CAWR Newsletter

July 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.'

News

New horticultural research facility at Ryton

CAWR has recently invested in a large polytunnel to be used for research concerned with the maintenance of soil fertility in protected cropping structures. A particular area of interest is ‘vegan organic’ systems that do not involve the use of animal manures or by-products; as part of the H2020 TRUE project a range of green manure species will be compared by Francis Rayns and Judith Conroy throughout the winter and the effects on the soil and following crops assessed.

RECOMS goes to China

In June, as part of the RECOMS project*, Alex Franklin and Agnes Zolyomi, attended the International Sustainable Development Research Society (ISDRS) annual conference, hosted this year by Nanjing University, China. Alex and Agnes jointly chaired a conference track theme entitled ‘Public Participation and the Role of Stakeholders: Sustaining Resources for the Future’. Focusing in particular on multi-stakeholder and community-led forms of resourceful and resilient environmental practice, the goal of this track was to open up discussion and advance understanding of how to nurture the inherent potential of all local stakeholders to become involved in creating innovative, adaptive and transformative sustainability pathways. Presentations delivered through this track included a paper by Alex, co-authored with CAWR colleagues Luke Owen, Donna Udall and Moya Kneafsey, delivering findings from their joint work on territorial food systems in Wales. Also delivering a paper in the well attended session was RECOMS fellow Jingjing Guo. Jingjing presented on her doctoral studies into ‘Managing Social-Ecological Systems for Resilience’, the fieldwork for which she is undertaking in rural China. [*This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 765389.]

The BioRich Project Continues

Donna Udall, Francis Rayns and Peter Hollings are assisting the Innovative Farmers team with their BioRich trial which involves feeding charcoal (or biochar) to cattle and analysing the changes in manure and subsequent grass growth.  Phase 1 involving the cattle trial has been completed and it was discovered that biochar reduces the amount of nitrate in manure; the reasons for this are being explored as this has benefits for Nitrate Vunerable Zone management.  Phase 2, the pot trial is currently underway and Phase 3, feeding biochar to young stock cattle to analyse the effect on worm burden, starts next week. This project that run by farmers for the benefit of farmers is attracting considerable interest. There are currently plans for two more trials which have the potential for European funding - if you know of any farmers willing to be part of this project please get in touch! Find out more details here.

Project Skyline

Photo credit: Mark Walton - Shared Assets @shared_assets 

On July 10th, the team of the Project Skyline and the communities involved in a year-long feasibility study aimed at assessing the potential for community stewardship of the land in the South Wales Valleys, shared their learnings during the event “How to build a Valley – Making it happen”, sponsored by Welsh Assembly Member Huw Irranca-Davies, at the Pierhead Building in Cardiff Bay. Many AMs and various organisations took part to the conversation, and the Welsh Government First Minister, Mark Drakeford addressed the event, providing great support to the initiative. Our postgraduate researcher Gloria Giambartolomei has been part of the Project Skyline team conducting participatory research for her PhD. She gave an introductory speech highlighting the importance of building community stewardship through a 100 years collective vision and institutional commitment to people and land, rather than through the umpteenth short-term and third sector-led feasibility study.

You can learn more about the event and Project Skyline here

Annual meeting of the TRUE project

Francis Rayns, Barbara Smith and Judith Conroy attended the 3rd General Assembly of the H2020 TRUE project (Transition Paths to Sustainable Legume Systems in Europe). This was hosted by Marta Vasconcelos of the Universidade Católica Portuguesa in Porto, Portugal. Francis and Barbara presented the findings of the two case studies that CAWR is responsible for - these are concerned with assessing the value of heritage bean varieties for human and beneficial insect nutrition and using legumes as a source of soil fertility in organic protected cropping systems. Find out more here. 

Visit from the Human Sciences Research Council South Africa to discuss future collaboration

Tim Hart, a Senior Research Project Manager at the Economic Performance and Development research programme in the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), Pretoria, South Africa, visited CAWR from 15 to 17 July 2019. Tim is a social anthropologist working in rural and urban areas, among others on mediators and brokers in development, food and nutrition security, agriculture and land reform. He was invited to CAWR by Stefanie Lemke building on previous collaborations on the potential of renewable energy in rural areas of South Africa and social dynamics of natural resource use in the Richtersveld National Park. Tim had the opportunity to participate in two seminars and engage with research colleagues around the research done at CAWR. We are in the process of developing future collaborations regarding research, hosting colleagues and delivering seminars, writing projects and other activities between the HSRC and CAWR.

Organic-PLUS update

One year after its commencement, the CAWR led Organic-PLUS project held its 2nd General Assembly in Aarhus, Denmark. The EU Horizon 2020 project aims to phase-out contentious inputs from organic agriculture and the gathering included progress reports of work conducted so far, particularly the extensive Europe-wide mapping of the current use of inputs such as copper fungicides and plastic mulch film. There was also a Scandinavian theme to proceedings with presentations from Paul Holmbeck of Organic Denmark, Organic Norway's Børre Solberg and Danish farmer Esben Møller, talking about the successes and challenges of organic agriculture in Northern Europe.

ESRS Conference

Dr. Luke Owen and Donna Udall participated in the XXVIIIth European Society for Rural Sociology (ESRS) conference last month (June 25th-28th) in Trondheim, Norway. The bi-annual event attracted over 370 delegates, with Luke and Donna contributing to the Working Group ‘Provenance Foods as a pathway for a sustainable rural transformation’. 

They presented their latest research, co-authored with Dr. Alex Franklin and Prof. Moya Kneafsey, titled ‘Pathways to sustainability? Aligning Protected Food Names with agroecological praxis is Wales’. The session generated valuable discussion about some of the key issues facing rural communities throughout Europe, and the ways in which Protected Food Names, such as Welsh beef and lamb, can facilitate sustainability transitions. 

This paper is currently being written up as a journal article. The two previous outputs from the CAWR Protected Food Names project can be found on the project website.

HOMED update 

Katharina Dehnen-Schmutz and Samantha Green attended the Tree Health Citizen Science Network meeting at RHS Wisley in July. Discussions were on DEFRA Policy: Tree Health Resilience Strategy, and the continuing role for Citizen Scientists, and news from tree health citizen science projects in UK such as Obervatree, OPAL, Treezilla and Communitree. Asian Longhorn beetle is now ‘absent from UK’. We also enjoyed a walk in the RHS Wisley gardens, and here is the group looking at box alternative plantings, with box tree moth and box blight causing alternatives to become more sought after. As a citizen, reader, if you wish to report a pest or disease on a tree please use Tree Alert. 

The Future of the Study of Religious and Spiritual Experience

In early July, Julia Wright presented a paper at ‘The Future of the Study of Religious and Spiritual Experience: 50th Anniversary of the Religious Experience Research Centre (RERC)’, University of Wales Trinity St David, Lampeter campus.  This event celebrated the foundation of the Centre by Sir Alister Hardy. Julia’s paper was titled “Agriculture and spirituality: can farming systems be sustainable if they ignore the hidden half of nature?” and is based on the work of CAWR’s research programme on the Applied Metaphysics of Nature: Exploring the Hidden Half of Farming.

Blooms for Bees featured in new wildlife gardening book

Blooms for Bees are delighted to be included in Kate Bradbury’s new book, Wildlife Gardening for everyone and everything, published by Bloomsbury in April 2019.

The book is absolutely packed with gorgeous photographs and practical information, some of which incorporates findings from research projects like Blooms for Bees.

Over 20 pages are dedicated to attracting and supporting bees, and pages 37 and 38 present the results of the Blooms for Bees dahlia trial. This demonstrates the great impact that contributing to citizen science projects can have!

CAWR Seminar on sustainable diets and food systems in South Africa

From 22-26 July 2019 Dr. Nicole Claasen, Senior Lecturer at the Africa Unit for Transdisciplinary Health Research (AUTHeR), North-West University, South Africa visited CAWR to continue collaborative work with Dr. Stefanie Lemke on sustainable diets and food systems in South Africa. In the seminar on 23 July, Nicole presented findings of this research, which is located in Vaalharts, Northern Cape, one of the largest agricultural irrigation schemes in the Southern Hemisphere, producing largely for commercial supply chains. Local food systems play an important role for livelihoods, food availability and access, as well as cultural food heritage in these rural communities. The discussion after the presentation focused on challenges with regard to local economies of food systems, land reform, the divide between commercial and smallholder farmers, high levels of economic and social inequality, and the coexistence of undernutrition and overweight.

Hawkwood Seed Festival

Photo: The Wildlife Trust kindly shared their rainproof gazebo with Emellyne

CAWR participated in The Seed Festival: planting big ideas, at Hawkwood College, Stroud, 19-21 July. This national festival celebrates courageous climate leadership, creative expression and innovation in partnership with our natural world, and this year the RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) was present to discuss their important new report: Our Future in the Land. At the festival, CAWR was the only university research organisation present with Emellyne Forman, Samantha Green and Julia Wright running the stand. It was a great opportunity to network with innovative social change-makers who were interested in the open seminar series, MSc course, and the centre’s wider research activities

As a team, they were just struck by the wealth of inspiring speakers and activities that were available; Bruce Parry’s talk on non-hierarchical ways of being in South East Asian indigenous communities was well received, as was Transition Town’s Rob Hopkins; Poets Drew Dillenger and Matt Harvey were both given standing ovations for their engaging performances discussing social justice and ecology.

 Media

The Plastic Litter Surveying on Coventry Canal project was featured in an article in Canal Boat and The Tillergraph. Click here to view the article. 

Successful PhDs 

Moussa Sidibe successfully defending his PhD thesis on "Past and Future Hydroclimatic variability over West and Central Africa, and their teleconnections." Congratulations Moussa! 

Miche Fabre Lewin also defended her PhD with minor corrections on Artful Bodymind: enlivening transformative research methodologies. Congratulations Miche! 

Recently Awarded Projects

Geraldine Brown was awarded £11,250.00 from The Conservation Foundation for a project called ‘Evaluation of the Tool Shed Project.’    This will be used to evaluate a previous project funded by the Lottery to develop the skills of prisoners by fixing  broken tools which are then donated to schools and voluntary groups.

A 4-year EU Horizon Marie Curie Action RISE project, worth 147,200 euros to Coventry University, called UNDERTREES was awarded which focuses on research in Agroforestry and Ecosystem Services on three continents (Europe, Africa and South America). Sara Burbi 

Artful Science and Scienceful Art: Forum of Exchange 

On 16th July 2019 at CAWR, Research Associates Miche Fabre Lewin and Flora Gathorne-Hardy of Touchstones co-hosted with Martin Wilkes an experimental Forum of inspiration called Artful Science and Scienceful Art. The forum was an exchange between David Gibbin from CIWEM and CAWR, with contributions from Clive Adams of the Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World (CCANW), which is co-founder with CIWEM of the Arts and Environment Network. Like CAWR and Touchstones, CIWEM has a commitment to creating safe spaces for collaboration encouraging many ways of knowing as essential for working towards a just and inclusive world that also embraces the other-than-human.

Click here to find out more about the day. 

MSc in Agroecology, Water and Food Sovereignty

Join us in September for our MSc in Agroecology, Water and Food Sovereignty. 

Modules include:

• Policies and Institutions for Food and Water Sovereignty
• Global Processes for Water Sustainability and Resilience
• Community Self-Organisation and Resilience
• Resilient Food and Water Systems in Practice
• Participation, Power, and People’s Knowledge
• Agroecological Techniques and Practices
• Gender, Food Systems and Natural Resources
• Stabilisation Agriculture 
• Global Professional Development – Consultancy 
• Project

Click here to find out more information.

Studentships 

Events 

Publications

The first Blooms for Bees journal paper ‘Evaluating the ability of citizen scientists to identify bumblebee (Bombus) species’ has been published in PLOS One.

In this paper, the bumblebee sightings submitted by participants during 2017 are used to explore the ability of citizen scientists to correctly identify bumblebee species.

Looking at the data in this way was important because the quality and accuracy of citizen science project data is poorly understood and is often of concern to scientists and policy makers.

The paper demonstrates that citizen science projects can generate high quality data, even for a group of insects that is challenging to identify, and highlights the essential role of expert verification.

The data revealed where the greatest misidentification issues occurred and enabled the development of recommendations for improved training resources.

You can read more about the paper on the Blooms for Bees blog 

Full citation: Falk S, Foster G, Comont R, Conroy J, Bostock H, Salisbury A, Kilbey D, Bennett J & Smith, B. (2019) Evaluating the ability of citizen scientists to identify bumblebee (Bombus) species. PLoS ONE 14(6): e0218614.

Claeys, P., & Duncan, J. (Accepted/In press). Food sovereignty and convergence spaces. Political Geography, (In-Press), (In-Press).

Ifelebuegu, A., & Ojo, P. (2019). Modelling the effects of ferric salt dosing for chemical phosphorus removal on the settleability of activated sludge. Journal of Environmental Chemical Engineering, 7(5).