"Living on the Edge" was the title Doug chose to discuss with his audience at his inaugural lecture last night at Brackenhurst. Doug described how the 1972 book "The Limits to Growth" by Meadows et al. was an early influence on him and he explored how - since this publication and its successors - we had continued to exploit the earth's resources and live beyond its long-term capacity.
The quality of questions was an indicator of the depth of the audience's interest in this area and today Doug developed these ideas further with our geography and environmental science students.
Get involved with community volunteering through NTU!
Janet Northover - our Schools, Colleges and Outreach Officer, presented at the recent student forum to encourage students to take up one of the numerous opportunties to volunteer through NTU's community projects. Many of these are funded so students gain valuable work experience and get paid for their input.
After the forum Janet had lots of interest from students so hopefully this will follow through to more volunteers. We particularly need some Brackenhurst students in the main University Ambassador team!
Full details at http://ntu.ac.uk/business_professions/our_students/student_volunteering/index.html
The Forum also discussed lots of issues relevant to the students' academic experience and it was good to hear that everyone was happy with the speed and type of feedback received last term on their assignments.
There will be a fuller update on further IT improvements shortly...
Oxford Farming Conference 2012
The Oxford Farming Conference is something of an institution which each year tries to address a significant issue facing agriculture. The theme for the 2012 conference was "Who holds the power in global agriculture" and the Power in Agriculture report produced for the conference makes fascinating reading. (http://www.ofc.org.uk/papers ). Dr. Alan Renwick SAC's Head of Land Economy and Environment Research Group, lead author, gave a very fascinating summary of findings - it was interesting to hear for example how few companies are now involved in the production and distribution of key inputs such as fertiliser and seed across the world - does this make global agriculture vulnerable?
Other speakers ranged from representatives of Transnational Companies - the so called TNCs - to small businesses developing niche products. Caroline Spelman Defra Minister entitled her talk "Big Chances for a Small Island" and was applauded by some of the livestock farmers in the room for her stance on the badger cull but there was very little else of note in her speech which mainly focused on the challenges of CAP reform without giving many definitive examples of the UK's stance. The RSPB's Director of Conservation Martin Harper gave a strong account of why the declines shown by the Farmland Bird Index are particularly relevant in the light of potential intensification - but I felt that the farmers were left feeling that there was little new information to inform their land management.
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