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27 January 2011: Essex Sociology contributes to the Beddington Report

Mark Harvey and Sarah Pilgrim's analysis of the new competition for land (recently published in Food Policy) helped to under-pin the recent UK Government Foresight ('Beddington') report on Global Food and Farming Futures.

Their review paper concludes that any analysis requires an integrated approach to the food-energy-environment system, and that strategic political direction of innovation and sustainability regulation are required to bring about major shifts in agriculture leading to sustainable intensification of cultivation, rather than the continued expansion of cultivated area.

As a consequence there is likely to be substantial global variety in technologies, agricultural productive systems and use of natural resources in contrast to the current world of a dominant global and integrated technology platform based on petro-chemicals.