CCRI is the largest specialist rural research centre in the UK, having expertise in all aspects of research in policy and planning for the countryside and the environment of the UK, Europe and further afield.
CCRI, with University of Exeter, has recently started working on a project for Natural England to develop methods for monitoring and evaluating the social outcomes of agri-environment schemes.
For the past five years, the RECARE project has been working with stakeholders across Europe to develop a new way of saving the soil. As the project ends, it is presenting the accumulated learning from its research to policymakers in the cities, regions and nations of Europe as well as international bodies.
The urgency of this mission is underscored by recent UN reports highlighting the role that agriculture plays in climate change and how sustainable agriculture is going to be necessary to secure food production as well as liveable landscapes under climatic change.
As the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation uses World Soil Day to raise awareness about soil health, it may come as little surprise to find out that soil doesn’t just impact our food supplies, it also helps clean water and lower risks of floods and droughts. More surprising is the SoilCare team’s efforts to treat profitability for farmers as a central priority – a consideration many research projects on environmental health overlook.
A forum led by the Royal Agricultural University (RAU) and the Countryside and Community Research Institute (CCRI) to support farmer-led initiatives and fresh thinking on policy issues welcomed representatives from over a dozen organisations
Our third and final blog post related to rural women comes from Hannah Chiswell (right). As one of the newest members of the CCRI team, she reflects on becoming a rural geographer and her experiences on the way where she has encountered many inspirational women in rural environments.
Last week on 15th October it was International Rural Women Day and Julie Urquhart provided an overview of her journey into rural academia. This week we will hear from Katarina Kubinakova who will discuss the role of women with regard to rural development and how they are regularly the ones who are key to the success of an initiative or project.
Mauro Vigani is at the 30th International Conference of Agricultural Economists, the tri-annual conference of the International Association of Agricultural Economists (IAAE), where he is presenting a paper.
CCRI researcher, Hannah Chiswell, has been awarded a visiting scholarship by the Ruralia Institute, University of Helsinki, at their Seinäjoki campus in western Finland.
Media coverage for University of Gloucestershire researchers explore the resilience of UK arable farming
The CCRI has announced that it will be holding a Rural Policy workshop linked to Brexit on Thursday, 29th March, 2018. The workshop, which is free to attend, seeks to build on ideas from a range of industry experts, practitioners and existing discussions to identify priorities and ways to embed them into policy thinking, and ultimately action, so that food, farming and environment policy is fit for the challenges that lie ahead in the next 70 years.