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Archie

Archie Ruggles-Brise

I am an 11th generation landowner from Essex, with a 20 years of varied experience that includes working for and with water companies, tech firms, charities, investment firms and on our farming estate. I’m driven by the desire to tackle big problems, and to learn by doing, including how we reconcile competing land use choices to deliver everything people value – from food, to clean water, climate mitigation, wellbeing and much more.  My passion is for finding answers to complex questions, breaking them down into manageable chunks that anyone can incorporate into their business. The opportunity to do experience how others do this on a global scale, courtesy of the Nuffield Scholarship, is unsurpassed. And I’m grateful to my sponsors Royal Norfolk Agricultural Association for making it possible.

Balancing the Books. Does Multifunctional productivity represent optimal land use?

Study Overview

Multifunctional landscapes (MFL) are land in which all forms of ecosystem service (ES) (benefits to people) are balanced, regardless of whether they are paid for or not. ES include energy, food, water, risk reduction, heritage, culture, nature, medicines and climate mitigation. However, to be successful this demands a wider view of what ‘productivity’ means, re-defined as “[land that is]…highly productive when production is interpreted to include all potential market and non-market outputs”. Benchmarking performance in this way could help reconcile challenging choices posed by finite land availability by enabling recognition (and in some cases reward) for a greater range of outcomes from land. Could this approach offer a route to greater sustainability for the rural land use sector beyond traditional enterprise diversification? However, measuring wider outcomes and going beyond traditional market-base reward mechanisms presents significant challenges to policy and practice. This study will explore global best practice related to MFL; on-farm and landscape-scale approaches, measurement of environmental and social outcomes, financier and funder demands, supply chain and policy influences. Global experiences drawn from complex agricultural, environmentally and socially focussed landscapes managed by a diverse range of people will enable me to build an overview that can then be used to support MFL at scale in the UK and beyond.