Dataset Information

Aligning research with policy and practice for sustainable agricultural land systems in Europe.

ABSTRACT: Agriculture is widely recognized as critical to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), but researchers, policymakers, and practitioners have multiple, often conflicting yet poorly documented priorities on how agriculture could or should support achieving the SDGs. Here, we assess consensus and divergence in priorities for agricultural systems among research, policy, and practice perspectives and discuss the implications for research on trade-offs among competing goals. We analyzed the priorities given to 239 environmental and social drivers, management choices, and outcomes of agricultural systems from 69 research articles, the SDGs and four EU policies, and seven agricultural sustainability assessment tools aimed at farmers. We found all three perspectives recognize 32 variables as key to agricultural systems, providing a shared area of focus for agriculture's contribution to the SDGs. However, 207 variables appear in only one or two perspectives, implying that potential trade-offs may be overlooked if evaluated from only one perspective. We identified four approaches to agricultural land systems research in Europe that omit most of the variables considered important from policy and practice perspectives. We posit that the four approaches reflect prevailing paradigms of research design and data analysis and suggest future research design should consider including the 32 shared variables as a starting point for more policy- and practice-relevant research. Our identification of shared priorities from different perspectives and attention to environmental and social domains and the functional role of system components provide a concrete basis to encourage codesigned and systems-based research approaches to guide agriculture's contribution to the SDGs.

SUBMITTER: Scown MW

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6421444 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Aligning research with policy and practice for sustainable agricultural land systems in Europe.

Scown Murray W MW Winkler Klara J KJ Nicholas Kimberly A KA

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20190225 11

Agriculture is widely recognized as critical to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), but researchers, policymakers, and practitioners have multiple, often conflicting yet poorly documented priorities on how agriculture could or should support achieving the SDGs. Here, we assess consensus and divergence in priorities for agricultural systems among research, policy, and practice perspectives and discuss the implications for research on trade-offs among competing goals. We analyzed t ...[more]

PMID: 30804196

Similar Datasets

Project description:BackgroundThere is an established body of evidence linking systems of social protection to health systems and health outcomes. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide further emphasis on this linkage as necessary to achieving health and non-health goals. Existing literature on social protection and health has focused primarily on cash transfers. We sought to identify potential research priorities concerning social protection and health in low and middle-income countries, from multiple perspectives.MethodsPriority research questions were identified through two sources: 1) research reviews on social protection interventions and health, 2) interviews with 54 policy makers from Ministries of Health, multi-lateral or bilateral organizations, and NGOs. Data was collated and summarized using a framework analysis approach. The final refining and ranking of the questions was completed by researchers from around the globe through an online platform.ResultsThe overview of reviews identified 5 main categories of social protection interventions: cash transfers; financial incentives and other demand side financing interventions; food aid and nutritional interventions; parental leave; and livelihood/social welfare interventions. Policy-makers focused on the implementation and practice of social protection and health, how social protection programs could be integrated with other sectors, and how they should be monitored/evaluated. A collated list resulted in 31 priority research questions. Scale and sustainability of social protection programs ranked highest. The top 10 research questions focused heavily on design, implementation, and context, with a range of interventions that included cash transfers, social insurance, and labor market interventions.ConclusionsThere is potentially a rich field of enquiry into the linkages between health systems and social protection programs, but research within this field has focused on a few relatively narrowly defined areas. The SDGs provide an impetus to the expansion of research of this nature, with priority setting exercises such as this helping to align funder investment with researcher effort and policy-maker evidence needs.

Project description:Unhealthy foods and tobacco remain the leading causes of non-communicable disease (NCDs). These are key agricultural commodities for many countries, and NCD prevention policy needs to consider how to influence production towards healthier options. There has been little scholarship to bridge the agriculture with the public health literature that seeks to address the supply of healthy commodities. This scoping review synthesizes the literature on government agricultural policy and production in order to 1) present a typology of policies used to influence agricultural production, 2) to provide a preliminary overview of the ways that impact is assessed in this literature, and 3) to bring this literature into conversation with the literature on food and tobacco supply.This review analyzes the literature on government agricultural policy and production. Articles written in English and published between January 1997 and April 2018 (20-year range) were included. Only quantitative evaluations were included. Studies that collected qualitative data to supplement the quantitative analysis were also included. One hundred and three articles were included for data extraction. The following information was extracted: article details (e.g., author, title, journal), policy details (e.g., policy tools, goals, context), methods used to evaluate the policy (e.g., outcomes evaluated, sample size, limitations), and study findings. Fifty four studies examined the impact of policy on agricultural production. The remaining articles assessed land allocation (n?=?25) (e.g., crop diversification, acreage expansion), efficiency (n?=?23), rates of employment including on- and off-farm employment (n?=?18), and farm income (n?=?17) among others. Input supports, output supports and technical support had an impact on production, income and other outcomes. Although there were important exceptions, largely attributed to farm level allocation of labour or resources. Financial supports were most commonly evaluated including cash subsidies, credit, and tax benefits. This type of support resulted in an equal number of studies reporting increased production as those with no effects.This review provides initial extrapolative insights from the general literature on the impact of government policies on agricultural production. This review can inform dialogue between the health and agricultural sector and evaluative research on policy for alternatives to tobacco production and unhealthy food supply.

Dataset Information

Aligning research with policy and practice for sustainable agricultural land systems in Europe.

Publications

Aligning research with policy and practice for sustainable agricultural land systems in Europe.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets