Connecting land and people

Expertise from across society are needed to find solutions the global issues that society is facing today. Issues such as sustaining life in the face of climate stress, natural resource depletion and environmental degradation.

Our work connecting land and people involves collaborating with organisations from academia, land management, policy and industry. Identify innovations in knowledge, practice, infrastructure and regulation. We are working together to find mechanisms to catalyse change in current production systems, markets and governance and overcome social, technical and economic “lock-ins”.

This interdisciplinary work is possible due to the breadth of expertise across our five science departments, our institute farms and our networks of contacts within agri-food systems, the natural environment and civil society. Ranging from local community projects to national or global initiatives, our work includes trialling sustainable land management practices with crofters and farmers, gathering evidence to inform agri-environmental policy, developing new technologies and methods for crop improvement or environmental protection and creating novel products with agri-food industries.

Connecting land and people theme contact

Katherine Irvine

Behavioural Social Scientist

Resources

Pick-a-Mix

An online tool where the database of intercrop trials can be explored in tabular, map or graphical formats. Users can focus on specific crop mixture combinations or types of farm management to look at the yield performance of mixtures relative to monocrops.

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Crop mixtures – harnessing biodiversity for sustainable farming

Produced in partnership with RHET and Buglife, this sustainability and crop mixtures learning resource offers the chance to find out more about growing crop mixtures and undertake citizen science.

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