CAWR Newsletter

May 2017 

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 resilent food and water systems.'

Remembering Nigel Baker

We are greatly saddened to report the death of one of our students, Nigel Baker, who lost his fight against cancer on 16th February 2017. 

Nigel was a member of the very first cohort of Masters students to complete CAWR’s MSc in Food Security Management in 2014. His lecturers remember a student with a deep knowledge, an enthusiasm for learning and a critical mind. He was committed to trying to make the world a better place by tackling injustice and environmental destruction. In his Masters thesis he proposed a new concept called ‘Net System Productivity’ which measures food system productivity by taking into account food waste and nutritional quality – elements which are ignored in conventional measures of productivity.  He applied this measure to an agroecological system in the form of a Community Supported Agriculture scheme and made some preliminary comparisons with the conventional supermarket – industrial agriculture food system. In September 2015 Nigel began work on a PhD to extend and deepen the research he had begun in his Masters thesis. Sadly, he had to suspend his studies in the springtime of 2016, but he kept in close contact with his supervisors at CAWR, always enjoying opportunities to discuss food systems sustainability and politics. He attended seminars whenever he could and even presented his own seminar.

Nigel is greatly missed, but the memory of his courage, dignity and determination serves as an inspiration to those who were lucky enough to know him.  Our deepest sympathies go to Nigel’s wife and family.

We are also very proud to announce that CAWR will fund the Nigel Baker PhD Studentship on Food System Sustainability to enable this research to continue.  

HLPE releases new paper

A new paper from the UN High Level Panel of Experts (HLPE) on Food Security and Nutrition is now available:

HLPE. 2017. 2nd Note on Critical and Emerging Issues for Food Security and Nutrition. A note by the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition of the Committee on World Food Security, Rome.

Professor Michel Pimbert (Director) is one of the members of the HLPE and is a co-author of this report. He and his colleagues on the HLPE have worked with many different people around the world and have identified critical and/or emerging issues that deserve further attention to address food security and nutrition (FSN) and, more generally, sustainable development. The HLPE on food security and nutrition has identified nine main critical and/or emerging issues:

1.     Anticipating the inter-connected future of urbanization and rural transformation

2.     Conflicts, migrations and FSN 


3.     Inequalities, vulnerability, marginalized groups and FSN 


4.     Impacts of trade on FSN 


5.     Agroecology for FSN in a context of uncertainty and change 


6.     Agrobiodiversity, genetic resources and modern breeding for FSN

7.     Food safety and emerging diseases

8.     From technology promises towards knowledge for FSN 


9.     Strengthening governance of food systems for an improved FSN

Participatory Video Reflection Day

Hosted by the People's Knowledge Working Group, researchers and students at CAWR organised a day-long workshop with Soledad Muniz and Nick Lunch from Insightshare to discuss the use of participatory video in research at CAWR. Participants discussed Christabel Buchanan and and Chris Yap’s dissertation research as case studies to draw out lessons and discuss dilemmas in the research process.

Christabel’s research focuses on alternative food economies and autonomy in Greece, while Chris' research focuses on urban gardening and the right to the city in Sevilla, Spain. 

Congratulations to Muhammad!

CAWR would like to congratulate Muhammad Shahid on completing his PhD titled 'Assessing Social Sustainability in Food Supply Chains: Evidence from the British Cheese Industry'. 

We wish you all the best for the future!

Events

Workshop: QUANTUM-Based AGRICULTURE for FARMERS

-where science and traditional practices meet - balancing the energies of land, field and farm

June 20-23         The Field Centre, Nailsworth, Glos., GL6 0QE

The aim of the workshop is to provide an understanding of the principles of subtle energies, and to explore the impact of energy fields on our health and our behaviour, and on our management of and relationship with our land, our animals and our environment. Amongst other impacts, this can lead to restored livestock health, increased crop production, reduced pest and disease incidence and improved quality of your produce.

Dr Patrick MacManaway is a geo-biologist and second generation practitioner of the healing arts, including earth acupuncture and geopathic stress remediation. Training first with his parents at their Healing and Teaching Centre in rural Fife, Scotland, Patrick studied Medicine at Edinburgh University before taking apprenticeships in both Western and Eastern approaches to landscape energy and traditional Geomancy.  Past-President of the British Society of Dowsers, and Founding Member of Circles for Peace, he is the author of several books and CDs. In practice since 1994, Patrick consults and teaches on farms worldwide with regular visits to the UK, USA and Australia.

Cost: £295 (including biodynamic lunch)

For full details and bookings please contact: J Wright j.wright@coventry.ac.uk  Tel. 07557425257

8th Annual Conference of the AESOP ‘SUSTAINABLE FOOD PLANNING’ group, 2017

November 14-15       Coventry University, Coventry, UK, CV1 5FB 

Re-imagining sustainable food planning, building resourcefulness: Food movements, insurgent planning and heterodox economics

In this conference we look for contributions that valorise and bring to the fore the multiplicity of marginal, residual, heterodox or unheard experiences, policies, concepts and practices that are already creating new worlds in innovative and socially just ways, and/or bear the potential of becoming building blocks of sustainable food planning for a resourceful, agroecological, urbanism.

We are also interested in critical contributions that reflect on how current mainstream approaches to food production, food strategies and urban agriculture can be/are being radically transformed into tools for resourcefulness.

We particularly look for critical contributions that address one or more of the following five sub-themes:

• theoretical re-conceptualisations of urbanism
• political processes and strategies
• resourceful land management
• urban agroecological practices
• post-capitalist economics