Peter Matthews

About

PhD project: Sustainability performance of ecological approaches to farming at regional scale
Agriculture faces the twin challenges of meeting increased demand from a growing and more affluent population, whilst also conserving key natural resources that underpin the sustainability of our societies. Moreover, different farming systems vary in the extent to which they provide or challenge public goods and ecosystem services, such as drinking water, air quality, landscape appearance and biodiversity. 
Therefore, there is a need to assess how far new, environmentally-friendly farming approaches can promote improved performance and sustainability at the rural areas in which they are located. It is also important to understand how socio-economic and policy drivers affect the development of these farming systems and assess their environmental, social and economic performance. However, novel farming approaches tend to be linked to the land and territory where they are implemented, and so the ecological and socio-economic impacts of these approaches may vary at a regional scale. Comprehensive sustainability assessments of these farming systems should therefore be conducted beyond the farm level, accounting for the provision of public goods and ecosystem services at regional scale. 
This interdisciplinary project will involve a mix of ecological, social and economic research, with the ultimate aim of conducting a sustainability appraisal of ecological approaches to farming at regional scale. Research will be conducted in two case-study regions in south-east England, with different natural and agricultural characteristics. The project will start by investigating the socio-economic and policy drivers affecting adoption of ecological approaches. Insights into these drivers will be used to inform the development of different future scenarios for the expansion of ecological farming across the landscape. 
Analysis of the literature on environmental, social and economic impacts of these farming approaches will be used to understand how the different spatial patterns of farming practices under each scenario affect the provision of public goods and ecosystem services. These findings will then be combined in an integrated sustainability assessment, where ecological farming approaches will be assessed against regional sustainability targets, using network analysis to examine the interactions among the cause-effect relationships linking drivers to impacts for each approach. 
The combination of sustainability assessment, scenario and network analysis employed in this research will provide a valuable framework for understanding how ecological farming approaches can contribute to sustainable development in rural landscapes. Critical paths and possible barriers to achieving sustainability targets will be identified, highlighting priority areas for further research, agricultural policy and rural landscape management. The research has the potential to support and inform the EU’s Horizon 2020 Low-input Farming and Territories (LIFT) project, of which the University of Kent is a key partner. 
Peter Matthews is a member of the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology.  
Supervision
Dr Joseph Tzanopoulos
Dr Robert Fish
Funding
South East Network for Social Sciences (SeNSS) ESRC-funded studentship