Looking ahead to new horizons

After an excellent Relu "New horizons in animal and plant disease" event in London last week I am just beginning to look at all the rich material from the discussions. We were extremely fortunate that senior people from policy making organisations were willing to give up their time - and also people very much at the sharp end of putting policies into practice. It was a great opportunity for our researchers to discuss the real-life implications of their findings with a diverse group of stakeholders, and an intensive day for everyone involved. Our team of note-takers worked extremely hard, and they deserve special thanks. The themes ranged from who should take responsibility for disease to how we should rethink our approach for the 21st century. Now I will be working on a Relu briefing paper drawing on the discussions from the day. It will be challenging, but I hope the results will be interesting.

Now wash your hands please

Who takes the rap if you get a nasty dose of diarrhoea after visiting your local swimming pool? Or you are bitten by a tick in your local park and develop Lyme disease? Or your child is infected with E coli at a farm open day? Like so many things in life, it's complicated. But local authorities have responsibilities in these and many more areas relating to animal and zoonotic disease. With global warming there will probably be new and more varied diseases reaching our shores and the people at the front line - who may be in many different departments of local government - need the most up to date information to help them combat such threats. Relu's latest policy and practice note will help - it draws on the latest research from the programme and shows how it is relevant to local authority responsibilities.

Making a splash with slurry

It's always a thrill for a townie like me to make it into the pages of Farmers' Weekly, particularly if I can mention something like slurry and sound like a genuine country person. My Talking Point article that appeared in the magazine on Friday 22 April was trying to persuade farmers to think seriously about farm-scale anaerobic digestion. Of course I can't claim any personal expertise on this. The article drew on the research that Professor Charles Banks and his team have been carrying out in the Relu programme, and an opinion piece is a good way of getting the results talked about. So I'm just doing my job and encouraging knowledge exchange. But I do genuinely think it's time we thought more seriously about this technology. It's not just about slurry. The amount of food we waste is scandalous. Since the 2001 outbreak of Foot and Mouth we can't feed waste food to pigs - but surely feeding it to an anaerobic digester would provide some kind of alternative?

What is the cost of clean waterways for farming communities?

Is it fair for farmers to bear the financial cost of cleaning up rivers for town dwellers to enjoy? According to Relu research, that could be the unintended consequence of implementing the European Water Framework Directive. Policies that drive land use changes to reduce pollution of waterways could have serious economic consequences, not just for farmers but for whole rural communities, and the research suggests that in general it would be towns that benefit. Putting a value on the benefits we derive from the natural world is always difficult, but it is important that all these aspects are costed in, not just the ones that are bought and sold on the market. And we have to take into account how these vary across different geographical areas. The encouraging news is that this projest has devised a model that will enable policymakers to do just that, meaning environmental investments can be targeted more effectively, to ensure that everyone gets the maximum value for money. So it's not just the people with pleasure boats, or indeed just the farmers, who benefit. http://www.relu.ac.uk/news/policy/%20and%20practice%20notes/28%20Bateman/Bateman

If you go down to the woods today....

Everyone knows that the countryside is a benign place that does you good. Exercise makes your heart healthier, green spaces made your head healthier - it's obvious. But the countryside is full of animals, and just occasionally you might catch something nasty from them - E coli from cowpats, Lyme disease from tick bites, Weil's disease from rat urine. We can hardly blame the land manager on the country estate who puts up warning signs, in an attempt to deflect any legal action, but that may just put you off your picnic without doing any real good. Research from Relu's Assessing and Communicating Animal Disease Risks for Countryside Users project confirms what we all suspected - giving people information simply isn't enough to alter their behaviour. But if we can persuade visitors to make small changes, it would make a big difference in helping them to avoid infection. Achieving that will require a more structured approach - visitors need the right kind of communication, in the right form, at the right time. It's no good seeing a big poster telling you to wear long trousers to avoid tick bites when the whole family has arrived for their day out wearing shorts. They also have to see good practice in action - if the park ranger is wearing long trousers and a long-sleeved shirt they are more likely to follow that example. If someone has been bitten by a tick, they need to know what to do and have the means available - removing the tick promptly with an appropriate pair of tweezers will remove the risk of getting Lyme disease almost completely. In order to provide communication that really will be effective, we need land managers and health authorities to pool their expertise. An authoritative knowledge base, available for all organisations to draw upon, could be a big step forward in protecting the public from zoonotic disease. http://www.relu.ac.uk/news/policy%20and%20practice%20notes/27%20Quine/PPN%2027%20v2.pdf

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?

The sweet smell of successful anaerobic digestion

Ambridge’s plans for a farm-scale anaerobic digester came to naught, but perhaps they could have been viable if dodgy Matt Crawford hadn’t tried to get his finger into the pie. Brookfield’s milking parlour might even have been able to operate by recycling slurry from the cows. And maybe rather than taking against the whole scheme because of fears about land being taken out of food production, Pat and Tony Archer should have thought about setting up their own digester to process crop waste and slurry. It could have been a useful source of organic fertiliser for Bridge Farm. But anaerobic digestion doesn’t have to be fictional. Charles Banks and his team have been able to demonstrate that it could be a real-life, economically viable diversification strategy for arable and dairy farms. Where are the farmer-entrepreneurs who could make it happen in the real world? There must be some who could make it work – and it needn't involve going into partnership with Matt Crawford. http://www.relu.ac.uk/news/policy%20and%20practice%20notes/26%20Banks/PPN26.pdf