Climate, dispersal, civilisation and collapse

Dr Jonathan Dean has been a Lecturer in Physical Geography at the University of Hull since February 2017. Here he draws on work carried out with the British Geological Survey to investigate the links between climate and humans.

Why did some Homo sapiens, after evolving in eastern Africa and living there for tens of thousands of years, decide it was time to up sticks and move to Asia? Why did cities and vast empires in the Middle East collapse suddenly around 4,000 years ago, and again 3,000 years ago? People have often proposed a link between climate change and the course of human history, but to test these theories we need to know exactly how the climate changed back through time. That’s where people like me come in. My job is to work out how climate changed in the past. Because there are no meteorological records going back more than a few hundred years, we have to come up with clever ways to reconstruct past climate. I use lakes as a historical rain gauge. In some lakes, carbonate – which is like the limescale in your kettle at home – forms every year in the surface waters. In this carbonate, there are different types of oxygen, and the ratio of one type of oxygen to another varies depending on factors such as how deep or shallow the lake was at the time it formed. This carbonate then falls through the water to the lake bed and is locked away as an archive of lake level change…until scientists come along. We drill into the sediments to take cores. We then analyse the ratio of one type of oxygen to another at different points back through time from the carbonates in these sediments, and from that can reconstruct changes in lake level, and hence climate changes between wet and dry, back through time.

Lake sediments about to be analysed in the lab.

Let’s consider two examples of how climate change might have changed the course of human history. Firstly, why did our species, Homo sapiens, leave Africa after evolving there? Scientists have found evidence of Homo sapiens in the Middle East as far back as 130,000 years ago. However, other researchers have analysed the DNA of modern humans and concluded that modern non-Africans are likely to be descended from people who left Africa via Egypt around 60,000 years ago, suggesting the people who left 130,000 years ago died out before they could successfully populate the rest of the world. But why did Homo sapiens leave Africa? Maybe climate change played a role. We have used sediments taken from an old lake on the border between Ethiopia and Kenya. We showed in a paper published last year that there was a climate shift in eastern Africa at the time the successful dispersals out of Africa occurred around 60,000 years ago – the climate was changing from being very variable with multiple fluctuations between wetter and drier conditions, to a more stable climate where there was less change. During the more variable times, it was difficult for Homo sapiens, and only those who adapted to each climate change survived. This led to natural selection for the most flexible, highly skilled individuals and populations. When the climate then became more stable, it was easier for Homo sapiens to survive so populations increased. This led to pressure, as more and more humans tried to survive on the food and water resources of eastern Africa. This may have therefore pushed some people out of the region in order to try to find new lands to live on, and because of the natural selection during the times of variable climate they had the skills required to migrate out of Africa.

A dry lake bed in Ethiopia that we drilled to retrieve sediment cores (Photo Julian Ruddock).

Our second example brings us much closer to the present day. Between the time of the migration out of Africa and 5,000 years ago, humans had started playing musical instruments, developed farming and invented the wheel. But at approximately 4,000 years ago and again at 3,000 years ago it seems big civilisations ‘collapsed’ – the archaeological evidence suggests they either went into decline or ceased to exist all together. Again, climate change has been used to help account for these sudden events. A drought lasting several hundred years has been identified ~4,000 years ago in climate records from lakes in the Middle East – for example in our record from a Turkish lake that was published in a paper in 2015. In Egypt, the Nile floods failed, leading to famine and political upheaval, and they even stopped building pyramids for a few hundred years. Around 3,000 years ago we identify another drought, at the time the Hittites, who lived in central Turkey, went into decline. Nowadays in central Turkey, there is only roughly 300 mm of precipitation a year and even with modern technology agriculture is difficult. But at the times of these ‘collapses’ we have shown it would have been even drier. These droughts may have weakened civilisations and combined with civil conflict, invasions and population pressures to cause the ‘collapses’. We will never know for sure what killed off these civilisations, but what we can say is that it would have become much more difficult to grow crops, and hence for people to feed themselves, during these droughts.

Therefore, climate seems to have been a major force in shaping the course of human history – from explaining the migration of early Homo sapiens out of Africa, to contributing to the collapse of civilisations. There are important lessons for the future here. The Middle East is likely to bear the brunt of climate change this century, with drier conditions due to falling precipitation and increased summer evaporation. Eastern African is predicted to see some large climate changes too. Already politically volatile regions, fighting over water resources is likely to intensify conflicts this century. In the Middle East, it may become as dry as it was at the times of the droughts 4,000 and 3,000 years ago, and the question is whether modern technology and politics will prevent the ‘collapses’ of civilisations that we saw in the past.

(A version of this blog was first published on the BGS Geoblogy.)

Reconstructing Bronze Age environments at Hobbister, Orkney

by Michelle Farrell (@DrM_Farrell)

Last Monday (2^nd February) it was World Wetlands Day, and consequently my Twitter feed was full of stunning photographs of different types of wetland. Much was made of their role in alleviating flooding by acting as giant natural sponges which soak up water, as well as their biodiversity value and ability to store vast amounts of carbon. But despite all the wetland appreciation that I witnessed on Monday, there was very little mention of their importance to archaeologists and palaeoecologists.

Wetlands have a whole archaeological sub-discipline devoted to them. Wetland archaeologists are drawn to these damp, muddy environments because the waterlogged, anaerobic conditions inhibit microbial activity and often result in exceptional preservation of artefacts made from organic materials such as plant fibres, hair, wood and leather. These artefacts rarely survive on dryland sites, meaning that wetlands often preserve an additional level of detail relating to the everyday lives of our ancestors. Wetland archaeological sites also preserve plant and insect remains, which give us insights into the function and economy of the sites. Additionally, wetlands contain an archive of information relating to their own environmental history. Past changes in vegetation can be reconstructed from pollen grains, and the remains of single-celled organisms called testate amoebae provide information about past climates.

Wetlands were also important to people in the past. Across north-west Europe, deposits of precious metalwork were made in both wetland and dryland environments during the Bronze and Iron Ages. Artefacts deposited on dryland tend to be interpreted as valuables that were either lost or hidden with the intention of retrieving them in the future. Given that it would have been difficult to retrieve items from wetlands once they had been deposited, these objects are commonly thought to be votive offerings. In the past wetlands may have been viewed as wilderness and as being resistant to domestication, and it may be that these deposits represent an attempt to appease supernatural powers associated with these environments during times of perceptible environmental change. There is considerable palaeoenvironmental evidence for a shift to a wetter climate during the Bronze Age, particularly in upland regions of Britain. Deposition of valuable metalwork was perhaps an attempt to domesticate and control the changing landscape during this period of wetter climatic conditions.

To date, evaluation of this hypothesis has been hampered by a lack of palaeoenvironmental data relating to the findspots of votive deposits - and in many cases, the exact locations of the finds are not recorded. In Orkney in 2006, when I had just begun my PhD research with the aim of reconstructing Bronze Age vegetation and environmental conditions in the islands, peat cutters at Hobbister in Orphir uncovered a beautiful example of a late Bronze Age socketed axehead. Was it a votive deposit, and was there any palaeoenvironmental evidence for changing conditions at the time of deposition? An archaeological survey of the site had revealed various structures interpreted as the remains of a prehistoric field system, as well as several probable Bronze Age burial mounds. The discovery of a potential Bronze Age landscape buried by peat meant that the site would be useful for my PhD research, even if it turned out that I wasn’t able to say much about possible reasons for the axehead deposit.

 

Blanket bog at Hobbister, Orkney

Commercial peat extraction at Hobbister, Orkney

I analysed two peat cores from the site – one from the deepest area of deposits to ensure the fullest possible record was recovered, and one from as close as possible to where the axe was found. Analysis of the peats revealed evidence for a mixed economy based on arable cultivation and livestock rearing. The field system probably formed part of an ‘infield-outfield’ system, where fields nearest to a settlement (‘infields’) were cultivated more or less continuously by adding fertiliser in the form of dung, turf and seaweed, while those beyond (‘outfields’) were only cultivated on a temporary basis, being manured only through the folding of livestock in the summer prior to cultivation. Beyond the outfields would have been common pasture for livestock grazing. At Hobbister the pollen evidence indicates that this would have largely consisted of heathland, and there is evidence from charcoal contained within the peat that this was managed by burning to improve the quality of the grazing by encouraging dense growth of new shoots of heather, which contain more nutrients than old-growth heather, and by allowing grasses to grow in the gaps created by fire.

The remains of plants preserved in the peat at Hobbister suggest that the surface of the bog became slightly wetter during the later Bronze Age, at around 1200-800 BC. If the bog became wetter at this time, it is likely that the surrounding area did too. The suitability of land for farming would have been highly dependent on local hydrology, and increased wetness may have rendered the soil incapable of supporting cereal crops. Although the pollen evidence suggests that cereal cultivation at Hobbister continued at least until the Iron Age, local people would have been extremely aware of the gradual encroachment of peat onto formerly more productive land, and it is distinctly possible that they tried to halt these changes through votive deposition.

Distinctions have been drawn between votive deposits made in different types of wetland, with the suggestion that rivers, with their opposing banks, may have been viewed as boundaries dividing communities, and that deposition here might have been a display of power and prestige to other social groups. Bogs, on the other hand, may have been the focus for ritual acts aimed at reinforcing social cohesion within communities (Fontijn 2002; Mullin 2012). Orkney has no major river systems, but the highly indented coastline may have played a similar role in dividing communities here. Hence the deposition of the Hobbister axe could be seen as an attempt by local people to maintain community integrity during a time of perceptible environmental change.

In summary, wetlands are awesome - they preserve so much information about our past that simply doesn't survive on dryland archaeological sites. Next year on World Wetlands Day, we palaeoecologists and archaeologists need to get in on the act and promote the value of wetlands for understanding our heritage!


References:
Fontijn, D.R. (2002) Sacrificial landscapes: cultural biographies of persons, objects and ‘natural’ places in the Bronze Age of the southern Netherlands, c. 2300-600 BC. Analecta Praehistorica Leidensia 33/34: 1-392 (download for free here)

Mullin, D. (2012) The river has never divided us: Bronze Age metalwork deposition in western Britain. Oxford Journal of Archaeology 31: 47-57

This post is based on my recent paper, available here:

Farrell, M. (in press 2014) Later prehistoric vegetation dynamics and Bronze Age agriculture at Hobbister, Orkney, Scotland. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany. doi: 10.1007/s00334-014-0507-6

High school students as research partners: working with Nuffield Placement Students

 by Jane Bunting (@DrMJBunting) and Rebecca Williams (@Volcanologist)


Meanwhile, back in the lab...

This week, the blog is back indoors, where Jane and Rebecca are spending August helping some Sixth Form students get a taste of 'real science' in the summer before they apply for University.  Five students have placements with us in GEES through the Nuffield Foundation Research Placements Scheme, which will enable them to be assessed for a British Science Association CREST Gold Award.

Rebecca did a Nuffield Placement herself in the summer after her first year of A Levels.  Neither the Nuffield scheme or the CREST Awards had been done before at Rebecca’s school. An eager biology teacher, Dr Bridgeman, had heard of the scheme and so started it up that year with Rebecca and two of her school friends being the first students to go through it. They weren’t provided with placements, but rather had to find them for themselves. At the time, Rebecca knew she enjoyed Geography, Science and Maths. She was also a bit obsessed with Time Team and she has blogged before about how her journey into geology really started by wanting to be a geophysicist. The only company she could find locally which did geophysics was a consultancy company for the oil and gas company, TGS-Nopec (as they were then known). Rebecca wrote a letter (no email back then!) asking if they would take her on as a work experience student and was delighted when they did. It was a phenomenal experience. Rebecca worked on a project called ‘Hydrocarbon prospectivity along the eastern seaboard, offshore northwest Europe’. She doesn’t have a good memory, but the report is sat next to her as she types this – a testament to how important the experience was. Rebecca found that the geophysical interpretation of the seismic lines wasn’t what interested her. Rather, it was the geology – how is the oil formed, where does it come from, where is it stored, how is it trapped and where can it be found? When Rebecca then had to fill out her UCAS application a month or so later, it was geology degrees she applied to, and not the geophysics that she thought she was going to do, and the rest, as they say, is history. The Nuffield Scheme really did change Rebecca’s path in life. The results from that project were eventually presented by TGS-Nopec at the PETEX Conference – the premier oil and gas conference!

Students doing placements work with a supervisor for 4-6 weeks on a 'real' research project - one where the supervisor doesn't know what will happen or be found out.  The students are expected to read around their topics, contribute to discussions about the design of experiments or studies, plan their own time, learn to use different pieces of equipment, collect data and interpret it, and produce a report and a talk or poster at the end of the placement - of course there is lots of help available, from the supervisor, from technical staff, from other students and researchers in related fields, but it is still quite a challenge.  This year's students all seem to be making the most of it, and are filling their lab notebooks with lots of lovely data.

Tinashe weighing an ear of wheat

surface of a wheat leaf: the 'squashed donuts' are the stomata

Jordan, Leah, Charlotte and Tinashe from local sixth forms at Wyke and Sirius Academy are all working with Jane and Lindsey Atkinson (@LJA_1), who also blogs here, on a pilot study of the effects of small climate changes on spring wheat, which is linked to a bigger project being run by the Network Ecology Group called "The impacts of climate-warming on farmland food-webs and ecosystem services".  In this project, 24 plots are marked out in a field of spring wheat.  Half of these are warmed by 2 ^oC, the sort of change in summer temperature which we are likely to see in our region within the next century according to predictive models.  Since the warming will dry out the soil, half of the warmed plots and half of the non-warmed plots are also given some extra water, so some plots are warmer and drier, and some are just warmer.  We're studying wheat plants collected from the different plots in the field experiment, and also growing our own in the controlled environment rooms in the GEES building, where special lights on timers mimic day and night cycles, the room temperature is controlled, and neither rabbits nor aphids can snack on the growing leaves - the indoors experiment should therefore help us understand how the plants respond to the climate changes without the rest of the food web complicating the picture.  Jordan is studying how biomass allocation varies (essentially 'plant budgeting', looking at how plant resources are divided between light capture, water capture and reproduction).  Charlotte is looking at the effects of the climate changes on the grain yield of the wheat plants.  Leah and Tinashe are looking in more detail at whether the plants can adapt to grow in different conditions by varying the number of stomatal cells in their leaves (an introduction to studying stomata aimed at students can be found here). 

Jordan and Leah cutting up wheat plants

These data, along with other aspects of the plants being measured by Jane and Lindsey, will form the basis for an initial paper on the response of this important crop plant to anticipated climate changes (which of course will get blogged about here) and for a grant application to extend the work; we need to show that our experiments will produce interesting results before we can ask for funding, so these projects are playing an important role in helping us develop this research area.

Jodie uses a digital camera to photograph her thin sections

Jodie joins us from Hessle High School and Sixth Form College. Jodie is interested in geology and chemistry so we’re convincing her that volcanology is an excellent subject! Jodie is doing a research project on the Green Tuff Ignimbrite from Pantelleria with Rebecca. In particular she is looking at thin sections of the ignimbrite to look for features that she can use to interpret how the ignimbrite was formed. This project is a continuation of a long-running project that started with Rebecca’s PhD in 2006. It’s a small, but important part of a much bigger research jigsaw, and the results look promising! We’ll be blogging more about the project next week. If the results look good, Jodie and Rebecca will be presenting the research at the UK’s volcanology conference which this year is hosted in Norwich; Jodie is getting real experience of working on a research project at the cutting-edge of Rebecca’s science.

The Nuffield Schemes offer a wonderful opportunity for students to try out real science; it's very different from school!  For us, it's an excellent way to communicate with the next generation of scientists and consumers of scientific findings, and gives the students involved a taste of scientific work, a boost for their university or job applications and helps them make better course and career choices.  If you're a student reading this, ask your teachers about the scheme or go to this link.  If you're a scientist, we urge you to consider taking on placement students through the scheme - it might even help you get that crucial bit of data to progress your research next summer.

Of gribbles and fish oil: plants and future security

By Lindsey Atkinson (@LJA_1)

In the week that the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was issued (31.03.2014) with its emphasis on risks and the importance of adaptation, the UK Plant Sciences Federation  (UKPSF) held their 2014 conference ‘Plant Science – Sustaining Life on Earth’ at the University of York.  This conference brings together a wide range of plant scientists from ecologists to molecular biologists and gives them the opportunity to share their knowledge across disciplines.

A key theme of the conference was food security¹ and how plant science may help to meet some of the challenges we face.  The conference was opened with a keynote lecture from Prof Tim Benton (University of Leeds) on ‘Feed, food and fuel: plants and future security’ where he gave us an overview of some of these challenges.  Drivers of change include the growth in global demand for food, globalization and the changing climate.  Combine this with soil degradation and these things add up to make future food supplies look very uncertain!  On the other side of the coin, it’s not just about food supplies, but also about waste.   Some of these themes were echoed in Prof Peter Gregory’s (East Malling Research/University of Reading) talk in which he looked at the importance of sustainable agriculture and reducing waste and loss. 

Some of the headline figures from the recently published UKPSF report Status of UK Plant Science: Current Status and Future Challenges include:

•  ‘There will be 2.4bn extra people to feed by 2050’
•    ‘Global food production must increase by 60-110% to meet this demand’
•    ‘Up to 40% of global crop yields are lost to plant pests and diseases each year’
•    ‘Agriculture accounts for 70% of the world’s fresh water use’
• ‘By 2030, global energy demand is predicted to rise by 40%’

At one level these challenges need to be tackled through politics and economics but plant scientists are using their knowledge and creativity to contribute too, which brings us back to gribbles and fish oil…

Gribbles are small, marine, wood-boring crustaceans and wouldn’t normally make an appearance at a plant science conference.  However, understanding and using their digestive enzymes may increase the efficiency with which we can break down woody materials to produce biofuels (read more). 

We also learned that fish oil isn’t made by fish – yes, you guessed it – it is made by plants (in this case marine algae) and accumulated by the fish.   Using fish as a source of these fish oils for fish farming is not sustainable but using transgenic crops could be… (read more).  

There were many more examples of how plant scientists are working to improve crop yield and yield stability, water and nutrient use in agriculture and the nutritional value of crops.  There is also a lot of current research on using plants as factories to produce additional nutrients and biofuels.  You can find more details of all the topics covered at the conference at http://plantsci2014.org.uk/programme/

The future for plant scientists in the UK was the topic for a debate chaired by Dr Sandy Knapp of the Natural History Museum.  Although great strengths were recognized in the plant science research community, it was noted that it has an ageing population and skills shortages are predicted.  The importance of inspiring students from an early age was emphasized with calls for greater inclusion of plant science in the curriculum at both school and in higher education.  The next challenge is once inspired, providing the opportunities to keep scientists in this area.

The panel (from L to R): Sarah Gurr (University of Exeter), Jim Beynon (University of Warwick),  Sandy Knapp (Natural History Museum, London),  Mark Chase (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew), Mike Bushell (Syngenta) and Dale Sanders (John Innes Centre).

The conference closed with a final talk from Prof Jackie Hunter, Chief Executive of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), who gave her view of a 21^st Century Vision for Plant Science to tackle challenges in sustainable crop production.

¹Food Security was defined at the World Food Summit of 1996 as occurring “when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life” (http://www.who.int/trade/glossary/story028/en/).  

Localised Food Systems – What Role does Place Play?

by Kirstie O'Neill

(@KirstieJONeill)

My PhD research focused on what policy makers could do to help support localised food systems (LFS).  Although LFS are difficult to define, the number of LFS has grown over the last 15 years as producers and consumers seek alternatives from mainstream, globalised food systems.  A widely used definition is:

“rooted in particular places, [LFSs] aim to be economically viable for farmers and consumers, use ecologically sound production and distribution practises, and enhance social equity and democracy for all members of the community” (Feenstra 1997)

Local food is frequently seen as playing a role in rural development, as a way to overcome farming crises, revive lagging rural economies and restore consumer confidence.  Examples include farmers’ markets, farm shops, box schemes, community supported agriculture, community gardens and organic production.  LFS are often based on characteristics such as direct contact between consumers and producers, increased trust, and greater proximity. 

Olive grove in Anversa degli Abruzzi, Abruzzo
(Photo: Kirstie O'Neill)

My PhD research with policy makers, local food businesses and consumers in East Yorkshire (UK - an area usually seen as industrial farming) and the Abruzzo (Italy - the Abruzzo is often seen as marginal farming) explores how local food is contingent on specific localised spaces.  Using evidence from two contrasting types of region, one so-called industrial agricultural region and the other a more marginal region, helps to probe why some regions develop strong LFS while others do not. 

Rapeseed field, East Yorkshire (Photo: Kirstie O'Neill)

Relating to food production, regions are frequently characterised as ‘marginal’ or ‘industrial’, but food production can be more complex.  Eastern England is often viewed as being devoid of LFS, as a homogeneous intensive agricultural region or a ‘placeless foodscape’ (Morgan et al., 2006).  Regions that have been marginal to the post World War II productivist agricultural regime are typically viewed as the stronghold for LFS, in the UK, for example, linked to areas like Devon, Cumbria and Wales.  Countries such as Italy and France are often viewed as favourable for LFS as a result of cultural attachment to local food (Montanari 1994).  Such stereotyped views may inhibit opportunities and developments in regions like East Yorkshire as well as in countries like Italy, by glossing over more detailed local variations. 

Such stereotypes of ‘conventional’ or ‘peripheral’ are problematic as these opposite ends of a spectrum are not clear-cut, with a more nuanced picture emerging.  Policy support is essential for the success of LFS, yet how policy makers interpret and understand local food varies by regional context.  ‘Local food’ means different things in specific contexts.

Contingent Local Food Systems and Regions

East Yorkshire (UK) and the Abruzzo (Italy) were my case study regions for investigating LFS (see Figure 1).  Although they are diverse in many respects, similarities include the ways in which space affects the actions and thinking of core actors involved in local food and rural development.  East Yorkshire is an intensive agricultural region embedded into global commodity networks yet with an emerging local food sector, whereas the Abruzzo is the type of area frequently associated with strong LFS.  Italy per se is associated with a strong food culture, assumed to have high levels of commitment to local food (‘prodotti tipici’) (Helstosky 2004; Montanari 1994). 

Figure 1. Map showing East Yorkshire (left) and Abruzzo (right) (Source: Wikimedia commons).

In East Yorkshire, people frequently linked areas like national parks with local food.  Many referred to places like the North York Moors and Yorkshire Dales (both national parks) as places where it would be ‘easier’ to run a local food business.  East Yorkshire was described as ‘flat and boring’ in contrast.  One respondent thought that in contrast to East Yorkshire ‘it’s good to go to a farmers’ market in Devon and Cornwall’.  While one policy maker suggested that ‘local food has the perception of being produced in the Dales or the hills, where you can see the animals’. 

In contrast, the Abruzzo region has one third of its land mass designated as protected land.  Despite this many people saw the region of Tuscany as better suited to local food.  Tuscany is a popular tourist destination, but is also firmly embedded in the Italian psyche – ‘non è la Toscana’ (‘well, this isn’t Tuscany’) was a common response.  This suggests that both areas, despite their differences, encounter similar problems in being recognised as a local foodscape. 

Can industrial foodscapes accommodate LFS?

East Yorkshire business selling locally landed
shellfish to local markets
(courtesy of www.what-a-catch.co.uk)

This idea of local food as being quite separate from places of intensive food production influences how policy makers think about local food in the context of East Yorkshire and the policies they subsequently develop.  Recent attempts to stimulate a LFS include a number of food festivals in the area, a Local Food Directory (here, including businesses like the one left here), dedicated local food workers and a not-for-profit company promoting local food.  All of these actions have challenged common perceptions of industrial farming regions, as one policy maker said ‘to everybody’s astonishment it was amazing just what is made in East Yorkshire, and is overlooked because the image and everybody’s thought process goes straight to North Yorkshire’.  Increasing the visibility of foods produced in the region has contrasted with previous perceptions; as one tourism business said ‘15 years ago I would have said “well we’re just corn barons really,” you know there wasn’t a lot of diversity’. 

However, for some the image of East Yorkshire as industrial foodscape is enduring and represents a potential barrier for developing LFS in the region.  Although there is increasing diversity of local foods in places like East Yorkshire, many still associate such regions with intensive agriculture, as emphasised by a policy maker:

‘...it’s easy to see how you would promote lamb from the North Yorkshire Moors isn’t it?  Promoting wheat from Holderness is…just doesn’t work in the same way...[it’s] not...something that’s sold directly to the end consumer’.

Thus, industrial farming regions are still viewed by some as agriculturally homogeneous, leaving little room for the diverse range of products made in East Yorkshire, including goats’ cheeses, organic salads, smoked fish as well as lamb.  Many of the views I encountered during my research can be understood in the context of large-scale and financially profitable agriculture being seen as the norm locally.  This frames how other farming activities are understood and perceived, so that practices not fitting into this image of ‘proper’ farming are devalued. 

Contrasting evidence from the Abruzzo region

Despite the Abruzzo being geographically different to East Yorkshire, and arguably a region with an ‘attractive’ landscape, many businesses and policy-makers reported similar issues.  Many respondents stated that Tuscany represented a better, stronger LFS; popular images of Tuscany were how local food producing regions were imagined.  Interviewees suggested that although the remote and wild landscapes of the Abruzzo region offered similar potential, they were not (yet) able to compete with places like Tuscany.  Italy is a varied country and respondents illustrated the difficulties that they faced in Abruzzo, such as a low external profile, relative geographical remoteness and a lack of potential customers.  For instance, one regional policy maker stated that ‘no-one knows where the Abruzzo region is, not even in Italy’.

Mountain scene, Gran Sasso National Park
(Photo: Kirstie O'Neill)

Organic agriculture was more common in Abruzzo, as the mountainous parts of the region were not suitable for industrialised agriculture.  This ‘unspoilt’ aspect of agriculture was seen as strengthening local food production, for many ‘l’agricoltura industriale non è pensabile’ (industrial agriculture would be unimaginable here).  Organic production was accepted as a ‘good thing’ in Abruzzo, whereas in East Yorkshire organic food was viewed with suspicion, as being for ‘hippies’ and critical of conventional agriculture.

The Italian producers were aware of their fragile position in a remote part of Italy which is not the Italy that most people imagine.  Policy makers in the region referred to an increasing distance between consumers and producers, despite the vision of Italy as a nation of food lovers.  Paradoxically, despite bemoaning the increasing distance between producers and consumers, LFS businesses in Abruzzo actively promote their produce to people outside the region, for example by targeting tourists or selling to buying groups (‘gruppi di acquisto sociale’) within Italy, or international sales using the Internet.

Conclusions

In depth discussions in both places revealed geographically-specific interpretations of what local food is, dependent upon local contexts.  Previous conceptualisations of LFS rarely take industrial agricultural regions into account.  However, East Yorkshire is one such region successfully developing local food, thus challenging common perceptions of such places.  Similarly, regions like Abruzzo, which are generalised as having the ‘right’ conditions for successful LFS, also require support and determination to take advantage of the opportunities presented by LFS.  Despite such regions being associated with strong LFS, they do not automatically establish them, particularly as they are often sparsely populated and may be distant from consumer demand. 

My research suggest that policy makers need to address the future role of such places in food production – the development of local food in both locations is something that has to be worked at and in both cases this has been achieved through policy makers trying to create a local food network/culture.  It cannot be assumed that certain regions will develop LFS while others will not – the success of LFS are not tied to particular characteristics, but can succeed with the appropriate support, promotion and determination.

A longer version of this paper has been accepted for Regional Studies, Regional Science, forthcoming.

What's 'appening' with DE:FT

By @deftfood

Progress so far 
Now that we are six months into the project we thought it was time we let you all know how things are progressing. We have prototypes of three apps - FoodCloud, ShopStamp and Gradeback - which are on our website www.deftproject.org.uk as power point slides.  For those who left comments on the forum page of the website, many thanks!  Any further comments would be most welcome too! We have also designed a questionnaire survey, https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/DDZWC9K which is looking at shopping habits and technology.  Again please feel free to complete it.  There is also the chance of winning some Amazon vouchers for those who do.

Following on from some of the feedback we have received we have slightly modified the FoodCloud prototype, removing the quiz and simplifying some of the links that we had built into it.  Just to recap, the idea behind FoodCloud was to develop an app which would show people how they were ‘surrounded by food’ so, for example, what was growing in the fields, how food was moving all around them, the routes it was taking and the outlets available to them.

Progress to date 
David Grey from Computer Science at the University of Hull is one of the co-investigators on the project and he has been busy turning our paper prototype of FoodCloud into a working app.  The app has, of all things, a ‘back end’, which can be found at http://foodcloud.deftproject.org.uk so please have a look at it and tell us what you think. The link will take you straight to the log in page and once logged in it is then possible to input descriptions of what the fields are used for using the fields tab.  David has built in a link to ‘MyFarm’ so that anyone who logs in as a farmer can locate their farm using the map which will be displayed, zoom into their fields and label them accordingly as well as providing a brief description of their farm and any farm gate sales they offer.  It’s amazing what a campus can be used for as in order to test how well the ‘back end’ works we have turned the Hull site into a virtual arable farm. The Cohen building was a field of wheat which has been harvested and will be made into biscuits.

Opening up the app 
This information is stored in the ‘back end’ of the app and when the app is opened up it uses GPS to locate any fields that have been added to the ‘back end’ data base.  

Image of smartphone screen and field ‘flags’

Once the fields are located a small ‘flag’ appears on the phone screen (see image above),and by touching the ‘flag’ labelled, wheat, for example, an image of a wheat plant will appear together with the information that was loaded onto the ‘back end’.  We now have a working prototype which is exciting which we can take out ‘into the wild’ and demonstrate to people something we have just started to do and if anyone else would like to see the app working please get in touch at Deborah.butler@hull.ac.uk.  Any feedback is invaluable and will help us in making the app more responsive to the needs of user groups.

Next steps.
At present we are in the process of trying to develop extra ‘layers’ to ‘FoodCloud’ so that it can be used to make the link between food and sites of historical interest. We have also been thinking about a broader ‘FoodCrowd’ concept which would involve children, for instance collecting and inputting data on their local area thus learning about their localities and how they are surrounded by food.