{"id":454,"date":"2021-03-05T15:07:58","date_gmt":"2021-03-05T15:07:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/biosmartamazonia\/?p=454"},"modified":"2023-04-21T15:26:06","modified_gmt":"2023-04-21T14:26:06","slug":"cop-26-and-the-doughnut-economics-of-agro-forestry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/biosmartamazonia\/cop-26-and-the-doughnut-economics-of-agro-forestry\/","title":{"rendered":"COP-26 and the doughnut economics of agro-forestry"},"content":{"rendered":"

Written by Andrew Barnes<\/em><\/span> 5th March 2021.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

I call myself an agricultural economist as that\u2019s where my training has been.\u00a0 Over the (many) years of working with Government agencies and NGO\u2019s I\u2019m struck over how flexible I can be and still apportion that term to myself and what I\u2019m doing.\u00a0 Fundamentally it\u2019s about bringing economic thinking to our natural resources with the prime view to supporting livelihoods.\u00a0 Around 15 years ago I began to question some of the fundaments of that discipline as what I\u2019d seen on farms didn\u2019t match the theory I\u2019d been taught.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t get me wrong \u2013 the models work just about right and give us answers that can help – but when put through a magnifying glass, on-the-ground decision making reveals a whole palette of forces at work beyond any economic theory – past habits forced by necessity or the institutions imposing their will on what to do and who benefits looms large in farming decision making.\u00a0 This is just as true for a cattle farmer in the uplands of Scotland as it is for a family farm in the Colombian Amazon. We have employed a range of approaches to unpick this decision-making process, for example playing games to understand their risk perceptions, and they show great variances in both what individuals value and how they respond to outside economic forces.<\/p>\n

What is revealed when the veil is removed of the Colombian farmers we\u2019ve met and surveyed?\u00a0 These are poor -yes, typically with little education \u2013 yes but are also trying to engineer a complex system to support their families first and foremost and also with a pride for their cultural heritage, their identities as cattle farmers and the support for more natural systems.\u00a0 However, there are so many limits to what they can do to thrive as individuals, to give their kids schooling and a bright future.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s nothing new to criticise economics and blame it for all our problems \u2013 giving nature more prominence in our thinking helps.\u00a0 Arguably one of the more popular movements recently is the idea of a Doughnut economy.\u00a0 That is an economy living within its limits but also providing the fundamentals for individuals to thrive in a just society. We can all sign up to this, but we should recognise that some countries have high barriers and low incentives to change their current system.\u00a0 Our job in BioSmart is to navigate that course to encourage more uptake of silvopastoral farming to meet social and individual goals but this is to similarly low-income farmers also led by seemingly immovable objects.<\/p>\n

To much pride, the UN COP-26 meets in my adopted home country this year and one theme is promoting nature-based solutions.\u00a0 I\u2019m expecting the usual set of high-level talks about how we must change the food system, how economics is bad and how damaging agriculture is.\u00a0 But when we take a more real-world view it strikes me that silvopastoral farming in the Amazon should be the embodiment of Doughnut Economy principles \u2013 trees are, after all, a readily, and culturally appropriate solution that is, relatively easy to implement and has benefits \u2013 but I doubt any farmer we met would know what the term means.<\/p>\n

Our work in BioSmart is to understand how silvopastoral systems can be scaled up and we have a whole set of tested policies and approaches to encourage uptake but when individuals are so different and have differing needs and desires, the scale of the challenge can be overwhelming.\u00a0 All we can do is learn from our mistakes and promote the local over the global as best we can to provide a basis for change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written by Andrew Barnes 5th March 2021. I call myself an agricultural economist as that\u2019s where my training has been.\u00a0 Over the (many) years of working with Government agencies and…Read More ><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":657,"featured_media":357,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"__cvm_playback_settings":[],"__cvm_video_id":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[16,24,23],"coauthors":[25],"class_list":["post-454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-colombia","tag-cop-26","tag-economics"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nCOP-26 and the doughnut economics of agro-forestry - BioSmartAmazonia<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/biosmartamazonia\/cop-26-and-the-doughnut-economics-of-agro-forestry\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"COP-26 and the doughnut economics of agro-forestry - BioSmartAmazonia\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Written by Andrew Barnes 5th March 2021. 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