Suchergebnisse

Governing for agri-food security and rural sustainability: antecedents and transitions -- Contested sustainabilities in agri-food and rural development: exploring sustainable pathways of green growth and the bio-economy in the UK -- Socialising and spatialising the bio-economy: reconstructing natural powers -- An alternative model: exploring the 'new rural paradigm' and the rural eco-economy in Europe -- Evolving webs of agri-food and rural development in the UK: the case of Devon and Shetland -- Towards a sustainability science and place-making for rural and agri-food development.

"In response to the challenges of a growing population and food security, there is an urgent need to construct a new agri-food sustainability paradigm. This book brings together an integrated range of key social science insights exploring the contributions and interventions necessary to build this framework. Building on over ten years of ESRC funded theoretical and empirical research centered at BRASS, it focuses upon the key social, economic and political drivers for creating a more sustainable food system. Themes include: regulation and governance sustainable supply chains public procurement sustainable spatial strategies associated with rural restructuring and re-calibrated urbanised food systems minimising bio-security risk and animal welfare burdens.The book critically explores the linkages between social science research and the evolving food security problems facing the world at a critical juncture in the debates associated with not only food quality, but also its provenance, vulnerability and the inherent unsustainability of current systems of production and consumption. Each chapter examines how the links between research, practice and policy can begin to contribute to more sustainable, resilient and justly distributive food systems which would be better equipped to 'feed the world' by 2050"--

This book examines the development of food policy and regulation following the BSE (mad cow disease) crisis and traces the changing relationships between three key sets of actors: private interests, such as the corporate retailers; public regulators, such as the EU directorates and UK agencies; and consumer groups.

AbstractRural areas become central sites for the development of the post‐carbon transition, yet this is a highly contested and contingent process whereby neo‐liberal models of development and framings compete with the emergence of the alternative circular eco‐economy. The article argues for a grounded conceptual and empirical approach in tracing this overall process of sustainable place‐making. It explores three key highly contested dimensions: reflexive governance, distributed eco‐economies, and re‐financialisation, arguing that such explorations are critical in developing more sustainable rural‐urban functionalities for the necessary post‐ carbon and post‐neoliberal transition.

The recent rises in food prices represent the 'tip of the iceberg' and a 'canary in the mine' moment for world agriculture. They are underlain by a continuing 'race to the bottom' and speculative process whereby systems of resource production and exploitation are continuing to rely upon 'infinite supply' assumptions and narrow technological solutions to 'feeding the world'. I argue here that these conditions are leading to a dominant policy framing that tends to marginalise diverse and place‐based agro‐ecological systems by creating a new legitimacy for bio‐economic rather than eco‐economic solutions. Government and policy‐making bodies need to redefine and widen their approaches to agriculture and agri‐food in ways that recognise its social, cultural, political and spatially diverse contribution in a post‐carbon world.

The British government published its new food strategy in January 2010, entitled 'Food 2030: How We Get There'. This emerges out of a considerable amount of policy activity and debate since the sharp rises in food prices during 2007–2008. This demonstrated the need both to now have an explicit food policy, and to position this as a goal across various government departments. In addition, it is recognised that food security and hunger are key global concerns. How does the strategy face up to the arrival of these new and combined challenges associated with the need to produce more food sustainably and to allocate it more fairly? Clearly, we are in a period of new productivism with regard to trying to solve national and international food security and sustainability issues. Yet this strategy misses an opportunity to stimulate a new strategic approach in enhancing and developing the United Kingdom's food supply system albeit in its international context. We need more governmental and political innovation and imagination if we are to meet these challenges. The new food strategy may come to represent the start of this process.

AbstractMobilities, vulnerabilities and sustainabilities represent three key and potentially divergent processes currently affecting rural Europe. Together they also set some key challenges and potentials for critical rural social science. This article, after first setting these processes in the global macro‐context of growing environmental vulnerability and spatial uneven development, explores each of these processes in turn. It asks how rural areas can meet the challenges of these increasing mobilities in ways which reduce vulnerabilities and enhance sustainabilities. One answer, it is argued, concerns the critical understanding and dissemination of the sustainable rural development model. In the second part of the article some of the conceptual building blocks of such a model are proposed, suggesting the recasting of new rural–urban relationships based around new eco‐economic principles.