Pollinators and healthy soil, critical to all life, are in decline because of human activity. At the same time, both food producers and consumers are experiencing declines in wellbeing. The Abundant Life project seeks achieve measurable impacts on human communities and on land and nature. Specifically, it seeks to improve the wellbeing and nature connectedness of land managers and people experiencing food poverty and support transitions to land based practices that support pollinators and increase soil microbiota in rural south Devon. The project is a collaboration between three established social enterprises: Common Flora, Pollenize and Food in Community.
Over the course of 18 months, Abundant life will work to create more abundant natural ecosystems and improve wellbeing by reaching into and combining communities: people who are vulnerable or on a low income, farmers (conventional and organic) and urban dwellers (including asylum seekers and refugees). Activities include citizen science via ecological surveys and soil microscopy, field edge trials of predator-supportive crops and perennials on conventional and organic farmland, free long-term tenancies for ecological food growing with training and practical support, mental health training for farming and land working families, perennial plant propagation, cooking in community cafes to increase access to nutritious food, and lots of opportunities for people to meet and share.
IDS is supporting Abundant Life by providing guidance and mentoring on its evaluation activities, including participatory evaluation, the Nature Relatedness Scale, Wellbeing Scales, collection and analysis of qualitative data, measurements of soil microbiology, carbon sequestration estimates, and assessments of changes to farming practices. The evaluation seeks to not only provide an assessment of the project but to enable other projects to learn from and build on the experiences of Abundant Life.
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