Looking back at six years of fun

As 2012 draws to a close and the end of Relu itself looms in March 2013, I have been looking back at my own experience of working on the programme.  I was appointed in January 2007, and there are two things that our Director Philip Lowe said to me in that first year that have coloured my view of my job ever since.  First, not long after I came to work in the Centre for Rural Economy, there was some discussion about our meeting room and who within the university should be able to book this resource.  Philip was adamant that the meeting room must be available to researchers within CRE because “It’s our research lab.  At any time one of might have a brilliant idea and we will want to rush in there to discuss it.”  This was slightly intimidating as I wasn’t sure how many brilliant, light-bulb moments I might be able to initiate, but also tremendously exciting.  I knew this was going to be a great place to work.  The second comment from Philip that has stuck in my mind referred to our forward planning for Relu.  He said: “We have to meet all the research councils’ requirements of the programme, but the really important thing is that we have fun at the same time.”  I think we have managed to do both over the past six years.  I also have the impression that Relu has generally been a positive experience for the academics who carried out the research.  It has certainly felt like a genuine community of minds.  As one prominent member of this community commented last week “Life will seem strange without Relu!”  But, of course, the world moves on, and already both academics and stakeholders are building on the outcomes of the programme.   The independent evaluation of the programme’s impact commissioned by ESRC couldn’t have been more positive, so I think all involved are entitled to feel a sense of achievement.    My colleagues Philip Lowe and Jeremy Phillipson deserve a very particular mention.   Working with them is a privilege and I was particularly pleased to see that Philip’s huge contribution to rural studies and to the interdisciplinary Relu programme has just been recognised by the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry.  He will be presented with the prestigious Bertebos Prize by the King of Sweden on 28 January.  I know everyone in the Relu community will want to congratulate him.  Merry Christmas and a happy new year.  I'll see you in 2013.

Bridging the Ambridge divide

Before I came to work on rural research, I didn’t give much thought to the range of different skills that the farmer needs to access in order to run a farm efficiently.  Although I’m a regular listener to The Archers, all those references to land agents, agronomists and ecologists rather passed me by.  It didn’t help that land agent Graham Ryder was, for many years the most boring character in the serial.  As for Alistair Lloyd the vet, I was more interested in his relationship with Shula Hebden (nee Archer) than his farm health planning sessions with David Archer.  But over recent years even I have become aware of the complex challenges that the farmers of Ambridge are facing and their need for increasingly specialist knowledge across a wide range of professions.  Unpredictable weather has become a fact of life, even in Borsetshire.  The unprecedented wet summer and its effects have been written into the script and although we haven’t heard any discussions about its possible causes I’m sure that Brian and Pat have been locking horns over climate change in the Bull.  An ecologist was key in advising Willow Farm on a new eco-friendly reed bed solution to livestock waste disposal.  Meanwhile, over at Brookfield, David and Ruth Archer took specialist advice on their milk production, in the face of dwindling profits, and are now moving to autumn calving.  It’s a good time to be an independent consultant in Borsetshire, as everyone seems to be seeking their expertise.  Modern farming involves so many different professions, I just hope they are all working together on their project planning.  In fact I can’t help thinking that our new Landbridge networking site for rural professionals could help them to do just that.  And having now met several land agents who are very far from boring, I wonder whether logging into Landbridge might widen even Graham Ryder’s horizons.

Who is paying to keep our drinking water clean?

When I was walking in the countryside in the south of England some years ago I came across a river where half a dozen cows were wading upstream, grazing on the reeds that were growing in the water.  I'm an unreconstructed townie and the scene struck me at the time as both bucolic and charming.  It was just like a Constable painting.  I didn’t consider for a moment the damage that those cows might be doing to the river, or the ways in which they might be polluting the water.  That was in another life.  Since then I have worked with scientists on the Demonstration Test Catchment projects and learnt something of how cattle poach riverbanks, resulting in sediment entering the stream, affecting the whole ecosystem of the waterway.  I know that those cows were also depositing their urine and faeces directly into the river, and that this encourages the growth of some organisms at the expense of others, with effects that cascade through the food web, with serious consquences for fish and mammals.   From a human perspective, if water was being abstracted for the public supply, it meant there were added costs for the water company and their customers.  So perhaps this wasn’t such a charming sight after all.  Should the farmer have allowed the cows to access the river?  Wouldn’t it have been more responsible to fence them in?  From the point of view of the consumers who have to drink the water, that’s probably true.  I don’t much like the thought of water that has been polluted by cattle coming out of the tap in my kitchen, even if it has been purified.  But fencing is expensive, and if the cows can’t drink from the river, they will also need a drinking trough.  Who is going to pay for that infrastructure?  It’s a big investment for any farmer.  But, at the moment, the water company is paying to cleaning up the supply and passing the cost on to consumers.  Perhaps it would be more efficient and sensible for the consumer to pay for some fencing to keep the cattle out of the river?  As with most things in life, somebody somewhere has to pay, and perhaps we need a more high-profile debate on where the costs should fall for this kind of public good.

Tell me a story and don't make it too scary...

When I was a child nuclear war seemed like a very real possibility if things were to go badly between the powerful nations of the world.  Although I was too young to understand all the implications of the Cuban Missile Crisis, we all knew something serious was happening.  Throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and into the 1980s, it was a threat that bubbled up regularly into the public consciousness.  Although there might have been disagreements about the likelihood of nuclear weapons being deployed, people seemed to accept that if they were, the consequences could be life-changing and might lead to the devastation of the planet.  Would any country take on responsibility for such terrible actions?  The effects of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki still resonated and the Aldermaston marches provided a focus for protest. 

When I was at the Living With EnvironmentalChange conference this week on “Supporting the Journey to Adaptation”, I was struck at how environmental concerns have filled that “fear niche” for some of us while others seem to remain oblivious.  Although more countries now have nuclear bombs, the end of the Cold War has removed that most immediate threat.  Dystopian literature has moved on from nuclear to environmental disaster.  The difference in the present situation is that perceptions of such a threat, and any notion of responsibility, vary so much across the population.  In the conference hall few would, I think, have denied the seriousness of the situation.  We saw stark statistics laid out in powerpoint slides by distinguished climate scientists.  Although probably not everyone agreed on the likely speed of environmental change, there was no denial of the need for action, for a journey towards both mitigation and adaptation. 

However, we also heard from social science researchers who played us some clips of interviews with “real people”.  They were confused, unconvinced, unwilling to buy into action that the scientists saw as essential.  Uncertainty expressed in scientific results, and taken for granted by researchers as part of the scientific process, is viewed by the public with frank suspicion.

We see this every day in the media and in life.  Recently I encountered one obviously intelligent man who maintained that climate change is a conspiracy by scientists to create jobs for themselves.  It is difficult to counter this kind of world view.  So how can we hope to change behaviour and, as a society, embark on that journey to adaptation, let alone achieve any mitigation?  For me, the most encouraging session at the conference was a session on digital storytelling.  This was a shining example of the benefits of bringing arts and science together, to tell real people’s stories.  By bringing global climate change to a local level, through personal experience, we might help the wider public to understand the part everyone plays.  I have not met many farmers, for example, who would deny that the climate is changing.  Even if they might argue about the causes, they see the consequences in their everyday experience.  Personal testimony isn’t just a fluffy and non-scientific, anecdotal approach.  Stories are always powerful and, as communicators, we could make more use of them.  They make big realities more manageable.

 

Is ash dieback the wakeup call we need for biosecurity?

Trees are suddenly high on the public agenda.  We take them and their contribution to our landscapes and ecology very much for granted, until they are under threat.  For anyone old enough to remember the ravages of Dutch elm disease in the 1970s, the current debate about ash dieback has particular resonances.  But why have we been taken so much by surprise?  Ash dieback is one of many diseases that are currently affecting our native woodland and moorlands.  Policymakers and stakeholder organisations have known for several years that these problems are increasing.  The first interdisciplinary research into plant disease was carried out by researchers working within the Relu programme and “Growing Concerns: animal and plant disease policy for the 21^st century” was published just over a year ago.  Several themes emerged very strongly in this policy briefing paper: animal and plant diseases are also spread by people, so we need to understand human behaviour as well as the science of pathogens; public awareness of these problems is low and consequently there is little willingness to pay for biosecurity measures; environmental change is likely to exacerbate the problems; international trade poses particular challenges.  It is also very unclear where responsibility for either implementing precautionary measures or meeting potential financial losses should lie, particularly when the horticulture industry is very disparate and involves many small companies.  Global supply chains are often long and complex, with many stakeholders involved, so it can be difficult to pinpoint failings.  But the paper does make the point that we have sources from which policymakers can learn, including experience gained in dealing with animal disease.  Researchers have urged a more rounded response, including a thorough analysis of socio-economic drivers and how it affects human behaviour, alongside technical assessments of diseases.  We know that stakeholders’ responses may, sometimes unwittingly, exacerbate risk or limit the effectiveness of precautionary measures.  Flexibility is also called for, as threats change all the time.  It may be, as some commentators suggest, that we are already too late to save our ash trees.  A more optimistic response would be that at last we do have the level of public awareness we need in order to have an effective debate about the wider questions of plant biosecurity. Perhaps we need to seize that opportunity now and decide where our priorities lie: free global trade, protection of our native flora, or crop and food security.  We also need to decide who should take on responsibility for biosecurity and its failures.

Memory and Prediction in Tree  Disease Control PPN 25 http://www.relu.ac.uk/news/policy%20and%20practice%20notes/25%20Potter/PPN25.pdf

Plant Disease Risk, Management and Policy Formulation PPN 31

http://www.relu.ac.uk/news/policy%20and%20practice%20notes/Mills%2031/PPN31%20Mills.pdf    

Mackintosh, umbrella, or just chance it?

When the weather forecaster says that “there is a twenty per cent chance of rain tomorrow” do you put on a mackintosh?  Or do you assume that you’ll be ok without a coat, because a twenty per cent chance seems pretty low?  Many of us view the weather forecast with scepticism but still complain vociferously when it seems as though the forecaster has got it wrong.  In fact modern forecasts are remarkably accurate.  If conditions don’t measure up to our expectations it’s often because of geographical variability or timing, factors that are difficult to forecast with precision.   But we also don’t seem to be very good at understanding uncertainty.  We expect the forecast to be just that, a definite prediction of the future.  Of course, in reality, it can only be modelled on what is happening at the moment.  Poor Michael Fish will always be remembered as the forecaster who denied that there was going to be a hurricane, even though he did say that it was going to be windy.  When serious damage, injury and even death ensue, questions about “fault” emerge, of course.  We have seen that very clearly in Italy this week.  Six scientists and a government official have been found guilty of manslaughter and imprisoned because they failed to foresee a major earthquake that struck the town of l’Aquila in 2009.  This is very shocking to fellow scientists who understand all too well how difficult it is to predict earthquakes with accuracy.  Such predictions always carry a large margin of uncertainty.  One effect of the verdict is likely to be that researchers will be unwilling to advise governments or to take part in public communications exercises in the future.  But were the scientists perhaps to blame in the way they communicated?  It may be that at the public meeting where they talked about risk they did sound too reassuring.  Or, alternatively, was the audience predisposed to hear the reassuring words, rather than the caveats that the scientists insist were included?  Just as we would rather think that a twenty per cent chance of rain means we don’t need a mackintosh after all.  But in reality it would probably be wise to pick up an umbrella, just in case, and think ourselves lucky that we don't have to worry about earthquakes in the UK.

Counting the angels on the head of a pin

As a communicator rather than an academic I have, at times, found some of the debates going on around me mystifying and, to be honest, a bit pretentious.  "What is knowledge?" seems to be a favourite one and "when does information become knowledge?" is another.  I sometimes think I'm listening to arguments over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.  But, over the past five years, as I have been engaged in the reality of disseminating results from the research, the issues become more concrete.  Researchers are usually striving to answer important questions that would help real people in the real world.  Often they might be producing lots of data or information, but it isn't necessarily emerging in a form that is going to be useable by potential audiences.  The Relu programme was designed to address this gap by engaging potential knowledge users from the very outset, and I think that we have achieved a great deal.  But we still aren't perfect by any means.  Projects have gone to great lengths to ensure knowledge exchange takes place, with advisory panels and events that facilitate the process, at programme level we have targeted users very strategically and our publications aim to provide information in the right form.  As a result, I think we do better than many research programmes have managed in the past.  But, although the gap between knowledge production and application is growing smaller, it's often still there.  Representatives ask those "simple" questions, and researchers look surprised, because they have produced the results and published them in an academic journal, and that, surely, is all they are being paid to do?  They have a point; too often there's no money in the budget for doing anything else.  And how much effort and resources are policy makers and organisations putting into drawing out the information they say they need?   It's very variable. Whatever your point of view on these questions, it isn't going to solve the problem, particularly in these straitened times.  The reality is, however, that research which goes nowhere beyond the academic journal isn't benefiting anyone, except possibly the researcher and his/her career.  Even that may cease to be the case as we all strive to measure that elusive "impact" for Research Excellence Framework, or REF.  So perhaps we do need to put a bit more thought into the philosophical question "what is knowledge"? and how all that data is going to be turned into useful information when designing research proposals.