What will be the Future of Food?

I have just read Emma Cooper's (aka The Alternative Kitchen Garden) blog on BBC2's The Future of Food shown last night (now available on the iPlayer if you have seen it) presented by George Alagiah. I urge you to read it. It is an excellent synopsis of the programme and I couldn't agree more about Emma choosing to skim over the views of the CEO of Sainsburys. He doesn't deserve air time. I too do not believe that supermarkets are innocent and offer benign buying deals to suppliers. They do indeed influence consumers at great cost to farmers in the UK and abroad.

What I look forward to with interest in Part 3. Will the programme deliver some well researched material about environmental and farming solutions plus the necessity of constraints on the greedy First World or will it leave the viewer with the sense that the problems of this world are so great they are insolvable? I hope not. Positive change comes from motivated intelligent people who are offered strategies and the possibility of developing solutions. We need to hear about what is wrong - and we also need to understand what we can do to put things right. That is why Rebecca Hoskins' film A Farm the Future's programme also on BBC2 was so good (and attracted 5 million viewers). It presented the problems and began a process of investigating solutions - a process that I know she is still doing. Watch out for Part 2 (if the BBC have the wits to commission it).

Having seen so many productive food systems in the UK and abroad, I know there is another way of farming and gardening and that we are only just exploring the very beginnings of permaculture, forest gardening, agroforestry, ally cropping, edible perennials etc etc. What we have to do is change how we live. Food is akin generated energy – to create more ecological and benign systems we can't carry on the way we are, using resources and gobbling meat and fish and imported veg and fruit just as we can't have our unscrutinised if-you-can-afford-it-burn-it power systems. The idea of proliferating nuclear power in the UK to enable us to carry on our post-industrial society misses the point for me. Change is inevitable. Let's develop strategies and plan for positive, creative change, not poor polluted substitutes that try and fail to replicate life in the fat days. That's as sad as eating cod, an endangered fish that barely reaches maturity in our seas before we scoff it down with chips.

Let's embrace a leaner, healthier, saner economy and world. I do not, however, see this leaner, more ethical way of life as a paucity. It's a healthier more creative and kinder lifestyle for all. There just aren't the groaning tables of excess food lit by the stark light of the nuclear industry.

Saving Money At Home

One other snippet of information before I leave the domestic world of washing is that if you live in a hard water area like we do there is no need to put an expensive water softening tablet in with every load. Simply run a 60 degree cycle once a month and add half a cup of washing soda crystals. This will prolong the life of your machine by stopping it being furred up. Soda crystals are available from supermarkets and cheap as chips.

Maddy Harland

Permaculture Magazine www.permaculture-magazine.co.uk

You can have your 'locally sourced' washing machine and pay the same as you would from an online supplier

Just back from two weeks camping in Cornwall in a glorious site with minimal but adequate facilities. We are a family of five and so returned with a huge pile of washing including scanky damp clothes, sleeping bags and salty wetsuits waiting for a proper rinse. Inevitably the washing machine packed up. No complaints. It was an Italian-made Ocean Eco Spray and had valiantly served us for 13 years of intensive family life.

So, unexpected shopping quickly became vital. I wanted to buy a machine made in Europe that would last - that means Siemens or Bosch. I also wanted a machine that spins no faster than 1400 rpm (fast enough), uses little water and I wanted at least an A for energy efficiency. There are cheap brands made in China that fulfill these criteria but parts are hard to find and they are reputed to die after a few years max (if you are lucky). Lastly, I wanted to buy it from the local guys who had twice fixed our old machine when it went wrong but I did need a reasonable deal.

The model I wanted (a Siemens WM14S383) has a manufacturer's five year guarantee and is energy efficient and takes an 8kg load. Naturally, I went online to compare prices. It was an eye-opener. You'd expect sites like Currys, applianceonline.co.uk and kitchenscience.co.uk to be really competitive versus my local guys but once I had factored in delivery, installation (not as simple as it may appear in an old cottage with idiosyncratic plumbing) plus taking the old machine away many sites worked out more expensive.  It interested me that some very prominent white goods retailers try and charge you additional premiums for 1 and 3 year guarantees which are substantial and totally unnecessary. The machine is already guaranteed.

The other thing was the piles of washing discretely stowed all over the house and left in the van! Currys couldn't deliver for over a week minimum. Our local guys promised to install the next morning between 9 and 10 am for the same price as many of the bargain online retailers. Add to this the superb after service they - Peter Jay in Waterlooville - offer (we phone up, they check their database, know who we are and what model we have, and call the next day) and there was no competition. I could have my European manufactured washing machine from a local supplier for the same price. I know it's £200 more than a cheapo Chinese version but I also know if it goes wrong Peter Jay will come and fix it under guarantee the next day.

Purists may tell me I ought to buy a mangle and wash in the bath but I don't have baths and I work full time. I'd rather grow as much of my own food as possible year round with the little spare time I do have. I can't imagine my teenage kids taking to retro laundry methods either. So the point of this story is: before you buy online check where the beast is manufactured and its eco-credentials, ask for your local suppliers' prices, how long they have been in business and what kind of after sales service they offer and buy locally. It may cost you £30 more than if you had ought it from hughesdirect but it will probably save you money in the long run and a whole heap of hassle (and dirty clothes).

Maddy Harland

Permaculture Magazine  www.permaculture-magazine.co.uk

Editorial from Permaculture Magazine No60

I am always fascinated to read about the madness of globalised trading so when reader Val Grainger, aka The Woolly Shepherd, contacted me about the comings and goings of deer in the UK, I pricked up my ears. Woodland coppice is gradually being brought back into rotation here in Britain, but one problem is that deer love to eat the young shoots of coppice regrowth thus killing the stools. Over 150,000 deer are consequently culled in Britain each year and this figure needs to rise to protect the woodlands (we just can’t fence it all). Most of this venison is exported to Europe whilst we in Britain import venison from New Zealand in vast quantities to be processed and packaged and sold as British venison. Val says, “This is freely available unadulterated, woodland meat. I have eight acres of woodland on the smallholding and we have lots of deer that do terrible damage. If forest gardening is to be encouraged, this wonderful resource should be harvested and not exported!”

Someone who has done much to raise awareness of forest gardening and permaculture this year is the filmmaker Rebecca Hosking, who made the BBC2 film ‘A Farm For The Future’, exploring peak oil and potential answers for oil-free farming. Millions of viewers have watched it and the ripple effect is still evident. (If you missed it see www.permaculture-magazine.co.uk/news.html for the online version.) Rebecca told me that it took more than two years of negotiation to persuade the BBC to commission a film about peak oil and alternatives to oil-dependent farming (they didn’t want to alarm people), yet oil geologists reliably inform us that the world’s supply of oil peaked in 2008 at the latest. The world of energy descent is upon us.

Overcoming mainstream inertia can be trying. In the film ‘Garbage Warrior’, Michael Reynolds, the originator of Earthships (passive solar buildings built using recycled materials and renewable technology), tells the story of how the New Mexico state banned him from building experimental structures. He speaks colourfully of his struggle to overturn legislation, “I am not trying to bad-mouth the system. I have become a Trojan horse. I have infiltrated the system. I have crawled up the asshole and I am going to change them from the bloodstream.” He succeeded... PM, in print since 1992, spent its early life outside the system, trying to engage the mainstream. Now we are invited to share our views at the London International Book Fair and with the Queen’s Award for Enterprise panel; bastions of capitalism. Are we in danger of losing our radical edge and forgetting where we came from? I don’t think so. We are consciously trying to use the system to spread our ideas as far as possible. We understand that time is very short in terms of climate change and strategies for adaptation are vital now. In the short term, we can’t reverse the clock. Global temperature rises during this century are unavoidable. The significant question is what can we do for our grandchildren?

I am interested in how people respond to climate change and peak oil. Is it with denial, fear and depression or with enquiry and subsequent positive actions? The film critic, Dr Emily D Edwards, writes about what purpose films like ‘The Last Stand’ (an environmental documentary) serve: “For the dissident audience, the mission is to corrode the mantra of development equals progress, jobs, and a strong economy. For an apathetic audience, the mission is to open a wedge in the indifference. For younger audiences, the mission is to educate and recruit a new generation to activism. For sympathetic audiences, the mission is to inspire and energize the troops.” PM aims to be a window on a world of alternatives to the fossil fuel dominated, centralised power, global markets model – what David Holmgren calls ‘Brown Tech’ (see Reviews page 57). We want to open a wedge in the indifference with our collective passion for positive change, celebrate the power of reclaiming self-reliance in a world of crumbling financial systems, and show people that there are other, better ways of living. Activist Joanna Macy, recommends we close our eyes and remember three non-consumer things we are pleased about that have occurred in the last 24 hours,

“Self appreciation in a culture that’s trying to sell us things is deeply subversive.”

Maddy Harland and the Permaculture Magazine Team

Editorial from Permaculture Magazine www.permaculture-magazine.co.uk

Garbage Warrior is available on DVD from The Green Shopping Catalogue http://tiny.cc/7ck8y