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

CSA dividends

CSA, Community Supported Agriculture has been around long enough for reasonable people to ask themselves "why isn't more of this happening", a feeling that was picked up at today's Soil Association conference in Birmingham:

"People are sick of being told to worry about food. They need to feel empowered. We know of lots of alternative local food systems that are sustainable, resilient, viable and principled. They may not be able to solve the global problem, but they can say: 'Nothing we are doing will stand people in worse stead.'"
Bonnie Hewson, Soil Association CSA Project Manager. The Guardian, 3 February 2010

Having just attended the monthly St Davids Eco City Project meeting, where food and CSA was a big part of our discussions, Bonnie Hewson't comments have even more resonance. Gerald Miles, one of our excellent local organic farmers (we have a good share of them down here) talked passionately about the change from his early days of farming when he employed 25 people part time on the farm to now, when he employs none, and farms holiday makers instead. A St Davids based CSA scheme with as little as 20 households paying £30 a month could make enough difference and certainty of income for Gerald's son to become a farmer rather than leave the farm to find work elsewhere. Nine households at the meeting last night said they'd sign the dooted line. We feel empowered.

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.

Food Security - feeding on good ideas

Next Friday sees the launch of a new combined research project that's been exciting us here for some time. The project's start was at the Hay on Earth food workshop in May last year, when we brought together aronud 65 leading food thinkers to consider the practical challenges of moving towards food sustainability and security at a national level.

Largely as a result of synchronicity and serendipity, one of the attendees was Dr John Fagan, who was in the process of setting up EOS - the Earth Open Source Institute. The Do Programme, borne out of the Do Lectures, was already running as a six month action learning project to investigate and develop new ways of teaching sustainability in workplaces and schools, so it was a natural extension that the idea of launching a more detailed food security project came about. We're lucky to have three enthusiastic researchers from Quebec, Chile and Wales embarking on the journey with us, supported by a great 'mastermind' group including all those you'd want - policy makers to practitioners.

Our goal is to map out the objectives needed for Wales to be self sufficient in food essentials within 20 years. If you've got an interest in sustainable food production, processing, marketing or management and would like to join in the fun, drop us a line, and help develop the project ready to for Hay in 5 months' time.

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.