Sustainable Food Production Theme
Theme lead: Dr Katrin Prager
Food production is no longer solely about producing food of high quality in sufficient quantity, but also has to meet societal demand for reduced environmental impact. This theme focusses mainly on agricultural land use, but also encompasses other food sources such as game (e.g. deer). A key challenge is the trade-offs faced by different land managers such as farmers, foresters, or trusts in managing the landscape for multiple benefits including conservation, recreation, and food production. A range of social, economic, cultural, and political processes influence the management and governance of the landscape, and it is their interplay across different spatial, temporal and functional scales that is a key interest in this theme.
Specifically, the sustainable food production theme explores the following topics:
- Resultsbased and collaborative approaches to managing farmland, biodiversity and water at the landscape-scale
- Benefits of, and barriers to, farmer cooperation and engagement with the wider community
- Evaluating and increasing the effectiveness of policy interventions
