morethanorganic

There is a clear hole in the logic behind a suggestion made in my previous post  "Just ordinary food".

While waiting to talk with the manager at a large private compost producing company, two trucks arrived with burned residue from a municipal dump!  There´s no need to go into what that burned residue may have contained, I´m sure you get the picture when you consider what gets thrown away.

So what´s the point of that: producing pote...

While we continue to make organic food sound special, it will stay entombed within a niche market, only appealing to sufficiently affluent & / or educated people.  This is fine if you´re one of those people, but most people don´t fall into this category and they need feeding.

It saddens me when we use our interest in organic food to puff up our ´goodness´, wearing it like a badge, while we launch attacks at the ´bad´ farmers who us...

Working pruning olive trees brings a sense of heritage: a heritage of extraordinary value.  Many of these trees are well over 100 years old, some possibly several hundreds.  Each knarled trunk and crooked branch come together to give each tree a character of it´s own.  So many seasons have gone into creating these characters, yet they are still only young adults and with care could well still be around in the next millenium.

The noble generations that pl...

Ever consider why society developed like it has?  Here, society means over-consuming countries such as UK and USA, where life is automated.  Make no mistake about this, making a living from farming the land is probably the hardest phyiscal work you´ll get.  Manual building work may be more intense, but that´s a 9-5 job, whereas farming is a lifestyle, all hours, all weathers, all days.

By now you´re wondering where this is going?  You know ...

It seems that you´re generally interested in more collaborating.  Different levels, different areas of focus, but you see the point in collaborating to achieve more tangible action.  Yes?

So how do we take this forward?  Here are some initial suggestions to get the ball moving and stir you into bringing your own ideas forward.

In using social media, as a collaborative vehicle to help drive transition to sustainable farming and food, my ...

The soil here in South Catalunya leaves a lot to be desired. Generally, abundant top soil is difficult to track down.  On my land, that had remained fallow for twelve years, the resulting humus had barely made an impact on the deep red clay base. Generally here in Spain, we find that areas rich in fertile top soil command a market premium price - that´s if  this type of land makes it onto the market  - the local people know what´s a good long term investment and hold onto it!  This sit...

So the drive to sustainable food is beginning to appear on the general public´s radar - all the pan banging has created enough noise to get us this far.  That´s positive, a move in the right direction, but how do we develop our cause - make it tangible enough to kickstart some real change, real momentum?  How do we really get our claws into some deep societal action?

Twitter as a connecting tool is good, but we´re harnessing all this connectiv...

Capitalism ephasizes quantity.  In our over consuming Western Nations, quantity is seen as a core value.  Accumulating material wealth as a facet of desiring quantity, drives our economies and plays a large part in our lives which are managed and run based on quantities of time.  Wherever we look, it´s not difficult to find quantity as a core value. So is it really so surprising that agriculture and food systems reflect this core value of quantity?

Our so...

The openness of Twitter, makes it possible to chat with  many different people with varied views and to begin to get some insight into the conditions shaping these views.

There are many people within the agricultural community with views that mirror the large bio-technology corporations.  From what I´ve heard so far, with regards to food security, these views can be condensed into the need to increase productivity and make more efficient use of existing agricu...

Dear Mr Gates,

Sir, as a small scale farmer, I´m writing to express my concern for your proposed roll out of bio-technology to initiate a green revolution in the continent of Africa.

Your focus on wanting to help the African people is noble and I personally have never been to that continent, nor do I know a great deal about the traditions of the African peoples.  However, I do have a little understanding of the condition of agriculture in our wes...

The GM Food discussions on Twitter recently, are interesting not only because they help progress our understanding of the subject, but also to guage how responsive people are to different ways of driving interest in our causes.

Over the last couple of years, the GM debate seems to have become clouded by a smog of public helplessness, so it´s important to get people talking again.  But how?

1.Before we start, it´s essential to have s...