Green Food

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Green Food


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81/100 Possibilities~ 100 Possibilities Project set

www.organicconsumers.org/Organic/lappebook050602.cfm
The globalization and consolidation of our food system, the staggering loss of plant diversity, the continuing farm crisis, dwindling water and soil resources, and the genetic modification of our staple food crops like soy and corn, lead us to wonder if there is indeed hope for this small planet. "Hope’s Edge" considers these issues, first by challenging the way we’ve been conditioned to think about them.

. . . In addition to inspiring stories from home and abroad, and a plethora of statistics and information, we are also continually reminded of the joys of whole-food cuisines from around the globe. Each chapter has wonderful recipes that reflect the traditional foods from the culture being discussed. The final section, "Coming to our Senses" contains more than fifty gourmet recipes from some of our leading vegetarian chefs and cookbook authors including, Laurel Robertson, Molly Katsen and Anna Thomas, who, along with Frances Moore Lappe and others, started this revolution in the way we think about food. How far this cuisine has evolved from its humble vegetable stirfries and bean casseroles!

www.smallplanet.org/

www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5i-MPbPn4-M_gG…

UN unveils ambitious ‘green’ food programme
NAIROBI (AFP) — The UN Environment Programme has unveiled an ambitious seven-point plan to feed the world without polluting it further by making better use of resources and cutting down on massive waste.

A survey of the current state of food production and consumption released to a forum of the Kenya-based UNEP and world environment ministers showed colossal waste but also came up with green solutions. "Over half of the food produced today is either lost, wasted or discarded as a result of inefficiency in the human-managed food chain," UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said of a 104-page report released on Tuesday. "There is evidence within the report that the world could feed the entire projected population growth (of about three billion by 2050) alone by becoming more efficient while also ensuring the survival of wild animals, birds and fish on this planet," he said.

Researchers roved from the Arctic to Australia, noting for instance that 30 million tonnes of fish were discarded at sea annually, while "almost one-third of all food purchased in the United Kingdom each year is not eaten." Prodigious quantities of cereals currently used worldwide as livestock fodder could feed people, the report said.

But waste of food produced is only one aspect of a wide-ranging survey that covers issues ranging from climate change, drought and land degradation to the negative impact of fertilisers and pesticides on crops and the food chain. "We need a green revolution in a green economy but one with a capital G," Steiner told the Nairobi conference which runs to Friday. "We need to deal not only with the way the world produces food but the way that it is distributed, sold and consumed, and we need a revolution that can boost yields by working with, rather than against, nature."

The focus on waste highlights a rarely surveyed field, Steiner said, and suggested, for example, that "losses and food waste in the United States could be as high as 40-50 percent."

. . . The measures recommended for a mid-term effect include steps to:
- "Reallocate cereals used in animal feed to human consumption by developing alternative feeds based on new technology, waste and discards. This could feed nearly the entire projected population growth" (to an estimated nine billion people overall by 2050).

- "Support small-scale farmers by a global fund for micro-finance in developing diversified and resilient ecoagriculture and intercropping systems.

- "Increase trade and market access by improving infrastructure, reducing trade barriers, enhancing government subsidies and safety nets, as well as reducing armed conflict and corruption."

The document is entitled ‘The environmental food crisis: environment’s role in averting future food crises’ and can be accessed at www.unep.org or at www.grida.no.

Linda Woodrow


Image by Permaculture Planet
www.permacultureplanet.com
50 Things About Me

1. I'm the Linda Woodrow who wrote The Permaculture Home Garden.
2. I'm not the Linda Woodrow who was briefly married to Elton John.
3. I have had a kitchen garden for about 30 years now.
4. I live in Australia, in rural Northern NSW.
5. My climate is sub tropical – warm dry windy spring, hot summers with unreliable thunderstorms, warm wet autumn, cool but not cold winter. This makes me a very lucky gardener.
6. I also live on a hill – nearly 300 metres above sea level – so my garden is pretty well frost free.
7. My garden these days is quite small and very intensively fenced to keep out possums, wallabies, paddymelons, bush turkeys, bower birds, cockatoos, flying foxes, goannas, carpet snakes, quolls, and other assorted wildlife.
8. Sadly, I can't use chook domes any more. See above. But I'm working on a new chook roost design now.
9. One of the most important things I have done in my life was a riparian restoration project that planted a forest: you'd think the wildlife would go live there!
10. I live with my partner of nearly 30 years, Lewie, who is the smartest, funniest, most creative, honest, and sexiest man I know, and also the laziest.
11. He likes fishing, but not gardening.
12. I have two grown up kids, a son and a daughter, who are both people anyone would choose in their "stranded on a desert island" crew.
13. I am a Virgo, but I don't believe in astrology.
14. But co-incidentally, I'm a pretty good Virgo.
15. I do believe in science. I love the scientific method for observing and understanding reality.
16. And thus I find it hard to believe that anyone doesn't believe that climate change requires us all to seriously change our addictive consumerism, now, yesterday.
17. When they believe in electricity and aeroplanes?
18. In fact the only way I can make any sense of it is that they mustn't like life – their own life, other peoples' lives, human species life, biodiversity, life in general – and this is shocking.
19. Because I believe what is sacred is the miracle that this blue green planet circling a small outlying star put together the right conditions for the marvel of evolution to happen. How unlikely is that?
20. I feel very lucky to be the beneficiary of this miracle because life is good.
21. And to honour its goodness, I plan to live long and enjoy it, in solidarity with all the other lives – human and other- doing the same thing.
22. Which makes me a witch. Or at least a pagan.
23. And brings me back to the theme of food gardening, and cooking and enjoying fresh healthy food.
24. Because food is one of the great pleasures of life. (Just one of them, but a good one.)
25. And maybe now is a good spot to add that I'm not a vegetarian – I have been in the past, and sometimes we go for a long time without eating meat, but philosophically I think predation is a natural part of the cycle of life.
26. So long as the animals have a good life, preferably wild and free.
27. It worries me that we feed fish to cats when there aren't enough fish to feed people in much of the world.
28. I like cooking. It is a way to relax and be creative and show nurturing care for people.
29. Possibly a little too much. I work outside the house, pretty well full time lately, mostly on a computer. So I have to watch I don't put on weight,
30. But the whole idea of "diets" just doesn't fit in my world.
31. And fake food made industrially sets me off on a rant.
32. I live in a home built house, and I hammered in a good percentage of the nails in it.
33. I live with stand-alone solar power which provides all the electricity anyone could possibly need.
34. We have a composting toilet, a system that is still being improved. 'Nuff said
35. Our hot water comes from solar panels in summer and a slow combustion stove in winter and there's plenty of heat though sometimes not a huge amount of water.
36. Our water comes from tanks and dams and some years we have to be very frugal with it.
37. I am a very bad housekeeper.
38. I think perfect is the enemy of good and being purist is dangerous, which is just as well because otherwise I'd have to totally disown myself.
39. I like mending and making things and making things last.
40. I like the challenge and elegance in being frugal.
41. Left to myself, I would have very little stuff, but I live with a bloke who likes old things and the stories they hold.
42. I live in a community set up in the early 1980′s.
43. I think if we forget and lose the skills of living as a community, we are going to be in big trouble, especially as we negotiate the challenges ahead.
44. So I am pleased some of we hippies stuck with the learning and managed to invent models of functional community.
45. I love the beach but I wouldn't want to live there.
46. I love the internet – information and ideas – such treasure.
47. I'm not at all sure though that mobile phones are a necessary invention.
48. Or any music system since vinyl.
49. I am basically very shy and don't like talking about myself, so this is hard.
50. I started this blog because I had an epiphany that it wasn't ok to let shyness stop me when we need all hands on deck to create a cultural shift.

witcheskitchen.com.au/

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