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University of Sheffield My Harvest Project

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daveyboi:

--- Quote from: lezelle on May 09, 2018, 08:32:38 --- Yes it will be interesting and I would like to see the link and follow it please. happy gardening

--- End quote ---

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.

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