A Latin American Perspective to Agricultural Ethics

The mixture of political, social, cultural and economic environments in Latin America, together with the enormous diversity in climates, natural habitats and biological resources the continent offers, make the ethical assessment of agricultural policies extremely difficult. Yet the experience gained while addressing the contemporary challenges the region faces, such as rapid urbanization, loss of culinary and crop diversity, extreme inequality, disappearing farming styles, water and land grabs, malnutrition and the restoration of the rule of law and social peace, can be of great value to other regions in similar latitudes, development processes and social problems. This chapter will provide a brief overview of these challenges from the perspective of a continent that is exposed to the consequences of extreme inequality in multiple dimensions and conclude by arguing for the need to have a continuous South-South dialogue on the challenges of establishing socially and environmentally sustainable food systems

Food Systems Resilience : Towards an Interdisciplinary Research Agenda

In this article, we offer a contribution to the ongoing study of food by advancing a conceptual framework and interdisciplinary research agenda – what we term ‘food system resilience’. In recent years, the concept of resilience has been extensively used in a variety of fields, but not always consistently or holistically. Here we aim to theorise systematically resilience as an analytical concept as it applies to food systems research. To do this, we engage with and seek to extend current understandings of resilience across different disciplines. Accordingly, we begin by exploring the different ways in which the concept of resilience is understood and used in current academic and practitioner literatures - both as a general concept and as applied specifically to food systems research. We show that the social-ecological perspective, rooted in an appreciation of the complexity of systems, carries significant analytical potential. We first underline what we mean by the food system and relate our understanding of this term to those commonly found in the extant food studies literature. We then apply our conception to the specific case of the UK. Here we distinguish between four subsystems at which our ‘resilient food systems’ can be applied. These are, namely, the agro-food system; the value chain; the retail-consumption nexus; and the governance and regulatory framework. On the basis of this conceptualisation we provide an interdisciplinary research agenda, using the case of the UK to illustrate the sorts of research questions and innovative methodologies that our food systems resilience approach is designed to promote

Mitigating N2O emissions from soil: From patching leaks to transformative action

Further progress in understanding and mitigating N2O emissions from soil lies within transdisciplinary research that reaches across spatial scales and takes an ambitious look into the future

Evaluating economic resilience for sustainable agri-food systems: The case of Mexico

In the agri‐food systems context, understanding and measuring sustainability and resilience seems particularly relevant as countries appear to struggle with implementing the full range of official SDG indicators in preparation towards the fulfilment of the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development (United Nations, 2015). Regarding resilience of food systems, SDG‐2 proposes target 2.4. The aim of this target is to ensure, by 2030, sustainable food production systems and implementation of resilient agricultural practices that “increase productivity and production, that help maintain ecosystems that strengthen capacity for adaptation to climate change, extreme weather, drought, flooding and other disasters and that progressively improve land and soil quality” (United Nations, 2017b). Thus, measuring the progress towards target 2.4 will require the assessment of productivity and sustainability of food systems, but also the understanding and assessment of resilient practices of rural enterprises

Impacts of river water consumption on aquatic biodiversity in life cycle assessment-a proposed method, and a case study for europe

Contains fulltext : 128084.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access

Creating high challenge/high support academic environments through constructive alignment: student outcomes

Higher education needs to provide challenging yet supportive learning environments catering for students with diverse academic needs. There is also an emphasis on using student-driven outcome measures to determine teaching effectiveness. How can these measures be used to reflect upon and evaluate teaching initiatives? Using an undergraduate occupational therapy programme as the site for exploration, this article reports on an application of constructive alignment principles and describes how available empirical data were used to explore student outcomes. A comparison was made between student evaluations and academic grades prior to, and after the implementation of the initiative. Results provide evidence of improvement in student satisfaction and academic grades as a result of implementing constructive alignment. Whilst it is acknowledged that changes in academic grades and student evaluations can be attributed to a number of factors, findings of this study support a view that constructive alignment facilitates students\u27 learning and experiences