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Entries in food (21)

Saturday
Jul172010

Failing to succeed

Nature has a wonderful way of teaching, if we can manage to stay still and silent enough to engage with her ways. One of the areas that we've been finding most interesting to reflect on is the idea of failure, which doesn't really seem to exist in nature - the only 'failure' that we've been able to conceive so far would be the failure as 'not adapting to your changing environment - and going extinct' - but even this isn't a big deal in nature as the disappearance of dinosaurs makes space for lots more species, including eventually, us.

A recent Seth Godin blog about failure prompted me to think about the scales for failure that link to the work that we're doing on biomimicry

FAIL OFTEN: with ideas or projects that can challenge the status quo. Proposals. Brainstorms. Concepts that open doors. By taking small steps frequently and sharing ideas widely, there's little risk of over-expending energy on something that doesn't work. A plant will send out root hairs to find the next nutrient - as they're only a cell or two thick, it's not too big a deal if they don't find food. If I haven't gestated on my magic idea for months before I share it, it's no big deal either.

FAIL RARELY: Avoid failing often on the things that you have to do for a living; in nature, it's bad news for a raptor to miss and his a tree instead, and it can be dangerous to eat the wrong food. For humans, it can screw up a presentation once, but to do it often will lose us customers or influence quickly.

FAIL NEVER: Bring home the food, raising young, keeping warm and staying healthy are the keystones for survival in nature in the same way that delivering for stakeholders and customers is key in business. Adaptation to a rapidly changing environment, such as the one that we're creating - peak oil, energy, water and food crises that we've created - is something that we've got to do. We can't afford to fail on this one, but look as though we're going to. "Too difficult", "not enough time" or "too complicated" may all be true, but if we fail to adapt, we're out of here.

Learn when to turn failure into food



Saturday
Jul032010

Incredible Edible

There's an excellent project in the north that's showing how a bit of fleet-footed, well directed activity can enthuse people to make a difference. In Todmorden, the Incredible Edible food project is step by step signing people up to do more and eat better. Here's their starter for 10:

1) Build schools for the future that have the living edible world at their heart.

2) Transform health buildings with edible plants and trees as an integral part of the design and workplace.

3) All public bodies to release land for food growing.

4) Plan for food – Support local food production through the planning system with all local plans identifying places for growing.

5) Tick all the boxes – Make growing a performance indicator for ‘wellbeing’ for all Public Services.

6) Insist all new homes to have ready-to-grow spaces.

7) All social landlords to allocate space for growing.

8) Charter for truly local markets – support local food producers and farmers and campaign for the reallocation of subsidies.

9) Make sure public bodies like schools and health authorities have as a priority to procure local food.

10) Invest in food skills for the future. We need incredible degrees and diplomas, cooks and technologists, farmers and fabulous food producers.

Click here for more information

Thursday
Jun172010

Food prices and security

The recent Hay on Earth sustainability workshops focused tightly on food security with the release of the Growing Wales project, aiming to create a nation-scale, open source food security project.

The importance of the learning about and sharing food are starkly reminded in this article in the Guardian, which shows that the UN Food and Agriculture organisation and OECD predict that food prices will increase by 40% in the next decade. Apart from the forecasts that the global demand for food will increase by 100% by 2050 as more people eat meat and dairy products, this price hike spells big trouble for the billion or so people in the world who are so poor they don’t know where their next calorie is coming from, let alone their next meal. That’s not good for them, or us.

At the 2010 Do Lectures, Peter Segger will be talking about the importance of rebuilding our lost soils by smarter growing practice, to lock up carbon as well as produce food. The soil at Peter’s farm at Blaencamel near Aberaeron on the coast of Wales is so full of life, you can almost hear it singing.

Our job is to share that song, and the food, with others.



Tuesday
Apr202010

Three generation farming


St. Davids, Pembrokeshire, Wales, UK. April 2010.

A new community supported agriculture scheme was launched in Wales on the weekend thanks to the tireless hard work of organic farmer and GM-free campaigner Gerald Miles, Gill Lewis, Ailsa, Adam, Wyn & Val Buick and Darren & Rupert from regeneration agency PLANED.

The first day's work involved planting potatoes, onion, artichokes and comfrey. Members signed with an £18 donation that will be followed with a £30 a month food payment from July or so when the harvest starts.

Gerald Miles reckons that for each 50 or so households that sign up, a full time job can be created on one of the areas' organic farms. There are 800 houses in St Davids...

Saturday
Apr172010

Food insecurity, spin and salad

The Guardian's headline says it all:

Flight ban could leave UK short of fruit and veg

And then goes on to say.."This will mean a three-day shortfall in the supply of... asparagus, grapes, green onions, lettuce and pre-packed fruit salads. The fear is that, while there are still supplies of these products in the supply chain, they are likely to be exhausted next week."

I'm quaking in my boots and am not sure how my family will react when they discover that asaparagus and green onions will be off the hors d'oeuvres plate. And I dread to think how they'll take the prospect of not being a able to buy packaged salads at exhorbitant prices.

Nonsense reporting such as this gets in the way of much more serious concerns around food security - an oil shock due to supply interruption would cost lives, not dinner parties.