Who's season is it anyway?

I had an email yesterday from a good friend in north Wales. She'd been into her local branch of Tesco to discover that they had a "buy 2 for £3" offer on selected seasonal vegetables. It would be super nice to think that they were starting to act responsibly and promote food that's been seasonally harvested in the country it's eaten, to improve freshness & nutrition, increase prosperity of farmers, and reduce carbon emissions.

There was one small snag though. Tesco don't appear to be bothered by which country's season they are referring to. Their offer was for:

Asparagus (air freighted in from Mexico)

Kenya beans…. (air freighted from Kenya)

Green Runner beans  (air freighted from Morocco)

Bigger snags were to come. Trading Standards impotent about Tesco's dodgy claim, because technically the food was 'seasonal' - just not in the UK. Somewhere in their system, there's a missing connection...

About 30 years ago (yeeks) I spent a couple of weeks winter / spring climbing in the Cairngorms and Skye. In the Cairngorms, due to youthful, blissful ignorance, a group of us were avalanched in Corrie An t'Sneachda and allthough badly shaken, we walked away with no more damage than a lost axe and glove.

When I returned to Shefflield Uni a few weeks later, I made it my job to become an expert in snow avalanches and even now, can picture the front of Colin Fraser's  book on the subject. The desire to do that came from a realisation of consequences that could be triggered again by the yawning gap between what I knew and what happens on the mountains.

What scale of near miss I wonder, will it take for us to feel the same about safety of our food system?

Earlier this week, Jeremy Leggett, writing in the Guardian, said:

"During the financial crash the world went within weeks from a received wisdom that investment banks had squeezed risk out of complex derivatives, to a spiralling doubt, to a tipping point of disbelief and panic. With peak oil, officials around the world, corporate and governmental, would experience exactly the same collapse of confidence in their cosy cultural assumptions. A second giant industry would have been found to have its asset assessment systemically and ruinously wrong. The net impact would be that oil-producing nations would begin to husband their own resources: keeping exports back for use in their own oil-hungry multi-hundred-billion dollar-and-rouble infrastructure programmes.

This is a scenario that could lead to food delivery lorries failing to reach Tesco in time for Friday-night shopping.

The lessons from the financial crash ought to be stark. The prevailing culture mocked the disbelievers, ahead of the crash. Gillian Tett, capital markets editor at the FT, saw the crisis coming because she was a trained anthropologist and knew how to recognise a cult when she saw one. She was accused of scaremongering from the stage of the World Economic Forum."

Here's a small do. Next time you're in a food shop, ask for the manager, and pose this question "I've been hearing a bit about the impact of peak oil on food production and distribution. How much have you heard from your suppliers, colleagues or manager about this?" Send your responses to emily.g@growingwales.org

Feeding Wales

Today we launch a research project to define a plan that can produce security of supply of food essentials by 2030. Working with us are three superb researchers from the US, Chile and Wales, supported by experts from the Soil Association, Community Farms & City Gardens, farming, marketing and distribution. At the helm are Dr John Fagan and Paul Skinner from Earth Open Source, with Wales and sustainability context from me and the TYF team.

We are planning to be present initial findings at Hay on Earth in early June this year, and to partners in industry and public sector shortly after that.

Please pass the word around to anyone you know that's interested in food security and community resilience; we want to hear from as many people as possible with stories and questions to share.

Feast or famine

That we're facing an uncertain future of food supply has been talked about and pondered over for a decade or more, underpinned by high quality research from Tim Laing, The Soil Association and many others. Today's article in the Observer by the UK government's chief scientist, John Beddinington makes yet another call for action on food security and the need to increase resilience of supplies.

The article quotes Beddington's comments from earlier this year:

"It was an ecological disaster that occurred on the other side of the planet. Yet the drought that devastated the Australian wheat harvest last year had consequences that shook the world. It sent food prices soaring in every nation. Wheat prices across the globe soared by 130%, while shopping bills in Britain leapt by 15%.

A year later and the cost of food today has still to fall to previous levels. More alarmingly, scientists are warning that far worse lies ahead. A "perfect storm" of food shortages and water scarcity now threatens to unleash public unrest and conflict in the next 20 years, the government's chief scientist, Professor John Beddington, has warned.

In Britain, a global food shortage would drive up import costs and make food more expensive, just as the nation's farmers start to feel the impact of disrupted rainfall and rising temperatures caused by climate change. "If we don't address this, we can expect major destabilisation, an increase in rioting and potentially significant problems with international migration, as people move to avoid food and water shortages".

As with many similar issues, I sense that it will be a combintation of in-built intertia to anything other than short term threats, lack of information and a lack of ability in systems thinking that will make things far more difficult for us, our children, and more importantly, the billions of people in the global south who cannot buy their way out of trouble.

Here's what you can do:

Little Do: write to the Chair of your local council asking what strategic plans are in place to prevent food security causing major problems in your area, and ask if there's anything that you and your colleagues can do to help.

Big Do 1: learn, or re-learn how to grow your own food in your garden or on a local allotment, and talk to members of your community to find out what they are doing too.

Big Do 2: Get involved with a joint collaboration between the Earth Open Source organisation and Ecosapiens to create a draft national food security response for Wales.

Future food considerations

This report has just been released by a working group in the Welsh Government, and lays out comments and expectations that frame the anticipated direction of food production in Wales in the coming 10-20 years.

Much of the focus is on branding products and business, rather than addressing the deeper core issues that lie at the heart of our unsustainable production and consumption of food. Levels of food waste thoughout the supply chain for instance, caused by a combination of supermarket purchasing practices and consumers throwing away 1/3 obuy, do not appear to be covered by the report. Whilst energy prices are factored into discussions, the absolute role of oil and gas in producing the fertilisers we need to grow our crops is not. Similarly, soil erosion doesn't get a significant mention.

One of the most important next steps is to help communities grasp the opportunities and benefits that they can derive from more localised food production - impacts of an order of magnitude more important than branding local products. The role of geographic communties is key to the future of food security as much as it is for climate and sustainaibility response; action, as always, will result from individual involvement.

Food Security - new resources

The Sustainable Development Commission have just released their new paper "Food Security & Sustainability - A Perfect Fit", which is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding why we must keep food firmly on the radar for carbon reduction, biodiversity and community security.

The timing of the document fits with the upcoming release of the TYF EcoSapiens / Hay on Earth Food Security Plan for Wales, which moves the focus from understanding to action. Much of the work on the draft has been completed by John Fagan from the Global ID Group, one of the world's leading non-GM testing organisations, and passionate advocate for sustainability and transparency in our food supply. The plan will be published on this site in two weeks time; email Andy Middleton if you want to see a copy of the draft - comments welcome.

Elsewhere in Wales, we are encouraged by news that Groundwork are close to securing the first site to develop as a Naked Food pilot site, where we will be working with socially excluded groups to develop the technical and operational skills to develop small scale, commercial horticulture projects.