Thursday 3 March 2011

Relu rules KE!

Yesterday was taken up by a cross-country trek to Birmingham for the first team meeting of a new project, being funded by Defra, to improve knowledge exchange across and beyond their Demonstration Test Catchments. For people like me who don't know anything about this kind of thing (and definitely don't know the acronyms) - there are three "DTC"s http://ww2.defra.gov.uk/news/2010/09/28/agriculture-news/- the Wensum, the Avon and the Eden, and three research teams are pondering the question of whether farmers can go on producing as much food as we need while reducing the pollution caused by agriculture. It's a tough challenge, but if they can find some potential answers then we need to get those applied as widely as possible. The knowledge exchange project will be aiming to find the most effective ways of sharing the lessons. It's not a Relu project - but it could be "Son of Relu" in its approach - interdisciplinary, involving stakeholders as equal partners and looking for ways to involve them in the process of knowledge production. It was fascinating to hear about how farmers are taking readings of run-off on their own land, and how powerful this can be in making that connection between pollution levels and land management strategies. For me, it underlines how influential the Relu approach has become. But I would say that, wouldn't I?

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