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SAMKUL-Samfunnsutviklingens kulturell

Frogs, fuel, finance or food? Cultures, values, ethics, arguments and justifications in the management of agricultural land (FORFOOD)

Awarded: NOK 9.3 mill.

Farmland is an important but, limited resource that we rely upon to grow plants for food and feed. These areas are, however, exposed to ever more competition for its use. Urbanization with housing construction, business development, infrastructure development are important competitors for the land. Food production also competes against other productions, such as plants for energy (e.g. biofuels), protection of endangered species, cultural values, or climate. Agricultural interests, environmental interests, economic and political interests have different and potentially contradictory approaches to the same land when food production competes with a ?red-listed? salamander, with multinational companies, or local politics. To put it bluntly, one might ask: Are frogs and fuel worth more than farmland? FORFOOD has studied how culture, values, ethics, argumentation and reasons have influenced the management of agricultural land in the past, present and future. FORFOOD contributes to a better understanding of how resource hierarchies are culturally constructed when different interests and agendas compete for agricultural resources, and the ethical challenges that arise in, between and within the various hierarchies. Analyses in FORFOOD are based on empirical material such as interview and observation data, as well as text from public and private organizations and from the media. FORFOOD has completed fieldwork in Norway, Canada, Australia and the global organization FAO (UN Food and Agriculture Organization). The analyses show that the major societal challenges that gained renewed focus during the financial and food crisis in 2007/2008 had major impact both politically and in civil society. On the one hand, we see that concepts and arguments about food safety, as well as access to enough and healthy food, which were previously linked to Low-Income Countries, have been renewed in the High-Income Countries. On the other hand, we see that the challenges trigger the creation of new alliances between sectoral and national interests. Government interests unite with the private sector and philanthropic actors for the development of food production in Low-Income Countries, while environmentalists and peasants work together to protection land resources in High-Income Countries. This is also expressed as a common struggle for the protection of the non-renewable natural resource of farmland. Nevertheless, we see that economic actors play an increasingly important role in land management for various purposes that provide financial benefits and quick profits. Economic values conquer other values in a short-term management perspective. We might ask: Who is responsible for taking care of the resources for the future? Climate change, environmental degradation, increasing populations, urbanisation, poverty and power relations, as well as conflict and war, challenge everybody's ability to produce and distribute an adequate volume of healthy and timely food to the world's population. Farmland is still the most important resource for food production, and availability is crucial. FORFOOD has analysed ways that culture creates and transforms discourse and practices in land governance and provides new knowledge to decision makers, civil society, economic actors and researchers about the ethical, moral and value-based factors in play in this empirical field of business and property rights. FORFOOD offers tools from humanities and social sciences that can help management, politicians and community actors to think in both short and long terms about natural resources and their ethics, morals and responsibilities. This requires decision-makers to extend the scope of their management obligations not only in time, but also beyond national borders and beyond human beings - and challenge prevailing discourses about economic growth and human prosperity in competition with the rights of nature. Hence, FORFOOD complement and challenge the dominant financial and economic ideologies and practices in the field of agriculture and land use. Our recommendation for area planners, politicians and other decision makers is that as long as the economic and cultural valuation of farmland in its own right is low, it must be seen in conjunction with other interests to ensure the effective achievement of farmland preservation goals. http://forfood.bygdeforskning.no/

Agricultural land is a vital yet limited resource. We depend upon it for food production, but it is also in direct competition with other land-based activities, such as housing, infrastructure, mining, investment, carbon off-setting, nature conservation a nd industry. This competition has direct impacts for national and international food security. The spectre of food insecurity is also intensified by the combination of global population growth, environmental degradation, climate change and excessive marke t speculation - or land-grabbing - of agricultural assets. The overarching objective of FORFOOD is to explore how culture, values, ethics, arguments and justifications influence decisions related to management of agricultural land in the recent past, the present and in the future. The project employs a case based and comparative approach. Five interrelated work packages lead up to an integrated analysis and discussion through exploration and analyses of the cultural preconditions for or in relation to 1) Maintenance of agricultural land within three nature resource-based economies; Norway, Australia and Canada 2) Land preservation in environmental politics 3) The Norwegian pension fund's investment in agricultural land abroad 4) Ethical valuation in ag ricultural land governance and 5) Frogs, fuel, finance and food in new global land use. The project will benefit from a multidisciplinary, international research team and a broad range of perspectives and approaches. Situational analysis is a methodologic al design for multi-site research, combining a discourse analytical approach with a grounded theory approach. Such analysis will be employed to capture the cultural prerequisites for thought, communication, action and meaning-making across different actor s and locations related to management of agricultural land.

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SAMKUL-Samfunnsutviklingens kulturell