Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The Conference was framed by the launch of the Sustainable Food Trust’s report, Feeding Britain from the Ground Up, which proposes a plan for how the UK could sustainably feed itself. It’s both a radical and eminently sensible proposal.
The debates on food security versus sustainability in the context of the war in Ukraine have revitalised a longstanding debate on “who will feed the world”.
If global governments were alive to the nature of the climate, energy and water emergencies upon us, they’d be frantically busy planning how to sensibly and humanely repopulate the countryside and depopulate the cities…
To blow off a few cobwebs, I decided to spend a couple of days hiking a part of the Ridgeway, which has been in use for around 5,000 years and is supposedly Britain’s oldest road.
The 1970s surge in ecological awareness saw many books published on our relationship with the natural world. ‘Food for Free’, by Richard Mabey, was published fifty years ago in 1972.
Cheerleaders for new technology tend to ignore the ways in which that technology might be used to harm humans and/or the environment. But there are always people who will figure out how to create such harm.
Therefore, in addressing contemporary dilemmas, we must understand that academia, rural sociologists, architects, policymakers – and anyone who enjoys the privilege of speaking on behalf of ‘others’ – should make every effort to involve those who really struggle on the ground: the artists, the small-scale farmers, the young students, and the minorities who live precariously in rural territories.
On this episode, Jason Bradford, who is an author, activist, farmer, and teacher, talks about the energy intensity of our modern industrial agriculture system.
The promise of conservation agriculture to bring life back to the land and support biodiversity both above and belowground should appeal to environmentalists and farmers alike. For like it or not, a large part of nature will be what lives on farms, because we now use more than a third of the world’s ice-free land area for growing crops and raising animals.
The Rural Watch Africa Initiative (RUWAI) Seed To Wealth program is helping rural farmers in Nigeria to achieve sustainable income for livelihoods.
The Sustainable Food Trust’s new report, Feeding Britain from the Ground Up, finds that, if we change the way we farm and what we eat, we could improve our health, protect nature, combat climate change and be more food secure as a nation.
We want to preserve our sovereignty and credibility as food artisans. We want our craft
to be suitable for our grandchildren – a creative, meaningful cultural technique.
