In the latest CRE blog, PhD researchers Francis Naab and Ivy Matoju reflect on a recent visit to London where they presented their research to a newly launched social enterprise.

On 20^th Nov 2019, we attended a seminar held in London as part of the panel speakers for Bobab Africa, a recently launched social enterprise and online platform which aims to bring researchers and industry in Sub-Saharan Africa together to share ideas, form collaborations and generally work together for the development of the Continent. They are keen to hear from a broad range of individuals whose work (be that research or otherwise) focuses on sub-Saharan Africa. This includes early career researchers such as ourselves.

As part of their initiative of fostering collaborations, the Bobab Africa platform hosts seminar talks that can be viewed online or attended in person. Each seminar is focused on a different area, with the one we attended centred around “A growing ecosystem: Supporting off farm innovation for inclusive agricultural development”. Its main purpose was to foster discussions around policy reform related to off-farm innovation and enterprise, business models and how they work, education and training for youth engagement, and job creation along the agri-food chain. So how does our research fit within this?

Francis

My presentation focused on agricultural policy in Ghana, which has been a core part of my PhD research. More specifically, I discussed policies that affect the agri-food chain via two different routes: those that influence food production and those that influence demand for agricultural products, such as the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme that has been the focus of part of my PhD research. Whilst several of these reflect the key focus of government to increase staple food production and create a ‘Green Revolution in Ghana’, a financing gap to further support this exists, created by the recent banking crises in Ghana and the subsequent reform of the microfinance sector and other informal credit schemes.

As smallholder farmers form the majority of the rural population in Ghana, they are particularly hard hit by this recent banking restructure, which primarily served rural local communities and makes it difficult to invest. This is further compounded by a lack of a widely implemented agricultural insurance policy which would help with the increased climate variability in the country. Innovation within the agricultural sector has an important role to play in addressing this challenge, and I highlighted two Ghanaian start-ups as good examples of this: Cowtribe, which provides extension services to about 29000 livestock farmers using a mobile application, and SyeComp which renders services such farm mapping, localised weather forecasts, farm financing and value chain traceability. More organisations like this will be important in the future for helping in areas where government support is currently not strong.

Ivy

Innovation was an important part of the work I presented. More specifically: the acceptance of innovation at the policy level in sub-Saharan Africa and how this has changed over time: from of the Lagos Plan of Action (1980) to the current Science, Technology and Innovation Strategy (2014). My presentation covered some of the hurdles faced when implementing such policies, especially within the agri-food chain. Using an example of genetically modified foods, I highlighted the contrast between public perceptions in Kenya and Tanzania (the two case study countries for my PhD) regarding genetically modified foods and their acceptance at the policy level. These differences may well be due to misinformation and a lack of public awareness, especially for those in the rural areas, and the pragmatic steps adopted by the governments in the form of controlled laboratory and field trials. I also emphasised the need for more inclusive societal participation in policy development, with this currently being limited. This should aid in efforts to increase awareness and acceptance of policies, thus helping ensure their effective implementation at all levels. My ongoing research will be looking to explore policy development further with a range of stakeholders involved in the food chain, and hopefully I can make more specific recommendations as my PhD progresses.

The event was live streamed and well attended, with discussions around the presentations ranging from agricultural initiatives, to power dynamics, to policy and microfinance. It proved a great opportunity for networking and to discuss our findings with other researchers from across the UK, as well as find out more about how other people are looking to tackle some of the challenges focused on during the seminar. The Bobab initiative provides a great motivational space for facilitating these conversations and we’re looking forward to future events.

For more information on Bobab Africa visit their website: https://bobab.org/

In the latest CRE blog, researchers Lucia Rehackova and Mercy Ojo reflect on the recent Climate Conversation workshop at Newcastle University.

Earlier this month, Newcastle University ran a climate conversation workshop about what it could do to continue to reduce its carbon emissions. It was great to take part in the event, attended by staff and students alike, with most attendees keen to help drive change moving forward.

The event was opened by the University’s Deputy Vice Chancellor Professor Julie Sanders, who spoke about the need for the University to act with integrity in relation to the climate crisis. Newcastle University declared a climate emergency earlier this year, and it is good to see that this is being taken seriously and that there are people at the university who care about environmental issues and the role of the University within society.

We both found the discussions very positive, despite some of the presentations showing us the bleak future outlook for the planet, even if we do take radical action now. Professor Kevin Anderson, from Manchester University and the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, summarised the current status in his short presentation, but the full, approximately 1-hour talk, is worth watching and can be accessed here. Two points in his presentation particularly made us think:

1. First, he argued that offsetting carbon emissions by donating money (e.g. when buying flight tickets online) may be worse than doing nothing. This is because the donation may make people feel better about themselves and their travel, which may actually encourage more people to travel, or encourage people to travel more. Accordingly, Professor Anderson highlighted that the best policy is to not fly in the first place.
2. The other take-home message for us was that we have a lot more work to do than we had thought. It seems obvious now, but we have to admit, we had not quite thought about how long it takes the environment to catch up with human actions. The climate change we are experiencing now is not a result of human activity within the last 10-20 years or so, it is a result of the industrialisation of work about 250 years ago. What this means is that if we pollute the environment faster and more heavily, as we are currently doing, the consequences in the future will be more serious than they are now. Further, any changes we make now will not result in a relatively quick response from the environment; what we do now may not affect us in our lifetime. But, if we do not reduce our emissions now, the next generation may find themselves in a much worse situation, because of the failure of the previous generations to safeguard the environment.

So what can be done now to help protect the environment for the future? Universities play a critical role in society, and as organisations, should be ethical and independent. They provide education, innovation and leadership, and there are many opportunities for Newcastle and other universities to do this in relation to climate change, including by reducing their own emissions. Newcastle University aims to be carbon neutral by 2040 or earlier, and a goal of this workshop was to explore opportunities for reaching this target by creating a “Road map to Net-Zero”.

Together, we worked on ideas that could improve university-related travel, energy use and resource use. We discussed everything from light bulbs, to bikes, to virtual conferences. We also talked about the way we learn and whether that needs to change as society and its needs change.

Some of the ideas for reducing the University’s carbon emissions brought up at our tables included: creation of an annual carbon budget for every staff member; allowances for traveling on business by lower-emission means (e.g. by trains/buses instead of planes); the inclusion of travel in the working time; training locals in other countries to help with data collection to reduce travel; reducing the working week to 4 days or scheduling working from home on days when there is no formal teaching; recording lectures and letting students attend virtually; developing compulsory sustainability curriculums for students; an immediate ban on flying first class for employees; production of our own energy on campus; improving strategies to insulate University buildings; using University-owned land to produce fruit and vegetables used in the canteens; having a student market where the leaving students sell/give away clothes or bikes to the new students; developing a scheme similar to cycle-to-work for students; and changing the default of meals to vegan. Perhaps some of the cost savings could then be used to support subsidies for lower-emission travel or to make deals with travel companies who could offer discounted travel for staff.

There were many more ideas and a lot of consensus on what could be done.

All hands were then on deck to come up with a road map which included immediate, medium-term and long-term ideas for actions. Here is a photo of it at the end of the workshop, showing how many mitigating actions can be done now or soon. It is now left to the University leadership to make the choice of embracing these suggestions and taking them forward.

Participants were treated to a nice vegan-friendly buffet lunch at the end of the event, but mind you, you had to be quick to get your food! Thinking of the amount of food that ends up in the bin during catered events, organisers purposefully limited the amount of food that was served, in a bid to cut down on waste. Despite this, the meal was a pleasant way to wrap up the day’s event. Actions indeed speak louder than words😊

Here in the CRE, we are also looking at how to further improve our sustainability practices. Next month we will be holding discussions about how we as a research group can reduce our carbon emissions both as an institution, but also as individual influencers within the range of academic fields we contribute too. Watch this space.

In the latest CRE blog, Research Associate Beth Clark reflects on a recent walking tour of Newcastle and how walking will play a vital role in the upcoming social science research on the FIELD project she is working on.

Although using walking as a research tool is nothing new in the social sciences, it is not a method I have ever used before. However, it is something research colleagues and I plan to employ in an upcoming phase of data collection for the FIELD research project we are currently working on. We hope this creative means of capturing data will help us both experience first-hand the landscapes our participants live and work in, and learn about how their interactions between the ground, buildings and livestock influence animal diseases.

The walking method can add rich data to a study, but it can also be a challenge to simultaneously observe your surroundings, make notes and ask questions. I was therefore delighted when the opportunity to go on a walking tour around Newcastle arose so I could practice walking and learning at the same time. I have lived in the Newcastle for 30 years, so it was also a great chance to be a tourist in my home city.

The walk started at Grey’s Monument, where we learnt about the city walls that still sit underneath Blackett Street today, as well as about the history of the monument itself. This included several stories in relation to various body parts falling off the statue of Earl Grey due to activity nearby, such as the construction of the metro line. We also heard about how there use to be a large country house – including landscaped gardens – within the original city walls, which occupied a large chunk of land around the area we know as Grey Street and monument today. It’s hard to believe that such a built-up area could previously have been such a grand estate, especially with no obvious signs of its presence still readily visible.

Moving gradually down the hill, we then entered the beautiful Central Arcade to hear more about its history, including, in particular, its beautiful architecture and stunning tin glazed tiles (these tiles can also be spotted in various pubs around the city centre). We also heard several stories about the different shops that have been in the premises over the years, including a ghost story – very fitting given the time of year.

Heading back outside onto Grey Street we learnt how this area of the city was created by covering over the Lort Burn – a river which still flows down to the Tyne today, albeit now underneath the city in a culvert. This explains the names of the roads ‘High Bridge Street’ and ‘Low Bridge Street’, as these were the actual crossings used to get over the river in years gone by. This hidden waterway is represented by a lovely array of paving near the Old George pub off High Bridge Street, depicting the water flowing underneath on its way down to the Tyne.

The decision to build upon this ground and over the river to create the beautiful buildings of Newcastle (in the famous Tyneside classical style) we know today, means that their foundations are pretty robust, being the same size of the buildings themselves. It was also impressive to hear that the Theatre Royal was built in just a period of 7 months, something which seems unthinkable today.

The tour helped me better understand what has driven the changes in the city and taught me more about the individuals behind these changes, such as Lord Eldon, Earl Grey and Richard Grainger. It really brought a human element into the history and development of the city, which as a social scientist I found fascinating. It also highlighted to me the importance of taking the time to understand the social elements involved in change, as well as the physical changes (in this case, buildings).

The walk really emphasised the importance of thinking about the land beneath your feet and how its use has changed over time.  It also demonstrated the value of looking up and fully taking in your surroundings. For example, I have lived in Newcastle for thirty years and never noticed the vampire rabbit hidden behind the cathedral, perched high above a doorway. This really hit home how much you can fail to notice your everyday surroundings.

This experience gave me numerous things to think about for my upcoming fieldwork, many of which will help ensure I can maximise the farm walks I undertake. This includes the importance of going with a fresh pair of eyes, and the value of using the visual prompt of your surroundings to stimulate discussion. This can generate a wealth of information, which we hope will illuminate some interesting new findings in the field of animal disease research.

This blog was originally posted on the FIELD project blog.

In the latest CRE blog artist in residence Gemma Burditt  discusses the first of her interviews with Northumberland communities about their predictions of the change in land use post Brexit.

Chickens in Northumberland by Gemma Burditt

In June of this year I made my way back to Northumberland to continue my research on the implications of Brexit on the rural north, focusing specifically on how land use might change post Brexit.

One of the more optimistic predictions which Michael Gove has begun work on, is that Brexit might provide an opportunity for British farming to work hand in hand with conservation and be rewarded in subsidies for acts which serve to increase biodiversity, create cleaner water and a more sustainable future. Farmers may also be encouraged to diversify into greener enterprises such as renting out land for renewable energy production or ecotourism. I was interested to speak to land owners, farmers and land based business owners to see how optimistic they felt about a post Brexit future, their predictions, aspirations and firm plans for the next few years ahead.

The last time I had spent significant time in Northumberland was during the winter months of 2016 / 2017; so, as I travel north from Newcastle to Berwick, I look out of the train window to see a landscape bursting with Spring optimism. The trail littered with wind turbines allows me to dream for a moment that a greener future for the country and food production might be obtainable after all. But looking more closely at the patchwork of fields, I begin to really understand what the statistic of 70% of the UK’s landscape being made up of farmland really looks like. When I think of the countryside, what appears in my head is just this, acres and acres of carefully orchestrated crops grown for their lucrative value which is not exactly “natural.” In fact with the increasing intensification of production, farmland more often than not is an actively hostile place for insects, birds and plants.

Saplings by Gemma Burditt

On the first day we meet two local land owners, one of whom tells us about how his land is made up: a farm in hand and several let out to tenant farmers with diversification into let out commercial properties and cafe. He has a genuine interest in conservation preferring to run a mixed farm while doing as much as he can to create woodland and habitats to increase biodiversity. He was fairly pessimistic about Brexit and was particularly concerned about the future of livestock farming as a no deal Brexit would mean paying tariffs of up to 45% on lamb and 60% on beef going into Europe. There was also concern that many farmers in the area cared a great deal about maintaining the highest animal welfare standards and if the markets opened up to the rest of the world, they would be competing against farmers who could produce meat more cheaply but perhaps not so stringently. This would perhaps result in many livestock farms going under. So what would this land be used for instead? His idea for his own farm was to take any unproductive land out of use to be used for forestry as it had the potential to be both profitable and increase biodiversity.

View from St. Oswalds Church by Gemma Burditt

The following day I met with Nicola Bell who worked with the CRE on a number of research projects and now works on LEADER projects trying to help small business and community projects to become more sustainable. She was kind enough to take me up to St.Oswald’s church and show me the view north of this point. Standing along the trail of Hadrian’s Wall, Nicola points out Kielder forest and explains how previously the woodland had been commercial but was now focusing more on the visitor economy. We can see quarries, wind farms, farmland and the RSPB conservation area. What is striking is how every piece of land is owned and accounted for. Although Kielder is working towards a more visitor based economy working on several conservation projects, it is so striking how the way we value even the countryside and natural landscape is based so heavily on economic outputs.

It would be very difficult for new innovative land based projects to emerge within this landscape as it is so unlikely that any land in the area would ever come up for sale without being snapped up immediately for a high price. Nicola was doubtful that land prices would be set to fall in the area after Brexit even if farmers were to sell up.

In the neighboring area I meet with Mark, aligned with the permaculture movement with his young WOOFA (willing worker on organic farm) Sam. He talks me through his various land based projects including plans for a new orchard, a social enterprise where homeless people would come and help plant and maintain the trees grown. Mark shows me around his fantastic garden, including saplings destined for the orchard. It looks like something out of 70s TV sitcom “The Good Life” with every inch of land being used to grow vegetables, trees and fruits – often in inventive containers made from unwanted items. He explains how proud he is that he doesn’t own anything. After spending the week hearing words such as “assets, profits, outputs” my ears really prick up to hear such a phrase being uttered, and what a rarity to meet anyone who doesn’t aspire to ownership particularly of property or land.

Some of the crops in Mark’s garden by Gemma Burditt

Obviously Mark is not aiming to stock the Sainsbury’s veg department so he is not under the same pressure as a regular farmer to maximise profits but it is difficult not to agree with the permaculture philosophy to “design intelligent systems which meet human needs whilst enhancing biodiversity, reducing our impact on the planet, and creating a fairer world for us all.” The permaculture movement has perhaps been sidelined as a somewhat hippy movement, but there seems real potential here to capitalise (sorry I know I’m doing it now!) on the wave of interest in locally produced food and create innovative community based projects as Mark is doing to bring people together through the love of growing.

There are several permaculture based veg box schemes in the area such as North East Organic Growers, a co-operative based near Bedlington all supplying locally grown organic produce to the area creating a sense of community and producing seasonal produce in a more sustainable way. Obviously this comes at a price and with an increasing percent of the population on stagnant incomes this is not an option for everyone.

On the way to Hexham I had seen a field which was filled with poppies. It looked like a memorial installation to commemorate the First World War, but after asking Mark about it, he explained that since Europe had banned certain weed killers, poppies had been easily able to grow again alongside wheat. I thought it was an interesting example of how European policy literally had changed how our landscape looked visually. Even down to the crops we are growing. Rapeseed for example, is soaring in popularity due to recent reports of olive oil prices spiraling after a poor European harvest and a bacteria outbreak affecting Italian olive trees. Rapeseed has such a striking yellow colour that it can dominate any landscape and challenge our concept of the British landscape made up of the traditional greens and browns. Rapeseed itself is also a controversial crop as it is often intensely farmed reliant on heavy use of pesticides and weed killers.

Finally we talk to a young researcher conducting tests into innovative crops which could grow in the UK partly in response to creating a more sustainable food production line and perhaps also with Brexit looming on the horizon; trying to find more profitable crops which grow easily in our climate. The two main trials were for Spelt and Buckwheat which again interested me in terms of the visual impact these would have on our landscape. The latter particularly having a striking appearance with fluffy white flowers protruding from the plant. A move towards a more plant based diet and unpredictable climate may also influence what we decide to grow in the future.

On the whole there was a lot less fear than I was expecting from a community so vulnerable to a no deal Brexit. There was also a unanimous feeling that the focus of the post Brexit agricultural policy would have to be working towards a greener and more sustainable future, although there was very little faith that the government would provide much support to aide these changes. Many were fastening their seatbelts praying that Boris Johnson didn’t get in – oh dear!

There were several more interviews conducted this week which I will discuss further in a future blog.

In the latest CRE blog senior lecturer Menelaos Gkartzios reflects on his visit to the Venice Art Biennale.

From ‘SaF05’, Charlotte Prodger, Scotland + Venice partnership

The vaporetto from the airport to Venice was noticeably slow, and I swear the quality of water had been improved drastically. I decided that ‘slow transport’ was part of a strategy that sought minimum interruption in a city that was sinking – literally and metaphorically. In the middle of August, of all times, I had come to attend the Venice Art Biennale – for the first time. Artistic practice represents a new avenue of research for me, following the research network in Japan on art and rural development, the CRE Artist-in-Residence programme and the newly advertised rural Artist Residencies at Visual Arts in Rural Communities, as well as the upcoming Special Section in Sociologia Ruralis on ‘Doing Art in the Country’.

I wasn’t necessarily looking for the function or the meaning of the artworks, and the director’s introduction reassured me that there was no need to. I saw the artworks as a critique, an exploration of a particular topic, a research approach, and sometimes as nothing to ponder on. I arrived wondering where and how ‘the rural’ is positioned at the festival, obviously not as a space for exhibiting works of art, but as a field of knowledge that artists are engaging with: what questions of rurality (if any) are explored through contemporary visual arts? I approached the festival as if I was walking around a park. In fact, part of the festival takes place at the Venice Giardini, The Gardens. Years ago, a Dublin-based artist had advised me against seeing everything in an art exhibition. ‘Imagine you are in a park’. Some flowers, he continued, might take your fancy; you might even get closer to smell some, while others you will ignore. Handy advice I thought to myself when you are dealing with so much work: two art presentations offered as ‘propositions’ (one in the Giardini and one at the Arsenale), national pavilions and a series of other parallel exhibitions throughout the city. So I strolled at the park. Slowly and many times.

I came of course with my own rural preoccupations. Rurality had found its way to the festival, although not necessarily in explicit terms. Drawing here on the national representation entries (i.e. the pavilions) for example, there were questions of rurality in Charlotte Prodger’s intimate confessions about her queer identity growing up in ‘the village’ in rural Scotland. There were representations of rurality in the numerous landscapes that were used to depict Ghana’s natural resources and people in the moving (moving) images of John Akomfrah. Or in the video footage of tsunami rocks (presented as ‘cosmo-eggs’) washed out from the ocean and the multiple meanings these have for coastal communities much damaged in the 2011 earthquake in Japan – an entry that was fascinating to me because of its interdisciplinary work across ethnography, art, music and architecture. There were artworks about indigenous rural communities, for example the Inuit people and the forced relocation they were subjected to at the Canadian pavilion by artist collective Isuma. And there were more.

From ‘Cosmo-eggs’, Motoyuki Shitamichi, Japanese pavilion

Of course, to see the art festival solely through the rural lens is to reduce it. The trend of engaging critically with ‘the rural’ was there, although this could be easily missed were you not looking for it. Following the curator’s introduction, social critiques were abundant at the festival, and these seemed in line with ongoing discussions in social sciences about decolonising the academy and the art world, racial struggles and white hegemony, transgender rights, climate change, migration, poverty and the growth of ultra-right politics. Some artworks were extremely powerful in addressing these in a profound way, and if you ever have a chance to watch Arthur Jafa’s acclaimed video ‘The White Album’ please do, as anything I might try to write here about it seems too little.

As in any festival, it was the social element that makes it. The ‘art crowd’ as it is derogatively called sometimes, was friendly and engaging, and I met many people attending the festival, including fellow social scientists from across the world. ‘The rural?’ some would ask in puzzlement. Despite the posters everywhere in the city about the Biennale, many tourists didn’t know about it. It doesn’t matter, Venice is a sort of an art festival on its own, I thought. Still, the festival and its venues took me to places I wouldn’t normally go, and there were enough scattered exhibitions around the city to give you an adventure. Enough to see Venice in a different way, with washing lines hanging outdoors, kids playing on the backstreets and empty traditional cafes. All slow, walking in the city – all slow as the rural is sometimes, mistakenly, typified to be.

In our latest blog, Professor Jeremy Phillipson and  Roger Turner (CRE Associate and Rural Economics Consultant), discuss how the UK Industrial Strategy can embrace rural economies.

Would it be sensible to have an Industrial Strategy that overlooks an economic contribution equivalent to the 10 leading cities after London? The answer is clearly no, but this would be the risk if rural areas were not fully incorporated into the development and delivery of the Industrial Strategy. England’s rural areas host over half a million registered businesses and many more unregistered ones,  employ 3.5 million people, and in 2017 generated a GVA (gross value added) of at least £246 billion. They are integral to regional economies, make a substantial contribution to the vitality of their urban neighbours, and sustain communities of over 9.5 million people.

Thankfully, Industrial Strategy policy makers and rural stakeholders have been working hard to ensure that the strategy embraces our rural economies and places. Most recently this was boosted by a major workshop on the rural contribution to the Industrial Strategy, hosted by Rural Enterprise UK at Newcastle University in March.

As we move into the next pivotal stage of delivery, more than ever the contributions of rural areas to supporting growth and productivity need to be universally supported and embraced across Industrial Strategy processes and measures. Our team’s analysis of the Government’s own small business data is challenging assumptions that rural economies lack dynamism, perform less well, or are simply dependent on urban growth. Rural economies have untapped potential – for example around twice as many rural firms report having goods or services suitable for exporting than those which currently export. Rural areas are also at the forefront of major socio-economic trends such as an Ageing Society and Clean Growth – two of the Strategy’s Grand Challenges.

So how can rural representatives and other stakeholders ensure that Local Industrial Strategies are as relevant, accessible and visible to rural as to city and urban areas? How can the Strategy’s Grand Challenges be converted from grand and society–wide challenges to regional and local opportunities for rural areas?

These questions were tackled at the workshop by a unique gathering of expertise. Bringing together stakeholders from literally across the UK – from the Isles of Scilly in the south to Shetland in the north – the event gained insights from leaders in government-sector organisations, sub-national agencies and partnerships, business and community organisations, researchers from Newcastle University’s National Innovation Centres for Ageing and Data, and those of us long-engaged in researching small-medium enterprises (SMEs) and rural economies.

It was clear in our discussions that all of the Industrial Strategy’s features and foundations are also drivers of rural productivity or growth. Each raises long-standing and distinct rural challenges and prospects that require attention, which play out differently across the diversity of rural places, yet often remain underexplored or underutilised.  A short report from the workshop and further info is available here.

In summary, participants highlighted several prerequisites if rural contributions to the Industrial Strategy are to be fully realised:

• Meaningful sub-regional devolution of Industrial Strategy measures coupled with local co-developed solutions and capacity building to enable local ‘place’-defined delivery.
• Strengthened engagement of micro and small enterprises in developing and delivering Industrial Strategy measures and sector deals, with bolstered commitment to involving rural businesses.
• Improved networking and representation of rural firms to generate strategic thinking, leadership and collaboration.
• Enrolment of rural economies as leading lights or test beds for ideas and innovation linked to the Grand Challenges.
• Appropriate metrics, indicators and investment thresholds for defining rural outcomes and measuring success.
• Enhanced evidence, sensitive to local diversity in drivers, needs and opportunities, so that Local Enterprise Partnerships and other stakeholders are better equipped to embed rural contributions in local industrial strategies, sector and area growth deals.

One of our own highlights of the day was to hear a senior Defra official welcome this occasion as a rare event at which the main Department ‘talking rural’ was not the government’s own rural champion Defra, as is normally the case, but instead a host of leading contributions from other government departments, especially BEIS, MHCLG, DFT, DFE, Scotland Office etc[1]. Indeed, in his keynote presentation, Sam Lister, the Director of Industrial Strategy, made the case for respecting rural as an equal partner in the UK’s future economies. Both interventions say a lot about the positive progress made by both departments in considering the rural reach of the Strategy and the contributions of many stakeholders who have worked to enhance recognition of rural areas and their economies. Many participants welcomed this new recognition and shared space. Continuing this shared endeavour is more essential than ever, and at Newcastle University we are keen to help to extend this dialogue and convert ‘talking rural’ into visible and valued actions for the future.

[1] Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), Ministry Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), Department for Transport (DFT) and Department for Education (DFE)

In our latest blog, Senior Lecturer in Agribusiness Dr Diogo Souza Monteiro talks about his participation in the Oxford Meetings on Food System Impact Valuation, and the growing need to change food consumption habits in order to preserve natural capital.

The Oxford Meetings on Food System Impact Valuation, hosted by Dr. John Ingram, leader of the food program at Oxford University Environment Change Institute, joins academia, businesses, governmental agencies and non-governmental organisations to work on Natural Capital Valuation and its implications. Now in its third year, the focus of 2019 was to capitalise on the forward momentum on the methods and initiatives already in place to evaluate natural capitals. I was fortunate to attend and lead sessions at the third meeting, held on the 15 and 16^th of April.

Food System Impact Valuation Meeting

Before I highlight some of the main initiatives discussed, it is worth recapping how we have arrived at discussions surrounding natural capital and its implications. Although not new, there is an emerging debate in policy and business communities surrounding how to manage the effects of climate change on human societies. The 1983 Brundtland report “Our Common Future” defined ‘sustainable development’ and highlighted the need to reconcile human activities with the natural environment and biosphere that supports our societies. However, only now is there a sense of urgency and an increasing consensus that, if we (as a society) persist in our current paradigm, large parts of the earth may no longer be habitable for future generations.

In order to mitigate the impacts of human activity on our planet, we need to be able to identify, understand, measure and manage those activities and their consequences which contribute towards climate change. In particular, food production and consumption are heavily dependent on natural resources. Therefore, there are several groups developing and implementing frameworks to evaluate the impact of different food sectors in the natural environment – hence the importance of the Oxford Meetings.

Since the concept of natural capital has been clarified, several organisations have developed frameworks and methodologies to measure this for both countries and businesses, such as the Natural Capital Coalition protocol. Additional sustainability frameworks have been developed that reflect a growing awareness of other capitals. These more holistic accounts of capital take into account natural, human, social and economic (manufacturing and financial) capitals in human activities. These “true cost” protocols are particularly pertinent in relation to food, such as those proposed by the Sustainable Food Trust or the FReSH true cost of food program. The purpose of these is to inform public and corporate policy and investment decisions, the latter used to identify the risks of different activities and their revenue streams. Moreover, they will impact our individual behaviour as consumers, including the discouragement of the consumption of products with high impacts on nature. Most discussions at the Oxford Meeting centred on the need for harmonisation of these true cost account frameworks and, more importantly, on how these can be used to support consumer decisions and promote dietary change.

Lady Margaret Hall – the conference venue

As part of the meeting, participants were divided in groups to discuss emerging issues on several themes including standardisation, finance, public policy and research projects. I led discussions in one of the public policy sessions, focusing on how the principles and methods of true cost accounting can inform policy promoting the use of food labels to increase transparency and foster consumer behaviour change. Examples of labels designed to help consumers make more informed choices in relation to some dimension of natural impact include the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) label in wood and paper products and the Rainforest Alliance label in foods.

However, there are several issues with these that were discussed during the session. Firstly, not all labels are equal or transparent surrounding the claim(s) they are communicating, and they do not necessarily take into account the true costs of the activities they are promoting. Another issue is that not all labels resonate with the consumer, with one participant highlighting that most consumers make choices solely based on price, meaning a label on a more expensive product that might reflect the true cost of production will not be chosen by most consumers.

Finally, the proliferation of labels communicating some dimension of sustainability — often with conflicting messages — makes choices difficult for consumers. This does, however, highlight an opportunity to develop a comprehensive label underpinned by sound food standards and true costs accounting methods for products in a given sector. If supported through policy to ensure a mandatory label, products with higher true costs of production would not be able to be carry lower prices. However, we are far from a consensus on methodologies and frameworks to determine what the true costs of a food product are, and the discussion session concluded that it is premature to propose such a label. Also, implementing mandatory labels based on true cost principles will be controversial and the charging the true cost of food may have important welfare and equity implications that need to be taken into account.

Labelling and underlying food standards are topics where there is growing expertise in CRE and SNES. For example, Dr Luca Panzone has done significant contributions to our understanding of the impact of carbon footprint labels on consumer choice. I have examined whether nutrition labels drove product reformulation and how alternative ways to convey diet information motivated consumer behaviour. CRE is therefore well positioned to continue to play a role in this important and urgent agenda.

PhD student Chisaki Fukushima talks about her experience of working for the Cultural Models of Nature project, and highlights key concepts from this that she will use in her doctoral research.

Cultural Models of Nature (CMN), a project funded by the U.S. National Sciences Foundation between 2011 and 2016, endeavoured to understand the cultural models of primary food producers around the world – their collective mental systems and processes as well as models of knowledge transfer and use.  Findings from the project have now been summarised in a book of the same name, to which my mentor Dr. Hidetada Shimizu and I contributed a chapter.

Cultural Models of Nature book

A key goal of the project was to compare CMNs on a global scale, particularly in terms of climate change. All project collaborators who contributed to the book report that primary food producers are struggling with the effects of climate change.  These producers perceived it to be affecting their livelihoods in different ways. Sometimes its impacts were direct, such as changes in weather patterns, temperature and storms (including flooding), and sea level rises.  Other times they were more indirect, for example market price turmoil – a result of equipment or oil price fluctuations and political manipulation. In complex economic and political systems, primary food producers struggle to understand not only what happens in these systems, but how to cope with the issues present.

Nature (with a lowercase ‘n’) – defined in this project as natural objects, environments and others — is the longest and strongest relationship for humans. Scientists and philosophers learn about nature from a careful examination of people’s livelihoods and subsistence patterns as there is always a relationship between cultural ideas of Nature (with an uppercase ‘N’) and any group dependent on nature for their livelihood ( i.e. all humans). The natural environment we see has already been permanently changed by humans. Human-aggravated disasters are affecting not only current, but also future generations. Therefore, we must focus on learning what humans know and understand to help them adapt to this new, harsher reality. The CMN scholars in this volume seek to understand decision making through clear and consistent mental models shared across a group, while also reflecting on cognitive models of the world. Specifically, ethnographers involved in this collection reject the notion that primary food producers are a ‘problem’ of irrational thinking and instead see their decision making as logical.

This addresses profound epistemological questions about what we can know about others. CMN tells us to open our eyes and look at the available evidence from people’s existence and livelihoods through discourse analysis, observation, and experimental data production and analysis. The different sites generated data from mixed and inter-subjective cultural analysis, borrowing from psychology and anthropology in order to produce data about primary food producers’ knowledge. This approach assumes there is an isomorphism, or similar process to do with what people say and what they know. This knowledge system recognizes cognition as central to individual decision making and attempts to formally describe what people know and the relationship between elements of their knowledge, or ‘folk knowledge’.

In the chapter I co-authored with Hidetada Shimizu, we introduced two key concepts that are integral to local cultural models of nature[1]. A study of Japanese farmers found particularly high salience (or importance) of Human Relationships in those two narratives regarding risk supported by more than two analyses.

Japanese farmers experienced the Green Revolution in the 1950s and 1960s along with the post-war social infrastructure such as land consolidation and technological development. They are well educated and knowledgeable, use modern technology, and enjoy an independent middle-level income that relies on robust management skills.  However, their collective peasant value of ‘Hyaku-sho’ community structure is still critical to their production and is very similar to what it was twenty years ago. It is therefore not only the nature of each agent that is important but also the relationships between agents. Social networks are particularly critical for managing risks from labour shortages, market price fluctuations, succession of the family business and coping with climate change. For the primary food producers included in the study, their success strategy emphasised overcoming risk, threats, and eliminating elements that might negatively affect their products. The entity which we can understand as ‘social relation’ almost appears to be one social organism – a kind of human eusociality.

The other narrative articulates the idea that crops are not just ‘products’, but are provided by the mercy of a holy nature and are a personified risk. This came through in a detailed study of the use of metaphor and semantic causal analysis. For example, farmers claim that they cannot control what nature does to them since nature is like humans, who make mistakes, and humans themselves are part of nature. Nature is personified both as something that can provide things, as well as a systemic relationship of components that includes people. It is possible that this is a result of the fusion of secular Buddhism and indigenous animism, but at present, we lack the evidence to make such a claim. It is, nevertheless, something I would like to explore in the future.

These two narratives are echoed across other sites in the project, and it is fascinating to see the differences and similarities between them. These may be the result of different environments, cultural histories, religions, economic policies, citizenship or, more likely, a complex interaction of all of these and other factors. The two narratives that we focus on in our chapter see risk as one of the attributes of nature, but humans as the ones who experience the consequences of that risk. Since humans face the consequences, they are responsible for managing risk. Successful risk management allows people to find Ikigai (the purpose/value of life) through a belief in surviving difficulties like economic crisis, climate change and natural disasters.

The work I did for Cultural Models of Nature with my mentor, Dr Hidetada Shimizu, was rewarding and profoundly inspiring. I am now continuing this work in my doctoral research, titled ‘Cultural Models of Risk’. I will extend the work I did with Dr. Shimizu to understand belief systems and cultural perceptions of the risk of radiation in food and in a nuclear host community.

[1] The original data belongs to Dr Hidetada Shimizu (Northern Illinois University).

A report released earlier this week by CRE’s Carmen Hubbard provides a detailed analysis of how the UK agriculture may be affected by Brexit. Working with colleagues from the Scottish Rural College, Agri-food & Biosciences Institute and a range of stakeholders, the report looks at all aspects of agriculture across all parts of the UK.

The UK agri-food sector will be one of the most seriously affected by Brexit. Not only is it dependent on trade relations both with the European Union and with the Rest of the World, but it is also a sector dependent on migrant labour, and the most heavily subsidised and regulated under the present Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

The research shows that under selected trade scenarios the impact of Brexit on UK agriculture will be far from uniform. The trade scenario effects depend on the net trade position, and/or world prices. Under a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the EU, agricultural impacts are relatively modest. By contrast, unilateral removal of import tariffs (UTL) has significant negative impacts on prices, production and incomes. Adoption of the current EU’s WTO tariff schedule for all imports (including those from the EU) favours net importer sectors (e.g., dairy) and harms net exporter sectors (e.g., sheep).

These trade effects, however, might be overshadowed by the foreign exchange rate and possible labour market changes and other non-tariff barriers.

Given the dependence of many UK farms on CAP direct payments, their removal, predictably, worsens the negative impacts of new trade arrangements and offsets positive impacts. Indeed, the elimination of direct payments will affect most farm businesses, but the magnitude varies significantly by enterprise and devolved administration.

The research shows differences in effects at farm and sector level, implying that although the agricultural industry can survive and adapt there is likely to be considerable hardship for individuals, families and businesses.

Changes in the agricultural industry could have more far reaching effects in other sectors, such as food processing.

Changes in land use may relieve environmental pressures, for example in areas experiencing over grazing, but could increase risks of pollution in others. Consideration will be needed for policies to manage any transition.

The Westminster and devolved governments may need to consider the implications of such changes for people, the food supply, land use and the countryside, and their responses and policy approaches to managing this may vary.

However, uncertainty during negotiations regarding the Withdrawal Agreement has been (and continues to be at the time of writing) a major problem, making it extremely difficult for farmers and the agri-food industry to plan for the future.

Read the report in full here.

This blog originally appeared on the Northern Rural Network Site, written by Paul Cowie.