Research | Rangahau

Research Themes

Theme One: Investigating Agricultural Sustainability

Theme Two: Farming Under Sustainable Systems

Theme Three: Trade and Sustainable Agriculture

Theme Four: Evaluation of social factors influencing consumer behaviour and food safety concerns

Theme Five: Sustainable customary use of wild foods

Theme Six: Knowledge systems and learning for sustainable livelihoods and lifeways

Theme Seven: Social-ecological resilience theory as a framework for sustainability research and management

Theme Eight: Urban-Rural perceptions and contested environmental governance

Future CSAFE Research themes

Theme One:
Investigating Agricultural Sustainability

Through the Public Good Science and Technology Fund, the government has funded ongoing evaluation of new systems of production like organic and IPM ('residue-free') food production. These evaluations have taken the form of regional studies, industry case studies, and evaluations of the total organic industry in New Zealand. These studies have included:

• regional studies of Canterbury, Nelson, Gisborne and Bay of Plenty
• industry studies of the Kiwifruit, Pipfruit, Honey, Wine and Processed Vegetable industries

These studies have outlined the varied ways in which organic or Integrated Pest Management systems have been used to incorporate sustainable agriculture principles into food production.

Theme Two:
Farming Under Sustainable Systems

An important dimension to research at CSAFE is the social and economic dynamics of farm households under new systems of production. This includes the social and cultural dynamics of being organic, decision making in farm households, issues of identity, landscape, gender and farm practice.

Working in collaboration with the Agribusiness and Economics Research Unit at Lincoln University, CSAFE has contributed to biennial surveys of primary producers to gauge their positioning in relation to issues of sustainability, environment, organic production and GM.

Theme Three:
Trade and Sustainable Agriculture

Another important dimension to research at CSAFE (again working with the AERU - Lincoln University) is the evaluation of trade and regulatory issues pertaining to environment and food safety criteria, and the market performance of products from different production systems.

An important factor conditioning the adoption of food products claiming environmental or food safety attributes is the emerging international politics of trade regulation, food auditing, retail strategy and market performance.

Topics researched involve:

• investigation of the social and economic dynamics of new audit systems governing 'sustainability' or environmental qualities in agricultural production
• identification of emerging trade trends in regulatory bodies like the WTO, and how these influence product development strategies by exporters
• identification of national level regulatory barriers and multiple retail chain strategies in relation to organic, IPM and GM foods
• construction of a trade modelling system using Price/Equilibrium applications to evaluate the potential economic performance of GM, organic and conventional commodities in the global marketplace
• construction of more environmental impact modules to augment the Lincoln trade & Environment Model. This will allow modeling of the impacts of trade policy (eg. in Europe or USA) on land and sustainability indicators on New Zealand farms.

Theme Four:
Evaluation of social factors influencing consumer behaviour and food safety concerns

An essential question bearing on the future success of both/either organic and GM foods is the emergence of consumer concerns about food safety and the perceived relationship between food safety and food production systems. Previous work includes:

• constructing a sociology of food scares
• investigating the historical parallels to current crises around novel technologies. Comparing the first conflict over sustainable agriculture in New Zealand in the 1940s with contemporary conflicts over GM
• undertaking case study analysis of specific applications of biotechnology (eg. GM salmon)
• evaluating media content about organic and GM food. Providing substantive data to debates over whether the media has constructed public concern over GM

Theme Five:
Sustainable customary use of wild foods

CSAFE complements its research on farmers and farmed foods with investigations of wild-food gathering and associated environmental management. This allows our Centre to mount a more holistic evaluation of people-nature interactions and world views that help shape different environmental ethics and conservation philosophies.

We are particularly interested in the way participation in wild food harvests helps create environmental subjects that then act in enhanced ways to advocate or manage for improved sustainability.

The main CSAFE research programme on agricultural food production also allows us to identify potential solutions that mitigate impacts of land uses on wild food populations, their habitats and safety of wild food consumption. Earlier CSAFE studies have featured duck hunting and wetland management by farmers and surveys of public attitudes to harvesters. Our current research in this theme features:

• case studies of whitebaiters and trout fishers and their agencies in the Mataura River catchment as part of the Sustainable Agriculture Research Cluster [insert link]
• Kia Mau Te Titi Mo Ake Tonu Atu ('Keep the titi forever'): the first and main objective of this community-led project is to ensure the sustainability of the traditional titi (muttonbird) harvest by Rakiura Maori
• Te Tiaki Mahinga Kai ('Guiding sustainable food gathering') supports local Maori communities in the establishment and ongoing sustainable harvest of customary fish

Theme Six:
Knowledge systems and learning for sustainable livelihoods and lifeways

Our emphasis on bottom-up pathways to improved sustainability and social-ecological resilience necessarily focuses on Local Knowledge of farmers and fishers, and the allied issue of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (Matauranga) of Maori engaged in customary use of wildlife.

The second objective of the Kia Mau Te Titi Mo Ake Tonu Atu research project focuses on picking the best of both worlds (Matauranga and science) to guide sustainable titi harvests, and the new Te Tiaki Mahinga Kai project records traditional Ecological Knowledge of the kaitiaki (Maori environmental guardians) of customary fishing and asks how science can enhance the Traditional Knowledge.

We research effective models of partnership between these local knowledge systems and science, and between adaptive co-management and classic expert-researcher led inquiry.

Similarly, Te Hononga o nga Ao (meeting of worlds) researches the interface between Matauranga and science to enhance ecosystem management on 35 island 'nature reserves' owned by Rakiura Maori in southern new Zealand.

A related and emerging CSAFE theme is the design of appropriate monitoring, decision-support and communication tools to enable collaborative learning for sustainability.

Theme Seven:
Social-ecological resilience theory as a framework for sustainability research and management

Despite the international significance of sustainability as a core area of inquiry in the social and natural sciences for decades, persistent obstacles to robust conceptualization of key processes and definitions have undermined its full evolution as a theoretical framework.

Classic textbook approaches to sustainability are being challenged by adherents to Socio-ecological Resilience Theory, a trans-disciplinary paradigm for framing models of how social systems influence and respond to change.

Scholarly protagonists assert that resilience theory promises a pathway out of the traps that plague sustainability research by robust, trans-disciplinary conceptualization of the connections between social, economic and ecological systems. This allows the theory to model whole systems' ability to respond to 'shocks' or to be transformed into a new target state by environmental managers.

The more mainstream 'command-control', 'Maximum Sustainable Yield' and compartmentalised view of 'sustainability' approaches often fail because they ignore larger scale and longer term cycles of change and feedback loops ('Panarchy') that reset or flip current local ecology and patterns of peoples' behaviour after shocks.

Despite the promise of the new paradigm, the complexity and abstraction of much of social-ecological resilience, confusion of terms, lack of parameterisation of models of actual socio-ecological systems, and especially difficulty in measuring resilience itself constrain opportunities for the theory to demonstrate its full relevance and importance to the broader field of sustainability.

CSAFE is evaluating the utility of social-ecological resilience for offering practical advice for environmental managers by building conceptual and mathematical prediction models of three systems (agriculture, customary use of wildlife by Maori, and the preservation estate. Models within each system will explore optimal management options in response to three common threats: climate change, intensification of use and the onslaught of invasive species.

Theme Eight:
Urban-Rural perceptions and contested governance

New Zealand receives over 60% of its income from the bio-economy, especially farming. In contrast, 87% of our people (and voters) live in urban areas.

A growing disconnect and lack of understanding between urban and rural dwellers and emerging conflicts over what should or should not happen on private farmland is reflected in debates on the Resource Management Act, Biosecurity, animal welfare, acceptability of different pest management interventions (eg. use of Biocontrol, GMOs, poisons, shooting and trapping of pests), public access to land, water quality impacts and landscape aesthetics.

Production of energy is predominantly a rural ecology issue.

A growing divide and lack of effective dialogue and partnership between urban and rural New Zealanders is a rising threat to sustainable food, fibre and energy production in New Zealand.

CSAFE is working with the Agribusiness and Economics Research Unit at Lincoln University to seek a research and communication role to enhance understanding of the mutual interdependence of town and country.

Future CSAFE Research themes

Research capacity building and collaboration with other teams are under discussion around the following themes:

• Climate change impacts on sustainability
• Sustainable energy use (as part of the National Energy Research Institute)