Heritage, resilience and biosecurity: challenges and opportunities in the revival of historic farming and food production

这一研究项目的目的是确定和探索在农业生产和食品加工的历史形式中实现开创性的实验性复兴的障碍和机会。当代食品生产被大规模的标准化做法所主导，这些做法看重产量、效率和成本节约，而不是多样性、创新和个人自主权。工业化的大规模粮食生产的特点是同质性，从单一种植作物和高度机械化的耕作方法，到集中的粮食加工和分配系统。这种设置具有较低的弹性和有限的灵活性，这使得它非常容易受到风险的影响，单个问题有可能导致整个系统的一连串故障。探索替代食物途径的动机是由一系列因素驱动的，从认为当前的体系在环境和经济方面都是不可持续的，到文化和社会信念，即我们应该更多地与我们的食物来自哪里联系在一起。该项目的目的是探索先驱团体如何利用遗产来解决粮食系统的复原力和生物安全问题，并审查人们为建设可持续未来而回顾过去的方式。该项目将探讨遗产复兴方面的先锋团体的活动，以及这些倡议在复原力、替代食品生产和生物安全方面所带来的机会。它还将确定这些集团面临的挑战，特别是政策限制，以及它们如何在基础设施内谈判这些挑战，以实现其目标。基础设施只是缓慢地承认，此类小企业和试验性努力需要支持。

The aim of this research project is to identify and explore the barriers and opportunities of a pioneering, experimental renaissance in historical forms of agricultural production and food processing. Contemporary food production is dominated by large scale, standardised practices which value yield, efficiency and cost saving over diversity, innovation and individual autonomy. Industrialised, mass food production is characterised by homogeneity, from monoculture crops and highly mechanised farming methods to centralised food processing and distribution systems. This set up has low resilience and limited flexibility making it highly susceptible to risk, with the potential for a single problem to cause a cascade of failures throughout the system. The incentive to explore alternative food pathways is driven by a wide range of factors, from convictions that the current system is unsustainable in both environmental and economic terms to cultural and societal beliefs that we should be more connected to where our food comes from. The aim of this project is to explore how heritage is being utilised by pioneering groups to address food system resilience and biosecurity, and to examine the ways in which people are looking to the past in order to build sustainable futures. The project will explore the activities of pioneering groups in heritage revival and the opportunities these initiatives represent in terms of resilience, alternative food production and biosecurity. It will also identify the challenges, specifically policy constraints, met by these groups and how they are negotiating these in order to achieve their aims within an infrastructure which is only slowly acknowledging that such small enterprises and experimental endeavours need support.