Research raises key questions about farm succession, considering issues of access to land for younger farmers and the impact and effect of retirement on the older farmer Dr Shane Conway, Postdoctoral Researcher in the Discipline of Geography’s Rural Studies Unit at NUI Galway, was recently announced as the winner of the Geographical Society of Ireland (GSI) Doctoral Research Award 2020. Dr Conway was presented with the award for his PhD research that explored the human dynamics affecting intergenerational farm transfer in later life . This prestigious national award, adjudicated by a panel of senior academics, was open to any graduate of a Higher Education Institute on the Island of Ireland who had successfully defended their PhD degree since January 2016. Commenting on receiving the award, Dr Conway said: “I am delighted and honoured to have received this award from the Geographical Society of Ireland for my PhD research. None of this would have been possible without all the farmers who generously took time out from their busy schedules to provide inestimable data and information for this research. Their candour and willingness to open up and share their stories and experiences provided me with a unique insight into the world as farmers perceive it. It is clear that the majority of farmers opt to maintain the facade of normal day to day activity and behaviour in later life, and such empirical findings will help inform more appropriate, ‘farmer-sensitive’ generational renewal in agriculture policy directions, and as a consequence, help prevent older farmers from being isolated and excluded from society, almost by accident rather than intention.”  Dr Conway’s winning PhD research, supervised by NUI Galway’s Dr John McDonagh and Dr Maura Farrell, provides an in-depth, nuanced understanding of the various emotional and social factors governing the attitudes and behaviour patterns of older farmers towards the ‘twin processes’ of farm succession and retirement. Dr Maura Farrell, Lecturer with the School of Geography and Archaeology at NUI Galway, said: “Dr Shane Conway is highly deserving of this award from the Geographical Society of Ireland, having completed excellent research on generational renewal in farming, which has become widely acclaimed both nationally and internationally.  Shane’s research raises key questions about farm succession, considering issues of access to land for the young farmer, but also deliberating extensively on the impact and effect of succession on the older farmer.  Shane has made excellent advancements in questioning current generational renewal policy and putting forward key ideas for the future direction of succession and inheritance practices on national and international family farms. “ This important research revealed that the reasons why older farmers fail to plan effectively and expeditiously for the future as are expansive, and range from the potential loss of identity, status and power that may occur as a result of engaging in the process, to the intrinsic, multi-level relationship farmers have with their farms in later life. The common denominator however, is that intergenerational farm transfer is about emotion. The so-called ‘soft issues’, that is the human dynamics involved, are the issues that distort and dominate the older generation’s decisions on the future trajectory of the farm. Such issues have resulted in intractable challenges for farm succession and retirement policy over the past fifty years and are the issues which future generational renewal in agriculture strategies and interventions must take into account. Farming is a way of life for many older farmers, and there can be detrimental consequences to their emotional wellbeing if they are cut off from their daily routines on the farm in later life. -Ends-

An Cumann Staire, NUI Galway’s History Society will host a talk on Ireland’s Mother and Baby Homes, delivered by Dr Sarah-Anne Buckley, NUI Galway Lecturer in the Discipline of History and an internationally recognized scholar of modern Irish history. The virtual event will take place on Wednesday, 24 February at 6pm over Zoom. With the Irish government’s decision to seal records of the homes in late 2020, and the recent publication of the Commission of Investigation into the Mother and Baby Home’s final report, there has been confusion and disappointment into information surrounding the homes. This event aims to inform on what exactly the homes were, their distinction from the Magdalene laundries, and what happened to those who came to the homes. Dr Sarah-Anne Buckley is an esteemed historian of gender, women and childhood in Ireland. She is co-principal investigator of the Tuam Oral History Project, which aims to form a public archive of stories from survivors of the Tuam Mother and Baby Home. Grace Carolan, Auditor of An Cumann Staire, NUI Galway, said: “From Tuam to Thomastown, thousands of Irish woman and children passed through the mother and baby homes. We hope this event will help us educate ourselves on what happened to those within them, so please join us for an engaging evening of information on a subject less spoken about.” The Zoom event is free to attend and open to the public. To book a place or for further information visit https://www.nuigalwayevents.ie/cumann-staire. -Ends-

Competitions focus on sustainable solutions in the area of food waste and plastics. Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Simon Harris, TD, today announced the 15 teams that have been shortlisted as part of the SFI Future Innovator Prize, including two teams collaborating with researchers from NUI Galway. The two challenge-based prize programmes, with a prize fund of €2 million each, as part of the SFI Future Innovator Prize, are calling on the research teams to develop innovative solutions to food waste and plastics. Five teams have been shortlisted under the SFI Food Challenge and 10 under the SFI Plastics Challenge. At the end of the 12-month programme two overall winners will be announced. The two NUI Galway collaborations shortlisted under the SFI Plastics Challenge include: Turnkey, a project between NUI Galway researcher Corine Nzeteu, with Ramesh Babu Padamati (TCD), and Stephen Nolan (Green Generation). The team’s challenge will look at turning plastic and food waste into key value-added products; Green Lab Services (GLaS) team of Una FitzGerald (NUI Galway), Michael McCormack (Irish Manufacturing Research), and Sinéad Ní Mhainín (Connacht-Ulster Regional Waste Management Office) who will look at Ireland's lab plastic problem. Congratulating the competing teams, Minister Harris said: “I am delighted to announce the fifteen teams who will go on to compete as part of the SFI Future Innovator Prize. The SFI Future Innovator Prize is a challenge- based prize funding programme that seeks to support Ireland’s best and brightest, to develop novel, potentially disruptive, technologies to address significant societal challenges. On this occasion, it is about tackling food and plastic waste. I am really excited to see the outcome of their work and the response to these key national challenges.” The SFI Food Challenge will support the development of sustainable solutions to reduce food loss and waste across the full breadth of the food supply chain, addressing topics such as premature spoilage of fruit and vegetables; undernutrition and promoting healthy aging through optimisation of diet; the shelf-life salad leaves; valorising food waste into value added commodities and waste in the fishing industry. The SFI Plastics Challenge will support the development of innovative STEM-led solutions that will enable the sustainable use of plastics in a circular economy, restore and preserve our oceans’ health, and maximise how we use the earth's finite resources. The projects aim to address problems across a number of strategic challenge areas including removing plastics from coastal areas; reducing reliance on single use plastics in laboratories; upcycling plastic waste and utilising plastic waste for sustainable battery technologies. Professor Mark Ferguson, Director General, SFI and Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government of Ireland, said: “I would like to congratulate the fifteen teams who have been shortlisted as part of the SFI Future Innovator Prize competition. We have seen a fantastic calibre of innovative thinking and truly novel approaches as part of the submissions, and I look forward to seeing the different solutions that develop in the areas of food waste and enabling the sustainable use of plastics, as the competition continues. I would like to commend each team on their hard work and dedication, and to wish them every success in the rest of the competition.” The SFI Future Innovator Prize, funded by the Department of Further and Higher Education, Innovation and Science through Science Foundation Ireland, is part of an overall government plan to cultivate challenge-based funding in Ireland. -Ends-