Landscapes

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 [email protected] or https://bsky.app/profile/adamcalo.bsky.social 

Music by Blue Dot Sessions: “Kilkerrin” by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue).

The Netherlands is a world leader in the industrial model of agriculture with speculation-driven land prices to match. Dido van Oosten of Stitchting Kapitaloceen presents a strategy for unravelling entrenched land relations from within a place where property is sacred.

Episode Links

• Nicholas Blomley: Performing Property: Making the World
• Mietshäuser Syndikat
• De Warmonderhof training program
• Land van Ons
• Vrijcoop collective housing project

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 [email protected] 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 [email protected] or https://bsky.app/profile/adamcalo.bsky.social 

Music by Blue Dot Sessions: “Kilkerrin” by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue).

A recent wave of sustainability claims confidently dictate how, for what, and where we ought to use land for climate mitigation and biodiversity conservation. Nikki Yoxall, a self proclaimed regenerative landscape manager walks through her thinking on land use decision making and responds to these critiques.

Episode Links

• Food without agriculture, Nature Sustainability 
• Guthman on the problems with localism
• DeLind on the problems with localism
• Phil Loring – deeper meaning of regen ag
• Understanding Ag team in the US
• Paige Stanley’s rangelands research
• Pasture for Life
• Remembering David Stanley
• Carbon Cowboys Network
• Samantha Mosier article on evidence of benefits of Adaptive Multi-Paddock Grazing
• Soilmentor 
• Highlands Rewilding
• Hannah Ritchie introducing her new book
• An environmentalist gets lunch – Hannah Ritchie
• The Cruel Fantasies of Well-Fed People, George Monbiot
• EU project on livestock futures

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 [email protected] 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 [email protected]. 

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).

Reforming property for sustainability requires both innovation in the law as well as in how we relate to land. Legal geography is a conceptual project that describes how law and space interact. Frankie McCarthy (lawyer) and Nicholas Blomley (geographer) discuss property through the legal geography lens.

Episode Links

• Frankie McCarthy

• Nicholas Blomley

• Remember property? Progress in Human Geography

• A Statement of Progressive Property

• State v Shack case

• Performing Property: Making The World. Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence

• The Mystery of Capital. Hernando de Soto

• Why Are We Allowing the Private Sector to Take Over Our Public Works? The New York Times. Brett Christophers

• Blomley on housing justice

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 [email protected]. 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 [email protected]

Music by Blue Dot Sessions: “Kilkerrin” by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue).

Episode Description

Rescinding the practice of human-exceptionalism may be required to treat animals and other non-human species with more grace. But it might also be required to re-orient how we understand how the non-human world operates and thus the decisions we make that may disrupt the order of the multi-species communities we are all part of. Dr. Emma Gardner proposes an "ecological permission structure", or a parallel planning process that takes into account the needs and desires of multi-species communities.

Episode Notes

Dr. Emma Gardner

The Animals of Farthing Wood

Watership Down

Raymond Williams, Problems in Materialism and Culture: Selected Essays 

Safina, C. (2015). Beyond words: What animals think and feel. 

Toad Patrol

Andrew Balmford's summary of land sparing

Land sparers feel their oats

Gardner, E., Sheppard, A., & Bullock, J. (2022). Why biodiversity net gain requires an ecological permission system. Town and Country Planning Association Journal, 391-402.

Freedom of Movement: how do animals get around in our modern world? [Online Event]

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 [email protected]. 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)

An article in Scientific American bringing a science and technology studies lens to Genetically Modified Organisms, provoked louder than normal responses from the pro biotech crowd. What can we learn from the exchange? Dr Andrew Flachs, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Purdue University, studied the role of seeds on farmer livelihoods in rural India as part of his book, Cultivating Knowledge. We discuss the arguments of the article and its malcontents to try and reach a broader understanding of what this debate is really about.

Episode Links

• Andrew Flachs personal website. On Twitter
• Cultivating Knowledge: Biotechnology, Sustainability, and the Human Cost of Cotton Capitalism in India, By Andrew Flachs.
• How Biotech Crops Can Crash and Still Never Fail, by Aniket Aga and Maywa Montenegro de Wit, Scientific American.
• Is Biotechnology Just New Colonialism? Talking Biotech Podcast, Dr. Kevin Folta.
• 'Woke' Scientific American Goes Anti-GMO, American Council on Science and Health, Cameron English.
• Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Sandra Harding.
• A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things, Jason Moore and Raj Patel.
• Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital, Jason Moore
• Works of Sidney Mintz.
• R. Vasavi’s work on the Green Revolution: Harbingers of Rain: Land and life in South Asia. Shadow Space: Suicides and the Predicament of Rural India.
• Paul Robbins’ contributions to the Intended Consequences
• Rock, J. (2019). “We are not starving:” challenging genetically modified seeds and development in Ghana. Culture, Agriculture, Food and Environment, 41(1), 15-23.
• Dowd-Uribe, B. (2014). Engineering yields and inequality? How institutions and agro-ecology shape Bt cotton outcomes in Burkina Faso. Geoforum, 53, 161-171.
• Andrew Flachs and Paul Richards on the role of performance on agricultural systems.
• Indian millet hunger reduction program.
• Learning to Love G.M.O.s, by Jennifer Kahn, The New York Times
• Montenegro de Wit, M., Kapuscinski, A. R., & Fitting, E. (2020). Democratizing CRISPR? Stories, practices, and politics of science and governance on the agricultural gene editing frontier. Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene, 8.
• Genetically Modified Democracy, by Aniket Aga.
• Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resilience and the Black Freedom Movement
• Researchers can restore the American chestnut through genetic engineering. But at what cost? The Counter

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 [email protected]. Music by Blue Dot Sessions: “Kilkerrin” by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue).