Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
We ought to be demanding that Public Health England and the devolved administrations in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast revise the Eatwell Guide, our national healthy eating guidelines, around sustainable diets, combining health, environment and social criteria such as affordability. These are what should drive production and determine rationing, if circumstances deteriorate.
I don’t intend to discourage anyone, but in the interest of honesty you should know that some resilience steps are much easier to accomplish than others. Depending on where you live, goats aren’t necessarily one of the easiest ones.
In times of crisis, especially in urban situations, a lot of the usual individualist concerns drop away and people create ingenious new commons to get by, ‘paradises built in hell’ in the resonant phrase of Rebecca Solnit. But I’d argue the longer and larger task is to dwell less on this transient commoning and focus instead on building the conditions in which people can create their own livelihoods renewably and locally as individuals-in-communities.
Without ignoring the real pain and loss many are suffering, we also must lift up the need to raise, grow, and catch our food in ways that are closer to our communities and enriching to all.
Hear, hear. Perhaps this crisis will remind us all to recognize the importance of being in community with each other, and the urgency of building a more resilient food system for all.
Small-scale fishing employs ten times as many people, has a much lower environmental impact, uses much less fuel and produces a fraction of the CO2 emissions, compared with industrial fishing – yet industrial fishing attracts far more subsidies than small-scale fishing.
“I want to preserve the integrity of organic because there is so much confusion in labels making it hard for consumers to know what they’re getting,” Ron says. “The word organic needs to mean what it says.”
All together, these techniques add up to an effective, inexpensive, low-impact garden-starting regime. There’s room for improvement, of course, which just keeps my life from getting boring.
Critical to this change is securing the right support from Government to incentivise more farmers to grow more fruit and vegetables, using agroecological and regenerative practices, in a financially viable way. By doing this, it could be possible for the UK to produce affordable and healthy food that guarantees food security and looks after the environment.
This specific Calenda was dedicated to the protection of the guardians of native corn, to defenders of ecological diversity, and to those protecting indigenous lands. The Calenda, a Native Corn Colloquium, and an indigenous corn performance by the All Species Project and the Mermejita Circus of Mazunte, Oaxaca, was a collaborative effort of seed and climate activists in February of 2020.
Thus, what has to be done? Since the cause of right-wing populism is the failure of neoliberalism, cosmetic changes will not have a long-lasting effect, we need to rethink the entire system. We need to put food producers – not multinational corporations and supermarket chains – at the centre of the European food system and decision making.
Is there any difference between the accidental but inevitable mass killing of dolphins by the fishing industry, and the deliberate annual massacre in Japan, that rightly causes such public outrage? If something is morally wrong, no amount of money can make it morally right. The slaughter of dolphins and other magnificent wildlife is, on any measure, morally wrong.
If you agree, there’s a simple answer. Stop buying fish.
To be resilient, a food system needs to be able to absorb, respond to, and recover from shocks and stresses. COVID-19 is a shock, because it emerged and spread rapidly, rather than a slow-burning disruption like a multi-year drought. How well China – and any country – will be able to provide safe, accessible, and available food both during and in the aftermath of COVID-19 will depend on its resilience.
