RELU Food Chain Research: Implications for policy

What can policy learn from the first wave of interdisciplinary research projects funded under the UK's £24 million-plus Rural Economy and Land Use (RELU) programme? The programme asked the FEC's Tom MacMillan to visit the projects and find out.

The RELU programme (launched in 2004) was set up to explore the connections between food and rural places through groundbreaking interdisciplinary research, jointly funded by three UK research councils.

The first wave of projects (the last ending late in 2008) is focused on sustainable food chains. The programme funded seven projects (each of which will publish its own findings) that confront the headline problems faced by the food chain – climate change, biodiversity loss, nutrition and food safety – and ask how the countryside will respond.

This report is about the cross-cutting policy implications of the seven food chain projects. As a set, they raise broader issues for how policy approaches the connections between food, the rural economy and land use. They prompt us to rethink three key objectives of government policies on farming and food - a healthy food chain; economic and ecological diversity; and dynamic rural economies - and the part the government should play in meeting theose goals.

(Publisher: RELU)