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How to grow your own wheat
Finlo Rohrer, BBC News Magazine
Global stocks of wheat are plummeting and people are starting to worry about the price of staples like bread. But can you beat the commodity market by growing your own?
Look out your back window. How’s the grass?
If you’ve got a garden at all, it might be that the grass is an unloved scrub as sparse as Elton John’s hair used to be. Or it could be a lush strip of glorious verdure.
Either way, the odds are you’re not getting much use out of it. Wouldn’t it be great if you could improve your health, help the environment and at the same time do your part to fight inflation?
… you need 297 square metres of wheat to provide your family with bread.
And there’s the rub. According to Garden Organic, the organic growing charity, the average British garden size as of 2006 was about 90 square metres.
… But Whitley knows most people will not be able to grow all their own wheat and suggests even producing a couple of loaves-worth a year would be a triumph.
… Those in the wheat industry are a little sceptical to say the least. Martin Caunce, owner of Brow Farm in west Lancashire, sells milling wheat and hand-operated mills so people can produce their own flour, but suggests most people will not want to take the final step and grow their own wheat.
“It is more feasible to grow your vegetables and buy your bread,” he says. “It takes too much space. You just couldn’t make it pay.”
The argument is that you could save a great deal more money by following the example of Tom and Barbara in The Good Life and focusing a bit more on vegetables.
Sally Smith, an adviser at Garden Organic agrees, suggesting: “It’s a lot of bother for very little return. You would need a smallholding really.”
(10 March 2008)
Definitely worthwhile as an educational experience – one sees what a miracle and a bargain grains are. -BA
So, You Want to Be a Farmer? (text and audio)
Jon Steinman, Global Public Media
Recorded at the 2008 annual conference of the Certified Organic Associations of British Columbia, we hear segments from a workshop titled “Starting Your Organic Farm”. Also featured is a short segment from a recent event titled, “Write to a Farmer Who Inspires You”.
(11 March 2008)
There’s a homegrown way to address climate change
ANNA LAPPÉ, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
… The global industrial food system — from how we grow crops to the way we raise livestock and what we do with the waste — accounts for at least 33 percent of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, according to analysis of data from the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. The livestock sector alone is responsible for nearly one-fifth of the world’s total emissions — more than the entire transportation sector.
Industrial farming is particularly problematic because it is a key emitter of methane and nitrous oxide, which have, respectively, 23 and 296 times the global warming effect of carbon dioxide. In the United States, widespread use of nitrogen fertilizer, roughly half of which is wasted in leaching and runoff, contributes to approximately three-quarters of the country’s nitrous oxide emissions. Globally, agriculture is responsible for nearly two-thirds of methane emissions.
With climate scientists warning we need an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 to avert planetary catastrophe, it’s clear we need bold action — and that bold action must include re-thinking food.
Here’s the good news: We already know how to build a climate-friendly food system.
(12 March 2008)
Australia’s food bowl lies empty
Nick Bryant, BBC
As the BBC looks at the impact of rising food prices around the world, Sydney correspondent Nick Bryant reports from Australia on how the worst drought on record has slashed its exports of wheat.
—
Though located in a remote corner of the planet, the fields of Australia’s food bowl are central to the worldwide price of wheat.
In this part of rural New South Wales, water-starved farms and cavernous empty grain silos have the potential to create a ripple effect which spreads around the globe.
And that is precisely what is happening right now.
After America, Australia is normally the second largest exporter of grain, and in a good year it would hope to harvest about 25 million tonnes.
But the country remains in the grip of the worst drought in a century, which is why the 2006 crop yielded only 9.8m tonnes.
(11 March 2008)
