Centre of Excellence - Future Productive Landscapes

The challenge: Society, policy-makers and scientists, globally, are calling for alternative land-use approaches to conventional agriculture that enhance ecosystem-societal services provided by diversified and multi-scale agroecosystems designs that encompass multi-scape values (Land-scapes, aqua-scapes, food-scapes, health-scapes, thought-scapes and eco-scapes).

Central focus: To conceptualise, design, implement, and test future, creative and adaptive agroecosystems as integrative subsets of complex landscapes components. The aim of this first project - stage - is to transform by design (over ‘default’ options embedded in ‘locked-in’ regimes) agricultural production systems and their context, and influence (help to shape ) by example, future agroecosystems in New Zealand and abroad, using University and private farms as a pivotal developmental models for research, innovation, demonstration and education.

We use Agroecosystems Systems Design as an interdisciplinary scientific tool and practice to promote research and capacity building in the ideation and implementation of more productive, resilient, sustainable, and socially responsible agricultural systems.

Our research lands at the farm system level, the interactions and feedback at lower and higher levels of organisation and the tools and methods required in the quantification of indicators across the productivity, economic, environmental, human and social dimensions of agroecosystems.

As there is insufficient amount of supporting research, policy support, and low awareness and ‘know how’ on Agroecosystems Systems Design implementation among farmers, councils and researchers. We aim to timely support farming practices and ecosystem services; and an systemically conceptualise and design, as well as systematically implement and test timely transition to future, creative and adaptive agroecosystems as integrative subsets of complex multi-scapes values.

Projects

• Re-conceptualising and implementing future peri-urban farming
• The socio-economic dynamics of alternative productive practice

The research theme, Future Foodscapes for Health, is focused on the investigation, design, and re-integration of food production and access back into the places we live and dwell. A basic essential of life, food, along with clean water, air and adequate shelter, is an essential element of urban infrastructure. Today however, food production and access has become spatially disconnected as our ability to engage long global supply chains has grown.

For the first time in history more humans are now living in urban areas than rural, and food production, historically an intrinsic part of our urban spatial structure, has been moved out of cities and their hinterlands, to the rural zone – disconnected spatially from the places we now live.

Considering the entire urban transect from rural preserve to urban core, this research looks at the potential of spatial design to re-connect, re-integrate and re-think the relationship between our ‘living places’ and ‘production spaces’

This research asks: ‘how do we re-integrate food production back into our everyday landscapes and the places we live, reconnecting people to food for greater health and wellbeing?’

Projects

• Re-connecting the Hinterland: Designing productive peri-urban landscapes through Agricultural Urbanism
• Urban Foodscapes and Greenspace Design Integrating Grazing Landscapes within Multi-Use Urban Parks

The research theme title, Toitū te whenua, is a call to action to hold fast to the land and sustain it. Toitū te whenua, toitū te taiao, toitū te tangata, toitū te mauri ora – emphasises the interdependence of land, environment, people and all living things.

Research in this theme is focused on processes, approaches, practices and technologies to reconnect, repair and regenerate these elements – including whenua, wai, mahinga kai and other natural resource taonga in their constituent ecosystems, catchments and takiwā (regions) – according to the matauranga Māori principle of `ki uta ki tai’.

The aim is to re-conceptualise concepts such as sustainability, resilience, productivity, wellbeing and prosperity et al. within a kaitiakitanga (stewardship) rangatiratanga (leadership and management) framework, and focus on repairing, maintaining and enhancing the mauri – or regenerative capacity of te taiao (the natural world).

In other words, a regenerative rather than extractive approach to land and resource use.

Toitū te whenua, is also an articulation of the whakatauki or philosophical statement – ko au te whenua, ko te whenu ko au – I am the land the land is me.

The ongoing impact of colonisation on Māori communities, their places, lands and environments, since the Treaty of Waitangi was signed in 1840, has been profound. Ancestral land and resource confiscation, coupled with alienation from decision-making and management, has had extreme inter-generational consequences for Māori social, cultural and economic wellbeing and advancement. It has also had major effects through time on the quantity and quality of our natural resource taonga – land, soil, water, air, natural environments and ecosystems.

Connections with whenua have not only been ruptured but natural environments increasingly fragmented and degraded, precipitating significant biodiversity loss due to a predominantly extractive rather than regenerative environmental philosophy.

Despite this, Māori communities in the current context remain inextricably linked as iwi, hapu and whanau to their whenua, taonga, and ecosystems, irrespective of legal ownership, property rights, economic viability, management approach or indeed regulatory regime.

Therefore, re-connection, restoration and regenerative management frameworks, processes, practices and technologies are critical.

To facilitate transformative change and innovation for future productivity of our collective whenua, natural environments, fragile lands, waters and landscapes, our research poses the question:

“How might te mana, te mauri, o te whenua, o te wai, o nga taonga katoa be restored in a production context through management, planning and design”

1. Cultural Context Mapping (CCM): Mapping taonga – whenua, soil, water, mahinga kai, cultural landscapes et al. across variable spatial (i.e. property, ecosystem, catchment, takiwa) and temporal (past, present, preferred futures) contexts: Case study Lincoln University’s, Mount Grand High Country Station.
2. Cultural Context Analysis (CCA): Analysis of ecosystem health, and the `state of the mauri’ or regenerative capacity of constituent natural resource taonga, whenua, wai, mahinga kai etc, within culturally prescribed ecosytems, catchments and takiwa, using matauranga, maramataka and other knowledge frameworks. Cultural Context Analysis will utilise the Mauriora Systems Framework (MSF) and where appropriate, other culturally nuanced analytical frameworks such as the `State of the takiwa’. Case Studies: Lincoln University’s, Mount Grand Station and Ashley Dene Farm.
3. Pluricultural Systems Analysis (PSA): Pluricultural Systems Analysis, will utilise multiple ontologies/epistemologies grounded in indigeneity - Te Ao Maori/matauranga Maori, settler - western ontology/sciences eg soil science, biodiversity, water systems et.al , and `other’ ontologies/epistemologies, to analyse different land types, biophysical conditions, production contexts and scales.
   The aim is to develop a data and information gathering system, along with inventory analysis, grounded in multiple ontologies and epistemologies, in order to set a natural resource taonga/biophysical/ecological baseline from which to model projected production futures and scenarios. A methodology for gathering data and information across pluricultural contexts (e.g., matauranga Māori, traditional ecological knowledge, science et. al.) and applying them collaboratively and equitably to specific place based settings `without privilege’, will be developed. (PSA once developed and refined will be adaptable to other indigenous contexts, internationally). In addition to Mount Grand High Country Station and Ashley Dene Farm., a selection of additional case studies will be chosen for the following variables and characteristics:
   • Scale: small, medium, large
   • Land type: high country, dry lan
   • Environmental characteristics. ecology, climate
   • Landscape
   • Environmental effects of production: Dairy, Sheep & Beef, mixed etc.
4. Pluricultural Management Systems (PMS): operationalising a PSA approach will require the development of an integrated pluricultural management and decision making system. This will need to be trialled and tested across a range of biophysical ecological and production contexts (as in project 3 above), but also variable ownership, management, economic and regulatory regimes.
   To that end, additional case studies representative of variability in the following characteristics will also be chosen:
   • Ownership: Public, Private, Māori
   • Management: Trust, Incorporation, other
   • Economic Profitability: Production systems, Products, Services etc.
   • Regulatory regimes: Policy, planning, compliance under Resource Management Act and other statute e.g. Te Ture Whenua Māori Act, Treaty Settlements etc.
5. Consideration will be given to the potential to combine the above processes i.e. Cultural Context Mapping (CCM), Cultural Context Analysis (CCA), Pluricultural Systems Analysis (PSA), Pluricultural Management Systems (PMS) into a seamless and digitised diagnostic, management and decision making tool for modelling future productive landscapes that are restorative and regenerative rather than extractive and abusive.