dr. A.J. Calo (Adam)

I study the barriers that prevent transition to a more just, sustainable, and ecologically resilient food system. Namely, I focus on the way systems of land tenure, norms of property, and complexities of land access tend to water down and frustrate efforts to reform food systems. This dynamic, land governance shaping food and farming outcomes, is the Land Food Nexus. I’m interested in the ways that innovations and policy reforms to property, land tenure and land transfers may facilitate food system transitions.

I am currently an Assistant Professor of Environmental Governance and Politics in the Geography, Planning and Environment group at Radboud University in the Netherlands.

I received a PhD from the department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at UC Berkeley, where I studied how problems of land access in California frustrated beginning farmer aspirations.

I was recently a researcher at the James Hutton Institute in Scotland, where I studied the role of land reform policies on the potential for agricultural change.

My most recent project, “The role of property, ownership & land tenure on landscape decision making: The case of Scotland’s ‘low carbon farming’ policies,” was part of the UKRI Landscape Decisions Programme Fellowship.