CAWR Newsletter

January 2023

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 equitable, sustainable and 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.

Associate Professor Gender Power and the Right to Food

CAWR associate professor Lucy Aphramor has been elected as a member of the Food Ethics Council. She joins CAWR director Moya Kneafsey, CAWR honorary research fellow Patrick Mulvany, and CAWR visiting research associate Dee Woods who are also on the FEC.

New Podcast Episode: Where Indigenous feminism and food sovereignties meet

AgroecologyNow in collaboration with CIDSE has launched the second episode of its podcast miniseries entitled ‘A Journey through feminist agroecology’.

The new episode, prepared by Jessica Milgroom and Csilla Kiss, explores the link between food sovereignty and Indigenous feminisms as a decolonial project of reparations and reconstruction in the context of North America. Find out more in our blog and listen to this episode on Acast, Spotify and Apple podcast.

Launching the ‘Pony Project’

Donna Udall launched the first output from the Pony Project earlier this month at the Oxford Real Farmers Conference.

The public facing film, titled 'The Welsh Pony', was designed to highlight the role of mixed grazing regimes, some including ponies, to manage landscapes in Wales. The film generated much interest and, along with Ben Cook, she has secured funding for allied projects (more about this next month!).  In the meantime, enjoy the film and Donna would be really interested to receive your feedback.

CAWR Makes the Case for Peat Phase Out at Oxford Real Farming Conference

There is a range of alternative media that can be used instead of peat

CAWR contributions to the Oxford Real Farming Conference in early January included Margi Lennartsson in the session ‘Peat-free growing media in commercial horticulture’.

Margi made the case for the phase out of peat from commercial organic horticulture by 2025 (ahead of the 2028 Defra target), building on the work of the CAWR-led Organic-PLUS project and trials conducted both at Ryton Organic Gardens and at other European partner organisations.

Planet 4B Kicks Off!

Project partners got to know each other in a creative methods workshop organised by CAWR staff

In December, Geraldine Brown and Barbara Smith travelled to Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg in Germany for the kick-off of our new Horizon Europe project ‘Planet4B’ led by Alex Franklin.

Along with our practice partner, Dadima, we were excited to begin this project which aims to acquire deeper understanding of how different socio-cultural factors intersect in decision-making for biodiversity and to use this understanding to enable transformative interventions.

Barbara and Geraldine at the launch event

Coventry’s Heritage Apple Varieties: Taste Test Results

Photo of apple ‘A’ in the taste tests in the CAWR kitchen, Autumn 2022. Photo by Liz Trenchard.

Apples harvested from abandoned allotments at Charterhouse in Coventry (by the Charterhouse monastery site and the River Sherbourne) were brought to CAWR for a taste test survey by CAWR staff.

Samples were also sent to the National Fruit Collection at Brogdale for identification to see which varieties have survived and thrive at this site along the Sherbourne valley. Identification results have arrived, and name five varieties, including one possible variety with Coventry connections.

This is Laxton's Superb, a late season dessert variety, introduced in 1921, which used to be widely planted in gardens and grown for sale commercially up until comparatively recently. It was raised by the Laxton brothers from a Wyken Pippin (a Coventry apple) – and Cox’s Orange Pippin cross.

The most popular apple variety with taste testers at CAWR was Lord Derby and least favourite was Rival (other samples had mixed reviews.) These results will help inform future research work on local apple varieties in the area.

Strip Tillage for Field Vegetable Production

Delegates discuss the strip tillage approach at the gathering in Devon

Organic farming systems, by eliminating the use of herbicides, often rely on repeated mechanical cultivations for weed control. These are known to be detrimental to soil structure but are difficult to avoid. A compromise could be ‘strip tillage’ – just cultivating narrow bands across the field into which the crops are planted. Francis Rayns attended an Innovative Farmers meeting to explore the possibility of establishing a ‘field lab’ to demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach.

Care-full Scholarship MOOC

How might care-full scholarship transform academic practice & institutional culture? Can you care too much? What about self-care?

Join Rabbit, Lynx and Sloth as they explore these questions and more in a new Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). The free course is connectivist-inspired and features some familiar faces from CAWR as they join RECOMS fellows and a host of other expert contributors to share experiences of care in their own research, teaching and practice.

Watch a two-minute video of how some of them define care-full scholarship here

If you’d like any more information about the MOOC including the possibility of a care-full scholarship workshop, please get in touch with Lindy

The MOOC is an output of RECOMS – a project that has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research & innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 765389

Flackson Tshuma visits CAWR

Flackson Tshuma and James Bennett being shown the long-term Broadbalk wheat experiment by Dr Andy Gregory of Rothamsted Research

Flackson Tshuma completed his Dual Degree PhD with Coventry and Stellenbosch Universities in 2022. Because of the pandemic he had not able to travel to the UK during his studies but we were pleased to welcome him in January.

His work was concerned with the effects of soil tillage in long term field trials and so, as well as other activities, it was particularly relevant for him to make a visit to Rothamsted Research to see some of the ‘classical experiments’ set up over 170 years ago. Flackson and his CAWR supervisors (Francis Rayns and James Bennett) had an excellent tour of the Rothamsted site, hearing about its history and viewing both the fields and the archive of stored samples.

Events

Catch up on our events and seminars by visiting our YouTube channel

Publications

Folorunsho, O., Bogush, A., & Kourtchev, I. (2023). A new on-line SPE LC-HRMS method for simultaneous analysis of selected emerging contaminants in surface waters. Analytical Methods, 15, 284-296, doi.org/10.1039/D2AY01574A

Pimbert, M. (2022), Avant propos, in Barbier, M., Lamine, C., Couix, N. (dir.) Pratiques et savoirs agricoles dans la transition agroécologique. Editions des archives contemporaines, Coll. «Etudes des sciences et Histoire des techniques», France, ISBN: 9782813003560, pp. 1-2.

Wong S., Armenise S., Nyakuma B.B., Ng P., Lee C., Bogush A., Launay F., Rebrov E., Muñoz M. (2022) Catalytic pyrolysis of plastics over maghemite-impregnated mesocellular foam using induction heating. Chemical Engineering Transactions, 97, DOI: 10.3303/CET2297005

Wynberg, R., Pimbert, M., Moeller, N., McAllister, G., Bezner Kerr, R., Singh, J., Belay, M. & Ngcoya, M. (2023) Nature-Based Solutions and Agroecology: Business as Usual or an Opportunity for Transformative Change?, Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, 65:1, 15-22

Hamidi M.D., Kissane S., Bogush A.A., Karim A.Q., Sagintayev J., Towers S., Greenwell C.H.C. (2022) Spatial estimation of groundwater quality, hydrogeochemical investigation, and health impacts of shallow groundwater in Kabul city, Afghanistan. Sustainable Water Resources Management, 9, 20. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40899-022-00808-9

Wong S.L., Armenise S., Nyakuma B.B., Bogush A., Towers S., Lee S.H., Wong K.Y., Lee T.H., Rebrov E., Muñoz M. (2022) Plastic Pyrolysis over HZSM-5 Zeolite and Fluid Catalytic Cracking Catalyst under Ultra-Fast Heating. Journal of Analytical and Applied Pyrolysis (IF 6.437), 105793. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaap.2022.105793 

Lavers, T., Charlesworth, S. Lashford, C., Warwick F., and Fried, J. (2022) The performance of Natural Flood Management at the large catchment-scale: A case study in the Warwickshire Stour Valley. Water SI Surface Water Management: Recent Advances and Challenges.

Tjahjono B., Beltran M., Lazell J., Bek D., Bogush, A.(2022) Prototyping Solutions – Findings from the third UK SIMBIO social innovation lab – and SIMBIO project implications, 25th of November, 2021. Coventry: Coventry University, Centre for Business in Society (CBiS).

Dehnen-Schmutz, K, Pescott, O, Booy, O, Walker, K (2022): Integrating expert knowledge at regional and national scales improves impact assessments of non-native species. NeoBiota 77: 79-100. (open access)

Tittonell, P., El Mujtar, V., Félix, G.F., Kebede, Y., Laborda, L., Luján Soto, R. & de Vente, J. (2022) Regenerative agriculture—agroecology without politics? Front. Sustain. Food Syst. 6:844261.