Tag: food security

Coronavirus: flying in fruit pickers from countries in lockdown is dangerous for everyone

Posted on by janet.crompton
Affordable and plentiful fruit and veg will come at the price of violating the strict national lockdowns in Bulgaria and Romania. epic_images/Shutterstock

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, major agricultural companies and charities have chartered flights to urgently bring in tens of thousands of Bulgarian and Romanian agricultural workers. Flights have headed to places like Karlsruhe and Düsseldorf in Germany, along with Essex and the Midlands in the UK.

This comes after farmers in both countries warned there is a real risk that thousands of tons of produce might be left to rot – further affecting food supply chains – if vacancies for agricultural workers go unfilled.

The excessive demand for food during lockdown has meant that farm labourers are classed as key workers, which is why they are being flown to the UK and other Western European countries.

In the UK, up to 90,000 temporary positions need to be filled within weeks. A national campaign has been launched appealing to students and those who have lost their jobs in bars, cafes and shops to help with the harvest. But so far the scheme only has around 10,000 applicants with even fewer having accepted work contracts due to low pay and demanding terms. This is nowhere near enough to ensure the sustainability of food supply chains.

That means that affordable and plentiful fruit and veg in UK supermarkets will come at the price of violating the strict national lockdowns in Bulgaria and Romania.

From ‘go back’ to ‘come back’

As of last year, nearly 98% of fruit pickers in the UK were foreign nationals. The vast majority come from Bulgaria and Romania. Both countries went into full lockdowns earlier in March, banning international travel. Chartering flights when borders are closed and planes grounded is effectively undermining the efforts of the Bulgarian and Romanian governments to manage the current health crisis.

The European Commission has banned non-essential travel while speeding up the mobility of key workers – a recognition of Western European dependency on Eastern European labour. The Bulgarian and Romanian governments have also been lax and have not insisted that Western European employers provide comprehensive health insurance for agricultural workers.

Farmers have said that without the workforce, crops may be left in the ground to rot and be wasted. Ververidis Vasilis/Shutterstock

There were promises of social distancing on planes and hand sanitiser was to be handed out. But photos of overcrowded airport lounges have demonstrated a complete disregard of health and safety. Workers will also not be paid for the mandatory 14 day quarantine period upon arrival.

Key workers to key spreaders

The reason why the lockdowns in Bulgaria and Romania are particularly strict is because both countries have fast-growing ageing populations.

The share of the population above the age of 65 between 2008 and 2018 is 2.8% for Romania and 3.2% for Bulgaria – both higher than the EU average of 2.6%. Many families also live in multi-generational households, which could put older family members at risk when the younger members return back home.

The exodus of doctors, nurses and care workers from Bulgaria and Romania also means access to medical care in smaller towns and rural areas – where most of these workers come from – will be all but impossible.

If returning migrant workers retrigger the pandemic, the consequences for both countries will be disastrous.

Economic dependency

But herein lies another part of the problem, because the national economies of both countries are heavily dependent on remittances – money sent back home from migrant workers.

For most of these people, seasonal work abroad is the only source of income and there is no safety net. They either stay home unemployed, or risk their (and their families’) health by boarding flights to the UK or Germany.

The financial incentive may be great. But so too are the public health risks. A 57-year old Romanian seasonal worker has already died from COVID-19 in Baden-Württemberg, Germany – begging the question of how many more will follow.

Food for thought

For the most part, the British public has long been disassociated from the realities of low-paid manual labour and has grown accustomed to fresh and inexpensive products produced by a disposable army of migrant workers.

And despite Brexit anxieties about EU migrants stealing British jobs, the COVID-19 pandemic has reminded the public that such labour is essential and won’t be automated anytime soon.

Ultimately though, it shouldn’t be down to migrant workers to fix supply chains during a pandemic – especially when evidence indicates that international mobility is contributing to the spread of the virus. Chartering flights during travel bans and national lockdowns is a dangerous reminder of how exploitative labour overrides political and public health responsibility.

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This blog is written by Dr Denny Pencheva, Senior Teaching Associate, Migration Studies and Politics, University of Bristol. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Dr Denny Pencheva

Sowing the seeds of collaborations to tackle African food insecurity

Posted on by janet.crompton

A group of early career researchers from 11 African countries got together in Bristol, UK, this month for a two-week training event. Nothing so unusual about that, you may think.

Yet this course, run by the Community Network for African Vector-Borne Plant Viruses (CONNECTED), broke important new ground.

The training brought together an unusual blend of researchers: plant virologists and entomologists studying insects which transmit plant diseases, as an important part of the CONNECTED project’s work to find new solutions to the devastation of many food crops in Sub-Saharan African countries.

The CONNECTED niche focus on vector-borne plant disease is the reason for bringing together insect and plant pathology experts, and plant breeders too. The event helped forge exciting new collaborations in the fight against African poverty, malnutrition and food insecurity.

‘V4’ – Virus Vector Vice Versa – was a fully-funded residential course which attracted great demand when it was advertised. Places were awarded by competitive application, with funding awarded to cover travel, accommodation, subsistence and all training costs. For every delegate who attended, five applicants were unsuccessful.

The comprehensive programme combined: scientific talks; general lab training skills; specific virology and entomology lecture and practical work; workshops; field visits, career development, mentoring, and desk-based projects.

 

Across the fortnight delegates received plenty of peer mentoring and team-building input, as well as an afternoon focused on ‘communicating your science.’


New
collaborations will influence African agriculture for years to come

There’s little doubt that the June event, hosted by The University of Bristol, base of CONNECTED Network Director Professor Gary Foster, has sown seeds of new alliances and partnerships that can have global impact on vector-borne plant disease in Sub-Saharan Africa for many years to come.
CONNECTED network membership has grown in its 18 months to a point where it’s approaching 1,000 researchers, from over 70 countries. The project, which derived its funding from the Global Challenges Research Fund, is actively looking at still more training events.
The V4 training course follows two successful calls for pump-prime research funding, leading to nine projects now operating in seven different countries, and still many more to come. Earlier in the year CONNECTED ran a successful virus diagnostics training event in Kenya, in close partnership with BecA-ILRI Hub. One result of that training was that its 19 delegates were set to share their new knowledge and expertise with a staggering 350 colleagues right across the continent.

Project background

Plant diseases significantly limit the ability of many of Sub-Saharan African countries to produce enough staple and cash crops such as cassava, sweet potato, maize and yam. Farmers face failing harvests and are often unable to feed their local communities as a result. The diseases ultimately hinder the countries’ economic and social development, sometimes leading to migration as communities look for better lives elsewhere.
The CONNECTED network project is funded by a £2 million grant from the UK government’s Global Challenges Research Fund, which supports research on global issues that affect developing countries. It is co-ordinated by Prof. Foster from the University of Bristol School of Biological Sciences, long recognised as world-leading in plant virology and vector-transmitted diseases, with Professor Neil Boonham, from Newcastle University its Co-Director. The funding is being used to build a sustainable network of scientists and researchers to address the challenges. The University of Bristol’s Cabot Institute, of which Prof. Foster is a member, also provides input and expertise.
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This blog is written by Richard Wyatt, Communications Officer for the CONNECTED network.

CAP should be replaced by a sustainable land-use policy

Posted on by janet.crompton
Wheat harvest by Jim Choate

Whatever your thoughts about Brexit, one thing most agree on is that it offers an opportunity to rethink how we in the UK look after our agricultural land.  The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has long been a source of resentment. It accounts for 40% of the EU budget yet has systematically failed to address, in some cases even exacerbated, the biggest concerns in European agriculture. Unlike most transnational sectoral market correction schemes, even much of the general public are aware of its shortcomings.

CAP is formed of 2 pillars. Pillar 1, which accounts for the 70% money spent, is simply a payment for land owned. The more land you own, the more money you get. This promotes large-scale mono-cropping, and acts as a rigid barrier to entry for young would-be farmers. Pillar 2 makes up the rest of CAP’s budget and consists of agri-environment schemes. Whilst well intentioned, Pillar 2 promotes an agricultural divide, where some land is responsibly stewarded while other land is intensively farmed. It is not the most efficient or effective means of improving the state of our land.

Public money for public goods

Michael Gove made a lot of enemies whilst at the Department for Education. However, since being appointed Minister for the Environment, he appears to have bucked the trend of expert-bashing. The government’s 25 Year Green Plan talks a very good talk – it’s a re-affirmation of the government’s laudable aim of leaving the environment in a better state than they found it, following on from the Lawton principles – but fails to walk the walk. There is much rhetoric, but very little explanation as to how goals will be met.

One consistent theme is that of spending public money on public goods. What this means is that tax-payers money should only be used to pay for the goods and services which are ‘consumed’ but for which there is currently not market. It is a way of addressing the tragedy of the commons argument, whereby, in pursuit of personal gain, individuals neglect that which they rely on for that gain, to the detriment of all.

Lake District by Les Haines

The Lake District as we know it has been shaped by generations of upland sheep farming. This practise offers extremely marginal returns, but many would agree there is a huge (but hard to quantify) value to the landscape of the Lake District. Public money should be spent to support such farmers.

In a post-Brexit landscape, there will be many competing demands on the public purse. The challenge, then, is to find alternative sources with which to finance the provision of these services provided by natural ecosystems.

Payments for Ecosystem Services

It is exceptionally difficult to put a value on nature. A market is needed through which farmers can ‘sell’ the services the land they own is able to provide, and beneficiaries of these services can purchase them. In many cases, one service may be provided by many land-owners, a single piece of land may provide many services, and there may be many consumers of each of these services. Clearly, this represents a complicated market structure.

But we can’t shy away from the task. The West of England Nature Partnership, as well as Green Alliance and the National Trust, have conceptualised a system through which such transactions can take place. Functioning as a sort of Green Investment Bank, an institution will package the suggested provision of a consortium of land-owners (for instance, the planting of woodland) for sale to a consortium of buyers. This might include water companies who benefit from cleaner water, Wildlife Trusts with a remit of improving the local access to nature, and developers with a requirement to offset/mitigate the impacts of their development.

In a similar light, Wessex Water have an online platform via which farmers can bid for money in return for adopting more sustainable farming practices. This system directly reduces the cost of water purification for the Water Company, acts as an incentive for good practice to the landowner, and provides landscape and wildlife benefits for the local population – a win-win-win.
Clearly its easier to pay farmers per hectare of land owner. But with the growing demands placed on our environment, and an increasing understanding of our reliance on it, such a system as described here could radically alter the terminal decline of Britain’s natural capital.

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This blog was written by Matthew Whitney who is currently studying an MSc in Environmental Policy and Management at the University of Bristol.

Matthew Whitney

 

Watermelon work

Posted on by janet.crompton

Did you eat any melon over Christmas? Or a strawberry? Have you seen a watermelon since the summer, maybe cut up in pieces in a boxed-up plastic ready-to-eat fruit salad? If so, that will help you relate to the dilemma for Spanish farmers and the workers they employ that I wrote about in an article called Misconceiving ‘seasons’ in global food systems, the case of the EU Seasonal Workers Directive published in the European Law Journal [1].

In this journal article, I essentially analyse a law, a European Law, but one that now governs the conditions under which seasonal workers from outside the EU can come to Europe to work in agriculture (and other ‘seasonal’ sectors) [2]. It also outlines their rights while they are here, making it both labour law and migration law [3]. This is brought together in an attempt to meet the needs across Europe for workers that pick the counter-seasonal crops such as strawberries, raspberries, melons and watermelons, as well as those summer vegetable crops that I have written about in the past.

A central theme in my work is about the disconnections of modern food production. But it is also about work. Labour, work, people, people who move, people who stay still. You can’t have workers without people. We are, and they are, one and the same. Yet law after law, country after country, policy after policy attempts to do just this by limiting the rights of workers when they come to host countries to work. The EU Seasonal Workers Directive is a recent version of this attempt to disconnect the rights and needs of people who migrate to work, from their status as workers.

Although the UK played a large role in its negotiation, they ultimately opted out of its adoption, and then, as we know, opted out of the EU altogether. Yet, this doesn’t mean that the influence of this directive stops at the UK border. The workers that pick many of our out of season crops in countries such as Spain and Italy, are governed by it. Furthermore, the UK is looking for options post-Brexit for how to govern seasonal work by migrant workers and this could give an insightful suggestion of what that might look like. This blog then, brings out a few elements of the article, which looks at the directive from the lens of a case study in Southern Spain: where our watermelons come from.

The farmers that I interviewed in Southern Spain work within the law. They ensure that they produce to the highest health and safety regulations, that they are registered, and work with certified exporters. These exporters (sometimes called co-operatives because they began as farmer cooperatives) then do an extensive quality selection in which they throw away much of the fruit and vegetables which do not meet the standards that you, your mum or your Grandparents might want for your year-round desert of prepared fruit salad.

Due to the very low wages and hard working conditions, not many people want to work picking these fruit and vegetables. The labour market is therefore dominated by migrant workers who have fewer language and transferable skills to find better paid and easier work elsewhere. Most people have all the legal requirements to work. However, for various reasons, the most vulnerable do not. They may not been in the EU long enough to regularise their status, they may not have employers to support them in doing this, their papers may have been rejected, they may not have had the money or the contacts to get a visa, they may have escaped distressing situations, made arduous (planned or unplanned) journeys towards the EU, some may also be refugees. In any case, these individuals also suffer from the need to work in order to live, and are some of the most vulnerable in the labour market. Furthermore, farmers generally do not want to hire them because they risk a €10,000 minimum fine if they are caught employing workers who do not have legal permission to work. So what happens?

The European Union want to solve the seasonal need for fruit pickers by offering temporary visas for people to come for a few months at a time to European countries (where most of your strawberries, tomatoes and watermelons are produced). In theory this is a model of carrot and stick – the carrot, the incentive, for prospective workers in countries like Morocco or the Ukraine is the temporary visa. I will ignore in this short blog the contradictions of the idea of ‘circular’ migration although I’ve covered this in the article. In short, it is not as advantageous as it seems at first glance. The main ‘stick’ or disincentive is increased border control that has been happening in the same context as the development of this directive, and the increased marginalisation of undocumented migrant workers who are already within the European Union but who are not given any options under this new directive.

Although this may sound logical, the EU Seasonal Workers Directive, in fact, is created in a context of false divisions and it therefore creates several more problems. Firstly, as we have explored, seasonal agriculture, in a context of intensive production, follows the time periods of when you like to eat melon, as opposed to when melon (etc.) is naturally in season. That means more than a few months of the year. So farmers like workers who are already in the country, who they can hire in person and work with over a steady period of time, building daily working relationships with.

Under temporary work schemes such as the EU Seasonal Workers Directive, migrant workers have reduced rights, therefore facilitating the creation of a legally mandated second-class tiered labour force. Temporary workers are also highly vulnerable to falling outside of the terms of their visa. Such seasonal work visas link their visa permission to their employers, something that makes them highly dependent on them and vulnerable to abuse [4].

Finally, seasonal migration is simply a form of temporary migration, aimed at avoiding the creation of a long term ethnic community in the host country. Historically, wherever host countries have attempted to invite ‘guest workers’ yet avoid settlement of migrant workers, this has failed. So the EU here, is criticised as still wanting to import ‘labour’ and not ‘people’ [5].

Let’s return to the watermelons and the farmer who intends to play it by the book. Unfortunately, this famer’s ultimate buyer doesn’t care much for the rule book. What they care about is ensuring that you get your summer fruits, cheaply, regardless of the season and regardless of who picks it and how protected they are or not. So the farmer is placed into a very difficult position which seems to sum up the tensions between our year round demand for cheap food and the just-in-time immediacy and demands that this puts on the people that produce it. A small farmer in Southern Spain described the situation in this way:

Once they were going to come [the export cooperative], we were arguing about the watermelons, whether we should pick them or not and in the end they said to me; “alright, this afternoon we pick them” and I said, “this afternoon I don’t have any workers” and they said; “either we come and get them this afternoon or we don’t come”. So I said, “Well, come” and when they come to pick the watermelons, I need a lot of workers, four people, and so I say, “where am I going to find those people? I can’t get…” so I went to the garage in El Ejido and there were four Africans just there.
[cited in 1].

The ‘watermelon dilemma’ of this farmer therefore demonstrates the final reason why the EU Seasonal Workers Directive, and other similar laws ultimately do not answer the problem of seasonal work: much seasonal work does not require workers for three or five or nine months, but a couple of days. In small scale production, you could perhaps ask family to help, but not on this scale. In these ‘enclaves of production’ at the European border, where everything is orientated so that it can provide cheap food to Tescos, Waitrose or your local greengrocer, the most vulnerable workers will always be needed to take this work. If they need the scarce work they can get without papers, while this work exists, they will probably be ready to take it. Yet the EU regulators prefer to simply ignore these watermelon pickers. By not offering them a route to legality this work will also condemn them to ongoing poverty and precariousness. In the process of drafting the EU Seasonal Workers Directive, an option was proposed to allow such migrants to apply for a seasonal workers visa (which would be fitting as they are the real ‘seasonal’ workers), yet this was rejected, leaving the watermelon pickers in an ever more precarious situation, dependant on the ever more scarce and desperate farmers whose lack of profits push them to take the risk to hire the people in most need of work.

There are many problems with this directive. However, in my opinion, the biggest problem that it represents, is the disconnection. This is the disconnection between a society that is happy to eat cheap food but that does not want to accommodate the workers that produce it with the same rights as they enjoy. Should the UK come up with similar legislation in the upcoming years we should be very careful indeed to pay attention to the underlying assumptions and disconnections and their impacts on the people that might come to do seasonal (or un-seasonal) work and on those who are already here doing it. In the meantime, this directive is up for revision in 2019.

References

1. Medland L (2017) Misconceiving ‘seasons’ in global food systems: The case of the EU
Seasonal Workers Directive. European Law Journal, 23(3-4), pp.157-171.

2. European Union (2014) Directive 2014/36/EU on the conditions of entry and stay of third-country nationals for the purpose of employment as seasonal workers. Official Journal of the European Union L 94/375.

3. Fudge J and Olsson PH (2014) The EU Seasonal Workers Directive: When Immigration Controls Meet Labour Rights. European Journal of Migration and Law 16(4): 439-466.

4. Rijken C (2015) Legal Approaches to Combating the Exploitation of Third-Country National Seasonal Workers. International Journal of Comparative Labour Law and Industrial Relations 31(4): 431-451.

5. Zoeteweij-Turhan M.H (2017) The Seasonal Workers Directive: ‘… but some are more equal than others’. European Labour Law Journal, 8(1), pp.28-44.

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This blog was written by Cabot Institute member Lydia Medland, it was originally published on her blog Eating Research and has been re-published here with her permission.  Lydia is a PhD student at the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies at the University of Bristol. Her research looks at the Global Political Economy.

Lydia Medland

Read Lydia’s other blog: Olive oil production in Morocco: So many questions.

Putting algae and seaweed on the menu could help save our seafood

Posted on by janet.crompton
File 20171213 27593 sfv3nk.jpg?ixlib=rb 1.1
Shutterstock
This article was written by Pallavi Anand, The Open University and Daniela Schmidt, University of Bristol Cabot Institute. 


If we have to feed 9.8 billion people by 2050, food from the ocean will have to play a major role. Ending hunger and malnutrition while meeting the demand for more meat and fish as the world grows richer will require 60% more food by the middle of the century.But around 90% of the world’s fish stocks are already seriously depleted. Pollution and increasing levels of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the atmosphere, which is making the oceans warmer and more acidic, are also a significant threat to marine life.There is potential to increase ocean food production but, under these conditions, eating more of the species at the top of the food chain, such as tuna and salmon, is just not sustainable. As a recent EU report highlighted, we should instead be looking at how we can harvest more smaller fish and shellfish, but also species that aren’t as widely eaten such as seaweed and other algae.The oceans have absorbed around one third of the CO₂ emitted into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution. The absorbed CO₂ goes through a series of chemical reactions that form carbonic acid and lower the pH of the water. These reactions also reduce the concentration of carbonate ions, which are vital for those creatures that grow external skeletons such as corals and shellfish.

The acid and the lack of carbonate mean these organisms form weaker skeletons and have to use more energy to do so, leaving less energy for growth and reproduction. Consequently, they up smaller in size. Aside from the impact this has on shellfish, several of the species affected, such as corals in the tropics or coralline algae in the waters around the UK, also play a key role in providing food and nursing grounds for fish. And less fish food leads to fewer fish for us to catch.

Climate change is affecting food production

The impact of ocean acidification varies widely across the globe. But it is already affecting marine food production, particularly of shellfish. For example, CO₂-rich water along the west coast of the US means more oysters in local hatcheries are dying when they are still larvae.
Warmer seas due to climate change are also affecting food supplies. Some species are moving towards the poles in search of cooler water, forcing fishermen into more northerly waters or leaving them without stocks altogether. Some fishing fleets in northern locations will find more fish available but many will see the amount of fish available to catch fall by between 6% and 30% depending on the region. The biggest impact will be on areas that are already the most dependent on fishing, such as Southeast Asia and West Africa.

One possible solution is to eat more smaller fish and shellfish such as mussels. Large fish need to eat smaller fish to grow. If we eat smaller fish instead then we remove a step from the food chain and reduce the amount of energy lost in the process. What’s more, it might become easier to farm these smaller fish because the algae, cyanobacteria and other plankton they eat could actually benefit from warmer waters and higher levels of CO₂ in the atmosphere. This is because they get their energy from photosynthesis and so use CO₂ like fuel.

Spirulina, the new seafood cocktail.
Shutterstock

It might also be possible to take this a step further and add some of these organisms directly to our diet, giving us an abundant new source of food. Seaweed, for example, is a type of algae that has been eaten for centuries, but only 35 countries commercially harvest it today. Spirulina cyanobacteria is already eaten as a food supplement and several companies are trying to turn other forms of algae into a human food source.

Farming these organisms in the right way could even help counter some of the effects of climate change on the rest of the food chain. For example, growing more seaweed lowers the amount of CO2 in the surrounding water, reduces acidification, and improves the environment for oysters and other shellfish. Managing seaweed harvest correctly will also maintain the dissolved oxygen and nutrient levels in the water, contributing to the overall health of the ocean.

The ConversationMaking algae a common part of more people’s diets won’t be easy. We need to ensure that any new algae food products on our dinner plates have the needed nutritional value but are also attractive and safe to eat. But sticking with our traditional salmon and tuna diet isn’t sustainable. Expanding our seafood menus could be a vital way of keeping the ocean healthy while it supplies the food we need.
Pallavi Anand, Lecturer in Ocean Biogeochemistry, The Open University and Daniela Schmidt, Professor in Palaebiology, University of Bristol

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Olive oil production in Morocco: so many questions

Posted on by janet.crompton

No standard salad would be complete without olive oil. Our friends the lettuce, tomato and cucumber now come automatically accompanied by the vinegar and the oil, the oil and the vinegar. Perhaps in a bottle, perhaps in a sachet, perhaps in some kind of over complicated vinaigrette processed by a supermarket near you, along with lots of salt and some corn syrup, a 21st century salad in the Western world would be naked without an olive dressing.

This weekend, after an intensive academic seminar in Morocco[1], we studious seminar attendees were rewarded with a field trip. So I was taken out to visit three agricultural holdings in action. They all grew olives, but apart from that, had little in common. These three: large, medium and small producers in turn gave us a hugely insightful opportunity to witness agricultural change in action. Since the turn of the millennium the large site, on previously colonial, then state-held land had been an apple orchard and had now turned to olive oil. The medium one had been focused on cattle, making use of previous common land, that was now enclosed land, and was now diversifying with oil, watermelons, and more. The small producer produced a full range of things including olives for their own oil and most recently had established a side income in both fish and honey production.

Firstly, we learnt how to make money. Morocco’s heavily financed agricultural development programme, Plan Maroc Vert, which aims to intensify the agricultural system into a new-age competitive beacon of the modern food system, offers attractive incentives to spruce up agriculture in the country with new machines. All you need is to write a proposal (a report), have money to invest (from bank credit perhaps) and an impressive part of your money will be returned to you in state subsidies within two years.

So, for example, all three of the small, medium and large producers we visited, had benefited from a 100% state subsidy for irrigation of their crops. In the case of the ‘super-intensive’ large producer this meant state funding for the irrigation of 65,780[2] olive trees from groundwater on a rapidly declining water table. Some of the more landscape-savvy of the seminar group reminded us that olive trees had been grown in the region for centuries precisely because they did not need this kind of constant watering but could grow deep roots and access scarce water themselves. This, however, is not of interest to the ‘super-intensive’ producer. This producer is simply interested in the logic of economic growth, which in this case says: plant the trees closer, and add the chemical nutrients to the water while you’re at it. And so, these 65,780 trees are watered with the addition of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and ammonium, yet no studies are evident of what all these substances may be doing to the groundwater. By any other logic this would be a big concern, nitrogen pollution, particularly. Nitrogen pollution of water supplies, or more simply, of the nitrogen cycle, is one of the only planetary ecosystem boundaries that we have already crossed as a human race. This was not relevant in the lesson of how to make money.

Yet, I work with people, so where were they in the Moroccan olive grove? Well, it seems they have been replaced by a machine in this super-intensive oil production. The company, with links to power as far up as it goes, has invested in a machine that drives over the trees like a bridge. It shakes their branches and collects their olives.  So much for an investment in rural employment.

Some new olive trees defy the machine but are pretty un-reliable as employers too. These trees that the machine can’t manage provide jobs for only a very precarious seasonal and short-term workforce. I was told that 100 people would be employed for a space of around 200 hectares, and these jobs would last 2-3 months. The company assured us though that these workers would get both contracts and, in order to have those contracts, bank accounts. Thank goodness the banks aren’t losing out.

I should be kinder in tone about the small and medium sized farmers that we visited. Not only did their olive oil taste a lot richer, but they invited us to tea, and allowed us to share their experience of oil production more closely.  They humoured our partial language skills and our many, many questions. This was the second major thing we learnt on the trip – we were a team. We were a slightly chaotic, and erratic team, but really quite effective. A little like slugs on a cabbage, we chewed up every bit of information every which way.

Releasing a group of 13 researchers at a family farm, was a bit like inviting children to a playground, or providing clowns with an audience. Each of us found something to play with, interact with, reflect upon and smile. Some of us looked at the trees or identified the plant specimens. Others wrote notes, or took pictures, or carried out semi-formal interviews with whichever family member we felt most comfortable with. Others played with material toys, climbing ladders, smelling fruit or knocking on enormous oil containers to discover them empty. As we found the olive branches, force-fed powder food through irrigated pipes, or in the smaller farm providing shade for some resident chickens, this seminar group grew together, discovering the knowledge of the peasant farmer.  This experience was far richer and engaging than any power point presentation or report.

More images can be found on the original blog.

References

[1] “Workshop on Agricultural Labour and Rural Landscapes in the Arab World” Organised by the Thimar collective and supported by the École Nationale d’Agriculture de Meknès, the Leverhulme Trust and the London School of Economics.

[2] Calculated based on 286 plants/hectare in a cultivated area of 230 hectares, this was the details of the holding advertised by the company.

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This blog is written by Lydia Medland, a PhD student at the University of Bristol’s School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies who is looking at the role of seasonal workers in global food production, specifically in Morocco and Spain.  This blog has been reposted with kind permission from her Eating Research blog.  View the original blog post.

Lydia Medland

Read Lydia’s other blog: Watermelon work

What happens when you let PhD students and post-docs organise a meeting?

Posted on by janet.crompton

As plant science PhD students, we feel it is vital to share our research with other scientists to generate new ideas for collaborative projects. For this reason we decided to organise the ‘Innovations in Plant Science to Feed a Changing World’ workshop, which was held in the University of Bristol Biological Sciences department in February 2017. The delegates included early-career scientists from Kyoto University, Heidelberg University and of course the University of Bristol.

Figure 1. The Conference Poster

The University of Bristol has a long-standing partnership with Kyoto University and more recently, Heidelberg University, as our plant science groups share overlapping research areas. The main aim of the workshop was to encourage novel collaboration opportunities between the plant science groups, which would give rise to future projects, publications and ultimately funding.

Last year, Kyoto University hosted a highly engaging and productive workshop (see Sarah Jose’s blog post last year) for early-career scientists from the three universities in this coalition. Following from the success of this workshop, we decided to organise the second workshop, where participants could build upon the partnerships forged at the last meeting, form new links and present their results in a friendly environment. So, for the past six months, a team of PhD students and post-docs has been busy organising the meeting that took place in February.

As it turns out, organizing a three-day conference, even a relatively small one, is quite a lot of work. Getting venues, transfers, catering, accommodation and social activities booked all presented their own particular challenges. However, perhaps the most challenging task was designing the program for the workshop, which was set out into different themes to encompass the participants’ different subject areas.

All the organisation paid off when the visitors arrived, slightly (very) jet lagged from their long flights. Once the workshop had started, we were delighted with how smoothly the sessions ran and how engaging the talks were. Following the talks there were many discussions over coffee, during the poster session and break-out session. We also included a careers talk from Prof Tokitaka Oyama from Kyoto University, who shared his insights on how to succeed as a plant scientist. Another highlight was the keynote talk from Professor Keith Lindsey (University of Durham), who shared his fascinating work on modeling plant developmental biology.

In amongst all the science, we had time for an excursion to the University of Bristol Botanical Gardens where Nick Wray gave a fascinating tour, which was very enjoyable. We also visited the Wills memorial building tower and even had a go at ringing the bell!

Figure 2. Nick Wray (far right) led a fascinating tour of the University’s Botanic Garden for the visitors.

Although organising the workshop was a lot of work, it was definitely worth it. Our organisation, leadership and project management skills were trained and tested in the run-up to the workshop, but in the end, it went very well indeed. All the delegates thoroughly enjoyed their participation and a comment that was heard a few times was that delegates were impressed, not just with the quality of the science being presented, but also the quality of the scientific discussion particularly given that English was not the first language for the majority of the participants.

We hope that the links formed at the workshop will continue to develop into novel collaborative projects. – I (Donald) definitely benefited as the post-doc Massaki Okada even stayed on a few days to teach me some techniques.

We would like to thank our funders, the Bristol Centre for Agricultural Innovation and the New Phytologist Trust for their support. We’d also like to thank the other members of the organising committee whose hard work made this workshop so successful: Fiona Belbin, Deirdre McLachlan, Tsuyoshi Aoyama and Antony Dodd.

Figure 3. Group Photo

Blog post by Donald Fraser & Katie Tomlinson

Working with the weather to manage parasites of livestock in changing climates

Posted on by janet.crompton
Parasites can be found in every environment on earth and infect a wide range of hosts – birds, fish, plants, insects, wild animals, domesticated animals and humans.  When parasites are discussed they often trigger an “ewww” reaction.  However, they have much more serious economic, food security and animal health and welfare impacts when they infect grazing livestock.  Grazing livestock contribute greatly to food security and this is not going to change any time soon.  Not only is the global population (and therefore food requirement) growing, there is an increasing demand for animal-based food products in developing regions and there is an essential role of animal products in marginal environments where crop production is infeasible.  Parasite control is therefore vital, but is not easy to achieve.

Many parasites have complex lifecycles which depend upon specific climatic conditions.  For instance, temperature and moisture determine development rates and survival.  Farmers could once use this to their advantage as the predictable, seasonal weather patterns led to predictable, seasonal patterns of parasites.  Reliable livestock husbandry practices therefore developed for parasite management.  However, in recent years there have been changes in climate and less predictable weather patterns.  Traditional management practices are often no longer effective as parasites are being found in unexpected regions and at unexpected times of year.  What’s more, whilst other organisms are being put under threat by climate change, parasites are successfully evolving and adapting to these changes in environment due to their short reproductive cycles.

Predicting the risk of infection to parasites involves multiple areas of expertise.  An in-depth knowledge of parasite characteristics is essential, and needs to be updated as they evolve.  Accurate forecasts for climate are also needed to help predict which regions may have an environment suitable for the parasite and changes to its seasonality.  An accurate forecast for weather (daily climatic conditions) is essential for certain parasites.  Combining historical data with forecasts, knowledge of the parasite’s requirements for development and farm characteristics (such as altitude and orientation) within complex models gives precise information on infection risk and helps farmers to be one step ahead of the parasites.  Technology is also aiding the rapid diagnosis of specific parasite infections to guide effective management practices.

Despite these advancements in parasite control, uptake of the technologies by farmers is often slow. The science behind parasites and the models developed are complicated and daunting.  Livestock farming is demanding, both economically and in terms of labour.  Therefore farmers need these complex technologies to be transformed into tools that are still effective, yet simple and easy to integrate into their current practices.  They need to feel confident in using the tools and understand the benefits that come with them – not the science.  These benefits include more efficient animals, both economically and environmentally, and improved animal health and welfare.

There is still much to learn about parasites. The rapid changes to the environment, the livestock industry and the parasites themselves means that this is an area of work that will be ongoing for the foreseeable future.  There is a huge need for collaboration between disciplines to not only develop the tools, but also to communicate their need and promote their use on farms.  This barrier to technology uptake could be a bigger hurdle for scientists than technology development itself.

 
This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Olivia Godber, a PhD student in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Bristol.
 

Saying goodbye and reflecting on lessons from the field

Posted on by janet.crompton

Last week I said goodbye to the National Crops Resources Research Institute (NaCRRI) where I have spent the last three months learning about Cassava brown streak disease (CBSD). I’m currently in the second year of my PhD at the University of Bristol, where I’m researching how CBSD viruses cause symptoms, replicate and move inside plants.

Cassava is a staple food crop for approximately 300 million in Africa. However cassava production is seriously threatened by CBSD, which causes yellow patches (chlorosis) to form on leaves and areas of tubers to die (necrosis), rot and become inedible. CBSD outbreaks are currently impacting on the food security of millions of cassava farmers in east Africa and it appears to be spreading westward, threatening food security in many countries.

I decided that I wanted to experience the problem for myself, see the disease in the field, meet the farmers affected and understand the different solutions. I am so pleased that I decided to visit NaCRRI; a government institute, which carries out research to protect and improve production of key crops, including cassava. The focus is on involving farmers in this process so that the best possible varieties and practices are available to them. Communication between researchers and farmers is therefore vital, and it was this that I wanted to assist with.

When I arrived I was welcomed so warmly, and was immediately part of the team. The root crop team leader Dr. Titus Alicai came up with a whole series of activities to give me a real insight into CBSD. I was invited to the field sites across Uganda, where I got to see CBSD symptoms in the flesh! I assisted with the 5CP project, which is screening different cassava varieties from five East and Southern African countries for CBSD and Cassava mosaic disease (CMD) resistance across different agro-ecological zones. I helped to score plants for CBSD symptoms. The researchers thought I was bit strange, getting very excited and taking lots of photos.

Main insight: complex and dynamic CBSD situation

The main insight I’ve gained is that the situation is both complex and dynamic. Different cassava varieties respond differently to CBSD infection, some plants show strong symptoms on the leaves and nothing in tubers, and other varieties show the opposite. Symptoms also depend on environmental conditions, which are unpredictable.

The whiteflies which carry viruses are also complex, and are expanding into new areas and responding to changing environmental conditions. There are also different viral strains found across different areas, and viral populations are also continually adapting.

Learning about solutions

It has been fascinating to learn how NaCRRI is tackling the CBSD problem through screening different varieties in the 5CP project, breeding new varieties in the NEXTGEN project, providing clean planting material and developing GM cassava.

Saying goodbye to new friends: Dr. Titus Alicai (NaCRRI root crops team leader), Phillip Abidrabo (CBSD MSc student) and Dr. Esuma Williams (cassava breeder)

And there’s the human element…

In each of these projects, communication with local farmers is crucial. I’ve had the opportunity to meet farmers directly affected, some of whom have all but given up on growing cassava. I’ve learnt a lot about how NaCRRI is constantly engaging farmers and involving them in solutions to the CBSD problem.

Challenges

Communicating has not been easy for me, as there are over 40 local languages. I’ve really had to be adaptable and learn from those around me. For example, in the UK we like to email the person sat next to us, whereas in Uganda you really have to talk to people to hear about what’s going on. This is all part of the experience and something I’m hoping to bring back to the UK!

I’ve had some funny moments too, during harvesting the Ugandans couldn’t believe how weak I was. I couldn’t even cut one cassava open!

Real world reflections

I’m going to treasure my experiences at NaCRRI. The insights into CBSD are already helping me to plan experiments, with more real-world applications. I can now see how all the different elements of the disease (plant-virus-vector-environment-human) join up and interact, something you can’t learn from reading papers alone!

Working with the NaCRRI team has given me the desire and confidence to collaborate with an international team. I’ve formed some very strong connections with people here and hope to have discussions about CBSD with them throughout my PhD and beyond. This will help make our research more relevant to the current situation. Above all, I’ve learnt the importance of getting out of the lab to experience and learn from what is happening in the field.

 

Thank you!

I would like to thank: Dr. Titus Alicai for welcoming me into the NaCRRI team and providing me with so many valuable experiences; the whole of the NaCRRI team for their generosity; my supervisors: Prof. Gary Foster and Dr. Andy Bailey for supporting my trip and my funders: Biotechnology and Biosciences Research Council, the Cabot Institute (University of Bristol), the British Society for Plant Pathology and the Society for Experimental Biology for supporting my internship.

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This blog has been written by University of Bristol Cabot Institute member Katie Tomlinson from the School of Biological Sciences.  Katie’s area of research is to generate and exploit an improved understanding of cassava brown streak disease (CBSD) to ensure sustainable cassava production in Africa.  This blog has been reposted with kind permission from Katie’s blog Cassava Virus.

 

Katie Tomlinson

More from this blog series:  

Paying a visit to the Plant Doctor in Uganda

Posted on by janet.crompton

Two weeks ago I organised a visit to a plant clinic in the Mukono district of central Uganda. The plant clinics are run by district local government extension staff with support from CABI’s Plantwise programme and offer a place where farmers can bring crop samples to get advice on how to prevent and cure diseases.

Why does Uganda need plant clinics?

It’s estimated that smallholder farmers loose 30 – 40% of their produce to plant health problems before harvest, which threaten food security, income and livelihoods. Ugandan farmers suffer heavily from pests and diseases, including maize stalk borer, wheat rust, banana bacterial wilt, coffee wilt and cassava viral diseases. The situation is always changing, as outbreaks of disease emerge and persist across the country.

Getting access to information is a challenge in rural settings. Often smallholder farmers have very little contact with extension workers and have no way of diagnosing diseases or finding solutions. The plant clinics provide farmers with access to current information to help make rapid, informed decisions that will save their crops. There are now over 191 plant clinics across Uganda and the aim is to have at least one plant clinic in every sub-county by 2020.

On the day…

I was picked up by Benius Tukahirwa an Agricultural Inspector from the Ministry for Agriculture Animal Industry and Fisheries (MAAIF). We drove to Mukono to meet Mukasa Lydia, who’s been a plant doctor for eight years! She has a wealth of plant health knowledge and is in touch with the local community.

When we arrived, we set up a base in the heart of the smallholder village of Nakifuma, Kimenyedde Sub-county, Mukono district. Local farmers find out about the monthly plant clinics through radio announcements and word of mouth. Before long a set of five farmers had arrived with their sickly plant samples. I was told that normally the plant clinics have around 20-50 visitors in a day. On this day the turnout was low as the rains had just started so farmers were in the field planting.

Local famers gather round to hear advice from the plant doctors

Patient 1

The first patient to be examined was a passion fruit branch with “woodiness” viral disease, which causes fruit to become misshapen, woody and inedible. The farmer was told to remove and destroy the infected plants immediately to prevent spread to other plants.

Patient 2

The second patient was a coffee plant with coffee berry disease, a fungal disease which causes coffee berries to rot, turn black and mouldy. The farmer was advised to immediately remove and destroy infected branches, and to apply copper based fungicides to the remaining plants.

Patient 3

The third patient I was very familiar with. The farmer had brought a cassava branch with Cassava brown streak viral disease, the leaves showed characteristic yellow patches and tubers were spoiled and inedible. The plant doctors advised him to get hold of some clean, virus-free planting material from a tolerant variety such as NAROCASS 1, NASE 14, NASE 19 from the government.

Plant patients: passion fruit with woodiness disease (left), coffee wilt disease (middle) and cassava brown streak disease (right)

The farmer: Kayondo Edrissa told me:

“I have been growing cassava for 20 years. I was hard hit in the 90’s by Cassava mosaic disease (CMD), which totally destroyed cassava crops and caused widespread famine. Since the release of CMD resistant varieties people had begun relying on cassava again. But now these varieties have been overcome with Cassava brown streak disease. I’m not going to plant cassava until I get hold of a variety which can resist the disease. Cassava is the real food which can keep our houses going so we really need a solution.”

After the crops were diagnosed, the plant doctors gave clear instructions for how to prevent or cure the diseases in the local language. These instructions were also sent as text messages to the farmers’ phones. Information and images of the diseases were also uploaded to the Plantwise Knowledge Bank so the government can track and respond to outbreaks. There was a challenge in getting a strong enough internet signal to upload the reports.

We then took a tour of Kayondo’s small-holding where we discovered lots of other problems, including a cassava plant with: CBSD, CMD, bacterial wilt and green mites! I was surprised at how many different plant diseases the farmers are facing. The visit helped me to recognise the importance of the clinics; they offer a meeting point for farmers to learn and communicate with each other and trained extension works about similar problems they are facing.

I would like to thank Plantwise for allowing me to visit the clinic, I had a very informative day!

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This blog has been written by University of Bristol Cabot Institute member Katie Tomlinson from the School of Biological Sciences.  Katie’s area of research is to generate and exploit an improved understanding of cassava brown streak disease (CBSD) to ensure sustainable cassava production in Africa.  This blog has been reposted with kind permission from Katie’s blog Cassava Virus.

 

Katie Tomlinson

More from this blog series:  

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