Rurban Revolution: Can ruralising urban areas through greening and growing create a healthy, sustainable & resilient food system?

食品对我们这个社会来说是一个越来越大的挑战。食品正在损害国民的健康，过度消费和不良的饮食选择导致肥胖和相关疾病的流行，如糖尿病在英国和其他国家。肥胖危机背后的部分原因是心理健康危机-压力导致不良的饮食习惯。另一个方面是缺乏营养食品-与其他高收入国家相比，英国的粮食不安全程度非常高。在全球范围内，农业是环境危害的主要原因，并对我们目前的粮食生产和消费方法的可持续性和持久性提出了重要问题。为了满足我们日益增长的粮食需求，需要扩大土地面积，这导致了广泛的森林砍伐和土壤退化，30%的温室气体排放来自农业，导致气候变化，对生态系统和人类产生重大的连锁反应。除了不断增加的土地使用压力和气候变化对确保供应链中稳定和充足的优质营养食品供应所带来的挑战外，英国在准备脱欧时还面临着进一步的挑战。劳动力和农场支付的潜在变化给国内园艺生产的可行性带来了很大的不确定性，而贸易协定的不确定性也给未来的水果和蔬菜供应带来了问题--目前30%的水果和蔬菜来自欧盟。该项目将研究一种新的想法-农村化（城市地区的农村化）-作为这些问题的整体解决办法的潜力。农村化是一种愿景，即从根本上增加我们在城市中用于绿化和食品种植的空间。这个想法可以通过以下方式解决我们的食物问题：帮助人们重新与食物和自然联系起来，减轻压力，增加水果和蔬菜的获取。增加城市粮食产量，减少我们需要在城市以外种植的粮食数量，在城市内外为自然腾出空间，缩短供应链，以及-增加对国家健康至关重要的水果和蔬菜的国内生产和供应。在过去，粮食系统的冲击造成了城市增长的迅速上升，个人和社区承担更多的责任来种植自己的粮食，例如，挖掘胜利和古巴后苏联解体。我们能否利用农村化作为提高粮食安全的先发制人的措施？农村化的想法也带来了许多问题和难题。社区城市增长已经存在，对参与者非常有益。然而，土地、技能和时间等方面的障碍阻碍了这些活动的扩大。我们如何提升这一活动，是否有促进这一活动的商业或监管解决方案？在营养价值和安全性方面，城市食品与传统食品相比如何？在这个项目中，我们汇集了营养学和心理学，作物和食品科学，生态系统和气候变化以及政治和社会科学的专业知识，以建立一个基于农村化潜力的证据基础，以可持续和有弹性的方式改变我们的粮食系统，因此它可以促进健康的生活方式。我们特别重视探索农村化的障碍和克服这些障碍的潜在方法。通过空间数据分析，调查，访谈以及实地和实验室实验，我们将探索农村化如何影响：-通过改善水果和蔬菜的供应，获取和消费来改善健康和可持续的饮食。 - 食品生产的数量、质量和安全以及英国食品系统的弹性。- 城市内外的生态系统服务交付。以及-我们如何克服农村化的障碍并实现效益最大化。

Food is a growing challenge for us as a society.Food is damaging the nation's health with overconsumption and poor dietary choices leading to an epidemic of obesity and associated diseases such as diabetes in the UK and other countries. Part of the reason behind this obesity crisis is a crisis in mental health - stress drives poor eating habits. Another aspect is poor access to nutritious food - the UK has very high levels of food insecurity compared with other high income countries.At a global level, agriculture is a major cause of environmental harm and raises important questions about the sustainability and longevity of our current approach to food production and consumption. The need for land expansion to meet our growing food demands is causing widespread deforestation and soil degradation, and 30% of greenhouse gas emissions derive from agriculture, contributing to climate change with major knock-on effects for ecosystems and people. In addition to the challenges that increasing land use pressures and climate change are presenting to ensuring stable and adequate supply of good quality nutritious food into supply chains, the UK is facing further challenges as we prepare for Brexit. Potential changes to labour and farm payments throw a lot of uncertainty on the viability of domestic horticultural production, and uncertainty around trade agreements creates questions about the future supply of fruit and vegetables - 30% of which currently derive from the EU. This project will investigate the potential of a new idea - rurbanisation (rural-isation of urban areas) - as a holistic solution to these problems. Rurbanisation is a vision for radically increasing the amount of space we devote to greenery and food growing in cities. This idea could combat our food problems by:- helping to reconnect people with food and nature, reducing stress and increasing access to fruit and vegetables.- increasing urban food production, reducing the amount of food we need to grow outside cities, making space for nature inside and outside cities, and shortening supply chains, and- increasing domestic production and supply of fruit and vegetables that are key to the nation's health. In the past, food system shocks have created rapid rises in urban growing, and individuals and communities taking more responsibility for growing their own food e.g. Dig for Victory and Cuba post-Soviet Union collapse. Could we use rurbanisation as a pre-emptive measure for increasing food security?The idea of rurbanisation also poses many questions and problems. Community urban growing already exists and can be very beneficial for those involved. However, there are barriers such as land access, skills and time availability that hinder the expansion of these activities. How can we upscale this activity and are there business or regulation solutions for promoting this? How does urban food compare to conventional food in terms of nutritional value and safety?In this project we are bringing together expertise across nutrition and psychology, crop and food sciences, ecosystems and climate change and political and social sciences to build an evidence base on the potential of rurbanisation for transforming our food system in a sustainable and resilient way, so it can contribute to healther lifestyles. We give particular importance in exploring the barriers to rurbanisation and potential ways to overcome these. Through spatial data analyses, surveys, interviews and field and laboratory experiments we will explore how would rurbanisation influence: - Healthy and sustainable diets by improving availability, access and consumption of fruit and vegetables. - Food production in terms of quantity, quality and safety and the resilience of the UK food system. - Ecosystem service delivery inside and outside cities.And - How we could overcome the barriers to rurbanisation and maximise benefits.