On Food, Farming and Land Management: Towards a Research Agenda to Reconnect Urban and Rural Lives

By 2015, it is estimated that 53% of the world’s population will live in urban areas (Chawla, 2002, p. 33). They will depend on those working in the countryside to provide food and other items considered to be essential or desirable. There is, however, evidence that the urban public’s knowledge of food production and associated land management issues (such as the use of pesticides) is woefully inadequate (see, for example, Kuhlemeier et al., 1999; Trexler, 2000). This appears to be an issue in many countries around the world. Desmond et al. (1990, p. 151) describing ‘new approaches for a better understanding of agriculture’, point out that ‘paradoxically, the United States has one of the world’s most plentiful food supplies and possibly the least agriculturally-informed public’. In Europe, a study of 686 Greek primary schoolchildren reported that ‘the pupils were ignorant about the signifi cant impact of farmers on the food chain’ (Paraskevopoulos et al., 1998, p. 58).