Sustainable Intensification of Agriculture

Over recent years, it has become an agricultural policy imperative to promote food security through increased food production. However, at the same time there is acute awareness of the potential negative impacts which may flow from such a policy. 

Environmental concerns have long been recognised and these have now been extended to issues of climate change. In addition, the food crisis of 2007-2008 highlighted numerous weaknesses within the global food chain, generating anxiety as to the operation of commodity markets which continue to experience great volatility. In essence, there is the major difficulty of realising food security for the present while at the same time husbanding the means of production for the future; and, with increasing frequency, this tension is being articulated in terms of ‘sustainable intensification’.

The project will seek to address the legal and broader governance issues which are generated by these new challenges, including the respective roles which may be ascribed to both ‘hard law’ and ‘soft law’, the effects of the current legislative framework for international trade and the implications for legislators in this field of recent scientific innovation.

Publications and outputs

• Monograph to be published by Oxford University Press