Level Panel of Experts (HLPE) on Food Security and Nutrition at the United Nations Committee on World Food Security (CFS). 

During the 4 years (2013 - 2017) he served on the HLPE, Professor Pimbert co-authored the following HLPE reports:

1. Food losses and waste in the context of sustainable food systems (2014) 

2. Water for food security and nutrition (2015) 

3. Sustainable agricultural development for FSN: what roles for livestock? (2016) 

4. Sustainable forestry for food security and nutrition (2017) 

5. Nutrition and food systems (2017) At the request of the the Committee on World Food Security of the United Nations (CFS), Professor Pimbert also co-authored two Notes on Critical and Emerging Issues for Food Security and Nutrition and Critical Emerging Issues. 

For more information on the HLPE on Food Security and Nutrition and its role at the science-policy interface click here.

UK Organic Congress

On 15th-16th November, the 2018 UK Organic Congress took place in Rugby, close to CAWR’s base at Ryton Organic Gardens and was well attended by our researchers. Ulrich Schmutz, Judith Conroy, Francis Rayns and Adrian Evans represented Organic-PLUS, a Europe-wide project researching pathways to phase-out contentious inputs from organic agriculture. They took the opportunity to speak to delegates and collect their views on inputs such as copper fungicides, peat and plastic mulches as well as the potential alternatives.

Margi Lennartsson and Francis Rayns displayed a poster of their study of the Garden Organic Members' Experiment Programme as an example of how citizen science can be used to develop sustainable horticultural practice. They used the conference as an opportunity to film some pioneers of the organic movement that will be included in an ebook that will be made available in the New Year.

The real seeds producers: Small-scale farmers save, use, share and enhance the seed diversity of the crops that feed Africa

In October, AFSA/GRAIN published a report on farmers seed systems in Africa "The real seeds producers: Small-scale farmers save, use, share and enhance the seed diversity of the crops that feed Africa". Patrick Mulvany (CAWR HRF) was one of the editors. The report draws on six Country Reports (Ethiopia, Mali, Senegal, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe) that summarised farmers' views about their seed systems and provided a national context. As AFSA/GRAIN say in their Introduction: "We hope that this report will serve to refocus our collective attention on the real food and seed producers of Africa, and make sure that their needs are met. We also intend for this report to spur debate on the kind of food system that Africa really needs: one based on diversity, on our own resources and our knowledge? Or one based on uniformity, plantations and foreign corporate control? This report is intended to help us ensure that we proceed down the right road for Africa." The Key Messages, expanded in the report, are: 1. Farmers’ seeds feed Africa; 2. Farmers’ seeds are reliable, available and affordable; 3. Farmers’ seed practices are diverse and knowledge-rich; 4. Women are Africa’s seed guardians; 5. Farmer-managed seed systems underpin small-scale agroecological production and food sovereignty; 6. Farmers are being pushed to abandon their seed systems; 7. African governments are giving in to corporate pressure and undermining local seed systems. The report and related documents are available here.  

Zika project team visit Rio de Janeiro 

Sue Charlesworth, Matthew Blackett, Frank Warwick and Rebecca Lewis travelled to Fiocruz, Rio de Janeiro for 10 days of workshops and research with Escola Nacional de Saúde Pública Sérgio Arouca. You can find out more about their trip by clicking here. 

Research Equipment and Infrastructures funding 

CAWR have been granted a bid that was submitted to Coventry University for funding to buy a microwave digester for one of our new laboratories; Sample Preparation, and will be up and running by the end of the year. 

A Curated Resource List on Participatory Video

We have put together a 'curated resource' list on participatory video (PV) including a selection of tools, guides and literature that we feel are helpful for understanding PV and especially for advancing its emancipatory potential. Click here to visit the Peoples’ Knowledge and Transdisciplinarity webspace.  

Grant from German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) for research documentary and ‘Sharingback’ initiative

Lena Michler (left) with Nama pastoralists in Richtersveld National Park, South Africa

Dr. Stefanie Lemke was co-supervisor of the Master thesis of University of Hohenheim graduate student Lena Michler in 2015. Together with Humair Hayat (also University of Hohenheim) Lena conducted research among Nama pastoralists on nature conservation practices in a protected area in South Africa. Lena and Humair founded the ‘Sharingback’ initiative, based on the realization that research is mostly extractive and does not adequately involve local communities. In September 2018 they received a prestigious grant of €64,386 (£56,958) from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), enabling them to complete a documentary as part of their ‘Sharingback’ initiative in South Africa, envisaged for release at the end of 2019. Stefanie is supervisor of the scientific part of this film and research project. She co-chaired a seminar organised by Tim Hart from the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) Pretoria, South Africa on 26 February 2018, where preliminary aspects of this project were presented and constructive, positive feedback was provided by seminar participants with respect to the documentary (see March 2018 Newsletter for details on the seminar). 

‘Sharingback’ is intended to continue in other countries within the scope of different socio-ecological studies. Further information can be found here.

Guest editors for Water journal 

Sue Charlesworth and Dr Craig Lashford have agreed to be guest editors for a Special Issue in the journal "Water" covering Sustainable Management of Urban Water Resources. 

MSc students visit the Pod 

Our current MSc students had an opportunity to visit the Pod; a community cafe that specialises in freshly cooked Vegan food. The students were able to hear about the stories and experience convening the ground-breaking work to build community and social change through the Pod, Time Union and Food Union from Christine Eade. 

Conferences 

Jonathan Eden travelled to Russia to speak at the international conference “Fires in the boreal biome under changing climates and land use patterns”, hosted by the Karelian Forest Research Centre in Petrozavodsk. Jonathan spoke about his involvement in the Horizon 2020 project PREREAL, which aims to improve predictability of forest fire activity using climate data and historical fire records. The conference included an exclusion to the Kivach State Nature Reserve to better understand local fire resilience strategies, including the use of artificial fire breaks. 

Damian Lawler lead-authored and delivered a joint oral paper at a major conference in Lyon, France in summer 2018. The conference was entitled ‘Integrative Sciences and Sustainable Rivers’.  

 The paper was titled as: ‘Modelling downstream change in river flood power: combining flood estimation approaches with Digital Elevation Models’  (Lawler & Stewart). The research was just one part of a long-standing and very fruitful collaboration with the UK National Centre of Ecology and Hydrology (CEH).  This particular joint collaboration was with Dr Lisa Stewart from CEH and was funded from one of Damian's NERC PhD studentships. The paper examined changing energy levels in several UK rivers from source to mouth.  Such fluvial energy levels are very important for the stability of rivers, erosion of their beds and banks, bridges, operation of aquatic habitats, and pollution evacuation from rivers systems.

Art of Collaboration 

LIFE OF WATER: Calling in the power of the arts

Water samples collected by Miche and Flora for Life of Water research residency 2018

The Charted Institute of Water and Environmental Management (CIWEM) is the leading royal chartered professional body dedicated to sustainable management of the environment, globally. In CIWEM’s December 2018/January 2019 edition of The Environment, Miche Fabre Lewin and Flora Gathorne-Hardy call in the power of the arts. In an article entitled Life of Water, they explore how, as creative thinkers and practitioners, artists are powerful partners to water leaders seeking to reimagine traditional approaches to water planning and management.

The article shares their recent research residency with the Aldeburgh Beach Lookout and Anglian Water. Miche and Flora started their residency by collecting water from a diversity of local water sources, including from estuaries, field-ponds, rain gutters, farm wells, and kitchen taps. The Life of Water residency culminated with a public exhibition, with tastings, conversation forums, films and musical compositions, a space to meditate with water and hands-on installations to make visible our relationship to water in our everyday lives. Collette Parker, Customer Engagement Manager at Anglian Water shares: ‘What’s exciting about working with artists is watching them come up with an organic response. That response can produce rich work and rich communications.’

Events

SEMINAR: Resource-saving strategies to improve productivity and quality of commercial substrate-grown soft fruit

 Dr Lucia Foresi

6th December 11:30-12:30

Live streamed via Facebook and recorded for our Youtube Channel

Click here to attend

SEMINAR: Lecture Performance ‘Liberate the Sciences’

Barbara Van Dyck 

13th December 11:30-12:30

Live streamed via Facebook and recorded for our Youtube Channel

Click here to attend

Publications 

Based on their interdiscplinary research on property relations and commoning  - from Kichwa mingas in the Ecuadorian Amazon to the Free Software movement and other commons in cyberspace -  Nina Moeller and Martin Pedersen were asked by HIVOS to write a report on the emerging, global Open Source Seed community. It identifies Open Source Seed as an important contribution to biodiversity and the struggle for food sovereignty and can be downloaded here.  

Anderson, C. R., Maughan, C., & Pimbert, M. P. (2018). Transformative agroecology learning in Europe: building consciousness, skills and collective capacity for food sovereignty. Agriculture and Human Values, 1-17.

Charlesworth, S. & Booth, C. (2018) Urban Pollution: Science and Management

Claeys, P., & Duncan, J. (2018). Do we need to categorize it? Reflections on constituencies and quotas as tools for negotiating difference in the global food sovereignty convergence space. Journal of Peasant Studies. 1-22

Pimbert, M. 2018. Global Status of Agroecology: A Perspective on Current Practices, Potential and Challenges. Review of Environment and Development, 53(41), 32-57