Short-term fertility-building legume-grass leys are essential to organic farming as they provide the major nitrogen input into the system. Increasing the diversity of plant species within these leys can improve the stability of these mixtures for a range of environmental conditions. This thesis provides evidence that increased ley diversity can also provide additional benefits to pollination and decomposition services alongside fertility building. Compared to a farmers' standard ley, increased ley diversity provided a season-long forage resource for a range of pollinating insects, while also providing a stable environment for earthworm species. However, the scale of this benefit is dependent on management practice, with grazing negatively impacting on pollinator abundance. The preference of different pollinator groups for a range of legume species showed that the diverse mixture is able to offer a forage resource to a wider range of pollinator species with differing functional traits, than a simple legume monoculture. The mowing management of the ley significantly alters the benefit to pollinator species. A non-intensive management regime such as hay production provides the greatest forage resource. However, even under more intensive mowing regimes the diverse ley mixture provided a better forage resource than the farmers' standard ley. Diverse mixtures aiso benefit earthworm species, have a longer incorporation time by macrofauna after ploughing, and produced a wheat grain and forage with a greater protein content than the farmers' standard ley. The findings addressed in this thesis show that cross-disciplinary research can produce multiple ecosystem benefits from novel approaches to farm management. The study outlines recommendations to growers that benefit pollination and decomposition services, and highlights future research questions and opportunities.

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This project applied an Agri-meteorological model (FAD AquaCrop v4) to predict the likely changes in the yield of rain-fed grain crops in Iraqi Kurdistan resulting from projected climate change. The research was carried out in three main stages. Firstly, Landsat Thematic Mapper imagery was used to classify the study area into different land cover types. The effect of rainfall variability on vegetation productivity in areas classified as 'rain-fed agriculture' was determined using a monthly composite time series of Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) measurements from July 1981 to December 2006 derived from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR). These data were compared to monthly precipitation records from Sulaymaniyah Meteorological Station to characterise the nature of vegetation response to rainfall. A strong positive correlation was found between vegetation productivity and precipitation patterns with a 2-month lag period. The second stage involves applying the AquaCrop model to predict winter wheat crop performance for the growing seasons 1986-2006. It was found that the simulated grain yield (GY) and above ground biomass (AGB) were consistent with the measured GY and AGB, with corresponding coefficients of determination (r) of 0.85 GY and 0.81 AGB. These results indicate that the AquaCrop model can be used for predicting winter wheat grain production. The last stage involved studying the impact of projected climate change for the 2020, 2050 and 2080 derived from the HadCM3 General Circulation Model. The AquaCrop model was re-run using the predicted changes in the climate values for temperature/precipitation for the selected decades, to simulate the impact on winter wheat yields. The findings indicate that the average yield of rain-fed crops will be reduced, with scenario A2a experiencing more reduction relative to that predicted by scenario B2a.

This thesis explores the career of Lady Eve Balfour (1898-1990), the founder of the Soil Association, and her contribution to the British organic food and farming movement, as it emerged into public view after the Second World War. Eve Balfour's agricultural education at Reading University College during the First World War and her years as an owneroccupying farmer during the 1920s and 1930s in Suffolk are described, including her involvement in the tithe protest movement. A range of interests pursued by Eve Balfour during the inter-war period is also discussed, including novel writing and Spiritualist practices. Her 'conversion' - as war loomed - to compost-based humus famling and her corresponding rejection of inorganic fertilisers is examined, as is her decision to convert her farms into a research project to demonstrate the superiority of organic farming methods. The arguments contained in Eve Balfour's 1943 book, The Living Soil, are presented as well as evidence about advertisements and BBC radio broadcasts that drew attention to the book. The founding and primary activities of the Soil Association from 1946 through the early 1980s are outlined and the nature of the organisation considered, with emphasis placed on members' central belief in the relationship between agricultural methods and human health. The organisation's ambivalent response to science is also discussed. Eve Balfour's unconventional, New Age religious belief is explored, with questions raised about whether similar beliefs were held by other key early Soil Association figures. The impact of Eve Balfour's reputation for unconventional religious belief and the Soil Association's associated reputation for 'muck and mystery' are assessed. The tenacity of Eve Balfour in leading the organisation despite an increasingly-powerful body of support for industrial farming is emphasised, while the opportunity her New Age religious belief offered critics to dismiss the organisation she led is also acknowledged.

In this thesis I revisit the acclaimed transformation towards organic agriculture in Cuba. Using Lefebvre's trialectics of space, I explore how dominant representations of Organic' agricultural space in Cuba, the so-called 'Greening of the Revolution’, was created through government institutions and public policy. I further investigate the locally lived gendered realities of farmers in a selected cooperative. I argue that the prevailing imaginary of a state-led nationwide transformation needs to be deconstructed and the role of NGOs, in particular Northern NGOs, to be fully acknowledged in the creation of 'organic' agriculture in Cuba. Northern NGOs were attracted by the romanticist environmental imagery of Cuba’s green agriculture. เท securing funding from donors, they have framed agr๐-ecology in Cuba according to their own understandings as well as needs of 'logframes', budget codes and project cycles. Northern NGOs are acting as transmission belts for Western understandings of NGO characteristics and agency. This has resulted in a re-shaping and positioning of Cuban NGO identity, creating new dependencies and tensions in the process and introducing fashionable themes, such as gender. 'Gender mainstreaming' is an outsider-driven process, as donors and Northern NGOs have requested the integration of gender into projects. Their practices neither go beyond the 'incorporation of women in the workforce', nor engage sufficiently with the gendered realities of the everyday, as I show in my case-study in a cooperative. Farmers are performing, negotiating or at times resisting the dominant 'representations of space' - i.e. the state, regulations and policies, but also - increasingly - NGO discourses and agendas/frameworks. This thesis employs empirical data collected during 10-months of research in Cuba.

The relationship between food security and sustainable land use is considered to be of the uttermost importance to increase yields without having to increase the agricultural land area Over which crops are grown. In the present study nitrogen concentration (25 and 85 kg/hal and planting density (6.7, 10 and 25 plants/m') were investigated for their effect on the plant Physiology and seed yield of kale (Brassica aleracea), to determine if the fruit (pod) yield could be manipulated agronomically. Nitrogen did not significantly affect seed yield and it is therefore recommended that the lower concentration be used commercially. Conversely Planting density did have a significant effect with increases in seed yield observed at the highest planting density of 25 plants/m', therefore this high planting density would be recommended commercially to maximise area efficiency, highlighting that simple agronomic changes are capable of increasing crop yields over a set area.