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

How can local government make it big in society?

The stated aim of the Government's new localism legislation is intended to shift power from central government to individuals and communities but how is this to be done? Local authorities will have to engage much more closely with residents if "Big Society" is ever to become a reality. Newsletters through doors aren't going to be enough (and they may be the first things to be cut in this time of austerity). It's going to take commitment, imagination and robust feedback mechanisms to give people a real stake and make them respond. So, at a time when resources are being cut, how is this kind of engagement to be achieved? There aren't any magic solutions but a recent policy and practice note for local government offers some useful pointers from Relu research.

1970s revisited?

Some of us are old enough to remember the 1970s and although Led Zeppelin, platform soles, and flared trousers may feature more vividly in those memories, there is also Dutch Elm Disease and the sad loss of these once ubiquitous trees. At the time it seemed as though the authorities could not quite believe the potential consequences of the infection but, as it became an epidemic, more and more elegant, and often ancient, giants sickened and died. Many people felt it as a very personal loss as they had to come to terms with the scars on much-loved landscapes. The idea that we could be revisited by tree diseases on a similar scale is alarming. But in the present era of austerity are we prepared to expend the necessary resources to protect our landscapes and heritage gardens from new threats? It is certainly a question that merits debate, as Relu's Policy and Practice Note No 25 shows all too clearly.

Would a written charter for land use help to create Big Society?

Most farmers accept the responsibilities that go along with the rights of land ownership. Many would say that they hold land in trust, not just for themselves and their families, but for their communities and for the nation. We certainly depend on them to preserve our iconic landscapes and to keep the land in good heart for future generations. But there are increasing pressures on each piece of land in our crowded world. How can it provide everything we need: food, timber, clean water, carbon storage, space for leisure, physical and mental well-being? Is it possible to create a framework that would integrate these different demands, within a "Big Society" model? The Relu programme provides some interesting examples of collaborative action. In Loweswater landowners have come together with academics to address the problem of algal bloom in the lake; in Pickering a "competency group" of local people and academics has created innovative computer models of flood risk, and resulted in a new solutions being piloted that could protect the town, without spending large sums of money. But is this kind of success specific to particular places and groups of people or could it be repeated elsewhere? Relu's new briefing paper, based on the programme's response to the recent Governement White Paper on the environment, takes a look at these questions and suggests that a written charter for land use that draws on this kind of research could help to enable integrated management of these vital resources. http://www.relu.ac.uk/news/briefings/BRIF13/NatureofEngland.pdf

Nature red in tooth and claw

Is nature benign or malign? If I go for a relaxing walk in the country on a sunny day I might assume that is good for my mental and physical health - and I'm probably right, most of the time. But what if I slip and fall into a cowpat that is full of E coli O157? Or I'm bitten by a tick and it infects me with Lyme Disease? Whose fault is it if I become ill? Should someone have warned me to take care, or is it all my own fault for not examining myself for ticks and picking them off with tweezers? Washing the cow excrement off my hands might have prevented me getting E coli but where is the washbasin in the middle of that farmer's field? Relu projects wrestled with these and even more complex problems at a risk workshop in York over the past couple of days. Perhaps I'm glad I live in the town after all. http://www.relu.ac.uk/research/Animal%20and%20Plant%20Disease/Animal%20and%20Plant%20Disease.html