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More Will Be Asked of Us: Revisiting 100 Million Farmers
Sharon Astyk, Casaubon’s Book
…one of the biggest problems we have as a society is that for 50 years, we’ve been told that the most important role we can have in changing our options is to “create markets” – that is, to tell people “I want this” so that someone else will do it for us. And to an extent, that’s true -I’m very grateful to people who buy local food and want to provision themselves locally. But I also believe that the notion tha our primary contribution to the world is to make markets has handicapped us.
The simple truth is that no matter how wonderful the local markets, your local farms probably won’t support most of the populace. Thus far, local food is a luxury item, for those in the know, and those who have access to it. Because of the sheer number of interested consumers, markets are indeed expanding rapidly – and that’s absolutely wonderful.
But the blunt truth is that if the time were to come fairly rapidly that we needed to *rely* on our extant food and agricultural systems, we’d be in deep trouble, very quickly. The current models are nowhere near large enough or resilient enough to meet present needs, much less enable surpluses to be produced in regions that can produce them to protect us from famine.
So how do we get more local agriculture on the ground? Part of that is the creation of new markets – which means the creation of new eating patterns. Farmers do not exist in a vacuum – they grow foods people want to eat and to buy. That means we need to eat locally, create markets for local foods, and start relying on local markets for staple foods as well. We need to start making and modelling local cusines and diets.
(16 November 2007)
Another good one from Sharon just posted today: Feast…Thoughtfully..
Food Vs. Fuel
Michael Maiello, Forbes
The world’s poor spend twice what they did on food just seven years ago, yet still starve in greater numbers. An eight-year-long drought in Australia, the lengthiest in 200 years, has helped keep global supplies of wheat and corn tight. Concern about climate change has led to biofuels subsidies that pit hungry mouths and empty gas tanks against each other.
A rising middle class in Asia is developing a taste for meat, so crops that might go to feed people are being diverted to cows and chickens. Within the next year, China will become a net wheat importer, driving food prices up just as it’s driven up other commodity prices this decade.
For the poor, this booming commodities market means more famines the United Nations and the World Bank simply can’t afford to alleviate.
Yet investors might find some opportunity amidst the misery.
(15 November 2007)
Fuel costs give ag a chill
Bob Krauter, Capital Press
Rising prices for energy push net farm income down by 10 percent
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Higher energy costs are taking a bigger bite out of farm businesses across the West – from keeping crops in production and in moving products to markets at home and abroad.
As crude oil has soared towards $100 a barrel, gasoline, diesel, natural gas and propane prices have climbed skyward for many agricultural operations and the businesses that serve them.
Feeling the chill of higher propane prices is California nursery grower David John. His Cal-Nevada Wholesale Nursery near Sacramento has already burned 3,000 gallons of propane since September to warm his 60,000 square feet of greenhouses, where 24,000 poinsettias are nearly reading for the holiday market.
“Our propane has gone up to $2 a gallon and last year it was $1.50.
As oil prices go up, propane will keep going up on us,” John said. On chilly November nights, his six heaters kick on to keep his plants at 65 degrees. He has no choice but to bite the bullet.
“We’ll lose the crop. It shocks the crop so it won’t grow,” he said. John has added about 25 cents to the price of each plant, but he added, “we are still losing.”
John has also been bitten by higher freight charges to ship his flowers by air.
(16 November 2007)
Farmer of the Year candidate doesn’t use muck: “future of farming” (audio)
Radio 4 (BBC)
Three people are in the frame for the title BBC Farmer of the Year – part of the annual Food and Farming Awards organised by the Radio 4’s Food Programme and Farming Today.
And this week, Radio 4’s On Your Farm will feature the second shortlisted candidate, an organic vegetable grower who was described by more than one of the listeners who nominated him as “the future of farming”.
He’s certainly a pioneer and something of a rare beast – an organic farmer who doesn’t use muck. You can find out how he does it when Steve Peacock and the judges Robert Clark, a retail analyst and Christine Tacon, who runs the Co-Op’s farming business, visit Iain Tolhurst for On Your Farm. Listen again from this page.
(18 November 2007)
Reader Colin Fraser writes:
Would like to contribute a story about a sucessfull farm close to where I live in Southern England. A true organic farm with no use of animal manure with sub 2 mile ‘Food Miles’ via local delivery agents.
Link to the farm’s box scheme.
BA: Vegetarians will like this – farming without animal inputs – and on poor soil! The farmer discourages customers who don’t live close enough. During the interview, farmer Tolhurts talks about farming after peak oil as well as many other issues.
Facing a Threat to Farming and Food Supply
Rick Weiss, Washington Post
Climate change may be global in its sweep, but not all of the globe’s citizens will share equally in its woes. And nowhere is that truth more evident, or more worrisome, than in its projected effects on agriculture.
Several recent analyses have concluded that the higher temperatures expected in coming years — along with salt seepage into groundwater as sea levels rise and anticipated increases in flooding and droughts — will disproportionately affect agriculture in the planet’s lower latitudes, where most of the world’s poor live.
India, on track to be the world’s most populous country, could see a 40 percent decline in agricultural productivity by the 2080s as record heat waves bake its wheat-growing region, placing hundreds of millions of people at the brink of chronic hunger.
Africa — where four out of five people make their living directly from the land — could see agricultural downturns of 30 percent, forcing farmers to abandon traditional crops in favor of more heat-resistant and flood-tolerant ones such as rice.
(19 November 2007)
Pessimistic comment on the article by GliderGuider at The Oil Drum.
Africa: Food production to halve by 2020
IRIN, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
Food security in Africa is likely to be “severely compromised” by climate change, with production expected to halve by 2020, according to climate change experts.
The projections are contained in a report launched last week in London by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was followed by an experts’ panel discussion.
“The discussions concluded that Africa is likely to be the most affected [by climate change] partly because of the increasing aridity in the north [the Sahel] and Southern Africa: and these are the most populous parts of the continent,” said Martin Parry, the co-chair of the IPCC’s working group which authored the report. He also listed the lack of technology available to adapt to environmental change as increasing the region’s vulnerability.
(25 September 2007)
