Category Archives: Research

Research

Notes from the ESRS conference (1)

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Today we had the last session of our working group ” Comparative perspective; governing semi-subsistance food and farming strategies in the countryside and city” . In this group we deliberately were seeking to contrast  cases of food and farming in urban and rural contexts. Can urban agriculture be compared with small-scale farming in rural areas? What has peasant farming literature to offer in how we can look at what is going on with food growing in cities?

We discovered useful and potentially bridging concepts and concepts which may confuse more than they reveal. To start with the latter, “semi-subsistance farming” may not be a useful concept. One reason is the many definitions as Imre Kovach showed us. But another is the meaning of the separate terms in the different rural and urban contexts. Is the ” semi”  in subsistance referring to selling surplus or buying the remaining part of the food supply if you only produce some of your vegetables? And is ‘ farming’  the appropriate term for growing food in allotments or community gardens?  From a rural perspective food production as a side, or part time activity is easily seen as farming and the person foremost as a producer and only in second instance as consumer. In city initiatives it is the reverse. Consumers usually do not ‘ farm’  but ‘ grow food’  or ‘ garden’  and hence are only a ‘ producer’  after their identity as a consumer. This while a rural hobby farm may be as intense in land use as an allotment at the city fringe. The focus on food provisioning strategies  seems therefore better since it refers to the activities one undertakes to eat, which may include growing activities too.

Human Values and Place-based Development – WASS seminar by dr Marilyn Hamilton

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WASS Seminar Human Values and Place-based Development by dr Marilyn Hamilton: Tuesday August 30th, 13.30-15.30, Venue: Room C75, Leeuwenborch

How can human values be the starting point for community and regional development? How can capacities be built, leadership developed and community learning in multi-cultural places be enhanced? How can we create an integral framework for place-making and place-caring?

This seminar is a unique opportunity to hear about Dr. Hamilton’s work in cities and eco-regions and how she sees that sustainability for both are interlinked as a complex adaptive system. Marilyn Hamilton ‘meshworks’ or weaves people, purpose, priorities, profits, programs and processes to develop strategies for resilience. She facilitates sustainable development programs, develops practical tools and supports multi-stakeholder groups in transforming cities and eco-regions into a glocally resilient ‘meshwork’. She states that we need to balance subjective/ intersubjective capacities of people (‘the inner dimensions’) with objective/interobjective capacities (‘the outer dimensions’).

An example is Abbotsford, which had been headlined by the media as the ‘murder capital of Canada’. Here the youth perceived that community didn’t value them as a resource for community. Community workers wanted Abbotsford’s food-based agricultural sector to “cook up cultural harmony” by renewing opportunities for the youth linked to the food chain. The research project used an integral framework and meta-mapping (based on the theory of ‘spiral dynamics integral’) to identify differences and opportunities for the city and develop a monitor (the vital signs monitor) for strategic planning.

Dr. Marilyn Hamilton is Professor of Sustainable Community Development and Leadership Studies at Royal Roads University in Canada. She is a leader, coach, teacher, researcher and Founder of “Integral City Meshworks Inc” http://www.integralcity.com/, and Jury Member of Globe Sustainable City Awards. She wrote the book, “Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive”.

More information: Ina Horlings, Rural Sociology Group (lummina.horlings@wur.nl) or Anouk Brack, Education and Competence Studies (anouk.brack@wur.nl).

Afstudeermogelijkheid bij OIKOS

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De Wetenschapswinkel Wageningen heeft een opdracht van COS Gelderland & OIKOS aangenomen om een haalbaarheidsonderzoek te doen voor het project ‘Participand’. Projectleider is Margriet Goris; het onderzoek wordt begeleid door Ina Horlings van Rurale Sociologie.

Met het project ‘Participand’ wil COS/OIKOS diverse doelgroepen -migranten, (inter)nationale studenten en anderen actief op het gebied van duurzame internationale ontwikkeling- bijeenbrengen om ondersteuning te bieden, samenwerking te stimuleren en om de kwaliteit van de activiteiten door kruisbestuiving te verbeteren.

Het onderzoek bestaat uit twee delen; inzichtelijk maken van wat er op dit gebied gebeurt in Wageningen en omgeving en hoe dit functioneert. Om vervolgens aanbevelingen te genereren voor een faciliteit die de verschillende initiatiefnemers in staat stelt hun werk te verbeteren door interactie met zusterorganisaties van verschillende oorsprong en culturele afkomst.

Het project omvat literatuuronderzoek, inventarisatie van initiatieven, interviews maar ook het organiseren van groepsbijeenkomsten met de verschillende initiatieven in samenwerking met de projectleider.

We zoeken een (Nederlands sprekende) masterstudent die zijn of haar afstudeeronderzoek op dit terrein wil doen. Het onderzoek start bij voorkeur rond half september.

Meer informatie tot 12 augustus bij Ina Horlings: lummina.horlings@wur.nl of 06-51126725; of na 8 augustus bij Margriet Goris: 06-28109539 (cocreation@live.nl).

Conference Call – Agriculture in an Urbanizing Society

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A major demographic milestone occurred in May 2007. For the first time in the history of mankind the earth’s population became more urban than rural. This process of urbanization will continue in an accelerated pace in the forthcoming decades: the growth of the world population from 6 billion people in 2000 to 9 billion people in 2050 will mainly occur in urban areas. By 2050 the urban population will approximately be twice the size of the rural population.

However, this does not mean that urban areas are or will become of greater importance than rural areas. On the contrary, the urban and the rural have always heavily relied on each other and will do so even more in an era characterized by rapid urban population growth. Cities will continue to need resources such as food, fibre, clean water, nature, biodiversity, and recreational space, as well as the people and communities that produce and provide these urban necessities and desires. Hence, key questions for the next decades are how, where and by whom these urban necessities and desires will be produced and provided and if and how this can be done in manner that is considered to be socially, economically and ecologically sustainable and ethically sound.

In recent years the concept of multifunctional agriculture has emerged as an important reference in debates on the future of agriculture and the countryside and its relations with the wider and predominantly urban society. This is an expression of the fact that agriculture is not only valued for its contribution to food and fibre production and the economic development of the agro-industry, but needs to be assessed according to a much wider range of social, environmental, economic and ethical concerns. At farm level multifunctional agriculture is characterized by a variety of entrepreneurial strategies and activities, such as processing and direct marketing of food products, energy production, care for elderly and disabled people, and tourism. But multifunctional agriculture is also expressed at higher scales, such as the regional level (e.g. collective nature and landscape management schemes and regional branding) and the national level (e.g. policymaking and implementation).

Due to the multiplicity of activities, the multi-scalar character of multifunctionality and the geographical contextuality of expressions of multifunctional agriculture, research on multifunctional agriculture and changing urban-rural relations is highly fragmented, disciplinarily as well as geographically. Hence, this conference aims to advance the scientific state of the art in research on multifunctional agriculture and urban-rural relations by bringing together scholars of different disciplines (sociology, economics, spatial planning, land use planning, regional planning, urban planning, crop sciences, animal sciences, soil sciences, architecture, etc…) from all parts of the world.

Working group themes
The conference facilities allow for a maximum of 21 parallel working group sessions. The scientific committee has proposed 21 working group themes (see http://www.agricultureinanurbanizingsociety.com/UK/Working+group+themes/)   and is inviting prospective working group convenors to submit a short (max 500 words) call text for the theme they would like to convene. Proposals for a working group call text can be send to the chair of the scientific committee by email (han.wiskerke@wur.nl) before the 1st of September 2011. The deadline for submission of abstracts will be 1st of December 2011. Abstracts will have to be submitted to the convenors.

More information

Please check the conference website for more information.

Support of Learning and Innovation Networks for Sustainable Agriculture (SOLINSA): new EU-funded project

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In March we had the kick-off  meeting of the EU-funded research project SOLINSA: Support of Learning and Innovation Networks for Sustainable Agriculture. The website has been launched recently and provides information on the project and will publish reports of findings. At the front page of the website can find a link a flyer on the SOLINSA project.

Agriculture is in transition. Among others agriculture respond to market developments, policy reforms, consumers and societal concerns and more generally sustainability issues, but in various ways.  From a rather one-sided production perspective , agriculture has become many-sided or even versatile. This has in turn has implication for Agricultural Knowledge System (AKS), i.e. the formal education, research and advice directed to agriculture and its development and is reflected in the different tasks and roles AKS can and is asked to fulfill in the support of learning and innovation practiced in often less formalised networks (i.e. the LINSA’s). AKS is in transition too, with regard to the need of building versatile expertise as well in how its is formally organised and funded (private, public or mixed funding). This is core of what will be studied in SOLINSA: how AKS can support more effectively and efficiently learning and innovation networks for sustainable agriculture. For this purpose two Learning and Innovation Networks for Sustainable Agriculture (i.e. LINSA) of various kinds in the eight participating countries will be studied in depth. In the Netherlands for example the network of sustainable dairy farmers (www.duurzaamboerblijven.nl).

The Rural Sociology Group (RSO) and Communication and Innovation Studies (CIS) of Wageningen University jointly participate as a partner in SOLINSA. For information you can contact either Laurens.Klerkx@wur.nl (CIS), Frans.Hermans@wur.nl (CIS) or Dirk.Roep@wur.nl (RSO).