The research program is oriented to empowering and interconnecting the cooperation between the institutes of the Czech Academy of Sciences and is dealing with multiple issues linked to food production and consumption. The Program Food for Futur is lead by the Institute of Experimental Botany. The Department of Environmental Geography Department enters this program with the topic Societal and Geographical Aspects of Food Systems and strive to encourage public discussion over the issue, organise public discussions and realise in-depth regional study mapping food system in South-East Moravia. More information about the programme can be found on the webpage of the project www.potravinyav21.cz.

The project is devoted to the problem of abandoning of agricultural properties that occurred after 1989. This type of abandoned properties forms the largest share of abandoned properties in the Czech Republic. Plenty of them have found new use and some are still utilized for agricultural purposes. The number of successful and “permanent” re-uses is not so big; in majority cases we should rather talk about extensive use. Systematic and deepening of knowledge on trajectories of (un-)usage of agricultural properties is currently on the edge of attention of researchers. However, the project offers important research potential in deepening of knowledge about changes of rural structures. The project will focus on various types of countryside in the South Moravian Region, the Vysocina Region and the South Bohemian Region. In the project, the database of agricultural properties operating in 1989 will be developed and their re-use will be followed. Evaluation of this database will be connected to quantitative and qualitative research among stakeholders in case study areas.

The main aim of the project is to explore new understanding of food security and actual trends that are evolving around the issues of food production and consumption. Within this project, Barbora Duží realized 7 month research stay (January 2018-July 2018) in University of Florence, Department of Architecture, Regional Planning and Design. From this reason, the great deal of research is devoted to Italy, region Tuscany and Prato province. We focus our research on mapping urban and peri-urban farms, their production and potential relation to local market. The second aim was to evaluate the farm operation with cultural landscape protection. The main outputs of the projects are scientific papers, popularization papers, proceedings, public lectures and developing international scientific cooperation.

International project aimed to conceptually develop our comprehension of the phenomena of urban agriculture. The COST-Action Urban Agriculture Europe (UAE) initiated the definition of an European approach to urban agriculture and founded a network of over 120 researchers from 29 countries worldwide. The project was chaired by Professor Frank Lohrberg of Aachen University, Germany. Urban Agriculture (UA) plays a key role in two global challenges: urbanization and food security. It can provide an important contribution to sustainable, resilient urban development and the creation and maintenance of multifunctional urban landscapes. In the globally emerging research field of UA, a European approach to the subject needs to be created. It has to integrate the unique European context regarding its urban and landscape pattern, the important role of the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) and the needs of the European society. The COST-Action Urban Agriculture Europe (UAE) initiated the definition of this European approach on the basis of existing research projects and reference regions in the partner countries. One of the main output was book Urban Agriculture Europe (2016) and two Special Issues dealing with urban agriculture in journal Moravian Geographical Reports 3/2017 and Nature+Culture (1/2018). More information about the programme can be found on the webpage of the project www.urban-agriculture-europe.org.