2 pages, For years agroecologists have warned that industrial agri-culture became too narrow ecologically, highly dependent on outside inputs, and extremely vulnerable to insect pests, diseases, climate change and now as demonstrated by the COVID19 pandemic prone to a complete shut down by unforeseen crisis.Like never before, COVID19 has revealed how closely linked human, animal and ecological health are. As a power-ful systemic approach, agroecology reveals that the way we practice agriculture can provide opportunities for improv-ing environmental and human health, but if done wrongly, agriculture can cause major risks to health.
2 pages, via Online Journal, Stan Cox’s The Green New Deal and Beyond argues that the realities of our climate crisis require the elimination of fossil fuels from the U.S. economy and a realignment of the unjust system that allows for their exploitation. Cox’s thesis is that the Green New Deal legislation (GND) is a good first step, but we in the U.S. must also acknowledge and adhere to the limits of economic growth and material consumption. His evidence-driven analysis builds from the IPCC report’s finding that we need to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 if we are to limit global warming to 1.5 °C.
11pgs, Across the European Union, the receipt of agricultural subsidisation is increasingly being predicated on the delivery of public goods. In the English context, in particular, these changes can be seen in the redirection of money to the new Environmental Land Management scheme. Such shifts reflect the changed expectations that society is placing on agriculture—from something that provides one good (food) to something that supplies many (food, access to green spaces, healthy rural environment, flood resilience, reduced greenhouse gas emissions). Whilst the reasons behind the changes are well documented, understanding how these shifts are being experienced by the managers expected to deliver on these new expectations is less well understood. Bourdieu’s social theory and the good farmer concept are used to attend to this blind spot, and to provide timely insight as the country progresses along its public goods subsidy transition. Evidence from 65 interviews with 40 different interviewees (25 of whom gave a repeat interview) show a general willingness towards the transition to a public goods model of subsidisation. The optimisation and efficiency that has historically characterised the productivist identity is colouring the way managers are approaching the delivery of public goods. Ideas of land sparing and land sharing (and the farming preference for the former over the latter) are used to help understand these new social and attitudinal realities.