Frogs, fuel, finance or food? Cultures, values, ethics, arguments and justifications in the management of agricultural land (FORFOOD)

Agricultural land is a vital yet limited resource. We depend upon it for foodproduction, but it is also in direct competition with other land-based activities, such as housing, infrastructure, mining, investment, carbon  off-setting, nature conservation and industry. This competition has direct impacts for national and international food security. The spectre of food insecurity is also intensified by the combination of global population growth, environmental degradation, climate change and excessive market speculation – or land-grabbing – of agricultural assets.

The overarching objective of FORFOOD is to explore how culture, values, ethics, arguments and justifications influence decisions related to management of agricultural land in the recent past, the present and in the future. The project employs a case based and comparative approach. Five interrelated work packages lead up to an integrated analysis and discussion through exploration and analyses of the cultural preconditions for or in relation to

1) Maintenance of agricultural land within three nature resource-based
economies; Norway, Australia and Canada
2) Land preservation in environmental politics
3) The Norwegian pension fund’s investment in agricultural land abroad
4) Ethical valuation in agricultural land governance and
5) Frogs, fuel, finance and food in new global land use.

The project will benefit from a multidisciplinary, international research team and a broad range of perspectives and approaches. Situational analysis is a methodological design for multi-site research, combining a discourse analytical approach with a grounded theory approach. Such analysis will be employed to capture the cultural prerequisites for thought, communication, action and meaning-making across different actors and locations related to management of agricultural land.