Tag: food

IncrEdible! How to save money and reduce waste

Posted on by janet.crompton

The new academic year is a chance to get to grips with managing your student loan and kitchen cupboards. Over lockdown the UK wasted a third less food than we usually would. This is brilliant, as normally over 4.5 million tonnes of edible food is wasted from UK homes every year. For students, it’s even higher. The average cost of food waste per student per week is approximately £5.25 – that’s about £273 per year!  It’s not just our bank accounts that are affected by food waste – it’s our planet too.

The process of growing, making, distributing, storing and cooking our food uses masses of energy, fuel and water. It generates 30% of the world’s CO₂ greenhouse gas emissions. The same amount of CO₂ as 4.6 million return flights from London to Perth, Australia! So it makes sense to keep as much food out of the bin as possible, start wasting less and saving more.

Start the new term with some food waste busting, budget cutting, environment loving habits! Here’s five easy ways to reduce food waste from your kitchen.

Conquer the cupboard!

Before you head to the shops, check what’s in your cupboards, fridge and freezer. Make a list and stick to it! Supermarket deals are designed to get you to spend more, and often student accommodation has limited storage space.

Chill the fridge out!

Turn your fridge temperature down to between 0 and 5°C to keep food fresher for longer. Having it too cold can actually spoil some foods!

Freezy does it!

Make the most of your freezer! You can freeze more than you think. Try bulk cooking things like chilli or stews and freeze some portions for when you’re feeling lazy. Check out the Love Food Hate Waste A-Z of Food Storage to double check anything.

Defrost like a boss!

Once you know what’s in the freezer, it just takes a bit of forward planning to save money and avoid a last-minute dash to the shops or Deliveroo.

Use it or lose it!

Get creative with your meal ideas and find ingredient swaps, recipe ideas and leftover hacks on the Love Food Hate Waste website. These are sure to impress your new friends and save you money!

For more information contact sustainability-estates@bristol.ac.uk

The University of Bristol’s Sustainability Team are making a sustainable university, by managing our precious resources, maintaining our sustainable standards and minding our impact on our communities.

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This blog is written by Emma Lewins and Anya Kaufman, Sustainability Interns at the University of Bristol.

Farming in the Páramos of Boyacá: industrialisation and delimitation in Aquitania

Posted on by janet.crompton
Labourers harvest ‘cebolla larga’ onion in Aquitania. Image credit: Lauren Blake.

In October and November 2019 Caboteer Dr Lauren Blake spent time in Boyacá, Colombia, on a six-week fieldtrip to find out about key socio-environmental conflicts and the impacts on the inhabitants of the páramos, as part of the historical and cultural component of her research project, POR EL Páramo. Background information about the research can be found in the earlier blog on the project website.

Descending down the hill in the bus from El Crucero, the pungent smell of cebolla larga onion begins to invade my nose. The surrounding land transforms into plots of uniform rows of onion tops at various stages of growth, some mostly brown soil with shoots poking out along the ridges, others long, bushy and green. Sandwiched between the cloud settled atop the mountainous páramos and the vast, dark blue-green Lake Tota, all I can see and all I can smell is onion production. Sprinklers are scattered around, drawing water from the lake, and large teams of labourers every few plots harvest en-masse. Some may see this as a bucolic landscape, indeed, there are ‘ecotourism’ posters advertising ‘agroturismo’ tours to learn about cebolla larga production. However, there is a less romantic idyllic side to this industry, which Aquitania and the surrounding area depend on heavily: around 90% of Aquitanenses’ economic activity is related to the onion industry.
Approaching Aquitania, where onion cultivation start to dominate the surroundings. Image credit: Lauren Blake.
Aquitania lies at an altitude of 3,030 meters, that is, 30 meters above the supposed line where páramo land begins, according to the Humboldt Institute. As such, this intense onion cultivation would be in breach of the delimitation law (Ley 1930 of 2018) that wants to limit agricultural activities because of their damaging effects on páramo ecosystems, which are now the focus of intense conservation efforts. The area under cultivation immediately around the lake was omitted in the delimitation (around 95% of the cultivable land in the water basin is under cebolla production), perhaps due to the economic importance of the onion industry and maybe even some pressure from the influential landowners who benefit from it. Indeed, many livelihoods depend on cebolla there, so it is complicated. The fieldtrip was aimed at understanding the tensions between livelihoods and conservation at different points of the Boyacá páramos, so Aquitania was an interesting place to start.
From a viewpoint higher up in the páramos, looking down over the town of Aquitania. The cebolla production expands all around it and reaches right upto Lake Tota. Image credit: Lauren Blake.
Cultivation of cebolla larga (picture a spring onion the size of a leek, also known as cebolla junca and cebolla de rama) began in the 1960s, following the demise of wheat, barley and a range of cold-weather crops, and the encouragement for specialisation and intensification (Galli 1981, Instituto Humboldt 2014) – evidenced in the diminished local weekly market. Since then, cebolla larga farming has grown exponentially: there are approximately 1,300 hectares under onion production around Aquitania (some estimate as much as 2,500, especially when the whole municipality is counted), where upwards of 500 tonnes are harvested per day – 200,000 tonnes annually, dominating over 80% of the national market and providing cebolla larga all over Colombia. Toxicologists are worried about the use of chemical fungicides, herbicides and pesticides which growers deem essential, as well as high amounts of gallinaza (chicken manure) for fertilizer, the quantities of each which are only ever increasing as land tires, diseases and insects become resistant, and pressure on yield dominates. Scientists from the UPTC (Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica de Colombia) are concerned about the toxicity of the lake, which receives the run-off, as indicated by emerging toxicology studies (Barrera, Espinosa-Ramírez and Silva 2019). Growing virtually nothing else, with year-round production and 3-4 harvests annually, Aquitania is the epicentre of the cebolla larga industry and is where producers, intermediaries and distributors are concentrated. Famous for its production, onion has come to form an integral part of the Aquitanense identity, and there are calls for Protected Designation of Origen (like champagne or roquefort cheese). In the central plaza amidst a water fountain, the most prominent feature is a statue of a man standing on top of a giant bunch of cebolla larga, harvesting tool across his shoulder, onions clutched in his hand. This proud identity is reflected again in a nearby mural depicting an image of cebolla larga alongside a statement on being Aquitanense (“Soy Cultura, Soy Ambiente, Soy Aquitanense”: “I am culture, I am environment, I am Aquitanian”).
Mural about Aquitanense identity and water fountain in the central plaza depicting onions and onion producers. Image credit: Lauren Blake.
The Aquitanenses I encountered were incredibly kind and open in sharing their lives with me. I spent time with campesinos who live above the town and benefit only marginally from onion production – with limited access to irrigation away from the lake, fewer resources to input, smaller plots of land and within the protected delimited páramos. I also spent time with jornaleros/cebolleros – day labourers who plant, weed, fumigate and harvest the crop –, and in a pelanza de cebolla – a processing operation where the onions are peeled and packed into nets of 500g and 1kg bunches, largely for direct sale in Bogotá supermarkets. The pelanza takes place in simple warehouses which employ mostly women – with male bosses and managers – who are paid by the quantity of bunches they process. The rectangular warehouse I spent time in was a closed space with a surprisingly low ceiling, one opening on the narrow side with no other windows, a few skylights for visibility, concrete block walls, corrugated fibreglass roof and dirt floor, making the conditions stuffy and dingy for the 15-20 or so workers inside. Throughout the day, the women have with them their babies and infants, who nap and play amongst piles of onions; their older children join after school. It is grubby, hard work, and it didn’t take long before my eyes and nose were irritated and streaming, with a headache lingering well into the night. I wondered if there were residues from the multiple chemical applications, and if this affected the health of the women and their children in the poorly ventilated space. They were concerned, but grateful to have work. I was full of admiration and compassion for them. They were understandably a little suspicious of me at first, but warm, curious and increasingly welcoming, especially once I had learned how to peel adequately!
A ‘pelanza’ where women process the onion ready for supermarket shelves. Image credit: Lauren Blake.
Out in the fields with the jornaleros, I imagined, or rather hoped, the open air would minimise the irritation to my sinuses, but I still felt the aroma permeate my eyes and respiratory system. The work, demanding constant bending over and, for the men, heavy lifting and carrying, is quite literally back breaking. The men are out from about 5am until late lunch, with female partners/family members joining them after taking children to school (and whenever school is closed, children help too, to learn working skills). Cebolla larga generates employment for 170 jornaleros (daily labourers) per hectare per day (Acevedo 2018) and since 89% of the land is occupied by only 20% of the population, in contrast to the 81% of land owners with less than 3 hectare plots (Albarracín 2015), most of Aquitania men are contracted on a daily basis. Hence, whilst there’s often work, there’s little security, and certainly no benefits like sick pay, healthcare, or pensions. The labour is arranged directly with men and the wage goes directly to the man, usually the day before, so whilst female family members work alongside them most of the time, they do not receive a wage. At 50,000 Colombian Pesos a day (about £10), whilst high compared to some manual labour work in Colombia, it is not well remunerated, especially when the man is accompanied by female family members (and sometimes children), which increases the amount of labour for the wage. Working 6, sometimes 7, days a week, most of the jornaleros have spent their entire lives in this work since childhood and see little difference for their future. There is an interesting tension. On the one hand, they feel “solo” (alone), with little state and welfare support, not unionised, and they see few alternatives for the rest of their lives, which can be depressing. On the other hand, they are proud, hard workers and grateful to be in a place with such reliable employment: “those who go hungry are those who do not want to work, because here we’re blessed with plenty of work” – variations of this comment were commonplace. However, it comes at a cost to the social fabric. Several interviewees reported that the rates of alcoholism, especially amongst men and linked to high levels of domestic violence, are amongst the highest in Boyacá.
Labourers load up the trucks for Bogota having harvested the onion. Image credit: Lauren Blake.
The jornaleros are concerned about their health – they know more than most how much chemical inputs are used in the onion production. However, similarly to the women in the pelanza, they are glad that the lake cultivation area is not included in the páramo delimitation, therefore meaning their livelihoods are protected. Indeed, despite being above the 3,000 meters mark, the lack of the characteristic frailejones around the lake indicate to them that they are not in páramo land, which they say is “más arriba” (further up). Having said that, the mounting environmental concerns of the production and increasing pressure to address them prompted from the delimitation debates do worry them – what employment will Aquitanenses have if the cebolla industry is restricted? The landowners and the representatives of the cebolla larga industry seem to have similar concerns and have been heavily active in their opposition to the delimitation and any environmental restrictions. NGOs and public officials in the area have reported that landowners and employers in the industry, who have had a free reign for decades, have demonised them by fuelling fears that the authorities and environmentalists want to stop the production and take away the various jobs (see also studies on socio-environmental conflicts around Aquitania such as Instituto Humboldt 2014 and Carrasco 2018).
A campesina milks her cow in the paramos above Aquitania and Lake Tota. Image credit: Lauren Blake.
In contrast to the Lake Tota industrialised economy, above the town, campesinos have been pushed further up into the páramos and pushed out of their small holdings. They try to participate in the onion industry on marginal land; many have given up and abandoned their dwellings, moving down to Aquitania to work as a labourer, joined the transport business integral to the industry, or migrated further afield to larger urban centres in search of better paid and less back-breaking work. Those who have stayed struggle to compete with the industrial level of production below, but have little choice, as there’s scant market aside from cebolla larga in the area. As a result, it is common to see cultivation right up to the edges of roads and buildings. Women from the Association of Female Campesinas (ASOMUC) report that male household heads are reluctant to allow them to use even small amounts of land to diversify their production, income and family food supply; for the men, every square meter should be onions. Whilst most other crops fetch a poor price at market, like in many other parts of Boyacá and Colombia, milk is one of the commodities that provides a dependable income, even at a small scale. With every inch taken up by onion, cows (often around 2 per household) are found grazing the verges between plots and taken higher up in the páramos above cultivation. Despite this, Aquitania is one of the few municipalities that has no milk collection service for the veredas (hamlets), making it difficult to sell surplus – all the infrastructure focus is on cebolla. Overall, the campesinos I spoke to were angry and felt betrayed and neglected by the government, who provide little support and instead are felt to mainly impose restrictions. Already struggling to survive and maintain their livelihoods, they feel disadvantaged and cut off from the participation and benefits of the onion industry and market, whilst any other activities are not supported either. Furthermore, they now fear the implications of living in and depending on delimited páramo land, worried that the government and authorities will soon prohibit them from practicing the marginal cultivation and livestock that they rely on. Feeling abandoned, the campesinos are often driven to abandon their smallholdings.
Abandoned house with onion planted right up to the edges. Image credit: Lauren Blake.
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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Dr Lauren Blake, from the Bristol Veterinary School at the University of Bristol. This blog has been reposted with kind permission from Lauren. View the original blog.
Dr Lauren Blake

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

The case to become a Fairtrade University

Posted on by janet.crompton

In October last year, I visited the Bristol Fairtrade Network to discuss Fairtrade and the Climate Emergency and find out more about how the University of Bristol could become a Fairtrade university. I had never heard of Fairtrade being part of the solution to the climate crisis, but I’m always looking for ways to act on this vital issue. I love the concept of Fairtrade and believe that as consumers we should be more responsible for the impacts of our purchases – Fairtrade empowers us to do just that.

The meeting started off with introductions and ice-breaker facts about the climate emergency. These set the tone for the meeting; the climate emergency is happening right now, and we need to act as soon as possible to prevent disasters affecting all of us. The Global South is feeling the worst impacts of the climate emergency which makes this a justice issue. There was also a great range of people at the meeting – from experts to novices, and even a couple who had travelled from a nearby town for the meeting.

In 2018 the City of Bristol was the first UK local authority to declare a Climate Emergency, and the University of Bristol was the first UK university to announce an emergency last year, with the Bristol’s NHS Trusts and We the Curious following suit. It’s clear that this is an issue that has captured the hearts and minds of Bristol’s residents.

How can Fairtrade be part of the solution to the climate crisis?

Climate change is increasing the vulnerability of farmers across the world to price volatility associated with their products resulting from increasing extreme weather events and weather pattern variability. The Fairtrade programme provides a price premium for farmers to invest in practices which can increase their resilience to the changing climate and decrease their vulnerability to crop failures and price volatility. Premiums can mean a better cash flow amongst farming cooperatives, greater access to credit and the ability to save more easily.

The Fairtrade foundation supports projects that encourage climate change adaptation and increase the resilience of farmers. For example, training for farmers is supported, which can include advice on switching to environmentally friendly practices, such as developing nutrient-rich soils that support healthy plants and encouraging wildlife to help control pests and diseases. The promotion of these practices, in turn, encourage sustainable agricultural production.

By supporting the work of Fairtrade and becoming a Fairtrade University, the University of Bristol can support the provision of the price premium to farmers across the world. Recognising the importance of supporting the mitigation and adaptation to climate change beyond the borders of Bristol due to the global nature of the climate emergency, is critical in ensuring a holistic approach to sustainability.

What we are doing as a University

The University of Bristol is working towards becoming a Fairtrade certified University as part of its commitments to address the climate emergency. This year Fairtrade Fortnight runs from the 24 February to the 8 March and the Source Cafes, Halls of Residence, Students’ Union shop and Balloon Bar are all getting involved with promotions and events to highlight how important Fairtrade is. We are putting on an event at the SU Living Room from 12 pm to 2 pm on 27 February to answer any questions and give out Fairtrade samples. For more information on Fair Trade at the University contact sustainability-estates@bristol.ac.uk.

 
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This blog is written by Emma Lewins from the University of Bristol Sustainability Team.

Bristol is Global Competition 2019 – a student response to the global food crisis

Posted on by janet.crompton
Bristol Is Global finalists

Food – not one of us would be able to live without it and crucially, this obvious fact is understated. In the global north, with fast food delivery services available at our fingertips and supermarkets stocked with shelves of tinned cans, frozen meals and fresh fruit and veg, it is unsurprisingly easy to take food for granted. In an increasingly globalised world, where much of our food travels miles across oceans and roads, it is ever more common to find ourselves alienated from the cycles and processes that start in the soil and end up at the tip of our knives and forks. Our disconnection to food is significant given that the global food industry is in a hidden environmental crisis: a crisis of social, cultural, historical, economic, political, and geographical significance. As students, we recognise that if climate demands are not met within our lifetimes: water scarcity, diseases, droughts, floods, and the acidification of oceans will impact the security of our food in irrepressible ways (Empson 2016: 77-8).

And so, this year, Bristol is Global (BiG) asked students to address the question:

How can the university, students and the wider public address the problems with the local and global food industry?

Focusing on three sub-categories:

  1. Food waste
  2. The hunger-obesity paradox
  3. Single-use plastic packaging.

BiG is an annual, university-wide competition organised by students that is themed around a different global socio-political challenge each year, with the winning team being awarded £500. The competition provides an opportunity for students from different disciplines to collaboratively develop a solution to a global problem on a local scale, founded on the belief that no global challenge will ever be resolved by one person, but rather a collective effort of countless individuals each making small actions.

To introduce the theme, Joy Carey, an expert in sustainable food planning who is currently a member of the Bristol Food Policy Council along with Natalie Fee, an environmental campaigner against plastic pollution, gave inspiring talks to launch the competition. This was followed by a panel debate to help students better understand the complex issue at hand a panel event took place. Representatives from Bristol Waste Company, Fair Trade Network, Community Farm, as well as our own Professor Jeffrey Brunstrom engaged in a thought provoking discussion with the students.

This year, the four finalist teams came up with four creative and diverse ideas that could potentially have a significant impact on the Bristol community:

  1. RecycleWise: A comprehensive information pack distributed to second year flats educating students on good recycling practices.
  2. Bright: An all-inclusive app with tutorial videos, interactive maps and reward schemes to encourage people to follow more sustainable eating habits.
  3. Eat Well Bristol: Student-volunteer run holiday cooking sessions in primary schools to make organic and healthy eating more accessible to underprivileged families in Bristol.
  4. Green Brewery Initiative: Growing indoor crops and herbs using plastic bottles rather than pots and used coffee grounds instead of fertiliser to engage the University community in reducing waste.

Members from LettUs Grow, a successful University of Bristol start-up developing vertical farming technology met with the teams to help them refine their pitch. In the final event, each team presented their ideas to a panel of judges. The quality of research and originality in each proposal was truly impressive, as well as the passion and enthusiasm shown by all four teams. The judges ultimately decided to chip in an extra £100 and fund two teams, the Bright App and RecycleWise, as well as providing continued support to all four teams to carry on with their projects. With Bristol Going for Gold (Bristol’s ambition to become the first Gold Award Sustainable Food City in the UK by 2020), each proposal has tremendous potential to help the city reach its goal.

As organisers of BiG we would like to thank the Cabot Institute for providing invaluable support throughout the competition. We would also like to extend our thank you to the Alumni Grant Foundation for funding to further help the teams implement their ideas.

Next year BiG will return with a different socio-economic issue, challenging students to come up with solutions that can truly help the Bristol community in different ways. We hope to engage more students and encourage the entire university community to engage in the issues we face.

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This blog was written by Lina Drozd, Usha Bholah and Smruthi Radhakrishnan, all students at the University of Bristol.

Travelling through Asia’s breadbasket

Posted on by janet.crompton

This is the second of a series of blogs from a group of University of Bristol Cabot Institute researchers who are on a remote expedition (funded by BCAI) to find out more about Kazakh agriculture and how farmers are responding to their changing landscape. 

Image credit: Hannah Vineer

Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ played on the car radio as we drove through endless fields of stubble stretching into the horizon in every direction. We were 2 days into our 3-day, 2,345km journey from Astana to our field site, and it was easy to see why Kazakhstan is referred to as Asia’s breadbasket. Spring had finally arrived after an unusually long winter.  Tractors were busy burning, ploughing and planting, disappearing into the distance with each pass of the field.

The vast, flat steppe has provided the opportunity for cereal production on a scale unrivalled by the UK’s comparatively small field enclosures. In 2017, Kazakhstan held wheat stocks of 12MMT (million metric tonnes), making UK’s 1.4MMT seem like a drop in the ocean by comparison. Kazakhstan exports wheat globally and is a key player in global food security. Grain elevators capable of storing more than 100,000 tonnes of grain dominate the skyline of every major town and soon became a familiar feature of the landscape to us.

Image credit: Hannah Vineer

Our journey was punctuated every 6 hours or so by stops at restaurants that seemed to appear out of nowhere. Each one was as unique as the last, their bright colours a reflection of the cheerful nature of the Kazakh people. The popular Tabletkas parked outside reminded me of VW Transporters, and the friendly locals reminded me of my Welsh roots, where strangers greet you on the street.

Image credit: Hannah Vineer

The restaurants served a range of traditional Kazakh comfort food – meat and milk based meals like borscht, always served with bread, of course. Bread, or нан (pronounced naan) is a staple food here and is said to be the most important part of the dinner table. The menu, written in the Cyrillic alphabet, was indecipherable to me at first and I had to pester the Kazakh and Russian members of our team to help me choose a meal each time. Based on my excited reaction when I finally discovered the image recognition feature of my Google Translate app, you would have thought that I had never seen modern technology before. In truth, I was just relieved to not be such a burden on the rest of team!

Image credit: Hannah Vineer

Before long we were back on the road and as the hours passed I looked forward to getting to camp and getting started with our work. We planned to visit remote villages, thousands of kilometres off the tourist track, to survey farmers about how they cope with weather extremes such as this year’s particularly harsh winter. But for now, we had run out of time and energy. The sun was setting and we needed to find a place to rest for the night. We headed for the dim twinkling lights of Aktobe, passing a tractor working into the night, illuminating a cloud of dust in its wake. When we eventually found a motel with rooms available, I found it difficult to sleep. I couldn’t wait for the final leg of our journey to our wild camp in the Kazakh steppe.

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Hannah Rose Vineer.  This expedition has been kindly funded by the Bristol Centre for Agricultural Innovation.  This blog was reposted with permission from the BCAI blog site.

Setting off on a BCAI expedition to Kazakhstan

Posted on by janet.crompton

This is the first of a series of blogs from a group of University of Bristol Cabot Institute researchers who are on a remote expedition (funded by BCAI) to find out more about Kazakh agriculture and how farmers are responding to their changing landscape. 

Abandoned machinery. Image credit Hannah Vineer.

Ghost towns on the Kazakh steppe look as though they are centuries old, but it is an illusion. They have been sandblasted relentlessly by the force of the steppe since they were abandoned, less than 40 years ago, after the breakdown of the Soviet Union. This is one area on earth that people have largely failed to tame, but as the human population increases the country’s agricultural systems are rapidly developing and focus is turning to the steppe once again. At the same time, farmers must adapt to recent changes in climate – drier summers limit crop production and water availability, and changing patterns of snowfall and snowmelt threaten the lives of livestock. I am about to embark on a remote expedition to find out more about Kazakh agriculture and how farmers are responding to their changing landscape. Follow this blog series for updates from the field.

Since 2000, approximately 5,000,000 additional hectares of land have been sown for cropping, and approximately 2,000,000 each additional sheep, cattle and horses are kept in Kazakhstan. This increase in livestock productivity is largely driven by smallholder farmers, who rely on livestock for up to a fifth of their family’s food. However, climate change has been felt disproportionately in Central Asia, threatening food security. National Geographic recently reported that over half a million animals failed to survive the winter in neighbouring Mongolia due to a combination of lethal winter conditions and poor summer crop growth, so I’m anxious to see how the Kazakhs fared.

Image credit: mapchart.net

I’m told that in the Ural region in Western Kazakhstan, wheat production, livestock and wildlife exist in close contact, and that this is the best place to start my research. I’m set to fly to Astana tomorrow to join colleagues from the Association for the Conservation of Biodiversity of Kazakhstan (ACBK) on the three-day, 2,000km journey to the far west. With the help of ACBK and Bristol PhD student Munib Khanyari, I will interview farmers spread out over an area the size of England, skirting along the Russian border and the Caspian Sea. I’ll spend my evenings wild camping off-grid under the stars for 2-3 weeks. There will be no fresh water, no toilets and no internet – the team and I have to carry everything we need in order to survive the duration. Wish me luck!

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Hannah Rose Vineer.  This expedition has been kindly funded by the Bristol Centre for Agricultural Innovation.  This blog was reposted with permission from the BCAI blog site.Read part two of this blog – Travelling through Asia’s breadbasket.

Africa looking to strategic partnerships to rein in food and nutrition insecurity

Posted on by janet.crompton
A child feeds on orange fleshed sweet potato in Central Uganda – Image credit ‘Winnie Nanteza/NARO-Uganda’

World hunger continued to rise for the third consecutive year according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)’s latest report. The data identifies climate variability as one of the major contributing factors to this worrying statistic. The intricate relationship between climate change and food security culminates in a major challenge that has rattled individuals, organisations and governments alike for decades. In the coming decades, Africa—which faces the biggest food security challenge in present times—will need more strategic partnerships to unlock its food security potential.Nearly one in every nine people—a significant proportion of whom live in Sub-Saharan Africa—go to bed hungry every night. So significant is this challenge that the United nations lists ending hunger, achieving food and nutrition security and promoting sustainable agriculture by 2030 second of its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

It is a daunting challenge made worse by an exploding global population set to hit 9 billion by 2050. Nonetheless, governments and other stakeholders worldwide are drawing inspiration from the fact that, despite the increases of the past three years, hunger overall has reduced by almost half in the past two decades. This has been made possible through deliberate efforts to increase agricultural production with minimal environmental impact.

Contemporary Agricultural Science Technology and Innovations (STIs) are pivotal to increasing agricultural production, food security, and promoting economic growth in Africa. However, realizing these aspirations greatly depends on leveraging the synergistic capabilities of the diverse actors within the sector towards building stronger partnerships and increased accountability for greater impact.

The nature of Agricultural Research for Development (AR4D) paradigms around the world is rapidly evolving, with new technologies constantly emerging and making the agricultural sector more knowledge intensive and innovations driven. In addition, the role of the private sector in agricultural R&D is increasingly more prominent, with Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) being touted as an ideal model for accelerating technology transfer, commercialization, and delivery of research outputs to end-users for optimal research impact. Innovative partnerships between the public and private sectors are especially important for attracting investments and financing innovative solutions for agriculture in developing nations.

To drive this innovative and responsive research agenda, scientists globally are increasingly coming together in collaborative partnerships to share resources towards ensuring that the world will be able to feed nine billion people by 2050.

Among these is the Community Network for African Vector-Borne Plant Viruses (CONNECTED)—a Vector-borne Disease Network awarded to the University of Bristol—which held its Africa Launch Conference  in May 2018. The network—which is closely involved with the Cabot Institute—aims inter alia to build a sustainable network of multi-disciplinary international scientists, to deliver solutions to devastating crop diseases.
 

Participants at the CONNECTED Network Africa Launch, May 2018

Three months on, and the Network is already making good on its promise. Following the first CONNECTED pump prime funding call soon after the Network’s Africa launch, research funding grants have been awarded to Network members working in African and European research institutions in classic triangular collaborations to achieve the ideals of the Network.

In August 2018, global science leaders congregated in Durban, South Africa for the inaugural Bio Africa convention. The conference provided opportunities to build capacity and drum up support for increased investment in, and support for Africa’s growing biotech industry. It is hoped that networks built there will enrich the implementation of past and existing Africa-led initiatives for growth and sustainable development, especially in the bio-economy sector.

While food is an easy topic to get people involved with, rising concerns about some aspects of agricultural technology bring unique dynamics to this area. A July 25 ruling by the European Court of Justice imposed exacting regulatory restrictions on the use of gene editing in crop improvement. This adds to existing regulatory stalemates—mostly in Europe and Africa—blocking the use of products of modern agricultural technologies such as genetic engineering and gene editing to deliver important crop varieties to the world’s most vulnerable people.

In Uganda for instance, genetically modified biofortified and bacterial wilt resistant bananas, and blight resistant potatoes remain locked up in confined field trials due to the absence of an enabling regulatory environment for commercialisation. Research is on-going—using genetic engineering—on virus resistant cassava, insect resistant and drought tolerant maize, and nitrogen use efficient rice among other key food security crops.

The ebb and flow of global politics and science remains a determinant factor in whether or not agricultural STIs can contribute to ending hunger by 2030 per the SDGs. Cognizant of the constraints new breeding technologies are facing to deliver impact, initiatives like Uganda Biosciences Information Center (UBIC) have been established to support the stewardship process to ensure that key agricultural technologies reach the people that need them most.

This is achieved through creating and raising awareness of modern agricultural biosciences and biosafety, to facilitate balanced, fact-based and objective discourse on modern biosciences in Uganda and beyond. Elsewhere, the Open Forum on Agricultural Biotechnology (OFAB), International Service for Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA) and Cornell Alliance for Science to mention but a few, are championing the same cause at regional and global levels.

In many ways gentle calls to action, such initiatives complement the millions of voices highlighting the global food challenge and imploring all humanity to spring to action to ensure that everyone has a seat at the (dining) table.

Policy coherence and coordination among different actors to end hunger remains key to delivering much needed solutions to global food and nutrition security. To end hunger, targeted steps must be taken to help people access the tools they need to create agricultural prosperity and progress. But we can’t just hope and pray, we have to take action—and Africa seems to be beginning to do just that!

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This blog was written by Joshua Raymond Muhumuza, CONNECTED Network member and Outreach Officer at the Uganda Biosciences Information Center (UBIC).

Food Connections

Posted on by janet.crompton

Last week the Bristol Food Connections festival explored “all that is GREAT about food in Bristol (and beyond)” [1]. This made me realise that what I am exploring are the separations in our global food system. While so much of food in Bristol is ‘GREAT’ there is still much work to do about what is NOT SO GREAT. In the global food system, the separations between those who produce and those who consume what is transported around the world are many: income, origin, lifestyle, language, history, opportunities, culture, diet, microbiome – you name it there are separations in the way we eat and live.

This weekend I co-facilitated an event, Philosophy Breakfast: The ethics of global food production, with Julian Baggini, philosopher and author of the book, Virtues of the table: How to eat and think, [2]. Julian focused our thoughts on ethics and justice, and I grounded us with a case study, on tomatoes produced in Morocco, based on my recent fieldwork. We were treated, literally, to food for thought, in the form of a breakfast bap and coffee from the Boston Tea Party as well as a full house of attendees ready and willing to reflect on their role in the food systems. I was determined that this group, who had been motivated enough to get up for a 10 am Sunday start, also be given space to tell us what we should be considering in relation to the ethics of food. So, we invited each table to choose a breakfast food element to reflect upon, bread, coffee, tea, bacon, tomatoes and mushrooms, as they slowly digested its nutrients and food dilemmas.

Framing the session Julian considered our role as consumers by drawing on the thoughts of some classical philosophers from Plato to Sen: we should not, he suggested, be afraid of always getting everything right, but we should at least do our best to avoid contributing to what we find clearly morally wrong. How to go about this? I asked our participants to think of questions which might help us reflect on each of the breakfast items to help us consider these dilemmas. Furthermore, perhaps we might have questions for others; for the supermarkets, for the governments, and for the companies involved. My favourite question from this savvy group was, for meat: “was it worth an animal dying for me to eat this?” something that connects to my blog on the great value of seeing meat as sacrifice: ‘L hawli‘.

My talk related more to the question about coffee, “What labour standards (how bad would they be) would stop you buying coffee?”. What a question. International labour standards usually boil down to a mutual agreement that the countries involved in trade will apply their national labour laws. They may also be required to ensure that these national laws meet international standards, but what are these international standards? Since the 1998 ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work (ILO, 1998) [3], international labour law has been focused, or in practice narrowed, depending on your perspective, to just eight core conventions covering four areas (collective bargaining, forced labour, child labour, non-discrimination at work), out of a possible 189 conventions covering many other very important areas [4]. So this is a relatively weak starting point, which in most cases simply attempts to ensure already existing minimum standards (laws) are implemented.

What happens also, when national laws do not meet the needs of workers? Too often agricultural work is excluded from normal labour standards, or minimum wages are lower in this sector. This is not just the case in poorer countries. In the USA, the world’s richest state, many agricultural workers are exempted from minimum wage and overtime entitlements of the main national labour legislation, the Fair Labour Standards Act [5]. This is discrimination sanctioned by law.

Such discrimination between agriculture and other sectors is also the case in Morocco, where I carried out fieldwork. Whilst the legal minimum wage in other sectors is £8.29, the minimum day wage for agricultural workers is significantly lower at £5.37. OK, you may think, but life is cheaper there. Not that much cheaper. We can convert that minimum agricultural wage to a UK equivalent via the Purchasing Power Parity formula, (or PPP) this tells you what the equivalent wage would be in the UK. That equivalent of that minimum agricultural wage in a UK context with UK housing, food and other costs would be £13.51. This is not enough to live comfortably, barely enough to survive.

This is why then, the first findings chapter of my thesis is entitled “No Money”. If a major supply chain, feeding us year round with produce that we increasingly depend upon, rests on a starting point of an unreasonably low minimum wage, we cannot consider this a socially sustainable global food connection. And it is a connection. Although we are separated by distance, language, culture and long food chains, it was not difficult to find tomatoes just on our doorstep. Even last week when the ‘counter-season’ was officially over (as we now produce more in the UK so there is less market for non-EU producers) I could easily identify tomatoes in Bristol from a major company in business just outside of Agadir, Morocco (where my research is focused). I know workers from this company’s greenhouses and packhouses and spent months in daily conversations with them about what needs to change. They are calling for increases in wages and working conditions, better childcare and better social infrastructure. The separations then, are there to be bridged.

Transparency came up a lot on the morning of our event. How is there so much information about the attributes of food itself, and so little about those that produce it? We can only find out about food if actors involved in the sector are willing to be open (governments, retailers, employers). This showed at the Bristol Fruit Market, which I also visited as part of the Food Connections festival. The openness of the owners to discuss their business and show us around their distribution centre was in very clear contrast to the supermarket distribution centres which are shrouded in secrecy. Yet this is not the case at every stage of the process and it is only by asking questions, and showing that we care, that we can have any leverage at all to shift the harshest dynamics of global food systems.

Why are wages so low in the food sector? How can we revalue food? How can we keep alternative routes to market going (such as through wholesale)? How do we know if workers are treated fairly? What does that mean? How can we improve social and labour conditions in global production? These some of the questions that I am working on at the moment.

Groups feed back from their discussions at the Philosophy Breakfast event 17 June 2018

[1] Bristol Food Connections Festival website

[2] BAGGINI, J. 2014. The virtues of the table: How to eat and think, Granta Books.

[3] ILO 1998. ILO Declaration on fundamental principles and rights at work. International Labour Conference. Geneva: International Labour Office.

[4] A list of the 189 ILO conventions

[5] See, Guide to the Fair Labor Standards Act

[6] This is known locally as the difference of the SMIG, the minimum legal industrial wage, and the SMAG, the minimum legal agricultural wage. The SMIG is set by the hour (13.46 Moroccan Dirhams). An 8-hour equivalent of the SMIG comes to the GBP of £8.29. This can then be compared to the minimum agricultural wage, set by the day at 69.73 Moroccan Dirhams, equivalent to £5.37 per day.
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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Lydia Medland and has been reposted with kind permission from her original blog.  Lydia is from the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies at the University of Bristol.

Lydia Medland

Find out more about the Cabot Institute’s Food Security research theme.

Pollination and International Development: How bees can help us fight poverty and feed the world

Posted on by janet.crompton

Animal pollinators are the industrious workers in the factory of life – transporting pollen from one flower to another to ensure successful fertilisation. 75% of our crop plants benefit from this free service which can increase the yield, quality and even shelf-life of their products. This translates to a US$235-577bn value to global agriculture each year. Many of our favourite foods – strawberries, coffee and cocoa – can end up shrivelled and tasteless without pollination. This ecosystem service is under increasing threat however, as pollinators face the potent cocktail of pressures we have laid upon them, declining in numbers across various parts of the world.

But what has all this got to do with international development? From what we can tell, communities in developing countries [1] are more reliant on pollinators than almost anyone, standing to lose important income, livelihoods, nutrition and cultural traditions if pollinators decline. And yet, although a number of researchers across the developing world have made substantial and important contributions to this field, limited resources and capacity have meant that only a small proportion of pollination research has focused on these regions. In fact, there isn’t even enough data to know what is happening to pollinators in the developing world, let alone how we can best conserve them and their values to human wellbeing.

Over two billion people in developing countries are reliant on smallholder farming and therefore indirectly reliant on pollinators, without necessarily knowing it.  Many valuable cash crops, for example coffee, cocoa and cashews, are highly pollinator dependent and almost exclusively grown in the developing world, providing income for millions of people. In fact the reliance on pollinator-dependent crops has increased faster in the developing world than anywhere else. Reliance on beekeeping for income and livelihoods has also increased and is becoming a common component of sustainable development projects worldwide.

Worryingly, declines in pollination will have deeper consequences than just the loss of crop yields and income. Because many of the most nutritionally important food groups such as fruits, nuts and vegetables are also the most pollinator-dependent, pollinator declines are likely to shift the balance of people’s diets away from these foods. As a result, many millions of people around the world, particularly in developing countries, are expected to become deficient in important micronutrients such as vitamin A, vitamin C, iron and folate, resulting in millions of years of healthy life lost.

So what is being done about all this? In recognition of the importance of pollinators to human welfare and the threats facing them, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) commissioned a global assessment of Pollinators, Pollination and Food Production, published in 2016. This triggered a great wave of political and media attention and has resulted in the incorporation of the report’s key findings into the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Many governments are now in the process of developing national pollinator strategies, including the developing nations of Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, South Africa and India. On this wave of momentum, the CBD has also requested the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) to update their International Pollinator Initiative (IPI) which aims to build greater understanding, management and conservation of pollinators around the world. This international attention won’t last forever though, so it is important that the current momentum is sustained and built upon as soon as possible, ensuring as many countries as possible – particularly in the developing world – are involved.

The UK has a valuable opportunity to contribute to these efforts. As a centre of excellence for pollination science, it is the second largest funder and producer of pollination research after the US. But only c.6% of the £95M we have contributed to pollination research in the last 10 years has any link or collaboration with a developing country (ÜberResearch 2018). As more of the UK’s Official Development Assistance budget is made available for research, there is a shift in emphasis towards research that directly contributes towards international development. New funding programmes are encouraging the UK research community to engage in collaborative projects with researchers in developing countries, building valuable research capacity. With the relevance of pollination and agro-ecology to addressing the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, these topics may fit into this new funding landscape. However, to be effective and ethical, partners and institutions in developing countries must be involved in the design of, and stand to benefit from these collaborations. See here for a UKCDS report outlining the ways in which academics and funders can help ensure fair partnerships.

As populations in the developing world expand, along with per-capita food demands, these issues become all the more pressing. Food production will need to increase by 70% come 2050 and this cannot be achieved by simply expanding agricultural land or fertilizer input. To ensure people are well-fed, in a way that is sustainable and ethical, we will have to intensify our farming in new ways. Understanding and managing pollination may be an important part of this and is something that researchers, politicians, agriculturalists and development workers will need to engage with sooner rather than later.

[1] For simplicity, we use the term ‘developing countries’ to refer to all countries listed in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Development Assistant Committee (DAC) list of Official Development Assistance (ODA) recipients. This includes countries from a range of economic classifications, from ‘Least Developed’ to ‘Upper Middle Income’ which includes the nations of China and Brazil. Whilst we group all these nations under the broad term of ‘developing country’, we acknowledge the great heterogeneity between them in terms of wealth, development and research capacity.


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This blog has been kindly reposted from the UK CDS website.  It is written by Cabot Institute member Thomas Timberlake, a pollination ecology PhD researcher from the University of Bristol who undertook a three month project with the UKCDS looking at the relevance of pollination to international development.

Thomas Timberlake

To find out more about this project you can view the full report, or watch a recording of the UKCDS Pollination and International Development Webinar.

You can also listen to Tom speaking on Nature Xposed, a University of Bristol nature radio station, about the importance of pollinators in developing countries.

If you have any comments about this blog do tweet us @cabotinstitute @UKCDS.

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