a reason for action on food

Although it's off most people's radar, there is a real sense of urgency to get moving on community, regional, nation and humanity scale awareness of the risk and response to the challenges coming down the track in terms of our food supply. Such as this:

UNEP estimates that nearly 2 billion hectares of land are affected by human-induced erosion and soil degradation, and in its 2002 “State of World Soils” report, provided the shocking insight that if we continue on a business-as-usual basis, nearly half the world’s current arable land will be “unusable” by 2050. Farmers the world over will need to move rapidly and systematically to regenerative fertility-building systems that build humus and retain carbon in the soils. (Jonathan Porritt, 2009)

TYF EcoSapiens are working with the Soil Association, Cardiff Uni and others to create a draft food reslience plan for Wales. Email us if you are interested.

new economics

Adbusters put out a call for short pieces on economic insights, so I posted this off to them. It was fun to write, and remember what's important:

The experiment nearly worked, and could have done, with its simple elegance. Providing that people were glued to the meme of ‘how much can I manage to spend?’, they were easy to control. As most folk drove air-conditioned cars, there was no talking on street corners, and little conversation through the car window. Processed food and eating watching TV reduced the chance of people talking over the dining table or the kitchen, and the shop assistants in the food store didn’t gossip. Managing the almost continual flow of material from the shops to the house to the dump took much time, and people didn’t seem to mind that the rubbish they threw had only been paid for hours before. Tiring commuting patterns and long hours at work ensured that few had the time to talk at home, or over long walks in the park or the country. As Mark Vernon wrote, ‘That's the genius of so much human exploitation: it can be taken for progress’. Mind control was strong, and nearly complete.

It would have worked except that, just in time, a few people started asking the question ‘how little can I live on, by choice?’ Is it £10,000 a year for my family, or five times that? At last, realisation. Fresh, cheap food cooked slowly tastes good, and allows space for words. Talks over walks have a magic that seeps deep into the conversation. Cycling and walking around community makes connections between people, hearts, minds and smiles. When the question of ‘Do I really need that?’ started to kick in, people realised that mind control was happening, but this time around, it was their own minds. At last.

pure genius

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Mark Vernon writes a thoughtful blog that's worth turning to from time to time for inspiration on all things philosophical, and many others beside. I liked this post last week, highlighted to me by fellow blogger Mark Charlton

More evidence that we belong to the hugely successful species, homo rapiens. Tomorrow, World Ocean Day, will be marked by screenings of the film The End of the Line. It's billed as focusing on the collapse of stocks of the luxury bluefin tuna, Nobu dish of choice. That's the genius of so much human exploitation: it can be taken for progress.

Our use of words such as progress, developed, civilised, needs to be pulled close. Progress, I thought, meant moving forwards. You'd think that the developed world would be harming the planet less slowly than the developing world. As for civilised? When the world's biggest arms manufacturers are permanent members of the Security Council, something has gone wrong definition of civilised. Etymonline describe its roots as "first recorded 1772, probably from Fr. civilisation, to be an opposite to barbarity"

Growing up

There's an amazing farm, Blaencamel, nestled in the hills north of Cardigan. For the last 30 years, they've been growing wonderful vegetables that sell from their farm shop and farmers's markets in central and south Wales. They grow soil too. Waste cardboard from local shops, grass cuttings, waste silage, hedge trimmings and old veggies are turned into compost in three weeks; the compost helps the soil grow. The farm is carbon negative because of this, which means they lock up more CO2 in the soil humus than their farming produces. Three decades on, they're still finding out what works, with a combination of passion, skill, learning and action. The art of Do.

Riding and rolling

2009 Do Lecture speaker Alistair Humphreys features in today's Guardian website in a neat little article about favourite rides . Inspired by those lists, I refelecte on my favourites; these are the top two:

Off-road: The red-graded Gorlech trail at Brechfa forest, halfway between Swansea and Carmarthen in West Wales. The combination of moss-covered ancient stone walls and dappled beech sunlight on the climbs contrasts beautifully with swooping downhills and some of the best berms in the country.

On-road: Still a relative novice at this, but the 1200 mile ride I did with my two eldest teenage children a couple of years back - they were 15 & 17 at the time - was one of the best holidays ever. We cycled from St Davids to the ferry port at Plymouth, took a ride over the Bay of Biscay to Santander, then cycled home. Hot, varied, fast, slow, tired, thirsty, very happy, and exceedingly fit-making.

Tickets for the Do Lectures are now on sale to corporate and individuals, priced at £2k and £1k respectively, all-in. There's good riding in West Wales too, and anyone who arrives early can come out to play.