Blog

Matt Reed reflects on our recent blog post 'Superfoods go to the roof!' and explores some of the arguments behind 'superfoods' in connection with the future of food and the future of food in cities. 

Matt Reed has been walking the terraces of Cyprus where a team from The Cyprus Institute, as part of the RECARE project, are investigating the role of terraces in preserving the soil. In this blog, Matt talks about the traditions of cultivation of mountain terraces and the the challenge to produce and sell food in a way that develops livelihoods and sustains the environment. Matt was accompanied by Jane Mills.

Some of CCRI’s Mauro Vigani's research recently featured in an article in The Guardian in connection with the production of microalgae spirulina on the rooftop of the Novotel Hotel in Bangkok. Our blog article goes deeper into this fascinating subject as Mauro Vigani talks about the two main factors that can drive the growth of the microalgae sector for food: reducing production costs and improving consumer demand.

A recent field trip along the Lower Severn Vale with a group of Landscape and Applied Ecology MSc students highlighted some of the opportunities and challenges associated with weaning ourselves off large-scale and centralised electricity generating systems. The area of interest is part of the Severn estuary between Gloucester and the old suspension bridge carrying the M48 from Aust to Chepstow.

CCRI Senior Research Fellow, Matt Reed, is a regular blogger writing on food, community and politics at his blog, 'the ruralist'. Matt's latest post, 'Going Digital', reflects on how the CCRI is addressing the challenge of getting its latest research findings out in the public domain as quickly as possible.

John Powells writes about two developments related to society’s capacity to deal with the management of global commons problems.

This blog post should have been started a while ago – for the moment I did, the ferocious rain seems to have died down. Nevertheless we now know that December 2015 was the wettest month on record, not that this…

Chris Short writes about a Defra workshop that he attended in London, hosted by Rory Stewart MP. The aim of the workshop was to explore how, through partnership, the recently proposed 25 year plan for nature can be developed and delivered.

One of the pleasures of urban living is the opportunity to be surprised by artwork that may appear, literally overnight, on the side of buildings, on railway carriages, under bridges, and particularly on large expanses of smooth bare concrete.