Skip to navigation Skip to content

Andy Goldring seminar

Seminar
30 October 2012, 11am
at the James Hutton Institute, Dundee
for scientists, researchers and other interested parties
Andy Goldring

Andy Goldring is Chief Executive of the Permaculture Association, a national education and research charity based in Leeds. Andy's work over the last 13 years at the Association has focused on building organisational and network capacity to teach, design and create permaculture systems.

In late 2008 the Association established the Research Advisory Board to address the lack of published research on permaculture systems. This group has developed a strategy, linked to postgraduate research and is preparing proposals to research council programmes.

In 2009 Andy established the LAND network with funds from the Local Food programme to develop 80 demonstration sites across England. This is now emerging as the 'distributed campus' of the Association that functions to support people's learning and as a participatory research network. Andy also initiated the Low Carbon Farming Initiative, which is developing into a training programme and bespoke support for farmers wishing to trial the permaculture design approach.

In 2011 the Association initiated two participatory research trials. One is a 10 year 'forest garden' trial and the other is a pilot 'mixed vegetable growing' garden trial. The new appointment of a dedicated Research Coordinator, is now enabling Andy to raise ambition and develop new research partnerships to enhance our understanding of permaculture theory and practice.

Permaculture: a design framework for engineering agroecological resilience

Permaculture seeks to design sustainable human settlements that combine soil, plants, animals, water and other components in an integrated productive system. The intention is to meet human needs on the smallest land area possible, to enable the re-wilding of large tracts of currently cultivated land. Permaculture can be thought as a distinct approach to sustainable intensification.

A central contribution of permaculture is the assemblage of highly diverse multi-species plantings which yield food, fuel, fibre, medicinal and other products, as well as ecosystem services such as soil-building, climate and rainfall stabilisation, and pollination. Scientific challenges arise from monitoring, recording, understanding and replicating these complex systems.

The presentation will provide a brief overview of the Association and its current research work to capture in situ evidence (at a range of scales from home gardens, public realm, smallholdings and farms) and then use "An indicator Framework for Assessing Agroecosystem Reslience" developed by Cabell and Oelofse (2012, Ecology and Society) to present and assess the permaculture approach and identify critical scientific and practical challenges that require further research and development if we are to achieve a truly sustainable farming system.

This seminar will take place at the James Hutton Institute Dundee and will be broadcast live to the Aberdeen site.


Printed from /events/andy-goldring-seminar on 28/03/24 09:28:33 AM

The James Hutton Research Institute is the result of the merger in April 2011 of MLURI and SCRI. This merger formed a new powerhouse for research into food, land use, and climate change.