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

A Peak at the Future

It's taken a while for Peak Oil to reach the awareness of the folk responsible for developing government policy and delivering strategic goals, and I'm not convinced that it's there yet. Only 18 months ago, major spatial planning documents in Wales paid it scarce attention, and assumed a 'business as usual' approach.

In an article on Monday 9 November, the Guardian revealed that predictions on the future of global oil supply had been distorted due to US pressure. Hard to believe, but there you go.

My question for today: knowing that a) a 60% rise in energy prices within the next seven years was likely anyway, b) it seems likely that we're around Peak Oil now, when would it be prudent to start serious planning for alternatives?

This the UK Govt's representative on peak oil in response to the Guardian's disclosure of the news:

"John Hemming, the MP who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on peak oil and gas, said the revelations  confirmed his suspicions that the IEA underplayed how quickly the world was running out and this had profound implications for British government energy policy.

He said he had also been contacted by some IEA officials unhappy with its lack of independent scepticism over predictions. "Reliance on IEA reports has been used to justify claims that oil and gas supplies will not peak before 2030. It is clear now that this will not be the case and the IEA figures cannot be relied on," said Hemming.

When shall we start planning for this? Answers on a postcard please.

Peak Oil report

The UK's Energy Research Centre has just published an important report that's essential reading for policy makers, analysts and anyone with an interest in business continuity.

The ERC are an independent body, and echo the calls of previous such as those from ITPOES - the Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security, who produced 'The Oil Crunch' in October 2008.

That central government departments are not planning or engaging the public or local authorities in peak oil or rapid carbon descent is yet another example of the inadequacy of our existing planning system (which is not planner's fault) to respond to 'game change' information shifts.

A series of 'rapid planning' events planned that we are planning for communities across Wales in the coming months will go some way to populating the plan that we need to map our way forwards.

Remembering Peak Oil

It's interesting to see how little mention there is in these times of Peak Oil, and the way that low oil prices seem to be placating debate. Important though, is the stark comment from the Peak Oil Task Force, back in October:

“Our main point is this. The speed with which the UK would need to mobilise for a “descent” peak oil scenario, much less a “collapse” scenario, exceeds anything that has yet been considered in the climate-change policy-response arena. Formulating a plan for either the “collapse” or the “descent” scenarios will require an entirely new framework for energy thinking in the UK.

Failure to act would entail major social and economic problems for government, industry and consumers alike, should either the “descent” or “collapse” scenarios materialise. Acting without taking a total-energy approach could lead to bad decisions involving little net-energy gain for the national economy, and deleterious impacts on our balance of payments”

Peak oil and energy security will be important for forthcoming workshops with local government directors at four events in coming weeks.