Department of Geography

Research seminars

Spring 2016

"Food, Climate and Society"


Arts C, Global Studies Resource Centre
Thursdays, 12.30 – 14.00

4th February 2016
Food: the elephant in the Climate & Society changing room
Prof Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy, Director of the Centre for Food Policy, City University London
(Note: This seminar will take place in Arts C 333)

Abstract

This talk explores why changes to the food system ought to be central in attempts to tackle climate change. The evidence is pretty clear, but the policy and political commitments are currently pretty weak. Why is this? What is being done to fill this policy space? After the Paris Accord in late 2015, now what?

Speaker bio

Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy, Centre for Food Policy, City University, Northampton Square, London EC1V 0HB, UK Tel: +44-(0)20-7040-8798 email: t.lang@city.ac.uk

Tim Lang is Professor of Food Policy and Director of the Centre for Food Policy, City University London. He was a hill farmer in Lancashire, England, in the 1970s. This formed his interest in the relationship between food, health, the environment and culture. He studies and engages with food policy debate at local, national and international levels. He is co-writing a book Sustainable Diets (Routledge, 2016), and is co-author of Food Wars (Routledge, 2nd ed, 2015), Unmanageable Consumer (Sage, 3rd ed, 2015), Ecological Public Health (Routlege, 2012) and Food Policy (Oxford University Press, 2009).

Reading

 

11th February 2016
Exploring low carbon agricultural innovation in China: a thousand flowers blooming?
Dr Adrian Ely, Senior Lecturer (SPRU), Deputy Director (STEPS Centre), University of Sussex

Abstract

China faces the challenges of feeding around one-fifth of the world’s population with only 8 per cent of its arable land, and of peaking its carbon emissions by 2030 (a target re-stated in its INDC prior to COP21).  How are Chinese innovation, agriculture and climate policies converging to create low carbon agri-food systems that address these challenges? This seminar draws from the project ‘Low Carbon Innovation in China: Prospects, Politics and Practice’, to explore this question.  In particular, it looks at contending models of innovation and the different pathways of social, technological and environmental change that they imply.  A diversity of innovations – exemplified by (but not limited to) transgenic seeds, precision agriculture, supply chain innovations and improved agro-ecological practices - are all emerging in the Chinese context.  Drawing on the findings from the past three years of the project, the seminar looks at the politics and the policies that may determine which of these flowers will bloom and which will die.

Suggested readings

 

18th February 2016
Water for food: global, regional and domestic virtual water trade networks
Dr Carole Dalin, Research Officer, Grantham Research Institute, London School of Economics

Abstract

Freshwater resources are under increasing pressure from human and environmental constraints. Population growth and socio-economic development have intensified water withdrawals globally, in particular for irrigated agriculture, accounting for 70-80% of global water use and aout 90% of water consumption. Furthermore, climate change is expected to enhance water scarcity in some regions. Trade of water-intensive products, corresponding to a transfer of water resources, can reduce the spatial heterogeneity of water availability. As such, domestic or international trade may improve water-use efficiency at a global or national scale, by providing more efficiently produced goods to all consumers. In this seminar, I will present the results of several analyses testing this concept at different scales, from global to regional (southern Africa) and domestic (China). I will also discuss the impacts of climate, socio-economic and policy changes on the water-food-trade systems, and their effects on regional and national food and water security.

25th February 2016
Bees, pesticides and politics
Prof Dave Goulson, Professor of Biology, University of Sussex

Abstract

Bees face many threats in the modern world, of which exposure to pesticides is by far the most controversial. In particular, there has been much interest in the impacts of one class of pesticides, the neonicotinoids. I will discuss the evidence that these chemicals may be harmful to bees and other wildlife. I will then look more broadly at pesticide use and modern intensive farming, and question whether this model of food production is sustainable in the long term, or desirable, and whether there are alternatives.

References

  • Goulson, D., Nicholls E., Botías C., & Rotheray, E.L. 2015. Combined stress from parasites, pesticides and lack of flowers drives bee declines. SCIENCE 347: 1435-+. 
  • van Lexmond, MB, Bonmatin, J-M., Goulson, D. & Noome, D.A. 2015. Worldwide integrated assessment on systemic pesticides. Global collapse of the entomofauna: exploring the role of systemic insecticides. ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & POLLUTION RESEARCH 22: 1-4.
  • Whitehorn PR, O’Connor S, Wackers FL & Goulson D. 2012. Neonicotinoid pesticide reduces bumblebee colony growth and queen production. SCIENCE 336: 351-352.

Bio

Professor Dave Goulson was brought up in rural Shropshire, where he developed an early obsession with wildlife.  He received his bachelor’s degree in biology from Oxford University, followed by a doctorate on butterfly ecology at Oxford Brookes University. Subsequently, he lectured in biology for 11 years at the University of Southampton, and it was here that he began to study bumblebees in earnest. He subsequently moved to Stirling University in 2006, and then to Sussex in 2013. He has published more than 240 scientific articles on the ecology and conservation of bumblebees and other insects. He is the author of Bumblebees; Their Behaviour, Ecology and Conservation, published in 2010 by Oxford University Press, and of theSunday Times bestseller A Sting in the Tale, a popular science book about bumble bees, published in 2013 by Jonathan Cape, and now translated into German, Dutch, Swedish, Korean, Chinese and Danish. This was followed by A Buzz in the Meadow in 2014. Goulson founded the Bumblebee Conservation Trust in 2006, a charity which has grown to 8,000 members. He was the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council’s Social Innovator of the Year in 2010, was given the Zoological Society of London’s Marsh Award for Conservation Biology in 2013, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2013, and given the British Ecological Society Public Engagement Award in 2014. In 2015 he was named number 8 in BBC Wildlife Magazine’s list of the top 50 most influential people in conservation. He lives in East Sussex with his wife and their three boys.

3rd March 2016
Innovative Farmers: a new network to support farmer-led innovation
Tom MacMillan, Director of Innovation, Soil Association

Abstract

Many of the best ideas in farming come from farmers. Yet most public and private R&D investment goes upstream or downstream of the farm, developing new products and services to sell them or ‘adding value’ to their products. Innovative Farmers is a new network that recognises and supports innovation by farmers themselves. The network provides professional group support, funding, a web portal to share learning and programme of wider knowledge exchange activities. At its heart are ‘field labs’, where groups of farmers experiment with support from a facilitator and researcher. These adapt the Farmer Field School approach, used by more than 10 million farmers in the global South, to the UK. Tom will share the motivations and thinking behind Innovative Farmers, findings from pilot field labs involving 750 farmers, and lessons learned so far.

Bio

Tom MacMillan is Director of Innovation at the Soil Association. The Soil Association runs Innovative Farmers alongside LEAF, Innovation for Agriculture, the Organic Research Centre, Waitrose and the Prince of Wales’s Charitable Foundation. Before joining the Soil Association in 2011, he was Executive Director of the Food Ethics Council. He has served on various advisory groups and boards, including the expert advisory panel for the UK Cabinet Office Food Matters report, ScienceWise, the BBSRC Science and Society Strategy Panel, and the boards of Sustain and the Brighton & Hove Food Partnership. He has a PhD in geography from the University of Manchester, where he investigated the use and abuse of science in food regulation.

Reading

 

10th March 2016
Novel foods and sustainable consumption
Dr Dominic Glover, Research Fellow, Institute of Development Studies

Abstract

Some experts and entrepreneurs think that edible insects could form a significant part of the human diet in the future. Freeze-dried insects might be cooked and eaten whole or ground up into insect ‘meal’ or ‘flour’ and incorporated, invisibly, into breads, cakes, pies, croquettes and other prepared foods. This could be a healthy and more sustainable source of protein than conventional meat, which has a big physical and environmental footprint. Rearing livestock for food takes allocations of land and water for feed production that might be dedicated to food crops instead. Not only that, but cows also produce greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming, which fuels climate change. But, meanwhile, meat remains a highly desired status food; as people get richer, they often tend to consume more meat. Insect-based animal and fish feeds are already on the market, which might reduce the environmental footprint of conventional meat. But will consumers choose to eat insect-based foods instead? The answer probably depends not only on ethical and environmental considerations but also basic issues such as cost, flavour and texture. Also, edible insects are not the only protein alternative under development, so future insect-based foods might have to compete in the market place with other protein alternatives based on algae or fungi, or even synthetic meat. This lecture will introduce some major issues and discuss a recent foresight project that considered the future of edible insects in the global food system.

Further reading

  • van Huis, A., J. van Itterbeeck, H. Klunder, E. Mertens, A. Halloran, G. Muir and P. Vantomme (2013). Edible insects: future prospects for food and feed security. FAO Forestry Paper 171. Rome, IT, Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations.
  • Glover, D. and A. Sexton (2015). Edible Insects and the Future of Food: A Foresight Scenario Exercise on Entomophagy and Global Food Security. IDS Evidence Report 149. Brighton, UK, Institute of Development Studies.

 

7th April 2016
What is a sustainable food system?
Prof Tim Benton, UK Champion for Global Food Security, Professor of Population Ecology, University of Leeds

Abstract

Can we produce enough food to allow 10-11bn people to live as we do, and in a sustainable way? The answer to this is partly determined by what is meant by “sustainable”. I’ll examine different notions of sustainability – from an agricultural and agri-food systems perspective – and ask whether they are sufficient to ensure that we maintain planetary and local ecosystem functioning; or whether intervening on the demand side is a necessary precursor to maintaining the system within “safe operating spaces”.

Bio

Prof Tim Benton is the “Champion” for the UK’s Global Food Security (GFS) programme, leading, facilitating and coordinating its activities. GFS is a partnership of the UK’s main public funders of research in food security, including the research councils and government departments (including environment, farming and rural affairs, international development, health and business, innovation and skills). The role of GFS is to ensure that strategically important research in this area is undertaken, and to add value to research via interdisciplinary collaboration, alignment and engagement of different communities of stakeholders. He is also a leading researcher, based at the University of Leeds, on agri-environment interactions and finding ways to make agricultural production more sustainable.

14th April 2016
Resilience or precarity? Social, economic and political adjustments after the global food crisis
Findings from the IDS/Oxfam GB Life in a Time of Food Price Volatility study, 2012-16
Dr Naomi Hossain, Research Fellow, Institute of Development Studies

Abstract

Little attention has been paid to thinking through the aftermath of the so-called global food crises of 2008-12. Estimates of declining global poverty, more stable commodity prices and rising wages since 2011 all suggest that in the long-term, the crisis benefited the poor, particularly in rural areas. People appeared to have been quite resilient to rapid rises in their main costs of living. But did it? And were they resilient? What adjustments did people have to make to manage rising prices, to tackle the changing value relations between labour and food?

The Oxfam GB/IDS Life in a Time of Food Price Volatility project (2012-16) addressed these questions. The sense of crisis faded to a squeeze after the peak crisis passed, but domestic prices stayed high or rose further, as in Ethiopia. The project studied how diverse populations in 23 locations in low and lower middle income countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia responded to these common pressures, focusing on changes in the work people were doing and the food they were eating, observing the influences of economic growth and environmental change, including disasters, on livelihoods and the scope for recovery. It also studied the transformative collective and institutional effects of those and related responses as they interacted in labour and food markets, reshaping food cultures and popular politics. The research shows how the mechanisms of adjustment to higher food prices came to operate through an immediate and sustained pressure on people on low incomes to a) to increase their effort in the market economy on whatever terms it offered, and b) to extract more value from the food being consumed, under conditions where both supply and demand are shifting fast, in part due to changing relative prices. Work became more precarious – unreliable, unregulated, flexible, dangerous – and effortful, and yet earnings still did not stretch to a decent diet for those near the poverty line. Eating was becoming a heightened source of anxious pleasures and consumer choices, as new food safety concerns and supply of cheap novel food items changed how people ate.

The political response to this new precarity was consistent with the idea that a ‘moral economy’ informs popular responses to subsistence crises. People – broadly - held public authorities responsible to protect them against food crises, primarily by making it possible for them to work, however precariously. Interestingly, many people felt democratic accountability made their rights to food in state protection against crises a realistic possibility, even if in practice they did not always feel protected. Through this ‘food crisis from below’ approach, emerges the pattern of mass adjustment in the global value relations between labour and food; as people change how they work and how they eat. It shows that this is precarity, not resilience.

Reading

http://policy-practice.oxfam.org.uk/our-work/food-livelihoods/food-price-volatility-research

21st April 2016
Food and the sustainable healthy diets question
Dr Tara Garnett, Food Climate Research Network, Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food, University of Oxford

No further information available at this time.

28th April 2016
Land sharing versus land sparing
Dr Jorn Scharlemann, Reader in Ecology and Conservation, Interim Director of Sussex Sustainability Research Programme, University of Sussex

No further information available at this time.

An archive of past series