Topic: University of Sheffield My Harvest Project

[daveyboi]

MYHarvest (Measure Your Harvest) is your opportunity to participate in an exciting research project that will estimate the contribution people who grow their own fruit and vegetable crops are making to UK national food production

On BBC News this morning they were highlighting this project in which they are attempting to do a first survey oh how much people grow their own produce since the 2nd World  war.

It will be used they hope to increase allotment growing space in the future amongst other things.

https://myharvest.org.uk/2017/12/calling-all-growers/

[lezelle]

Hi Ya, Good idea Daveyboi but you can define the interest by the upset caused when site are closed by money grabbing councils and landowners looking to build. Like ours who allowed a private school to build on public land without consulting the public. That said it's a good idea I have kept diaries for 30 years mainly to see where I went right and wrong. Your form should show under water a box for dip tanks while people will say water butt it is mains supplied, likewise under compost you put kitchen waste well some will put in cooked food and that is a no no as it attracts rats and smells. Being a master composter it should be pointed out by kitchen waste they mean uncooked like potato peelings, veggie peelings etc unless using a worm bin and then only some cooked food as the worms don't go for a curry sauce or similar. Just a few points they may want to clarify.  Our council said kitchen waste and then banned it as people were putting cooked food of all sorts in the compost collection bin. It was going to the recycling centre and is really a do not do. Hope it helps and hope it works.

[daveyboi]

You raise some very valid and interesting points Lezelle.

Maybe I should of linked the main page of the project as well.
The National Allotment Assoc are partners in the research.

As to waiting lists this morning on the BBC it was stated at present the number of people on waiting lists at present stands at around seventy thousand

[lezelle]

HI Davyboi, I am interested in what they find out and I don't think it will take long to discover. Some places are worse of than others for waiting lists, our council decided to let half plots to try and alleviate some of the pain. But our council is also guilty of selling off allotments for building until it was pointed out that a clause in the act said they have to provide alternative measures. I do sometimes wonder if our councillors live in the area as they don't seem to have an ounce of common between them. Building away with no concern for for others, pollution due to increase in traffic and roads with more traffic that can't cope with it. Yes it will be interesting and I would like to see the link and follow it please. happy gardening

[Obelixx]

I flagged up this project back in January hoping some of you UK based allotmenteers would sign up to keep the diary and add to the results base.

https://www.allotments4all.co.uk/smf/index.php/topic,81592.msg823446/topicseen.html#msg823446

Anything that helps persuades councils to keep and maintain allotments has t be a good thing.

[daveyboi]

Yes it will be interesting and I would like to see the link and follow it please. happy gardening

https://myharvest.org.uk/

[Beersmith]

Much as I love my allotment and much as I love to see research of this type I suspect the research may not deliver meaningful results. Why you will ask?

Well actually I can think of numerous reasons, but top of the list is simply that it's a self participation exercise.  Sample surveys rely on random sampling to ensure the estimates are unbiased and that suitable sampling errors can be calculated. This is hugely important.

Simple example. My plot is on a field with a bit of a slope.  Looking down the slope I can see a ten pole area tended by an enthusiastic and excellent gardener,  producing a wide range of fruit and vegetables. Great guy too - friendly, helpful and always ready for a few minutes friendly conversation.  A little further on is a plot that gets tended but barely - overgrown and scruffy in places with a rather neglected apple tree at one end that has got so tall the owner doesn't harvest most of the fruit. So who is more likely to go on line and summarise their crops.  Well it is far less likely to be the guy who is probably time poor and cannot get along to tend his plot.

But a national estimate would need information on unlet plots, neglected plots and average and below average plots to be realistic. Whereas it is the best tended and productive plots who are most likely to have tenants that will take part. If you don't get an accurate picture of both the good and bad the results will not be trustworthy.

This may sound very critical. That is not my aim. Research is difficult.  But if you are expending a lot of time, money  and effort and asking volunteers to do the same you face a responsibility to think through your research methods to ensure you have fully robust research method.  Self participation research is one of the toughest approaches.

[Tee Gee]

I was of a similar opinion to you Beersmith for the same reasons but having met these students at the Harrogate Spring Show I am a bit more optimistic ( but not wholly)

As with most statistics a lot will depend upon how they collate the information they receive, and how many results they receive, that is; the more information they get the more reliable the information should be.

I think their approach is to eliminate / ignore  the ability of the gardener and the quality of the  their produce. After all the answer they want is to determine is how much produce is being produced by all sorts of gardeners (as opposed to experts)per square metre.

Then they can project these results across the UK to assist local authorities to provide sufficient growing space to to supplement the nations need to supply home grown produce rather than relying on imported produce.

OK the amount might be small in the wider scheme of things but as they say: every little helps!

I got the impression they are tackling this project a bit like " square foot gardening" in other words how much produce can be produced from a given area of land.

The plan is each participant will measure their growing area and weigh each type of fruit/ veg they get from that area. Meaning size of plot should not influence the results too much.

If the participants state that the growing area allotted to a given fruit/ veg is 'x' sq metres and that they produced 'y' kilo's from it then they have a result that has some meaning to it.

As I mentioned previously this result will be more meaningful the more results they get from the volunteers taking part in the research.

They did not tell me if they were going to produce results for say an individual fruit/ veg.

Personally I think that weights will be converted into money for example  'x' pound per kilo  so that they can turn out a figure for the authorities stating that by them making land available to the general public  the nation can save import costs of around 'x' pounds per acre.

So the reason for my optimism or part thereof is based on my chat with these enthusiastic students who know it is up to their age group to produce answers to the Nations food costs and availability projections as predicted by the current statisticians.

Who knows the current statisticians may or may not have predicted things correctly!

Only time will tell and that might be too late and it is this  I think these students are thinking along these lines of!

So I say;  good luck to them!

.......and that folks is my view on the subject!   Tg

[nodig]

UK farmers get about 40 tonnes of potatoes per hectare, which is the same as 4kg per m2.  So a standard allotment of 250m2 would produce 1 tonne of potatoes for a farmer, enough potatoes to feed 5 families for a year perhaps.  let the farmers have all the allotments I say and save £millions on imported potatoes.

[Beersmith]

Tee Gee

Thank you for the interesting comments. I certainly wish them well. I agree they still have some challenges to overcome. Hopefully they will be getting some top level statistical advice to help them along.

[Digeroo]

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