Book of Abstracts

Food (In)Security Research Network

International and trans-disciplinary perspectives

16 October 2013

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CONTENTS

Professor Wyn Grant ............................................................................ 1

Dr Stephen Biggs .................................................................................. 1

Dr Leandro Vergara-Camus .................................................................. 1

Dr Dwijen Rangnekar ........................................................................... 1

Dr Ben Richardson and Dr Joao Nunes ................................................ 1

Emily Krüger ........................................................................................ 1

Ruth Segal ............................................................................................ 1-6

Chris Maughan ..................................................................................... 6-9

Katie Hartless Rose............................................................................... 9-11

Thomas Henderson .............................................................................. 11-12

Laura Muñoz Lopez .............................................................................. 12-14

David Blake ........................................................................................... 14-15

Mohammad Nayeem Aziz Ansari ......................................................... 16-17

Yagya Prasad Tubedi ............................................................................ 17-19

Christopher Coghlan ............................................................................ 19-20

Hasan Iessa ........................................................................................... 20-22

Prapimphan Chiengkul ......................................................................... 22-23

Marika Mura ........................................................................................ 23

Sarah Goler........................................................................................... 24-25

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SESSION 1: ACADEMIC PANEL

Professor Wyn Grant

Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick

Europe and Food Security

Dr Stephen Biggs

School of International Development, University of East Anglia

Title

Dr Leandro Vergara-Camus

Department of Development Studies, School of Oriental and African

Studies

The Politics of Food Sovereignty in Latin America: From Movements to

Governments and Back

Dr Dwijen Rangnekar

School of Law, University of Warwick

Farmer’s Rights and Intellectual Property

SESSION 2: INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATIONS, CONCEPTUALISATIONS, AND DISCOURSES ON FOOD SECURITY

Dr Ben Richardson and Dr Joao Nunes Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick

Power, vulnerability and harm: Exploring the politics of food security

In recent years, security has become a prevalent theme in many policy

and academic debates relating to food. This paper interrogates the

concept of food security, arguing that the political nature and

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implications of the latter have so far been left largely unexplored. Food

security has often been defined as technical project of nutritional

sufficiency; alleviating hunger is thus conceived as a managerial process

of providing an appropriate diet to individuals. This paper argues that the

security dimension calls for a broader and deeper engagement with the

politics of food. The argument suggests that achieving food security

entails an engagement with structures and relations of power that

propitiate and reproduce vulnerability to, and actual, hunger. Looking at

the case of Brazil’s food policy, the paper argues that conceptualizing

food security in this way is crucial for devising effective policies that can

address the problem of world hunger.

Emily Krüger Department of Political Science, Specialization in International Relations, Sciences Po Paris

The Role of Brazil in FAO (2007-2013) – motivation, strategies and impacts

Ruth Segal SPRU - Science and Technology Policy Research, University of Sussex

Contested framings of ‘agricultural research for development’

Area of research:

Prior to joining Sussex, I have worked in both UK-based and international

organisations on food, agriculture, development and sustainability issues.

My research interests focus on the functioning of the global agri-food

system, the development of global policy and the impact of policies on

food security, sustainable development and livelihood security for poor

and marginalised communities in developing countries. My PhD research

focuses more specifically on the role of international agricultural research

in meeting the needs of the poor, and how international actors and

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institutions interact to influence policy and the direction of change within

the global agri-food system.

Since the 2008-9 global food price crisis, there has been a renewed

interest in the functioning of the global agri-food system, in particular

how to ensure that a growing global population can be fed sustainably

and equitably. However, understandings of ‘sustainability’ are debated,

and the policy, development and technology approaches needed to

create a ‘sustainable’ system are contested between different groups.

What constitutes a sustainable food system? Sustaining what, producing

what and for whom? And how do different answers to these questions

affect policy and technology choices which shape the global agri-food

system?

As part of this debate, there has been an increased focus on the role,

direction and effectiveness of international public agricultural research in

helping to reduce hunger and increase food production ‘sustainably’ and

‘equitably’.

This research aims to increase understandings of how different ways of

framing debates about the global agri-food system (and different

conceptualisations of ‘food security’) have affected decisions on the

direction of public agricultural research at the global level. It will examine

whether – and how – changing pressures on the food system are leading

to new framings of the debate that might challenge, or reinforce, the

mainstream ‘productionist’ paradigm.

It will do this through an examination of recent attempts to reform public

agricultural research institutions, specifically the CGIAR (Consultative

Group on International Agricultural Research), and ask how CGIAR has

responded to changing pressures and new challenges such as the

Agricultural Research FOR Development (AR4D) agenda; how institutional

arrangements enable (or not) research outputs to address poverty and

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food security needs; and how diverse voices have (or have not)

influenced institutional change.

It will examine CGIAR’s evolving understandings of its role in the provision

of International Public Goods (IPGs); and how this role has been

negotiated within the context of increased private sector engagement

with agricultural research in developing countries, donor interests and

the AR4D agenda. It will examine influences on the CGIAR reform process,

and the mechanisms by which different perspectives gain and maintain

dominance in shaping the direction of change in public agricultural

research. It will consider the implications of the reform process for

CGIAR’s intended beneficiaries, including access to and appropriation of

IPG outputs of agricultural research.

The research aims to examine this process in order to shed light on the

dynamics of the debate in food and agriculture research, in particular

how dominant development models maintain their dominance or are

challenged by alternative approaches.

SESSION 3: FOOD SECURITY, FARMERS, AND GROUND-UP RESPONSES FROM NORTH AND SOUTH

Chris Maughan Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies, University of Warwick

Producing Radical New Forms or Reproducing ‘Neoliberal Governmentalities’? – Literary Representations of Agro-Ecological Resistance Movements

Agro-ecological resistance movements have attracted much praise in

recent years, especially those operating in the Global South (such as Via

Campesina and the Landless Workers Movement (Desmarais (2007), Patel

(2007), McMichael (2008), Shiva (2010)), though also those emerging in

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the Global North (CSAs, Food Co-ops, Organics, etc. (Tudge (2007) and

Reed (2012)). Part of the interest in such phenomena is undoubtedly

explained by the dynamic which defines them; i.e. ‘“ordinary” resistance

and/or political engagement [which] develops outside established or

existing networks’. In order that these movements continue to be seen

positively and achieve their respective aims, it has been argued (Aerni

2011) their operation and influence cannot remain ‘outside’ mainstream

agricultural networks. This paper will compare the representation of

agro-ecological resistance movements in two novels, Ruth Ozeki’s All

Over Creation and Michael Cliff’s No Telephone to Heaven – based,

respectively in the Global North and South – for alternative accounts of

the problems confronted by such movements, ones imbued with the

detail and nuance characteristic of the literary imagination.

Whilst this paper acknowledges that agriculture clearly ‘represents a

significant site for the refashioning of contemporary social critique’ the

problems it faces are huge and bound up in longue-durée, world-

historical processes (Moore 2001). There is, correspondingly, a sizeable

sociological and political discourse aimed at interrogating these new

forms of agro-ecological resistance (Guthman (2008), Patel (2009), Aerni

(2011), etc.) pointing, inter alia, to the lack of clarity with which they

describe and represent themselves, as well as the extent to which they

may be inadvertently reproducing behaviours characteristic of the

productive and consumerist patterns which they ostensibly emerged to

critique, resist, and overturn.

The discourse surrounding the success or failure of these movements

raises many questions, not least those concerning how agro-ecological

resistance groups name their adversaries and frame the debates of which

they are part. Terms like ‘food security’, ‘neo-liberalism’, and ‘agri-

business’, are regularly deployed without rigorous qualification, thereby

contributing to difficulties commonly encountered by those who wish to

imagine beyond them. The political and sociological discourse on ‘food

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security’, I will argue, stands to gain a lot by being reconceived and

critiqued in terms of the imaginative and representational possibilities

which have been occluded, even by those mobilising democratically for

agricultural change.

In an effort to contribute new perspectives on this emerging site of

resistance this paper offers an analysis of how such models of resistance

are being imagined and explored in contemporary novels. Following Imre

Szeman, I will examine two texts (named above) for a picture of the

‘social life’ of agro-ecological resistance movements in order that their

problems are “named and solutions to [them] proposed” (Szeman 2012).

In recent decades, literatures of the Caribbean, Central and South

America, and East Asia have shown an increasing appetite for thematising

the cultural and ecological impacts of the intensification of agricultural

production specific to their regions, as well as the agro-ecological

resistance movements which have emerged in their wake. Agro-

ecological resistance movements in the Global North have been less

frequently depicted. Despite a growing interest in food, attention has

been more keenly focused (in the UK popular media at least) on celebrity

chefs, cookery-themed TV shows, dieting trends, etc. (Germov & Williams

(2008) and Aphramor (2010)). Despite this disparity, my evidentiary

material has been selected to represent sites of resistance in both the

Global South and the Global North in an attempt to find affinities

between groups struggling towards new forms of agriculture.

Bibliography

Aerni, P. (2011) ‘Food Sovereignty and its Discontents’, ATDF Journal 8(1-2): 23-40.

Aphramor, L. (2010) 'Validity Of Claims Made In Weight Management Research: A Narrative Review Of Dietetic Articles'. Nutrition Journal, 9, 30.

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Germov, J. & Williams, L. (eds) (2008) A Sociology of Food and Nutrition: The Social Appetite, 3rd edn. Victoria, Australia: Oxford University Press.Desmarais, A. (2007) La Via Campesina - Globalization and the Power of Peasants. London: Pluto Press.

Guthman, J. (2008) ‘Neoliberalism and the making of food politics in California’, Geoforum 39(3): 1171-1183.

Kneafsey, M. et al. (2008) Reconnecting producers, consumers and food: exploring alternatives. Oxford: Berg.

McMichael, P. (2008) ‘Peasants Make Their Own History, But Not Just as They Please’, Journal of Agrarian Change 8(2-3): 205–228.

Moore, J.W. (2001) ‘Capitalism, Territory, and Hegemony over the Longue Durée’. Science & Society 65(4): 476-484.

Patel, R. (2007) Stuffed and Starved: Markets, Power and the Hidden Battle for the World Food System. London: Portobello Books.

Patel, R. (2009) ‘What Does Food Sovereignty Look Like?’, Journal of Peasant Studies 36(3): 663-706.

Reed, M. (2012) ‘Contesting “sustainable intensification” in the UK: The Emerging Organic Discourse’. In Reed, M., ed. (2012) Organic Food and Agriculture - New Trends and Developments in the Social Sciences. London: InTech.

Shiva, V. (2010) Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace. Dehradun: Natraj Publishers.

Tudge, C. (2007) Feeding People is Easy. London: Pari Publishing.

Katie Hartless Rose Department of Geography, Environment and Disaster Management, Coventry University

Exploring Sustainable Behaviour Change amongst the UK Agricultural Community

This abstract hopes to stimulate discussion through a ‘work in progress’

two pronged presentation on the different ways to promote sustainable

behaviour change within the UK agricultural community. Whilst the focus

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on the conference is international, the author feels that despite focusing

on UK farmers, lessons can be applied further afield.

The author is in the third year of her part time PhD, studying the different

methods farmers can use to mitigate and adapt to climate change. The

author will share her investigation of the values and cultural viewpoints

that influence the approaches of UK farmers and her exploration of what

can promote or inhibit behaviour change to more sustainable farming.

Firstly, the author would like to look at how, when exploring sustainable

agricultural behavioural change for farmers or any individuals, there must

first be an understanding of the different behavioural change theories

and models, which exist to promote change.

Having reviewed reports discussing over 40 theories and models, four

models from psychological and applied theories will be presented as a

work in progress with reference to how they can be used advantageously

for behavioural change amongst farmers (along with any disadvantages

to using the model). Additionally, when promoting sustainable

agricultural behavioural change, there must also be an exploration into

obvious opportunities, drivers, barriers, disincentives and incentives for a

farmer to become sustainable, and the best approaches or activities to

promote change and understanding for the change amongst the farming

population (i.e. the different ways to adapt and mitigate for climatic

impacts). The presentation will also look at these factors and whether

they hinder or help farming sustainably.

Secondly, the research for the PhD will include surveying both farmers

already farming sustainably from organic, to using permaculture, along

with farmers who show no interest in adapting their farming methods,

with a second stage of interviewing farmers in focus groups to drill down

from the survey data.

As the results of the survey will only begin to emerge from August

onwards, there are currently none to present. However, this author is

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confident that by October, there will be at least survey results to explore

and questions for focus groups will have begun to be developed.

Tom Henderson Department of Development Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)

Via Campesina organizations in Mexico and Ecuador: Collaboration, Conflict and Issues of Representation from the Grassroots to the International

My ongoing research addresses the ways in which agrarian movements in

Latin America are confronting the ‘corporate food regime’ (McMichael,

2007) and in the process reframing current debates and understandings

of the agrarian question. I hope that the research will help contribute to

filling an important gap in the literature by investigating the internal

dynamics of, and interconnectivity between, contemporary peasant

organizations with international reach through Via Campesina

membership, as well as how representation and accountability work in

practice from the grassroots to the national and international levels

(Borras et al, 2008: 179). The extent to which the ideas and demands of

the grassroots shape organizational discourse and practice is analysed, as

well as how national level organizations influence and are influenced by

the Via Campesia experience. How or whether these organizations

engage with rural labour issues given growing dependence on wage

labour for rural people across the region is also a major theme of the

investigation. The relationship between contemporary peasant

organizations and local and national level government is also discussed

given that movement and organizational ‘autonomy’ is a central concern

of Latin America’s peasant organizations yet its (negotiated) form is rarely

investigated with concrete examples. The strategy of ‘critical engagement’

with government, often espoused by Latin America’s peasant groups, is

also rarely analysed for what it means in practice. The research is ongoing

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and in July 2013 I returned from 11 months of fieldwork between Mexico

and Ecuador. In Mexico I was working with the CIOAC (Central

Independiente de Obreros Agricolas y Campesinos – Independent Central

of Agricultural Workers and Campesinos), and in Ecuador with the

FENOCIN (Federacion Ecuatoriana de Organizaciones Campesinas,

Indigenas y Negras – Ecuadorian Federation of Campesino, Indigenous

and Black Organizations), both national level peasant organizations

affiliated to the Via Campesina Transnational Agrarian Movement. The

research is based primarily on CIOAC’s coffee producers in Mexico’s

Southeastern states of Chiapas, Oaxaca and Guerrero and on FENOCIN’s

cacao producers on the Ecuadorian coastal plain.

References: Borras Jr SM, Edelman M & Kay C (2008) Transnational Agrarian Movements: Origins and Politics, Campaigns and Impact. Journal of Agrarian Change 8 (2 & 3), pp. 169–204. Mc Michael P (2007) Reframing development: global peasant movements and the new agrarian question. Revista Nera 10(10), pp.57-71.

SESSION 4: LAND, WATER, AND SCARCITY: STUDIES FROM AFRICA

AND ASIA

Laura Muñoz López Department of Economics, Politics and Philosophy, Centre for Applied Human Rights, University of York

Understanding land rights in Tanzania in the context of the global land grab. Empowering visions from below

The purpose of this research is to contribute to the expanding land

governance agenda exploring how local understandings of land rights are

changing due to global and local struggles over landgrabbing. According

to several policy makers and researchers, about 56 million hectares of

land have been sold or leased since the global food crisis in 2008, an area

bigger than Spain. Demographic pressures, climatic conditions, agrofuel

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requirements and price speculation are the main causes for landgrabbing,

a strategy through which different actors try to safeguard their own food

security, natural resources and economic needs. Landgrabbing has

fostered the debate about land tenure systems. On the one hand, the

property rights school has long been claiming that formalization of land

titles increases tenure security, and therefore promotes foreign

investment and economic growth. On the other hand, competing

narratives to such approach argue that land reforms and individualization

of land rights in developing countries causes damage in communities’

rights and increase tensions between the state and its population,

especially in those societies where land access is a highly valuable asset

for livelihood. This grievance in their rights has led communities to

mobilize to contest the current wave of landgrabbing using a different

array of strategies. Such mobilizations have informed transnational

activist networks, which in its turn have informed local struggles,

performing an empirical pattern that Santos1 has theorized such as

‘subaltern cosmopolitanism’, and which is one of the process bring about

by globalization. Subaltern studies are the framework for research in

counter-hegemonic and –from below globalization, which aims to bring

into focus the visions and influence of those more marginalized and

excluded in the evolution of institutions and law. One of such subalterns

is the food sovereignty movement: a peasants’ movement which

postulates a valid and alternative model to international agribusiness in

order to achieve food security empowering peasants, promoting the

protection of local rights and the preservation of biodiversity and

traditional knowledge. The peasants’ movement has acquired a relevant

role as an actor in global arenas, such as the FAO, and also has influenced

several governments to implement changes in their legal frameworks

adopting the food sovereignty postulates. Methodologically driven by

participant observation at community and grassroots organizations level;

and drawing on land rights debates and -from below scholarship, this

research argues that (i) local understandings of rights and governance are

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different from Western conceptions of property rights, and tenure

security is possible without ‘titling’ schemes, (ii) local understandings of

rights have more in common with food sovereignty movements rather

than agri-business models and (iii) local understandings of rights are

influenced by local context and by global interventions, and in turn have

shaped global understandings of rights.

1 Santos, B. de S. (2002). Toward a New Legal Common Sense. London: LexisNexis Butterworths Tolley.

David J.H. Blake School of International Development, University of East Anglia

How about irrigation – are hydropower dams the only villain in Mekong Basin food security debates?

Both news media articles and academic research addressing the current

rapid expansion of hydropower dams in the Mekong Basin are

increasingly focusing international attention on perceived threats to

regional food security resulting from complex, often cumulative socio-

ecological impacts. At the “Mekong River Basin Workshop on Food

Security” convened in Chiang Rai, Thailand in early 2013 by the Stockholm

International Water Institute (SIWI) and the International Water

Management Institute (IWMI), a common narrative of the key note

speeches and workshop rationale emphasised “the long-term threats to

the food security and livelihoods of millions of people” posed by

unrestrained growth of the hydropower industry (Jagerskog and Glauman,

2012). The conference strove to promote new approaches to analysis of

food security issues, especially risks to freshwater fisheries, under the

rhetorical framework of a “Water, Energy, Food Security” nexus, currently

popular with sections of the Western development aid community. It was

notable that the majority of papers and discussion focused on the

hydropower sector and overlooked the parallel construction of irrigation

dams in the Mekong region. This suggests something of a paradox, as

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there appears to be little conclusive evidence to demonstrate the

irrigation sector’s contribution to regional food security, while

presumably a migrating fish is unable to differentiate between an

irrigation dam and a hydropower dam in its efforts to navigate manmade

river barriers. Moreover, there seems to be an underlying assumption

operating as a dominant trope that irrigation projects, that because

irrigation systems are perceived as food producing enterprises necessarily

beneficial for national food security and hence poverty reduction, while

hydropower development is portrayed to entail a controversial trade-off

between energy and food security. However, the dominant assumption

appears to be largely unproven, while data exists to suggest that

irrigation sector investment in Northeast Thailand has provided the

lowest impact on both rural poverty reduction and net agricultural

productivity growth, when compared against government expenditure on

agricultural research and development, rural education, and

infrastructure development (including roads and electricity) (Fan et al,

2004). At the same time, irrigation development expansion forms a

central pillar of all regional nations’ poverty alleviation policy and

programmes. This paper considers the dilemmas posed by an almost

exclusive focus on the hydropower sector and drawing upon evidence

from the author’s PhD thesis, challenges elements of the present

hegemonic discourse, suggesting alternative narratives that question the

role of irrigation development in food security.

REFERENCES

Fan, S., S. Jitsuchon, et al. (2004). The Importance of Public Investment for Reducing Rural Poverty in Middle-Income Countries: The Case of Thailand. Washington D.C., International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI): 54.

Jagerskog, A. and Glauman, K. (2012) Concept Paper – Mekong River Basin Workshop on Food Security. September 2012. Stockholm International Water Institute, Stockholm.

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Mohammad Nayeem Aziz Ansari Department of Geography, Durham University

Community Dhan Bank in combating Monga in Northwest Bangladesh: Assessing its Role through Households’ Experiences

In local Bengali term ‘Monga’ is used to describe the seasonal hunger and

food insecurity in northwest Bangladesh in which the poor, particularly

those who rely on farm work, suffer acute deprivation caused by their

lack of purchasing power arising from seasonal scarcity of gainful

employment. With some variation this seasonal distress recurs each year

in two periods: the severe one is from mid-September to mid-November;

and the less severe period is in between mid-March to April. The poor

households, even the marginal and small deficit farmers have to survive

an extended period without proper meals and sometimes with no food at

all. The Monga is now one of the serious challenges in ensuring food

security in this region.

Considering this acute situation, with the help of local NGOs, an

independent research group of Jahangirnagar University, Bangladesh

established a dhan (rice/paddy) bank in 2006 in Laxmichap union of

Nilphamari districts - one of the severely Monga-affected areas. The

funding in the initial stage was through private donations by

philanthropic Bangladeshi individuals living abroad. The general concept

of the dhan bank is to help the poor households not to go hungry during

the Monga by lending them paddy and also to help them generate

additional paddy stock when they have surplus, particularly after the

harvest. The sustainability of the dhan bank means that the first cycle of

grant support in kind, i.e. rice, will be recycled without further grants to

the same poor families, and the responsibility of executing the

programme at village level is by the community itself. Though evidences

shows that rice/paddy banks are increasingly popular in south-east Asia,

especially in Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand in enhancing food security,

this is totally a new approach enabling communities not only to face the

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Monga but also allowing them to access a wider range of social needs and

services including cash savings, education, health facilities and women’s

empowerment. Many NGOs have taken this idea further and set up a few

more community dhan banks in other Monga-affected areas and these

follow the model of Laxmichap union’s emphasis upon storage, exchange

mechanisms as well as activities. Despite the general conclusion that such

new ventures may be suitable options in fighting the Monga, there

remain questions regarding their sustainability as earlier some similar

initiatives introduced by other NGOs did not succeed for several reasons.

So far there has been little research to understand dhan bank

effectiveness in reaching the poorest, i.e. linked to regular repayments of

rice, reduction of exploitative practices, meeting specific basic needs,

promoting collective decision-making, increasing the household’s

resilience, and so on from the participated households’ perspectives. This

paper is an attempt to fill this gap by documenting the experience of

households with reference to community dhan banks in Laxmichap union

of Nilphamari district.

Key words: Monga, hunger, food insecurity, community dhan bank,

resilience.

SESSION 5: POSTERS

Yagya Prasad Subedi College of Life Sciences and Medicine, University of Aberdeen

Nexus between economic and nutrition transitions in Nepal: preliminary observations from time series data

YP Subedi1, D Marais1, and D Newlands2

1 College of Life Sciences and Medicine, University of Aberdeen, Public Health Nutrition, yagya.subedi@abdn.ac.uk; debbi.marais@abdn.ac.uk 2

Department of Economics, University of Aberdeen, International Health Economics, d.newlands@abdn.ac.uk

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Introduction: The nutrition transition involves economic, demographic,

dietary and epidemiological shifts, which are each affected by one

another. The patterns and trends of the nutrition transition are not

uniform in the different regions of the world. Although some information

is available about Asian transitions, Nepalese patterns and transitions are

not known.

Aim: The objective for this part of the study was to describe economic

and nutritional shifts and their relationship in Nepal over the past 40

years.

Methods: Time series data for economic and food supply were collected

in five years intervals from 1970 to 2010 from government databases

such as the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Agriculture, Central Bureau of

Statistics Nepal and Nepal Rastra Bank, and food balance sheets from

global databases maintained by the Food and Agricultural Organisation,

respectively. Average annual rate of change was computed using the

natural logarithmic estimate method to measure the shift.

Results: The structure of the Nepalese economy is gradually shifting from

an agricultural (60% value added in GDP from agriculture in 1970) to a

modern industrial economy (74% value added in GDP from industry and

services sectors in 2010). The proportion of urban population, considered

as a proxy of urbanisation in Nepal, increased from 4% in 1970 to 21% in

2010. This includes natural increase and migration to the cities. The

number of international tourists in Nepal has increased by an annual

average of 5% between 1990 and 2010, increasing the tourist

contribution towards the national income by an annual average of 3.2%.

Average real per capita income has increased by an annual average of

1.6%. Nepalese dietary patterns have changed over the past forty years.

Energy intake has increased from 1795 kCal/day in 1970 to 2450 kCal/day

in 2010. Plant fat and sugar are the main contributors to this increased

energy intake trend; followed by meat, fish, milk and eggs. The trends

indicate that the percentage energy from plant fats significantly increased

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from 12% in 1970 to 17% in 2010 (p<0.05). These trends in dietary

changes seem to be following a similar pattern to Nepal’s one neighbor

India, but different to the other neighbouring country, China.

Conclusion: In conclusion, real per capita income and urbanisation seem

to be two of the major driving forces for the nutrition transition in Nepal

but tourism has also been identified as a unique trigger in this region.

These drivers are impacting on the traditional Nepalese diet especially in

terms of increased energy mainly from higher plant fat intake.

Christopher Coghlan School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford

State Food Potential (SFP): The Case of India and the Himalayas

The State Food Potential (SFP) of internal administrative boundaries

within countries is best captured using five main indicators. Nutrition,

Economic, Development, Social and Environmental proxies are used as

such indicators to create an index of food potential for 28 Indian states

(excluding Sikkim). This paper demonstrates that SFP is by construct a

flexible method which is able to adopt proxy indicators for each category

as relevant data is available. The application of this model actively works

to fill in the previous conceptual gap of domestic food security analysis

which has often rendered direct comparisons between the states and

regions of various nations difficult due to large data shortcomings. In

India SFP results show that there is somewhat of a geographic clustering

of states. The most favourable scores tend to be found in the northwest

part of the country and along part of the west coast, while the lowest

scores can be found in the northeast. The eastern and western Himalayan

regions show stark contrasts with both one another and the rest of the

country. The seven states of the east have shown themselves to be

heavily dependent on the National Rural Employment Scheme, with the

majority of households in the region receiving assistance from the

government. It has been shown that states with higher SFP scores have a

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higher percentage of their cultivatable land used for the production of

fruit and vegetables in addition to meat. A similar relationship is present

when looking at recent climate impacts expressed in the expected rainfall

in India. Results show that across all four seasons: pre-monsoon, south-

west monsoon, post-monsoon, and winter monsoon that states in groups

with higher SFP scores experienced more rainfall relative to the expected

amount. In the case of the highest group there was a surplus of rain

across all seasons while in stark contrast the lowest group showed deficits

across three of the four seasons. The Himalayas in this instance were

outliers to the general trend, with all 10 states experiencing rainfall

deficits in varying degrees and seasons and divided along clear sub-

regional lines.

Hasan Iessa School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development, Newcastle University

Concentrating Food Materials Using Electrokinetic Enhanced Filtration to Decrease Power Consumption and Nutrient Loss

Countries around the world are suffering from many problems

caused by the misuse of their resources either by using non-renewable

resources or destroying the valuable features of the resources that are

available.

Some of the most important challenges of facing humanity are

related to food and energy security. Food security includes many aspects

besides providing people with an adequate amount of safe and healthy

food; it also includes improving food processing to produce acceptable,

high quality food products with reduced losses of nutrients.

Continued use of conventional and traditional methods of

producing and consuming food products will not be sufficient to feed the

world’s burgeoning population. Many of these traditional methods

require very high energy inputs, and they also destroy some important

food nutrients and reduce their benefits.

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Dried and concentrated foods have become an important category

in the food products marketplace. The development of processing

techniques and the customers’ wants has increased the need to improve

product quality especially with the increase in competition in this

category.

Most of the current drying/concentrating methods have several

disadvantages and some have significant negative impacts on the

foodstuffs produced by these methods, especially their chemical

properties such as loss of essential nutrients, as well as their appearance,

aromas and flavour. In addition, most of the existing methods require

high energy inputs.

This project aims to combine the electrokinetic phenomena of

electro-osmosis with the traditional functions of filtration to form a

process of electrokinetically enhanced filtration (EEF). This process is

based on electrokinetic enhanced filtration to concentrate foodstuffs at

low temperature which saves energy, time and product constituents

associated with product quality especially the temperature-sensitive

components such as Vitamin C, vegetable and fruit colours and key

aromas.

This study is concerned with the changes that occur in indicators of

food quality using the application of EEF, such as Brix degree, total

carbohydrate content, Vitamin C and carotenoid preservation/retention,

colour as well as the energy inputs.

The general system contains two steps: Firstly ultra-filtration (UF)

to capture all particles larger than 1 Micron in size, and secondly reverse

osmosis to capture all other particles and save them from being lost.

Electrokineticsis combined with the UF to speed up the process and

save time and energy. This is carried out in an EEF-rig which was

designed to meet the project needs with an ability to change all the

dependent parameters to find the optimum conditions to run this

application.

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The initial results showed that the performance of the

Electrokinetics process is dependent upon several parameters such as the

sample’s conductivity, the applied voltage used, the applied pressure, the

residence time and the starting moisture content of the sample. These

results also showed an efficiency gain by using this process in speeding up

the flow rate of the filtration process and less negative impact on the

quality compounds within the foodstuff and also an efficiency gain by the

saving in power used by up to 50%or more, compared to the power

consumption of existing thermal methods.

Prapimphan Chiengkul Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick

Community land title deeds (CLTDs) and the Land Reform Network in

Thailand

For the past 10-15 years in Thailand, there have been hundreds of

cases of occupation of un-utilised land in the form of community land title

deeds (CLTDs), mainly for agricultural purposes. This poster draws on

qualitative interviews of people involved in the promotion and

implementation of CLTDs and sustainable agriculture in Thailand, as well

as secondary sources in the Thai language that are collected during a field

research in Thailand from October 2012 to February 2013. It is a case

study which forms part of an ongoing PhD thesis calls "Hegemony and

counter-hegemony in the agri-food system in Thailand (1990s to

present)".

First, the poster covers some of the main principles, origins and

development of the Land Reform movement, as well as actual practices

of CLTDs in different communities in Thailand. CLTDs were designed to

prevent land grabs by not allowing land controlled by the community to

be sold to people outside of the community who do not work the land, as

CLTDs are meant to safeguard agricultural land for small-scale farmers for

the development of sustainable agricultural food production. People in

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the community are allocated some private plots of land for agricultural

purposes while land usage as a whole, both private and common, is

governed by community rules that are established through democratic

means. CLTDs contest the primacy of the private property system, using

inspirations from pre-capitalist norms of the governance of common pool

resources (Na-moo rights). The people involved in the movement have

also drawn inspirations from other sources, such as from the socialist

struggles in Thailand in the 1970s, Via Campesina, and the experiences of

the Brazil's landless workers' movement (MST). In many ways, CLTDs

initiatives have positive influences on their members, local communities,

sustainable agriculture development and on civil society in the country.

Second, the poster summarises main challenges facing the

implementation of CLTDs, and in using CLTDs as stepping stones to

strengthen sustainable agriculture movement in Thailand. Challenges

include, for example, how the Thai state resisted having to de-centralise

political-economic power, how CLTDs might be suitable only where there

is still a sense of community, and how there are still no national plan to

safeguard prime agricultural land for food security purposes. In addition,

sustainable agriculture requires a lot of knowledge, time and labour;

hence it is very difficult for small-scale farmers to switch to such

production methods, as they are concerned with short-term economic

survival.

Marika Mura Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick

Separating the wheat from the chaff: Observations on food insecurity and farmers’ action in rural Tanzania

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Sarah Goler Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick

Living Life Like a Varenyk in Sour Cream: The evolution and meaning of cooking, eating and food security in Ukraine

This poster details a project funded by the Warwick Lord Rootes

Memorial Fund that enabled me to travel through Ukraine to document

personal stories of cooking and eating for three weeks from September

18th to October 8th, 2012. The finished product is a written and

photographic narrative cookbook that includes 24 personal recipes and

explores different Ukrainian culinary traditions and culture, with a special

focus on varenyky, and issues confronting food and agriculture in the

country.

Varenyky are more than dough-stuffed dumplings similar to Polish pierogi.

The endless variety of seasonal and regional fillings – mashed beans,

buckwheat, grilled mushrooms, sour cherries, potatoes, cabbage (fresh or

pickled), you name it - distinguishes them from their dumpling-cousins in

other countries. Practically revered by Ukrainians, varenyky are also

featured in countless sayings, folk tales and riddles. Monuments are

erected in their name, such as one featuring a giant bowl of halušky in the

city of Poltava.

To express desire for someone to ‘live life like a varenyk in sour cream’ is

to wish for them to have an easy life, something that has not been the

case for most Ukrainian’s throughout the country’s history. The project

explored the changes that people of Ukraine have encountered with

regards to their eating practices, as a result of political and economic

changes. I interviewed volunteers of both older and younger generations

to see how societal changes and perceptions of their own food security

are reflected through narratives of cooking and eating, and how

Ukrainian cooking has evolved from pre to post-Soviet times.

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Ukraine’s history, culture and evolving position as future global food

guarantor is fascinating. Its geopolitical position has caused it to be torn

between dominating neighbors in the east and west. But this turbulent

history has contributed to a vibrant, strong and unique culture, and a

specifically interesting approach to food. Ukrainians have had to weather

famines and scarcity, and adjust to a wide range of political, social and

economic changes. People have had to be inventive in order to feed

themselves, and many practices including jarring, pickling and home

gardening are still an important part of everyday life.

At the same time, Ukraine is considered in the minds of many to be a

bastion of agrarianism and traditional rural lifestyles. Upholding its

‘breadbasket’ reputation, a majority of its land is still devoted to growing

food. Today the world focuses on Ukraine as it recently joined the United

Nations Program on Food Security and is one of only a few countries

projected to be able to help maintain global food demands in the future.

This is especially crucial when food landscapes are changing all over the

world, with less people employed in agriculture and technology replacing

previously labor-intensive work. Agriculture and food issues are at the top

of government agendas as issues of food security are of constant concern

in a growing and continuously prosperous world.

A copy of the project report and cookbook may be found on the Lord

Rootes Memorial Fund Website:

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/insite/topic/teachinglearning/rootes/pastpr

ojects/projects2012