Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Public, media and corporate awareness of the need to tackle food waste appears to be higher than ever, but evidence suggests that despite this growing awareness, efforts to cut household food waste in the UK seem to have stalled.
The near-failure on Sunday evening of the auxiliary spillway at Oroville Dam and the ongoing emergency operations to contain flood waters in California’s second-largest reservoir and shore up its eroding outlet are a tale of caution for the nation’s aging dam fleet.
I promised a turn to more practical matters, and since the discussions under both my last two posts somehow managed to turn, as all discussions should, from global politics to market gardening, let’s have a think about the latter. Especially because I recently received a query from some start-up market gardeners asking some interesting questions about the business side of it, which struck me as good material to share in a blog post and hopefully elicit some other people’s responses.
I was spurred on to start this project by the global epidemic of food waste — as much as 50% of all food grown worldwide gets wasted before and after it reaches the consumer. Most of the food waste in the UK is avoidable — it could have been eaten had it been better managed. The Community Fridge: Frome is a simple solution that is replicable across all communities, enabling anyone to share some of this surplus food while cutting costs and emissions.
Let’s keep our eyes on the prize and not be distracted. Let us remain focused, not only on surviving the current US administration, but on building the foundation for thriving in the oil-constrained future on the horizon. Let’s ensure that we cover the basics ─access to food and drinkable water…
This year we were lucky enough to have Olivier De Schutter – the 2008 – 2014 UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food – deliver a key note speech.
I’d like to share with you my three favourite tools to use in the garden. These tools are used the most often and get the most work done in the shortest time. Generally I prefer hand tools to powered ones because they’re quiet, they don’t emit noxious fumes, and I can work up a sweat.
“The most important thing,” Huw says, “is doing something you love.”…“More than anything,” he says, “I just want people to get out there and grow food.”
For much of the farming community in the northern hemisphere, January is a time to engage in conversation and share ideas and so we headed to the eighth Annual Oxford Real Farming Conference (ORFC)…
But while a proliferation of food waste apps hope to combat the problem through technology, FoodCycle is tackling it by serving up hot meals to those who need it — along with providing a place for diners to build community and face-to-face friendships.
Consumers increasingly care about where their food comes from, how it is produced and how it impacts their health. This is generating demand for sustainable food and has enabled the recent resurgence of small-scale farming that produces environmentally sound and ethical produce.
I take the point Joe Clarkson made – at root, this blog is supposed to be about farming. The trouble is, the shape of farming is driven by politics (we’ll know that agrarian populism has succeeded when and if it’s the other way around…) so inevitably writing about farming involves writing about politics.
