Landscapes

Michael Grunwald is an environmental journalist who sees maximizing efficient production as the most important sustainability strategy. His book, "We Are Eating the Earth," brings fresh attention to an old debate. Episode Links We Are Eating the Earth Grunwald, M. (2024, December 13). Opinion | Sorry, but This Is the Future of Food. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/13/opinion/food-agriculture-factory-farms-climate-change.html The Useful Idiot, Land Food Nexus rebuttal to Grunwald's NYT piece The Enduring Fantasy of Feeding the World, Spectre Journal Historians rethink the Green Revolution The Globalization of Wheat: A Critical History of the Green Revolution Max Ajl's A People's Green New Deal On the contribution of yields to hunger abatement: Smith, L. C., & Haddad, L. (2015). Reducing Child Undernutrition: Past Drivers and Priorities for the Post-MDG Era. World Development, 68, 180–204. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2014.11.014 On the role of intensive agriculture in failing to reduce deforestation: Ceddia, M. G., Bardsley, N. O., Gomez-y-Paloma, S., & Sedlacek, S. (2014). Governance, agricultural intensification, and land sparing in tropical South America. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(20), 7242–7247. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1317967111 Pratzer, M., Fernández-Llamazares, Á., Meyfroidt, P., Krueger, T., Baumann, M., Garnett, S. T., & Kuemmerle, T. (2023). Agricultural intensification, Indigenous stewardship and land sparing in tropical dry forests. Nature Sustainability, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-023-01073-0 Thaler, G. M. (2017). The Land Sparing Complex: Environmental Governance, Agricultural Intensification, and State Building in the Brazilian Amazon. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 107(6), 1424–1443. https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2017.1309966 Land sparers feel thier oats Thaler, G. M. (2024). Saving a Rainforest and Losing the World: Conservation and displacement in the global tropics. Yale University Press. The IEA on competing theories of Indirect Land Use Change and biofuels: Towards an improved assessment of indirect land-use change – Evaluating common narratives, approaches, and tools More Work for Mother: The Ironies Of Household Technology From The Open Hearth To The Microwave | Ruth Cowan Munro, K. (2025). Reconsidering the relationship between home appliance ownership and married women's labor supply: Evidence from Brazil (No. 2509). The Global Alliance for the Future of Food call for investment in food systems transition The World Resources Institute report on Denmark's Green Tripartite Agreement Behind the Danish Green Tripartite – Democracy, Smallholders and the Rights of Rural People Grunwald debates an agroecologist At COP30, Brazilian Meat Giant JBS Recommends Climate Policy About Landscapes Landscapes is produced by Adam Calo. A complete written transcript of the episode can be found on Adam's newsletter: Land Food Nexus. Send feedback or questions to adamcalo@substack.com or Bluesky Music by Blue Dot Sessions: "Kilkerrin" by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue).

An apparent "success story" of Amazonian forest conservation motivates a 6-years investigation of the land sparing hypothesis. Dr. Gregory Thaler's new book, Saving a Rainforest and Losing the World, reveals a tragic belief that agricultural intensification will solve our problems of enduring extraction of the world's biodiversity. Episode Links Saving a Rainforest and Losing the World: Conservation and Displacement in the Global Tropics. Yale University Press Roser, Max. 2024. Why Is Improving Agricultural Productivity Crucial to Ending Global Hunger and Protecting the World's Wildlife? Our World in Data. Phalan BT. 2018 What Have We Learned from the Land Sparing-sharing Model? Sustainability. 10(6):1760. Scientists calling the apparent Brazilian halting of deforestation "one of the great conservation successes of the twenty-first century," in Nature Food For an excellent review of the Land Sparing / Land Sharing debate see: Claire Kremen, Ilke Geladi (2024). Land-Sparing and Sharing: Identifying Areas of Consensus, Remaining Debate and Alternatives, Editor(s): Samuel M. Scheiner, Encyclopedia of Biodiversity (Third Edition), Academic Press, 435-451, ISBN 9780323984348. OR Land Spares Feel Their Oats, Land Food nexus Ritchie, Hannah. 2021. Palm Oil. Our World in Data. An example of the "active land sparing argument." The green revolution: Patel, R. (2013). The long green revolution. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 40(1), 1-63. An argument for the "forest transition model" as it applies to Brazilian forests. Landscapes is produced by Adam Calo. A complete written transcript of the episode can be found on Adam's newsletter: Land Food Nexus. Send feedback or questions to adamcalo@substack.com or https://bsky.app/profile/adamcalo.bsky.social Music by Blue Dot Sessions: "Kilkerrin" by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue).

Recognizing how systems of private property control new visions of land use is one thing. Working on a political process of land reform is another. Bonnie VandeSteeg of the People's Land Policy discusses the recent program outlined in: Towards a Manifesto for Land Justice. Episode Links Land for What? Land for Whom? by Dr Bonnie VandeSteeg Towards a Manifesto for Land Justice A People's food policy from the Land Worker's Alliance Scottish Land Commission Liverpool Land Commission Southwark Land Commission Land for the Many, 2019, UK Labour Right to Roam Campaign Dartmoor Wild Camping court case Climate Litigation Example Access and Property: A Question of Power and Authority. Sikor and Lund 2009 Three Acres and a Cow The Diggers Landscapes is produced by Adam Calo. A complete written transcript of the episode can be found on Adam's newsletter: Land Food Nexus. Send feedback or questions to adamcalo@substack.com or https://bsky.app/profile/adamcalo.bsky.social Music by Blue Dot Sessions: "Kilkerrin" by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue).

Normally, land owners get a powerful say in the direction of land use. But what if we could design policies such that public values of land use directed who gets to own the land? PhD student and farmer Roz Corbett travels to France to find out. Episode Links Public consultation on the Proposed Land Ownership and Public Interest (Scotland) Bill (closes 12th September 2023) Scotland's Rural Land Market insights (Scottish Land Commission) Tim Lang, Feeding Britain Terre des Liens How the authorisation system works and it's impact on land market competition Summary article on the development of the new Land law in France Amelia Veitch Speculation in French agricultural land markets and the impact on SAFER decisions on land allocations Article exploring the impact on proactive local authority support for agroecological installations Resistance to mega basins 1 Resistance to mega basins 2 Agroecological Transitions for Territorial Food Systems Project Landscapes is produced by Adam Calo. A complete written transcript of the episode and extended shownotes can be found on Adam's newsletter: Land Food Nexus. Send feedback or questions to adamcalo@substack.com. This podcast was a team effort of Tanguy Martin from Terre de Liens, Amelia Veitch from the Laboratoire d'Anthropologie Politique (LAP-EHESS) and the University of Lausanne, Hélène Bechet and Alice Martin-Prevel from Terre de Liens, and Claire Lamine from INRAE for her involvement and support through the ATTER project. Georgie Styles provided production and audio mastering support. With thanks to the ATTER project for funding this podcast. Music by Blue Dot Sessions: "Kilkerrin" by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue).

Brexit produced a once a generation chance to create a wholesale reform of agricultural subsidies. Kai Heron works through what the England's new farm subsidy plan reveals about the politics of food system transformation. Episode Links Kai Heron on Twitter You can't eat profits: A democratic vision for England's tormented farmlands. The New Statesman. By Kai Heron, Alex Heffron and Rob Booth Climate Leninism and Revolutionary Transition. Spectre Journal. Kai Heron and Jodi Dean ELMS description from DEFRA Indonesian farm workers in the UK and debt bondage History of the World in Seven Cheap Things WWF FOI on UK's climate targets Eric Ross, The Malthus Factor US food policy and Haitian rice Women: The Last Colony: Maria Mies, Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen, Claudia von Werlhof The Classical Agrarian Question: Myth, Reality and Relevance Today: Sam Moyo On carbon markets and their overhype: The Value of a Whale, Buller Sustain on ELMs Climate apartheid Mark Fisher Capitalist Realism Rosa Luxemburg Reform or Revolution Nancy Fraser on Polanyi Maria Mies on subsistence Public Common Partnerships, Commonwealth Kai on the banana discourse Right to Roam campaign England Landscapes is produced by Adam Calo. A complete written transcript of the episode can be found on Adam's newsletter: Land Food Nexus Send feedback or questions to adamcalo@substack.com Music by Blue Dot Sessions: "Kilkerrin" by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue).

A question of how to advance upon the ecosystem services concept leads to lessons learned about how to work collaboratively across disciplines. Episode Links Lesson's Learned Writing (a blog by Beth Cole Is interdisciplinarity a mashup? Beth Cole social media The Landscapes Decisions Program Music: Kilkerrin by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue), Creative Commons license Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

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. Episode Links Five Penny Farms, Dorset Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa Scientists Boycott the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit Jyoti testifying at the EU Parliament in 2015 Raj Patel on Normal Borlaug | Interview in PBS American Experience Is Agroecology Being Co-opted by Big Ag? | Civil Eats Article Farm Protests in India Are Writing the Green Revolution's Obituary | Scientific American Article The Land Workers' Alliance The Dimbleby Report | Part One of the National Food Strategy European Coordination Via Campesina Reframing the land-sparing/land-sharing debate for biodiversity conservation | Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences Nature Friendly Farming Network Pasture Fed Livestock Association SUSTAIN Alliance for better food and farming Agriculture Act 2020 Landscapes is produced by Adam Calo. A complete written transcript of the episode can be found on Adam's newsletter: Land Food Nexus. Send feedback or questions to adamcalo@substack.com. Music by Blue Dot Sessions: "Kilkerrin" by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue).

The past decades have seen the rise to dominance of the ecosystem services framework, a worldview and scientific practice that sees the processes of the biosphere through a lens of how they prop up human activities. Within academic circles, the concept is hotly contested. Some see valuing nature with the language of neoclassical economics as the only way to motivate governments and corporate actors into doing responsible environmental action. Others see concepts of ecosystem services and natural capital as the inevitable deepening of predatory capitalist relations extending into new environmental domains. Dr Janet Fisher, an environmental social scientist at the University of Edinburgh, joins the podcast to discuss the newly published Dasgupta Report, an independent review of the relationship between the economy and biodiversity commissioned by the UK Treasury. The report made headlines when it asserted that we should treat nature like an asset and manage it like any other financial portfolio. We discuss how the report is evidence of a rise to dominance of applying economic thinking into the domain of ecology and environmental conservation and what that means for scholars working on landscape science. Links to items mentioned in the episode The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Dempsey, J., & Suarez, D. C. (2016). Arrested development? The promises and paradoxes of "selling nature to save it". Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 106(3), 653-671. The Future of Conservation Project Westman, W. E. (1977). How much are nature's services worth?. Science, 197(4307), 960-964. Ehrlich, P. R. (1968). The population bomb. New York, 72-80. Mark Carney, UN special envoy for climate's plan for a $100 billion carbon market The Natural Capital Project's InVEST software Kareiva, P., & Marvier, M. (2012). What is conservation science?. BioScience, 62(11), 962-969. Final Report - The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review The relationship between ecosystem services and human-wellbeing from the MEA. Norgaard, R. B. (2010). Ecosystem services: From eye-opening metaphor to complexity blinder. Ecological economics, 69(6), 1219-1227. Fletcher, R., & Büscher, B. (2017). The PES conceit: revisiting the relationship between payments for environmental services and neoliberal conservation. Ecological Economics, 132, 224-231. and response: Van Hecken, G., Kolinjivadi, V., Windey, C., McElwee, P., Shapiro-Garza, E., Huybrechs, F., & Bastiaensen, J. (2018). Silencing agency in payments for ecosystem services (PES) by essentializing a neoliberal 'monster'into being: a response to Fletcher & Büscher's 'PES conceit'. Ecological Economics, 144, 314-318. And rejoinder! Fletcher, R., & Büscher, B. (2019). Neoliberalism in Denial in Actor-oriented PES Research? A Rejoinder to Van Hecken et al.(2018) and a Call for Justice. Ecological Economics, 156, 420-423. The UK's Environmental land management schemes: overview Assetization :Turning Things into Assets in Technoscientific Capitalism Fletcher R., (2021) "Review of Partha Dasgupta. 2021. The economics of biodiversity: the Dasgupta review.", Journal of Political Ecology 28(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.2289 Additional research provided by Scott Herrett for this episode.

Notions of Land Reform, especially when looking historically, bring forth images of mass upheaval and unrest associated with nationalization and redistribution of resources—as it should. Yet, as the favored option to shift land use, where property entitlements are left unchallenged, continues to deliver watered down results, it seems to me it's worth willing to experiment with reshaping the concept of property, while still respecting deeply entrenched social and legal norms of property. There may be no better case to critically think this through than by looking at what's happening in Scotland, where a set of fairly recent Land Reform Acts have come into force. And I can't think of a better person to discuss this with in detail than Malcolm Combe, a senior lecturer in Scots private law at the University of Strathclyde. Malcolm has long been writing on Scottish Land reform, including a new book, "Land Reform in Scotland" edited with Jayne Glass and Annie Tindley. In this episode, we`ll talk about the Scottish Land Reform Acts, but also why they may have been started, and how they operate in the law. We end up focusing on a really interesting case of these new legal entitlements in action—when a local church was put up for sale in a place called Portobello, just outside Edinburgh, the local community attempted to use the new powers available to try and bring the asset into their control. Episode Links Lovett, J. A., & Combe, M. M. (2019). The Parable of Portobello: Lessons and Questions from the First Urban Acquisition Under the Scottish Community Right-to-Buy Regime. Mont. L. Rev., 80, 211. BBC Documentary Series on the potential for a community buy out at the Bays of Harris Land Reform in Scotland: History, Law and Policy The Morven Woods buyout story *Since recording of interview, Andy Wightman no longer serves as MSP for the Scottish Green Party This episode of Landscapes is supported by the UKRI Landscapes Decisions Programme Get in touch at https://adamcalo.substack.com/about