Land Food Nexus

Land Food Nexus

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Land Food Nexus
Land Food Nexus
To change food, change land

To change food, change land

Writing about the bridge between food systems change and land reform

Adam Calo's avatar
Adam Calo
Jul 07, 2020
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Land Food Nexus
Land Food Nexus
To change food, change land
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I’m Adam Calo, PhD. I write about the Land Food Nexus.

My academic work is based on the premise that a food system transition only occurs in tandem with changes to how land is owned, governed, and transferred.

I’ll share my research on this theme as well as my take on contemporary approaches to reforming agricultural systems. In more specific terms, I work on:

Land access in agriculture

How does one gain access to something? What is unique about land that makes controlling it especially interesting? What social dynamics must be applied to convince someone else that some land is owned? Who owns farmland and who is trying to own farmland? What are the links between proposed alternative food production strategies, like agroecology and regenerative agriculture, and land tenure?

Land Food Nexus
Farmland values rising (again)
Farmland Values Hit Record Highs, Pricing Out Farmers in the New York Times lays out the latest version of a timeless tale: farmland has seen a 12.4% increase between 2021 and 2022. The story then pivots to smashed dreams of the land seekers — the smallholders looking…
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3 years ago · Adam Calo

Land reform

What efforts are being deployed to change how farmland is owned, accessed, transferred and controlled? In the Global North, where cultural and legal norms of private property dominate, where is there space for change or innovation? How might property law be a lever to foster alternative forms of agriculture?

Land Food Nexus
Food system reform is missing a coherent asset transfer strategy
In one sense, the purely technical problems with delivering a “sustainable agriculture we need” are now mundane. Decades of research into agroecology across all corners of the globe, in all forms of climates, soil regimes and socio-technical systems, demonstrate that an agriculture built on generations of local knowledge and consistent striving to reduc…
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5 years ago · Adam Calo

New entrant farmers

An ageing farmer dynamic worldwide prompts policy makers to urge for the creation of more new farmers. Why? Who are these farmers and what are there aspirations? How will they gain access to expensive farmland or find a dignified place to live nearby?

Land Food Nexus
New farmers, but for what?
Say “ we need new farmers” and the audience nods their head. Say “new farmers should do things different” and face collective stares. A good portion of my research has been on thinking critically about “new farmers” as a piece of the sustainable food systems transition puzzle. It is broadly accepted that rural demographics are shifting towards nations fu…
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5 years ago · Adam Calo

Techno-optimism and food system interventions

What do solutions like vertical farming, genetic engineering, climate smart agriculture, robotic farm laborers, and payments for ecosystem services tell us about the politics of food system change? Who pushes these types of interventions and what are the alternatives? What does theory from political economy tell us about the potential consequences of these interventions?

Land Food Nexus
Land sparers feel their oats
In 2015, the ‘last word’ on the land-sparing land-sharing debate was penned by leading conservation biologists Claire Kremen. The conclusion of the article is such: land sparing is an interesting mathematical concept, but the link between intensifying land use in one place to land conserved elsewhere is just too much of a logical leap to be useful for p…
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3 years ago · Adam Calo

Food policy

Most nations and municipalities have separate institutions for farm, environmental, and public health policy. A food policy would bridge the three. What are the concerns of food policy and how are they to be implemented and monitored? How should policy makers contend with grand debates within food research such as food security versus food sovereignty and land sparing versus land sharing?

Che Guevara, Chez Panisse

Adam Calo
·
August 23, 2023
Che Guevara, Chez Panisse

Some of the most powerful anti-capitalist logics, imaginaries, and social projects owe their origins in food. Nothing could be more core to concerns over the means of production than produce itself. Control over the basis for social reproduction offers a power of self-determination that confronts the disciplinary force of the wag…

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Democratizing food system research

What methods can be employed by researchers to distribute power and benefits through research? Academic research has a long history of exploitation, where benefits flow from the researched to the researcher. In agricultural research, scientists have employed their expert knowledge in the service of certain implicit and explicit visions of how farming should be done. What tools and techniques can researchers in food systems use to bring forth an emancipatory practice?

Land Food Nexus
An Agroecological Vision for the UK
Episode Description Jyoti Fernandes, farmer of Five Penny Farms and Policy Coordinator with the UK based Landworkers’ Alliance, discusses what agroecology means to her and the efforts to shape food policy in the United Kingdom. We also discuss the risk of agroecology being co-opted and the current boycott of the UN Food Systems Summit…
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4 years ago · Adam Calo

A multi purpose poly tunnel in the Scottish highlands

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Land Food Nexus
Land Food Nexus
To change food, change land
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