Ed Dowding

It seems this list can bring wisdom and insight to pretty much everything we do.

Apart from the more specific ones (like ‘keep water high on the land’, but maybe just try to metaphor these as taoist haikus to trigger bewildering insights.)

• Relative Location Components placed in a system are viewed relatively, not in isolation. Functional Relationship between components.
• Everything is connected to everything else. Recognise functional relationships between elements.
• Every function is supported by many elements – Redundancy Good design ensures that all important functions can withstand the failure of one or more element.
• Every element is supported by many functions Each element we include is a system, chosen and placed so that it performs as many functions as possible.
• Local Focus “Think globally – Act locally” Grow your own food, cooperate with neighbours. Community efficiency not self-sufficiency.
• Diversity As a general rule, as sustainable systems mature they become increasingly diverse in both space and time. What is important is the complexity of the functional relationships that exist between elements not the number of elements.
• Biological Resources We know living things reproduce and build up their availability over time, assisted by their interaction with other compatible elements. Use and reserve biological intelligence.
• One Calorie In/One Calorie Out Do not consume or export more biomass than carbon fixed by the solar budget.
• Stocking Finding the balance of various elements to keep one from overpowering another over time. How much of an element needs to be produced in order to fulfil the need of whole system?
• Stacking Multi-level functions for single element (stacking functions). Multi-level garden design, ie., trellising, forest garden, vines, ground covers, etc.
• Succession Recognise that certain elements prepare the way for system to supports other elements in the future, i.e.: succession planting.
• Use Onsite Resources Determine what resources are available and entering the system on their own and maximise their use.
• Edge Effect Ecotones are the most diverse and fertile area in a system. Two ecosystems come together to form a third which has more diversity than either of the other two, i.e.: edges of ponds, forests, meadows, currents etc.
• Energy Recycling Yields from system designed to supply onsite needs and/or needs of local region.
• Small Scale Intensive Systems start small and create a system that is manageable and produces a high yield.
• Make Least Change for the Greatest Effect The less change that is generated, the less embedded energy is used to endow the system.
• Planting Strategy 1st-natives, 2nd-proven exotics, 3rd unproven exotics – carefully on small scale with lots of observation.
• Work Within Nature Aiding the natural cycles results in higher yield and less work. A little support goes along way.
• Appropriate Technology The same principles apply to cooking, lighting, transportation, heating, sewage treatment, water and other utilities.
• Law of Return Whatever we take, we must return Every object must responsibly provide for its replacement.
• Stress and Harmony Stress here may be defined as either prevention of natural function, or of forced function. Harmony may be defined as the integration of chosen and natural functions, and the easy supply of essential needs.
• The Problem is the solution We are the problem, we are the solution. Turn constraints into resources
• Mistakes are tools for learning
• The yield of a system is theoretically unlimited The only limit on the number of uses of a resource possible is the limit of information and imagination of designer.
• Dispersal of Yield Over Time Principal of seven generations. We can use energy to construct these systems, providing that in their lifetime, they store or conserve more energy that we use to construct them or to maintain them.
• A Policy of Responsibility (to relinquish power) The role of successful design is to create a self-managed system.
• Principle of Disorder Order and harmony produce energy for other uses. Disorder consumes energy to no useful end. Tidiness is maintained disorder.
• Chaos Has form, but is not predictable. The amplification of small fluctuations.
• Entropy In complex systems disorder is an increasing result. Entropy and lifeforce are a stable pair that maintain the universe to infinity.
• Metastability For a complex system to remain stable, there must be small pockets of disorder.
• Entelechy Principal of genetic intelligence. i.e. The rose has thorns to protect itself.
• Observation Protracted & thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless labor.
• We are surrounded by insurmountable opportunities
• Wait one year
• Hold water and fertility as high (in elevation) on the landscape as possible
• The only ethical decision is to take responsibility for our own existence and that of our children.
• Cooperation, not competition, is the very basis of future survival and of existing life systems.

http://www.thefarm.org/permaculture/

1. It’s too expensive (and I’ve got a family to feed.)

There are two separate issues here:

1. Is it too expensive – or does your regular shop charge too much for it?
2. Is it too expensive – or is the other food too cheap? (Or more to the point: are you just paying the extra expense in other ways?)

a) Your regular shop charges too much for it.

If you buy organic food in a supermarket it may very well be more expensive – but that’s because LOTS of things are more expensive in supermarkets: they just lure us in with the illusion of value. (And they’re good at it, too: that’s why the competition commission has to keep on slapping them down for doing things like raising prices to make the subsequent price cut more dramatic.)

If you shop at a local market, not only can you save about 50%, but you stay healthier by eating only fresh and seasonal food, have much less packaging to waste and feel terrible about throwing away, often find other good bargains, and most importantly you invest in your local community - £10 spent in your local market is worth £25 to the local economy, whereas £10 spent in a supermarket is worth only £14, because most of it zips away to head office to pay for TV adverts and expensive cars.

b) Other food is HUGELY subsidised, making it seem cheaper.

Subsidies work out at about 40 pence in every pound spent on food. Organic farmers, who don’t consume as much subsidy because they don’t use such high-input-cost methods and don’t try to maximise subsidy income, cost about 25 pence in every pound.

We are currently taxed £5.3 billion every year to subsidise current industrial farming methods (£3bn to farmers, £2.3bn on pollution cleanup). It’s been calculated that if we spend £1.2 billion every year for the next five years, all UK farms could convert to organic*.

That would mean we save £20 billion pounds in 5 years – about the same as we spend on education each year – and then free up another £5.3bn / year to invest in renewable energy. Huge.

* To be fair, I’ve not been able to corroborate that statement, but the numbers aren’t so important so long as they tend to zero, and end up delivering a system which requires less subsidy than the cost of conversion, which seems likely, especially with the ever rising cost of oil.

One definite bit of research though: In 2001 the UK pesticide market was worth about £500m per year. The cost of removing these from drinking water was £120m. That’s madness. And that’s before we even get on to the cancer rates, skin diseases, biodiversity loss, and so on.

2. It’s not any tastier.

It’s not supposed to be tastier. It’s supposed to be, and is, better.More nutrituous,

3. It’s weirdly shaped and got spots on.

Hey, cut your food some slack! That described you, once, too, and you turned out to be pretty tasty.

4. I’m concerned about animal welfare, not pesticide use.

Excellent! You probably look for the Freedom Food label, go free range, and only eat meat once or twice a week. You are wonderful! Did you know, though, that the Organic Certification includes animal welfare standards?

5. I buy local instead.

Ah, now that is interesting. Which is more important? Sustainable communities with local employment, or organic farming? Well you’re probably not going to get good organic farming without the people there to do it, so ensuring you’re buying local to keep that going is massively important. But then so is the health of your local environment. If you’re interested in local livelihoods, soils, jobs, high employment, roi,

You may have seen a recent report saying that going meat free one day per week saves more greenhouse gas emissions than eating a fully local diet. It seems kind of dubious, doesn’t it? You’re telling me that shipping grains and fruit half way around the world has less environmental impact than raising it locally?

Well you can test this for yourself at the Landshare Foodprint calculator.

I love the Soil Association, I really do – you will rarely meet a finer bunch of sensible, noble, inspired, and passionate people than at a Soil Association conference.

But boy-oh-boy has the organisation been holding them back! The Soil Association’s position and principles have been well intentioned, but the way they’ve gone about their job has been – with a few notable and excellent exceptions – from the dark ages. (Well, OK, maybe the 1970s? But with sprinklings of C17th Puritanism.)

But with their new corporate strategy, The Road to 2020, I am delighted to report that change is coming.

It’s driven by this vital sentence: There is no room for complacency*.

This is the crux which allows the pivot from “We are The Guardians of The Church of Organic Excellence and will only work with Believers” to “Let’s just try to help make food better for people and planet, shall we?”

Skipping over ironies that come from such a change of direction, and turning a blind eye (for now) to the “What took so bloody long?” problem of institutional change, let’s look at the highlights:

• More evidence based: they’re using facts, not ideologies.
• Going to where the people are: “it’s about mainstreaming our values, encouraging people to connect with, and care for, each other and the natural world through their relationship with food.”
• It’s about improving standards: The word ‘agro-ecological’ is used 3 times. Whilst it’s not much against the 44 instances of ‘organic’ it’s a major shift to acknowledging and promoting sustainable yet not-100%-organic farming methods.
• Partnerships: “Our future will be built on partnerships with other organisations and individuals who share our vision for the future of food, farming and land use. [...] investigate and promote business and social enterprise models that encourage ethical practice.”

This last point about partnerships is one I welcome enormously and agree with whole-heartedly. There is no room for complacency, and we must move fast and move together to undo the tragedies which have taken place since WWII.

I have had some experience of trying to work with the Soil Association on a project which helps with their stated aims of “providing solutions that help people to live, eat, farm and grow with the resources that are available” and “ensuring that we are giving the best possible service and support to our licensees”. I know three companies who have tried to work with the Soil Association on related projects which champion the work of organic producers, and each has met with a particularly abrupt and hostile response.

I shall be following up with Helen Browning to make sure that the journey along The Road to 2020 starts today, and will keep you posted.

(Meantime, you might like to sign up www.notasupermarket.co.uk to be a part of a networked solution which is 100% behind the Soil Association’s new direction!)

PS. apologies for the blatant self-promotion, but it’s a heck of a mission, and we need all the help we can get!

Both.

As food growers, sellers and eaters, we’re moving in two directions at once.

The number of hungry people has soared to nearly 1 billion, despite strong global harvests. And for even more people, sustenance has become a health hazard—with the US diet implicated in four out of our top ten deadly diseases. Power over soil, seeds and food sales is ever more tightly held, and farmland in the global South is being snatched away from indigenous people by speculators set to profit on climbing food prices. Just four companies control at least three-quarters of international grain trade; and in the United States, by 2000, just ten corporations—with boards totaling only 138 people—had come to account for half of US food and beverage sales. Conditions for American farmworkers remain so horrific that seven Florida growers have been convicted of slavery involving more than 1,000 workers. Life expectancy of US farmworkers is forty-nine years.

That’s one current. It’s antidemocratic and deadly.

There is, however, another current, which is democratizing power and aligning farming with nature’s genius. Many call it simply “the global food movement.” In the United States it’s building on the courage of truth tellers from Upton Sinclair to Rachel Carson, and worldwide it has been gaining energy and breadth for at least four decades.

Some Americans see the food movement as “nice” but peripheral—a middle-class preoccupation with farmers’ markets, community gardens and healthy school lunches. But no, I’ll argue here. It is at heart revolutionary, with some of the world’s poorest people in the lead, from Florida farmworkers to Indian villagers. It has the potential to transform not just the way we eat but the way we understand our world, including ourselves. And that vast power is just beginning to erupt.

[...]

More than 1,000 independent seed companies were swallowed up by multinationals in the past four decades, so today just three—Monsanto, DuPont and Syngenta—control about half the proprietary seed market worldwide.

Notes from The Food Movement: Its Power and Possibilities | The Nation.