THE IMPACT OF WATER QUALITY AND AVAILABILITY ON FOOD PRODUCTION LOUISE MANNING 2007 NUFFIELD SCHOLAR
Before my Nuffield Scholarship in 2007, I had been involved in the farming and food industry for twenty years. My husband Rob was awarded a scholarship in 2001 and as a result I had the opportunity to see the personal and business benefits of undertaking a scholarship. What did my Nuffield Scholarship do for me … that can be captured in three words: confidence, clarity and capability. Confidence: when you have barely left the UK before, except for a few holidays in Europe or short trips for work, standing alone at the Heathrow departure gate at the start of your personal Nuffield scholarship is a real moment, even if you’re in your 40s. It really makes you think of how you will use the time away from family, friends and work and gain the most benefit from the experience. The majority of my scholarship was spent in the US in Utah, California and Washington DC. I was studying water policy and on the first morning in discussions with lawyers in Utah, I realised I had chosen the wrong topic. The real topic I should have been studying was right before my eyes and I had the confidence to change track and study … “who water belongs to.” Having the confidence to recognise that you need to be adaptable and change direction and to believe in your ability to do so was a real takeaway for me from this experience. Clarity: my study took me to universities, farms, trade associations, even meeting the Secretary of State for Agriculture for California, and it was an opportunity to listen to many points of view and then reflect and gain clarity on what the important issues were and what opportunities there were in the UK to manage water more
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effectively. Being able to find clarity in complexity is such an important skill to have. Capability: it is only when I stood on the University of California campus, in Davis that I recognised building capability in people matters. The level of learning required to adopt climate smart farming is significant. UC Davis showed to me for the first, but not last time, that if you want to drive change you need to focus on young people. Universities are not the only place where learning occurs, as Nuffield is a testament to, but it is the place where evidence-based learning is championed. Academic curricula must be contemporary supporting the energies and innovative abilities of young people entering the agri-food sector. Capability is essential across our land based sector, with the continual need for upskilling and a need to embrace lifelong learning. I engaged with education on my return from my Nuffield study, gaining my PhD during the scholarship too. I started as a part-time lecturer then became full time in 2014. Five years later after working at two universities I was appointed as a Professor of Agri-food and Supply Chain Security at the Royal Agricultural University. I seek to develop passion and potential in all the people I come into contact with to drive capability, confidence and clarity, a lesson learned from my Nuffield Scholarship.
