Dear Beth, the Soil Association may be able to help. There is a guy farming veg on land near Pangbourne who is using green manures (nothing associated with livestock) and runs a box scheme.He has a wealth of knowledge about rotations and organic pest control. I don't know how much of it is in his head. It would be a shame for this note to be entirely written by academics without involving some practitioners and industry bodies such as the SA. There is a lot of applied knowledge out there. It would be great to get some of it formally recorded - I don't know how much of it is. Otherwise it is the agribusiness companies that then brand everything and control what goes out and this is not what we need.

The guy at Pangbourne: see http://www.tolhurstorganic.co.uk/about-us/

Unfortunately all these types of enterprises are threatened by food and agribusiness  which is exerting such control over suppliers to make small producers unable to compete. I have seen one perfectly good business closed down as a result of supermarket contracts changing - forcing farmers to go through a single wholesaler thus cutting margins and making horticultural crops uneconomic. 

Sue

Sue Everett MCIEEM, PG Dip Arch: AEES
Ecology and Sustainability Adviser
Editor: Conservation News, British WIldife


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On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 4:21 PM, Barbara Smith <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Please find an email from Beth with an opportunity to contribute to a POSTnote.

 

Barbara

 

From: BROCKETT, Beth [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 17 September 2014 16:09
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Enquiry for the BES AEG

 

Dear Barbara

 

I hope this email finds you well.

 

I am the new BES Fellow in the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (for 3 months) and I am preparing a briefing note (or ‘POSTnote’ - more information here) on the topic ‘Reducing greenhouse-gas emissions from agricultural crops’ – with a focus on arable & horticultural cropping. I am emailing you to ask if you would mind sending this email out to the AEG in case any of the members specialise in this topic and would like to contribute. My academic interviewee list so far doesn’t include many specialists in agricultural systems in transition economies and less developed regions, and I also have a paucity of horticultural specialists in this topic area – so would be especially keen to hear from them.

 

I attach the POSTnote scope.

 

Best wishes, Beth Brockett

 

British Ecological Society Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology Fellow

020 7219 1862

 

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