Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Brexit, bad weather and rising energy prices have a role to play, but our UK growers have been left out on a limb. Like a glasshouse half empty, this crisis is exposing deep systemic problems in our food system that need addressing. Sustain takes a look.
Dorn Cox is a family farmer who has long been in the vanguard of improving regenerative agriculture with open source technologies.
I’ve always thought that a long-term positive of Brexit might be a dawning realization that if you want to eat food locally you probably need to produce it locally, for the most part.
I think we are born with an innate sense of relationship; it has to be “educated” out of us to accept and participate in the current industrial food system.
Recognition of the contribution of small-scale farms and horticulture differs in each UK nation, yet the sectors commonly receive little or no support in proposals for the new policies.
As Indigenous writers such as Robin Wall Kimmerer show in Braiding Sweetgrass, indigenous people have much to teach us about holistic thinking, the use of social controls to curtail greed, and how to live with the rest of nature.
After the disruption of colonization, numerous tribal efforts aim to reinvigorate traditional foods and the health benefits they provide.
Ducks and geese are really low maintenance in comparison to other animals I have cared for. I really just provide them with a home, make sure they have feed when they need it, and leave them alone.
For sure, the cow and the deer can easily co-exist. On our farm, there is plenty of wild-life co-existing with our small herd of five mother cows. There are deer, elk, boars, fox, voles, fox, the occasional lynx, a huge number of birds including flocks of geese, and cranes.
I believe deeply in the commons. I believe it is the only true economic expression of all this interconnected biophysical reality.
Without the need for dedicated land or water, honeybees offer a more stable climate future.
Food is the basis for lifestyle: Food is the connection to our authentic, biological nature as living creatures, sharing the world with a host of other creatures, in a complex global ecology. Get that right, and all the other things are ‘negotiable’.
