Reaping the benefits: science and the sustainable intensification of global agriculture

Food security is one of this century’s key global challenges. By 2050 the world will require increased crop production in order to feed its predicted 9 billion people. This must be done in the face of changing consumption patterns, the impacts of climate change and the growing scarcity of water and land. Crop production methods will also have to sustain the environment, preserve natural resources and support livelihoods of farmers and rural populations around the world. There is a pressing need for the ‘sustainable intensifi cation’ of global agriculture in which yields are increased without adverse environmental impact and without the cultivation of more land. Addressing the need to secure a food supply for the whole world requires an urgent international effort with a clear sense of long-term challenges and possibilities. Biological science, especially publicly funded science, must play a vital role in the sustainable intensifi cation of food crop production. The UK has a responsibility and the capacity to take a leading role in providing a range of scientifi c solutions to mitigate potential food shortages. This will require signifi cant funding of cross-disciplinary science for food security. The constraints on food crop production are well understood, but differ widely across regions. The availability of water and good soils are major limiting factors. Signifi cant losses in crop yields occur due to pests, diseases and weed competition. The effects of climate change will further exacerbate the stresses on crop plants, potentially leading to dramatic yield reductions. Maintaining and enhancing the diversity of crop genetic resources is vital to facilitate crop breeding and thereby enhance the resilience of food crop production. Addressing these constraints requires technologies and approaches that are underpinned by good science. Some of these technologies build on existing knowledge, while others are completely radical approaches, drawing on genomics and high-throughput analysis. Novel research methods have the potential to contribute to food crop production through both genetic improvement of crops and new crop and soil management practices. Genetic improvements to crops can occur through breeding or genetic modifi cation to introduce a range of desirable traits. The application of genetic methods has the potential to refi ne existing crops and provide incremental improvements. These methods also have the potential to introduce radical and highly signifi cant improvements to crops by increasing photosynthetic effi ciency, reducing the need for nitrogen or other fertilisers and unlocking some of the unrealised potential of crop genomes. The science of crop management and agricultural practice also needs to be given particular emphasis as part of a food security grand challenge. These approaches can address key constraints in existing crop varieties and can be applied widely. Current approaches to maximising production within agricultural systems are unsustainable; new methodologies that utilise all elements of the agricultural system are needed, including better soil management and enhancement and exploitation of populations of benefi cial soil microbes. Agronomy, soil science and agroecology—the relevant sciences—have been neglected in recent years. Past debates about the use of new technologies for agriculture have tended to adopt an either/or approach, emphasising the merits of particular agricultural systems or technological approaches and the downsides of others. This has been seen most obviously with respect to genetically modifi ed (GM) crops, the use of pesticides and the arguments for and against organic modes of production. These debates have failed to acknowledge that there is no technological panacea for the global challenge of sustainable and secure global food production. There will always be trade-offs and local complexities. This report considers both new crop varieties and appropriate agroecological crop and soil management practices and adopts an inclusive approach. No techniques or technologies should be ruled out. Global agriculture demands a diversity of approaches, specific to crops, localities, cultures and other circumstances. Such diversity demands that the breadth of relevant scientific enquiry is equally diverse, and that science needs to be combined with social, economic and political perspectives. In addition to supporting high-quality science, the UK needs to maintain and build its capacity to innovate, in collaboration with international and national research centres. UK scientists and agronomists have in the past played a leading role in disciplines relevant to agriculture, but training in agricultural sciences and related topics has recently suffered from a lack of policy attention and support. Agricultural extension services, connecting farmers with new innovations, have been similarly neglected in the UK and elsewhere. There is a major need to review the support for and provision of extension services, particularly in developing countries. The governance of innovation for agriculture needs to maximise opportunities for increasing production, while at the same time protecting societies, economies and the environment from negative side effects. Regulatory systems need to improve their assessment of benefits. Horizon scanning will ensure proactive consideration of technological options by governments. Assessment of benefi ts, risks and uncertainties should be seen broadly, and should include the wider impacts of new technologies and practices on economies and societies. Public and stakeholder dialogue—with NGOs, scientists and farmers in particular—needs to be a part of all governance frameworks.

Planning for the reuse of redundant defence estate: disposal processes, policy frameworks and development impacts

This paper reviews recent research and other literature concerning the planning and development of redundant defence estate. It concentrates on UK sources but includes reference to material from Europe and the North America were it is relevant for comparative purposes. It introduces the topic by providing a brief review of the recent restructuring of the UK defence estate and then proceeds to examine the various planning policy issues generated by this process; the policy frameworks used to guide it; comparable approaches to surplus land disposal and the appraisal of impacts; and ending the main body of the review with an analyse of the economic, social and environmental impacts of military base closure and redevelopment. It concludes that there is a significant body of work focusing on the reuse and redevelopment of redundant defence estate in the UK and abroad, but that much of this work is based on limited research or on personal experience. One particular weakness of the current literature is that it does not fully reflect the institutional difficulties posed by the disposal process and the day-to-day pressures which MOD personnel have to deal with. In doing this, it also under-emphasises the embedded cultures of individuals and professional groups who are required to operationalise the policies, procedures and practices for planning and redeveloping redundant defence estate.

Housing supply and brownfield regeneration in a post-Barker world: is there enough brownfield land in England and Scotland?

The findings of the Barker review, which examined the reasons for the undersupply of UK housing, have important implications for the devolved constituents of the UK, including Scotland. This paper traces the emergence of the brownfi eld regeneration policy agenda across the UK and examines how the Barker review connects with this brownfi eld policy focus. The paper compares housing and brownfi eld policies and practices in England and Scotland, places them in an international context and elicits wider lessons for devolved governance in relation to housing policy, in terms of ‘centrist–local’ tensions. Estimates based on published data suggest that Barker’s emphasis on increased housing supply cannot easily be reconciled with the current emphasis on brownfi eld development and is likely to require a return to greenfield development in both countries.

Inheritance, access to resources and poverty in Serer families in Senegal

This research explores the relationship between inheritance, access to resources and the intergenerational transmission of poverty among the Serer ethnic group in rural and urban environments in Senegal. In many Sub-Saharan African countries, customary law excludes women from owning and inheriting assets, such as land and property. Yet, assets controlled by women often result in increased investments in the next generation's health, nutrition and schooling and reduce the intergenerational transmission of poverty. Qualitative research with 60 participants in Senegal reveals the important role that land, housing and financial assets may play in building resilience to household shocks and interrupting the intergenerational transmission of poverty. However, the protection afforded by these assets was often dependent on other factors, including human, social and environmental capital. The death of a spouse or parent had major emotional and material impacts on many Serer families. The inheritance and control of assets and resources was strongly differentiated among family members along lines of gender, age and generation. Younger widows and their children were particularly vulnerable to chronic poverty. Although inheritance disputes were rare, the research suggests they are more likely between co-wives in polygamous unions and their children, particularly in urban areas. In addition to experiencing economic and health-related shocks, many interviewees were exposed to a range of climate-related risks and environmental pressures which increased their vulnerability. Family members coped with these shocks and risks by diversifying livelihoods, migrating to urban areas and other regions for work, participating in women's co-operatives and associations and developing supportive social networks with extended family and community members. Policies and practices that may help to alleviate poverty, safeguard women's and young people's inheritance and build resilience to financial, health-related and environmental shocks and risks include: - Social protection measures targeted towards poor widows and orphaned children, such as social and cash transfers to pay for basic needs including food, healthcare and children's schooling. - Micro-finance initiatives and credit and savings schemes, alongside training and capacity-building targeted to women and young people to develop income-generation activities and skills. - Free legal advice, support and advocacy for women and young people to pursue inheritance claims through the legal system. - Raising awareness about women's and children's legal rights and working with government and community and religious leaders to tackle discriminatory inheritance practices and contradictions caused by legal pluralism. - Increasing women's control of land and access to inputs, enhancing their business, organisational, and leadership skills and promoting civic participation in local, regional and national decision-making processes. - Improving access to basic services in rural areas, particularly healthcare, building the quality of education and promoting girls' access to education - Enhancing agricultural production and providing more employment opportunities, apprenticeships and vocational training for young people, particularly in rural areas.

Climate change and the emergence of new organizational landscapes

There is general agreement across the world that human-made climate change is a serious global problem,although there are still some sceptics who challenge this view. Research in organization studies on the topic is relatively new. Much of this research, however, is instrumental and managerialist in its focus on ‘win-win’ opportunities for business or its treatment of climate change as just another corporate social responsibility (CSR) exercise. In this paper, we suggest that climate change is not just an environmental problem requiring technical and managerial solutions; it is a political issue where a variety of organizations – state agencies, firms, industry associations, NGOs and multilateral organizations – engage in contestation as well as collaboration over the issue. We discuss the strategic, institutional and political economy dimensions of climate change and develop a socioeconomic regimes approach as a synthesis of these different theoretical perspectives. Given the urgency of the problem and the need for a rapid transition to a low-carbon economy, there is a pressing need for organization scholars to develop a better understanding of apathy and inertia in the face of the current crisis and to identify paths toward transformative change. The seven papers in this special issue address these areas of research and examine strategies, discourses, identities and practices in relation to climate change at multiple levels.

Climate change and agricultural adaptation in Sri Lanka: a review

Climate change is inevitable and will continue into the next century. Since the agricultural sector in Sri Lanka is one of the most vulnerable to climate change, a thorough understanding of climate transition is critical for formulating effective adaptation strategies. This paper provides an overview of the status of climate change and adaptation in the agricultural sector in Sri Lanka. The review clearly indicates that climate change is taking place in Sri Lanka in terms of rainfall variability and an increase in climate extremes and warming. A number of planned and reactive adaptation responses stemming from policy and farm-level decisions are reported. These adaptation efforts were fragmented and lacked a coherent connection to the national development policies and strategies. Research efforts are needed to develop and identify adaptation approaches and practices that are feasible for smallholder farmers, particularly in the dry zone where paddy and other food crops are predominately cultivated. To achieve the envisaged growth in the agricultural sector, rigorous efforts are necessary to mainstream climate change adaptation into national development policies and ensure that they are implemented at national, regional and local levels.

Professionalism and professional institutions in times of change

Professionalism and professional institutions have developed and changed very gradually in recent decades, such that there are conflicting and competing definitions of what it means to be a professional. The direction of travel is examined through an institutional lens in terms of current trends and practices that have transformed professional life. At first sight, the evolution of professionalism appears to be developing into a new professionalism that requires less of professional institutions and more of the institutions of societal governance, such as contracts and statutes. These transformations are explored with reference to the need for a sustainable urban environment, showing that despite a reduced role of professional institutions, certain aspects of professionalism remain crucially important, especially in those jurisdictions where societal governance is not well developed. With the growing sophistication of legislation, insurance and commerce, the emphasis of what it means to be a professional is evolving. One key aspect of professionalism that is not usually listed in most texts is role definition and how this provides a sense of identity. Professionalism remains a relevant and important concept, but the exigencies of a sustainable urban environment transcend the objectives of the professions and demand a broader, collaborative and participative agenda.

‘In the air’ and below the horizon: migrant workers in UK construction and the practice-based nature of learning and communicating OHS

Local, tacit and normally unspoken OHS (occupational health and safety) knowledge and practices can too easily be excluded from or remain below the industry horizon of notice, meaning that they remain unaccounted for in formal OHS policy and practice. In this article we stress the need to more systematically and routinely tap into these otherwise ‘hidden’ communication channels, which are central to how everyday safe working practices are achieved. To demonstrate this approach this paper will draw on our ethnographic research with a gang of migrant curtain wall installers on a large office development project in the north of England. In doing so we reflect on the practice-based nature of learning and sharing OHS knowledge through examples of how workers’ own patterns of successful communication help avoid health and safety problems. These understandings, we argue, can be advanced as a basis for the development of improved OHS measures, and of organizational knowing and learning.

Biogas innovation processes and innovation system: lessons from Davao del Sur, Philippines

This paper examines biogas innovation system and processes in two farming communities in Davao del Sur, Philippines. Innovation histories were traced through workshops, semi-structured interviews, observations and document analysis. The paper shows that there were diverse innovation actors both from public and private sectors. Restrictive attitudes and practices resulted in weak and limited interactions among actors. Multi-actor interaction was weak, signifying a lack of innovation actors that focus on creating, developing and strengthening linkages, networks and partnerships. The lack of support in the socio-organisational institutions that constitute the enabling environment within which innovation actors operate may lead to systemic failure.

Building networks to work: an ethnographic study of informal routes into the UK construction industry and pathways for migrant up-skilling

The UK construction industry labour market is characterised by high levels of self-employment, sub-contracting, informality and flexibility. A corollary of this, and a sign of the increasing globalisation of construction, has been an increasing reliance on migrant labour, particularly that from the Eastern European Accession states. Yet, little is known about how their experiences within and outside of work shape their work in the construction sector. In this context better qualitative understandings of the social and communication networks through which migrant workers gain employment, create routes through the sector and develop their role/career are needed. We draw on two examples from a short-term ethnographic study of migrant construction worker employment experiences and practices in the town of Crewe in Cheshire, UK, to demonstrate how informal networks intersect with formal elements of the sector to facilitate both recruitment and up-skilling. Such research knowledge, we argue, offers new evidence of the importance of attending to migrant worker’s own experiences in the development of more transparent recruitment processes.

Death has a touch of class: society and space in Brookwood Cemetery, 1853-1903

Changes in the cultures and spaces of death during the Victorian era reveal the shifting conceptualisations and mobilisations of class in this period. Using the example of Brookwood Necropolis, established 1852 in response to the contemporary burial reform debate, the paper explores tensions within the sanitary reform movement, 1853–1903. Whilst reformist ideology grounded the cemetery's practices in a discourse of inclusion, one of the consequences of reform was to reinforce class distinctions. Combined with commercial imperatives and the modern impulse towards separation of living and dead, this aspect of reform enacted a counter-discourse of alienation. The presence of these conflicting strands in the spaces and practices of the Necropolis and their changes during the time period reflect wider urban trends.

Anticipatory objects and uncertain imminence: cattle grids, landscape and the presencing of climate change on the Lizard Peninsula, UK

In this paper we show how a seemingly unremarkable object – a cattle grid – has come to presence climate change in partial and contingent ways on the Lizard Peninsula, Cornwall, UK. We identify the cattle grid as an ‘anticipatory object’ through which conservation organisations seek to manage the future and adapt to climate change, but which at the same time presences that unthought-of future for others in the landscape. We explore the ways in which the cattle grid acts to presence something that is not only absent – climate change – but has uncertain imminence. We investigate the ways in which the cattle grid make climate relevant as an embodied and experiential process, a physical and intellectual artefact, and the means to imagine climate and the ways it might change. Drawing upon interpretative approaches informed by theorisations of materiality, presence and absence to understand climate change as a social phenomenon, we go beyond a consideration of this ordinary object defined by its function to consider how the object is experienced, the processes and practices through which people relate to it, and the ways in which social meaning accumulates around it. The empirical basis for this argument is provided by in-depth interviews with local representatives of Natural England, residents and farmers.

The sociocultural contexts and meanings associated with livestock keeping in rural South Africa

This paper complements Vetter’s position paper, ‘Development and sustainable management of rangeland commons – aligning policy with the realities of South Africa’s rural landscape’ (Vetter in this issue). It seeks to advance the debate regarding the contemporary nature of livestock keeping in South Africa. It sheds some anthropological light on the role of ‘culture’ in accounting for people’s values and practices in relation to livestock and reflects on the implications of this for policy-making in this area.

Parental death as a vital conjuncture? Intergenerational care and responsibility following bereavement in Senegal

This article explores the ways that parental death represents a 'vital conjuncture' for Serer young people that reconfigures and potentially transforms intergenerational caring responsibilities in different spatial and temporal contexts. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with young people (aged 15-27), family members, religious and community leaders and professionals in rural and urban Senegal, I explore young people's responses to parental death. 'Continuing bonds' with the deceased were expressed through memories evoked in homespace, shared family practices and gendered responsibilities to 'take care of' bereaved family members, to cultivate inherited farmland and to fulfil the wishes of the deceased. Parental death could reconfigure intergenerational care and lead to shifts in power dynamics, as eldest sons asserted their position of authority. While care-giving roles were associated with agency, the low social status accorded to young women's paid and unpaid domestic work undermined their efforts. The research contributes to understandings of gendered nuances in the experience of bereavement and continuing bonds and provides insight into intra-household decision-making processes, ownership and control of assets. Analysis of the culturally specific meanings of relationships and a young person's social location within hierarchies of gender, age, sibling birth order and wider socio-cultural norms and practices is needed.