About ten years ago I realised that climate change was a real and looming problem. I started reading, and occasionally writing, on the subject, linking global warming with peak oil as two sides of the same problematic coin. Our dependence on fossil fuels was and is clearly the overarching problem, and that dependence stems from our addiction to an unsustainable way of life. The unsustainability arises from our love of all things material and luxurious and our complete disregard for either seasonality or geography when it comes to shopping for food.
And it is an unfortunate fact that despite the continuing decline in oil production worldwide, it will be possible to continue to find and use fossil fuel for a long time to come, albeit at incalculable cost both environmentally and financially – until we finally poison our planet with a surfeit of CO2.
No matter how we address these issues, no solution to the greenhouse gas problem can work unless our consumption of fossil fuel is very substantially reduced. We can produce bio fuels and burn wood in our power stations, but we are still adding to the CO2 in our atmosphere, even while persuading ourselves that it is in a more sustainable way. We can invest in true renewable energy sources like solar, wind and tidal power, but without an unswerving determination to dramatically reduce our energy consumption, we will not stop the rise in our global temperature with many resultant disasters.
One of the most significant sources of greenhouse gas emissions is the fossil-fuel-intense way in which our food is produced and distributed. We could be talking about developing countries where vast tracts of land are rendered unproductive by unsophisticated subsistence farming methods, leading to the burning of forest or the draining of precious wetlands to liberate new land for agriculture. Equally we could be talking about major agribusinesses which destroy the soil (releasing CO2) by using heavily mechanised monoculture methods with the over-use of carbon-based fertilisers and pesticides, and the inherent fuel use associated with both farm machinery and crop transport and distribution.
Over the years I have continued to read and learn, and have come to understand that globally our means of food production and distribution are in a very bad way indeed. Recently the fact that horsemeat has been found in cheap ready meals where it was not supposed to be, has only served to reinforce my concerns regarding food production.
The more I learned, the greater was the effect on my own life. I dispensed with prepared meals some years ago. I started to make my own bread (having read about the ‘baking aids’ which are added to factory bread in the interests of a quick bake), I dramatically reduced my consumption of meat and am still edging towards vegetarianism! I started to incorporate different types of beans and pulses into my cooking. And recently, in the interests of saving CO2 emissions, I discovered a source of UK produced dried peas and beans, which should enable me to stop buying imported produce altogether.
A few years ago I stripped my garden of ornamental plants, bought a greenhouse and started to pay serious attention to growing my own food. I watched on-line video clips on all aspects of domestic food production, forest gardens, no-dig gardening, organic food and so on. In the course of conversations with like-minded friends, I discovered the concept of aquaponics as an efficient means of food production. I had finally arrived at a point in my life when I decided to rethink my entire future.
I proceeded to use up my limited savings to renovate my cottage before putting it on the market. I anticipate a time, not many years hence, when food becomes very much more expensive than it is now, through escalating production and transport costs, and I intend to use some of the released equity from the sale of my house to set up an aquaponics greenhouse, with the hope that I can keep my family supplied with the majority of their vegetable requirements, as well as some home-grown fish.
As yet my house has not sold, and I am getting frustrated with the wait! But it has occurred to me that there is a lack of balance in my search for answers. For all my reading about food production and distribution, I have realised that my knowledge on food consumption is pretty sparse. What should we eat? What shouldn’t we eat? How do vegetarians and vegans give themselves a rich, varied and tasty diet? And can they do it without relying on imported staples like soya (which is almost all genetically modified)? I know someone who remains very fit and healthy despite not only being vegan, but not eating any cooked food at all!
I decided I should try to correct these gaps in my knowledge, and so trawled through the Open University website for an appropriate course. Thus I discovered a short 21 week course on nutrition which is about to be conducted for the very last time, due to funding cuts! I spent some weeks thinking about it, taking into account my age at over 70; considering whether I was still up to the studying; whether my noticeably deteriorating memory is an insurmountable problem; whether my two-finger keyboard skills are equal to the task; wondering what happens if I have to move house part way through the course; and wondering if I could justify the expenditure.
Given a very positive level of encouragement from my family, I decided to register for the course and now eagerly await the arrival of the material. And, to occupy my mind in the interim, I have just taken delivery of Andrew Simms’ new book ‘Cancel the Apocalypse’, so that I can continue to search for reasons for optimism about the future of our planet!
Saturday, 9 March 2013
Saturday, 2 March 2013
Full of Sound and Fury, signifying what exactly?!
The Eurozone is worried! Beppe Grillo has certainly stirred the pot. In the Italian election his ‘movement’ grabbed a quarter of the votes, propelling 160 or so non-politicians into politics. I believe the most pertinent question we should all be asking (and it is relevant to all of us) is why did the voters vote this way? Perhaps after the antics of Berlusconi (including passing laws specifically designed to exempt him from prosecution) and then coping with his rather grey successor who they never voted for, and who subjected them to austerity and mass unemployment, they took the view that to go through all that for the sake of some European intangible ideal was not what they wanted. Perhaps their frustration with the day-to-day political merry-go-round finally got the better of them. Perhaps they want to try something different!
Could this be the glimmer of the beginning of a shift away from the conventional growth-obsessed thinking of ‘the usual suspects’, and towards a carefully controlled steady state economy?
There has been plenty of corruption in Italy’s politics for years – but take a look at the politics of the rest of the world. We in the UK are always so smug about our ‘mother of parliaments’ image, but really we are no better than the others. Although ‘corruption’ is a word generally applied to the dishonest use of money or power in government, I would apply it more widely; to include, for example, politicians who misrepresent their motives and ambitions. We have had the Iraq war, clearly fought on a false premise, ‘cash for questions’, the expenses scandals, Chris Huhne’s ill-judged antics, all of which have caused us to question the integrity of our politicians. And now the accusations against Lord Rennard – concerning which we are still being ‘spun’ a dilution of the facts.
In the USA, the public are continuously misled on a grand scale – their Iraq war (again on false premises), the subjugation of their politics to Big Oil, Big Agriculture, Big Pharma, the NRA and other groupings (including religious ones) who continue to mislead on food safety, energy, sustainability, climate change, environmental issues and the manipulation of their tax dollars to favour those who least need help but who chase power and wealth.
The level of corruption in the African countries, Spain, Greece, South American nations and most others is a phenomenon we are frequently alerted to by the media – and certainly the media themselves are not above scrutiny.
Some more fanciful commentators have drawn a parallel between Grillo’s Five Star movement and the so-called Arab spring, suggesting that Beppe Grillo’s arrival on the political scene heralds the start of a Europe-wide anti-political movement. But in fact this trend became internationally visible a while back with the Occupy movement, although the anti-globalisation protests predated that. Because the Governments in Europe and the USA are in favour of free speech (at least superficially), the Occupy movement has a harder row to till; such movements thrive on opposition.
But consider for a moment the bye-election in Eastleigh, Hampshire, the seat vacated by the disgraced former Minister Huhne. More than a quarter of the vote went to UKIP. Why? I presume some people voted for UKIP for their stand on European membership and immigration. But that is a less convincing suggestion since David Cameron announced his intention to hold a referendum on Europe, which could potentially address both those issues. Very few people, I would suggest, are in sympathy with most of the other UKIP policies, such as their antipathy towards any kind of green agenda, so we must assume that it is another example of ‘a plague on both your houses’. (Interestingly, in a post-election poll in Eastleigh, most of the ex-Tory voters admitted that at a general election they would return to the Tory fold.)
However our UK parliamentary system does not readily lend itself to a ‘Grillo’ situation, especially since the complete mismanagement of the referendum on our voting system. (A good example of a question constructed to achieve the desired result!)
Perhaps our politics need some kind of purge. To many, our political systems in Europe are not fit for purpose any more. There are too many laws and restrictions, a proportion of them increasingly unenforceable and seemingly pointless, and many of them apparently designed to protect us from ourselves! Taxes take an increasing proportion of earnings to pay for top-heavy administrations and projects which most individuals see as irrelevant to their lives.
So what does Mister Average Voter want? Disillusionment with the well trodden political path taken by every party when in power, notwithstanding election promises or political colour, leaves him bewildered, bored and disinterested. Despite the rose-tinted publicity material spread through constituencies at election time, politicians just don’t have the charisma, imagination or will to do anything new. No matter what they say, we know that there will be no substantive change to the way our Country is governed, only, perhaps, a new and more polished way of presenting it.
We could do with a Grillo to break the mould. Beppe Grillo has stated that his movement will not support any political grouping, but will act as an opposition party. To avoid instability and political break-down, the right and the left will be forced to work together. The potential ramifications of failure are huge throughout Europe, and particularly the Eurozone. After all Italy is not Iceland. The Icelandic Government takes credit for turning its back on its own banks (in response to a referendum vote on the matter), and allowing them to fail, despite protestations from Europe. The new prosperity in Iceland shows the virtue of that course of action. If Italy did the same (and exited the Euro) that would really give us all a good shaking. Perhaps that is just what we all need! There would certainly be plenty of misery, but perhaps it would be relatively short lived, and might free us from the chains of our present form of democracy, allowing us as individuals to relearn how to rely more on ourselves and our communities, and less on the State. Then we could start voting for what we want, instead of voting against what we perceive to be the marginally worse option!
Could this be the glimmer of the beginning of a shift away from the conventional growth-obsessed thinking of ‘the usual suspects’, and towards a carefully controlled steady state economy?
There has been plenty of corruption in Italy’s politics for years – but take a look at the politics of the rest of the world. We in the UK are always so smug about our ‘mother of parliaments’ image, but really we are no better than the others. Although ‘corruption’ is a word generally applied to the dishonest use of money or power in government, I would apply it more widely; to include, for example, politicians who misrepresent their motives and ambitions. We have had the Iraq war, clearly fought on a false premise, ‘cash for questions’, the expenses scandals, Chris Huhne’s ill-judged antics, all of which have caused us to question the integrity of our politicians. And now the accusations against Lord Rennard – concerning which we are still being ‘spun’ a dilution of the facts.
In the USA, the public are continuously misled on a grand scale – their Iraq war (again on false premises), the subjugation of their politics to Big Oil, Big Agriculture, Big Pharma, the NRA and other groupings (including religious ones) who continue to mislead on food safety, energy, sustainability, climate change, environmental issues and the manipulation of their tax dollars to favour those who least need help but who chase power and wealth.
The level of corruption in the African countries, Spain, Greece, South American nations and most others is a phenomenon we are frequently alerted to by the media – and certainly the media themselves are not above scrutiny.
Some more fanciful commentators have drawn a parallel between Grillo’s Five Star movement and the so-called Arab spring, suggesting that Beppe Grillo’s arrival on the political scene heralds the start of a Europe-wide anti-political movement. But in fact this trend became internationally visible a while back with the Occupy movement, although the anti-globalisation protests predated that. Because the Governments in Europe and the USA are in favour of free speech (at least superficially), the Occupy movement has a harder row to till; such movements thrive on opposition.
But consider for a moment the bye-election in Eastleigh, Hampshire, the seat vacated by the disgraced former Minister Huhne. More than a quarter of the vote went to UKIP. Why? I presume some people voted for UKIP for their stand on European membership and immigration. But that is a less convincing suggestion since David Cameron announced his intention to hold a referendum on Europe, which could potentially address both those issues. Very few people, I would suggest, are in sympathy with most of the other UKIP policies, such as their antipathy towards any kind of green agenda, so we must assume that it is another example of ‘a plague on both your houses’. (Interestingly, in a post-election poll in Eastleigh, most of the ex-Tory voters admitted that at a general election they would return to the Tory fold.)
However our UK parliamentary system does not readily lend itself to a ‘Grillo’ situation, especially since the complete mismanagement of the referendum on our voting system. (A good example of a question constructed to achieve the desired result!)
Perhaps our politics need some kind of purge. To many, our political systems in Europe are not fit for purpose any more. There are too many laws and restrictions, a proportion of them increasingly unenforceable and seemingly pointless, and many of them apparently designed to protect us from ourselves! Taxes take an increasing proportion of earnings to pay for top-heavy administrations and projects which most individuals see as irrelevant to their lives.
So what does Mister Average Voter want? Disillusionment with the well trodden political path taken by every party when in power, notwithstanding election promises or political colour, leaves him bewildered, bored and disinterested. Despite the rose-tinted publicity material spread through constituencies at election time, politicians just don’t have the charisma, imagination or will to do anything new. No matter what they say, we know that there will be no substantive change to the way our Country is governed, only, perhaps, a new and more polished way of presenting it.
We could do with a Grillo to break the mould. Beppe Grillo has stated that his movement will not support any political grouping, but will act as an opposition party. To avoid instability and political break-down, the right and the left will be forced to work together. The potential ramifications of failure are huge throughout Europe, and particularly the Eurozone. After all Italy is not Iceland. The Icelandic Government takes credit for turning its back on its own banks (in response to a referendum vote on the matter), and allowing them to fail, despite protestations from Europe. The new prosperity in Iceland shows the virtue of that course of action. If Italy did the same (and exited the Euro) that would really give us all a good shaking. Perhaps that is just what we all need! There would certainly be plenty of misery, but perhaps it would be relatively short lived, and might free us from the chains of our present form of democracy, allowing us as individuals to relearn how to rely more on ourselves and our communities, and less on the State. Then we could start voting for what we want, instead of voting against what we perceive to be the marginally worse option!
Friday, 22 February 2013
The Grand US Energy Bubble
How did the human race progress from cave dwelling to space station in such a relatively short time? Is it through our ability to learn, to build on what we have learned and then to learn from what we have built? But in this modern world, many of us have allowed that ability to become dormant, in favour of a desire for power, wealth and acquisition. And so we perhaps should not be surprised that many wealthy bankers seem to have lost the ability to learn from previous experience. Back to this later!
There has been some publicity over the last couple of years on the immense gas and oil reserves discovered in the USA, to be accessed by miraculous modern technology such as ‘fracking’ and horizontal drilling. It is proposed that the tar sands being mined in Canada will further supplement the USA’s insatiable need for fuel via the Keystone XL pipeline. We are told (by bankers?) that the USA has become self sufficient in fossil fuel for the foreseeable future. Yeah right!
The Americans (by which, of course, I mean the North Americans!) are desperate. They do not want to remain dependent on external supplies of fossil fuel. So they (including President Obama) are pulling out all the stops to avoid that dependency, with the willing help of the banks, naturally.
Let us consider the tar sands in Canada; this is actually a fascinating subject on its own. The Canadians say to the Americans, ‘if you want the crude from tar sands you have to build a pipeline (the Keystone XL pipeline) to take the crude to your refineries, otherwise we can find plenty of other customers for the crude!’ The pipeline is going to cost around $7 billion, which in the scheme of things is small change.
But to process the tar sands to produce the crude, they need copious quantities of natural gas (about a fifth of Canada’s entire production). They also need a lot of water, and a lot of diluent. Diluent? OK – to allow the stuff to flow through a pipeline it has to be diluted with some kind of light oil, which at present they are importing at a rate of up to 200,000 barrels a day. They could produce it themselves, from the bitumen they are digging up, but that is very expensive too. And by the way, there is a limit to the amount of gas they can use, because they have domestic users, as well as a binding agreement to export a proportion of the gas they produce to America! So we can deduce that production of crude from these tar sands is incredibly expensive, hardly cost effective, and about as efficient as you can get at producing greenhouse gases! Unsurprising therefore, that Canada pulled out of the Kyoto protocol!
The President long ago expressed his support for the pipeline – the only reason for a delay has been the choice of route. But the Americans are grasping at straws – the product will barely supply 10% of their daily needs, and at a massive production cost and a very small net energy gain. Globally Canadian tar sands are a drop in the ocean at massive environmental costs, and because of the restrictions on production in terms of energy, water and transport, it is hard to see a long term future for the process.
But don’t worry, the USA has its own stock of tar sands (not much), shale oil and shale gas.
It seems that this ‘revitalisation’ of the American energy industry attracted the attention of the investment bankers. I don’t pretend to have the slightest idea how investment finance works; but evidently money was poured in to the extent that production amounted to four times demand – resulting in a catastrophic drop in price, and a desperate drive to export to where prices were higher. The result has been that production costs have exceeded prices by a significant amount, resulting in a phenomenal amount of business in the mergers and acquisitions market, and thus huge profits for the banks.
Let us switch for a moment to considering the traditional and diminishing oil industry. You may remember that a gentleman called M King Hubbert produced the famous Hubberts curve in 1956, a graph which he used to predict that American oil production would peak somewhere about the late sixties or early seventies. There was much criticism and disbelief, but he was proven correct in his thinking as American oil production peaked in 1970. Hubbert was able to apply his mathematics to individual oil fields, oil producing countries and by extension to the planet, predicting that world oil production would peak in the early 21st century. Nothing yet, not even this latest alleged US bonanza, has shown him to be wrong.
You can apply Hubbert’s curve to almost any non-renewable resource; but it seems that the curve, which indicates a rise, a peak and then a decline in a roughly symmetrical format, doesn’t readily lend itself to these modern production methods. And the reason is this: the depletion rate of these wells is extremely fast, so instead of a gentle decline after the peak we have a cliff. To maintain production levels new wells need to be brought on stream all the time, at a cost of many billions of dollars. Required input annually to maintain current shale gas production in the States is around $42 billion. (Lucky we have those bankers!) Value of shale gas produced in 2012 was $32.5 billion! Shale oil is also horrendously expensive to produce and a well’s production rate will decline by in excess of 80% in the first 24 months. Tar sands produce oil at a cost of about $100 dollars per barrel, which leaves little room for profit! Many of the production sites of all these fossil fuel elements are already in decline. It seems unlikely that this 'foreseeable future' could last more than another five years or so!
The reason that Hubbert’s prognosis has proven so accurate time and time again is because, self evidently, the oil companies go for the easiest first. Thus the oil becomes progressively more difficult and more expensive to access, until you get to a point where it is no longer viable. Tar sands are not that far from that point of diminishing returns, and the great oil and gas bonanza so enthusiastically promoted by the bankers cannot possibly be other than a great big bubble!
The good news? Although carbon emissions from the USA continue to cause immense damage to our atmosphere in the short term, in the longer term that cannot continue because the bubble has to burst, and carbon emissions from the USA is certain to decrease!
And the bad news? Well… remember all that sub-prime nonsense when the house mortgage market collapsed? It is going to happen all over again with American oil reserves! I said we would come back to the bankers!
So what about our own UK shale gas reserves? I would steer clear of investment there if I were you! It will be better for us all if we just reduce our energy needs.
Data has been lifted from reports by Deborah Rogers of the Energy Policy Forum and J David Hughes of the Post Carbon Institute
There has been some publicity over the last couple of years on the immense gas and oil reserves discovered in the USA, to be accessed by miraculous modern technology such as ‘fracking’ and horizontal drilling. It is proposed that the tar sands being mined in Canada will further supplement the USA’s insatiable need for fuel via the Keystone XL pipeline. We are told (by bankers?) that the USA has become self sufficient in fossil fuel for the foreseeable future. Yeah right!
The Americans (by which, of course, I mean the North Americans!) are desperate. They do not want to remain dependent on external supplies of fossil fuel. So they (including President Obama) are pulling out all the stops to avoid that dependency, with the willing help of the banks, naturally.
Let us consider the tar sands in Canada; this is actually a fascinating subject on its own. The Canadians say to the Americans, ‘if you want the crude from tar sands you have to build a pipeline (the Keystone XL pipeline) to take the crude to your refineries, otherwise we can find plenty of other customers for the crude!’ The pipeline is going to cost around $7 billion, which in the scheme of things is small change.
But to process the tar sands to produce the crude, they need copious quantities of natural gas (about a fifth of Canada’s entire production). They also need a lot of water, and a lot of diluent. Diluent? OK – to allow the stuff to flow through a pipeline it has to be diluted with some kind of light oil, which at present they are importing at a rate of up to 200,000 barrels a day. They could produce it themselves, from the bitumen they are digging up, but that is very expensive too. And by the way, there is a limit to the amount of gas they can use, because they have domestic users, as well as a binding agreement to export a proportion of the gas they produce to America! So we can deduce that production of crude from these tar sands is incredibly expensive, hardly cost effective, and about as efficient as you can get at producing greenhouse gases! Unsurprising therefore, that Canada pulled out of the Kyoto protocol!
The President long ago expressed his support for the pipeline – the only reason for a delay has been the choice of route. But the Americans are grasping at straws – the product will barely supply 10% of their daily needs, and at a massive production cost and a very small net energy gain. Globally Canadian tar sands are a drop in the ocean at massive environmental costs, and because of the restrictions on production in terms of energy, water and transport, it is hard to see a long term future for the process.
But don’t worry, the USA has its own stock of tar sands (not much), shale oil and shale gas.
It seems that this ‘revitalisation’ of the American energy industry attracted the attention of the investment bankers. I don’t pretend to have the slightest idea how investment finance works; but evidently money was poured in to the extent that production amounted to four times demand – resulting in a catastrophic drop in price, and a desperate drive to export to where prices were higher. The result has been that production costs have exceeded prices by a significant amount, resulting in a phenomenal amount of business in the mergers and acquisitions market, and thus huge profits for the banks.
Let us switch for a moment to considering the traditional and diminishing oil industry. You may remember that a gentleman called M King Hubbert produced the famous Hubberts curve in 1956, a graph which he used to predict that American oil production would peak somewhere about the late sixties or early seventies. There was much criticism and disbelief, but he was proven correct in his thinking as American oil production peaked in 1970. Hubbert was able to apply his mathematics to individual oil fields, oil producing countries and by extension to the planet, predicting that world oil production would peak in the early 21st century. Nothing yet, not even this latest alleged US bonanza, has shown him to be wrong.
You can apply Hubbert’s curve to almost any non-renewable resource; but it seems that the curve, which indicates a rise, a peak and then a decline in a roughly symmetrical format, doesn’t readily lend itself to these modern production methods. And the reason is this: the depletion rate of these wells is extremely fast, so instead of a gentle decline after the peak we have a cliff. To maintain production levels new wells need to be brought on stream all the time, at a cost of many billions of dollars. Required input annually to maintain current shale gas production in the States is around $42 billion. (Lucky we have those bankers!) Value of shale gas produced in 2012 was $32.5 billion! Shale oil is also horrendously expensive to produce and a well’s production rate will decline by in excess of 80% in the first 24 months. Tar sands produce oil at a cost of about $100 dollars per barrel, which leaves little room for profit! Many of the production sites of all these fossil fuel elements are already in decline. It seems unlikely that this 'foreseeable future' could last more than another five years or so!
The reason that Hubbert’s prognosis has proven so accurate time and time again is because, self evidently, the oil companies go for the easiest first. Thus the oil becomes progressively more difficult and more expensive to access, until you get to a point where it is no longer viable. Tar sands are not that far from that point of diminishing returns, and the great oil and gas bonanza so enthusiastically promoted by the bankers cannot possibly be other than a great big bubble!
The good news? Although carbon emissions from the USA continue to cause immense damage to our atmosphere in the short term, in the longer term that cannot continue because the bubble has to burst, and carbon emissions from the USA is certain to decrease!
And the bad news? Well… remember all that sub-prime nonsense when the house mortgage market collapsed? It is going to happen all over again with American oil reserves! I said we would come back to the bankers!
So what about our own UK shale gas reserves? I would steer clear of investment there if I were you! It will be better for us all if we just reduce our energy needs.
Data has been lifted from reports by Deborah Rogers of the Energy Policy Forum and J David Hughes of the Post Carbon Institute
Sunday, 10 February 2013
Thoughts Arising from 'Horsegate'
I suppose there are millions of people who think as I do, that the latest bit of food-related drama, or something like it, was bound to happen sooner or later. Both governments and large commercial organisations have been colluding over time to make the simple business of growing and selling food more and more complicated, with this inevitable consequence.
The now largely discredited trend towards globalisation of our food markets has disadvantaged, and often destroyed, local community food production in favour of monocrop agribusinesses, often foreign-owned, determined to export because that way they can make more money, and satisfy their competitive desire for economic growth. They grow food in relatively poor countries where labour is cheap, and sell to rich countries where people are too busy making money to worry about down to earth matters like where their food comes from or how it is prepared!
The profit motive, having replaced the survival motive, encourages those businesses to try to increase the crop yield by any means possible using oil-based fertilisers, and often genetically modified seed. Mass production at the growing end of the chain means that the soil is merely a growing medium (supplemented with chemicals just like in hydroponics) for a monocrop where pests are drawn to the feast by the sheer area of their favourite food, to be slaughtered with chemicals which then find their way into the food chain. Mass production at the processing and packaging end means that the consumer can never be absolutely sure that they are getting what they think they are. Different countries have differing standards for their labelling, and controls of pesticide also vary from country to country. In the US, food labels are not even required to show whether the food is genetically modified.
The globalisation of our food brings about two significant effects; the distancing of the consumer from the producer, and a loss of control by the consumer over what he is eating.
Most consumers don’t know where what they eat comes from, and many of them really don’t care! If they want a French bean in February, they can buy it at the supermarket; and they have to buy it packaged, because the packaging protects the food during its long journey from Kenya. The production of that bean, like so many other products, is drenched in oil, contributing disproportionally to global warming, through its planting, its harvesting, its packaging and its air transport.
The modern way of growing food is for the most part inefficient, destructive and anti-communal. Large areas of land are ploughed, sown, fertilised and sprayed without any regard to the contours of the land, the flow of the run-off water, the underlying structure of the soil or the health and biodiversity of the surrounding environment. Productivity depends on chemical input and control of the wild life. A relatively recent addition to this ‘mess’ is genetic modification; and we are starting to see the negative side of that particular set of techniques.
Soil has been denuded of its natural health and essential minerals. The earth itself is being washed down hill when it rains, and carried down to the rivers, damaging the aquatic environment. The habitats of much of our wild life have been lost. The bird and insect populations have been drastically and noticeably reduced, even in the last decade.
Genetic modification of crops is losing credibility day by day. There is a widely held view that GM crops are carcinogenic (a view recently supported by a French scientific study). A recent report by the European Food Safety Authority states that most commonly found GM foods contain a rogue viral gene called Gene VI, which is potentially extremely damaging (check it out!). But the main reason why GM is losing credibility is because the promised increase in yield has simply failed to materialise. Additionally the claim that crops modified to be resistant to weed killers would enable a reduced use of chemicals has proven unfounded, and the amount of chemicals being used, and being absorbed by us through our food, is increasing. The patenting of GM seeds is putting small farmers out of business (although not yet in the UK).
In 2010 a report submitted to the UN by their Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food made it clear that the way forward for agriculture was to move away from large agribusinesses and genetic modification, and towards small production units using organic methods. Incorporating the lessons being taught by permaculturists into our food production would save water, preserve and enhance our soil and significantly increase yield per hectare. Small farmers already produce more per hectare than large scale producers, and are more likely to supply their local communities, thus reducing transport cost and pollution, as well as increasing our awareness of seasonality. Biodiversity would be increased. The nutritional value of our food would start to improve (although we have a long way to go before it will equal its value in the 1940s).
There is no question but that the UK could again be self sufficient in food production for the foreseeable future if these lessons were learned. It would also increase our resilience to climate change, because as the changes to our weather patterns occur, we would be in a position to adapt both our crops and our growing methods to these changes. It is completely inevitable that we will learn to eat less meat, as awareness grows that mass production of beef and lamb is an inefficient way of using the land to give us our main source of protein. And of course we should stop building over agricultural land!
Now consider how are food is dealt with once it has been grown. It is processed, packaged, transported, distributed to retailers and put on the shelf for us to collect. Returning to our French bean from Kenya, the grower may get less than 12% of the final price. (The retailer makes about double that.) It has to be packaged to protect it during its passage to our shelves. The transport has to be by air because of the bean’s limited shelf life, and in common with much fruit and vegetables it may have been treated in some way to extend the shelf life: there are treatments involving calcium chloride, and irradiation, for example. And after all that it is beyond doubt that much of this imported produce has to be thrown away because it didn’t sell.
The recent and emerging ‘crisis’ surrounding certain prepared meals, burgers and the like, labelled as beef but containing horse meat, has brought a few points to public attention. One is that from high end to bottom end brands, the brand name means little – they all get their products from the same small number of suppliers. In the mass market, that will never change. The retailers pressurise their suppliers to keep the price low, and those suppliers go to whoever will give them the lowest price. The latest revelation is that the French processer supplying Findus was getting its meat from Eastern European sources. Thus a Findus lasagne may contain meat from more than one country, and now we learn, from more than one species. Cheap burgers are bulked out with such supplements as chicken skin. One thing is clear – make a ruling specifying the required meat content and you open the door for that rule to be manipulated both legitimately and illegally. And when the product is labelled, who can possibly know what is written between the lines? And who can possibly know how old the meat is and how far it has travelled? And in spite of European legislation, how can we possibly know whether we are buying produce which has been genetically modified? After all imported soya bean is frequently used as a bulking agent or protein supplement, and most soya today is genetically modified.
The source of wonder is that there is so much surprise at these revelations!
A result of all this globalised food production is that prices are driven down at the expense of the farmer, in order to provide substantial profits to all the middle men. Costs arising are broadly as follows: producer, exporter, packaging, air freight and handling, importer charges and commission, supermarket costs, supermarket mark-up.
Think how much better for everyone if the exporting countries were able to grow food for themselves, and we were sensible enough to buy local! In that immense and convoluted food chain, we can never really know what we are eating. And what aggravates the situation further is that there is so much regulation of one kind or another that we have stopped thinking for ourselves. Who reads the label or even knows what half the terms mean? Watch your fellow shoppers and see if you can spot anyone doing that! We foolishly trust the retailers and the food producers to do our thinking for us.
In this society of ours, blanketed with traffic signs telling us where to walk, how to drive, what to eat, when we should throw food away, we have forgotten that when an apple goes off it goes brown and squishy and when milk goes sour it stinks!
So please – think for yourself, buy local and see if you can eat a little less meat!
The now largely discredited trend towards globalisation of our food markets has disadvantaged, and often destroyed, local community food production in favour of monocrop agribusinesses, often foreign-owned, determined to export because that way they can make more money, and satisfy their competitive desire for economic growth. They grow food in relatively poor countries where labour is cheap, and sell to rich countries where people are too busy making money to worry about down to earth matters like where their food comes from or how it is prepared!
The profit motive, having replaced the survival motive, encourages those businesses to try to increase the crop yield by any means possible using oil-based fertilisers, and often genetically modified seed. Mass production at the growing end of the chain means that the soil is merely a growing medium (supplemented with chemicals just like in hydroponics) for a monocrop where pests are drawn to the feast by the sheer area of their favourite food, to be slaughtered with chemicals which then find their way into the food chain. Mass production at the processing and packaging end means that the consumer can never be absolutely sure that they are getting what they think they are. Different countries have differing standards for their labelling, and controls of pesticide also vary from country to country. In the US, food labels are not even required to show whether the food is genetically modified.
The globalisation of our food brings about two significant effects; the distancing of the consumer from the producer, and a loss of control by the consumer over what he is eating.
Most consumers don’t know where what they eat comes from, and many of them really don’t care! If they want a French bean in February, they can buy it at the supermarket; and they have to buy it packaged, because the packaging protects the food during its long journey from Kenya. The production of that bean, like so many other products, is drenched in oil, contributing disproportionally to global warming, through its planting, its harvesting, its packaging and its air transport.
The modern way of growing food is for the most part inefficient, destructive and anti-communal. Large areas of land are ploughed, sown, fertilised and sprayed without any regard to the contours of the land, the flow of the run-off water, the underlying structure of the soil or the health and biodiversity of the surrounding environment. Productivity depends on chemical input and control of the wild life. A relatively recent addition to this ‘mess’ is genetic modification; and we are starting to see the negative side of that particular set of techniques.
Soil has been denuded of its natural health and essential minerals. The earth itself is being washed down hill when it rains, and carried down to the rivers, damaging the aquatic environment. The habitats of much of our wild life have been lost. The bird and insect populations have been drastically and noticeably reduced, even in the last decade.
Genetic modification of crops is losing credibility day by day. There is a widely held view that GM crops are carcinogenic (a view recently supported by a French scientific study). A recent report by the European Food Safety Authority states that most commonly found GM foods contain a rogue viral gene called Gene VI, which is potentially extremely damaging (check it out!). But the main reason why GM is losing credibility is because the promised increase in yield has simply failed to materialise. Additionally the claim that crops modified to be resistant to weed killers would enable a reduced use of chemicals has proven unfounded, and the amount of chemicals being used, and being absorbed by us through our food, is increasing. The patenting of GM seeds is putting small farmers out of business (although not yet in the UK).
In 2010 a report submitted to the UN by their Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food made it clear that the way forward for agriculture was to move away from large agribusinesses and genetic modification, and towards small production units using organic methods. Incorporating the lessons being taught by permaculturists into our food production would save water, preserve and enhance our soil and significantly increase yield per hectare. Small farmers already produce more per hectare than large scale producers, and are more likely to supply their local communities, thus reducing transport cost and pollution, as well as increasing our awareness of seasonality. Biodiversity would be increased. The nutritional value of our food would start to improve (although we have a long way to go before it will equal its value in the 1940s).
There is no question but that the UK could again be self sufficient in food production for the foreseeable future if these lessons were learned. It would also increase our resilience to climate change, because as the changes to our weather patterns occur, we would be in a position to adapt both our crops and our growing methods to these changes. It is completely inevitable that we will learn to eat less meat, as awareness grows that mass production of beef and lamb is an inefficient way of using the land to give us our main source of protein. And of course we should stop building over agricultural land!
Now consider how are food is dealt with once it has been grown. It is processed, packaged, transported, distributed to retailers and put on the shelf for us to collect. Returning to our French bean from Kenya, the grower may get less than 12% of the final price. (The retailer makes about double that.) It has to be packaged to protect it during its passage to our shelves. The transport has to be by air because of the bean’s limited shelf life, and in common with much fruit and vegetables it may have been treated in some way to extend the shelf life: there are treatments involving calcium chloride, and irradiation, for example. And after all that it is beyond doubt that much of this imported produce has to be thrown away because it didn’t sell.
The recent and emerging ‘crisis’ surrounding certain prepared meals, burgers and the like, labelled as beef but containing horse meat, has brought a few points to public attention. One is that from high end to bottom end brands, the brand name means little – they all get their products from the same small number of suppliers. In the mass market, that will never change. The retailers pressurise their suppliers to keep the price low, and those suppliers go to whoever will give them the lowest price. The latest revelation is that the French processer supplying Findus was getting its meat from Eastern European sources. Thus a Findus lasagne may contain meat from more than one country, and now we learn, from more than one species. Cheap burgers are bulked out with such supplements as chicken skin. One thing is clear – make a ruling specifying the required meat content and you open the door for that rule to be manipulated both legitimately and illegally. And when the product is labelled, who can possibly know what is written between the lines? And who can possibly know how old the meat is and how far it has travelled? And in spite of European legislation, how can we possibly know whether we are buying produce which has been genetically modified? After all imported soya bean is frequently used as a bulking agent or protein supplement, and most soya today is genetically modified.
The source of wonder is that there is so much surprise at these revelations!
A result of all this globalised food production is that prices are driven down at the expense of the farmer, in order to provide substantial profits to all the middle men. Costs arising are broadly as follows: producer, exporter, packaging, air freight and handling, importer charges and commission, supermarket costs, supermarket mark-up.
Think how much better for everyone if the exporting countries were able to grow food for themselves, and we were sensible enough to buy local! In that immense and convoluted food chain, we can never really know what we are eating. And what aggravates the situation further is that there is so much regulation of one kind or another that we have stopped thinking for ourselves. Who reads the label or even knows what half the terms mean? Watch your fellow shoppers and see if you can spot anyone doing that! We foolishly trust the retailers and the food producers to do our thinking for us.
In this society of ours, blanketed with traffic signs telling us where to walk, how to drive, what to eat, when we should throw food away, we have forgotten that when an apple goes off it goes brown and squishy and when milk goes sour it stinks!
So please – think for yourself, buy local and see if you can eat a little less meat!
Friday, 9 September 2011
A Degree in Soundbite-ism?
The weather is grey, and there is the sound of thunder in the distance; my outside activities are temporarily on hold. I have been watching television and caught a speech by David Cameron, given at the start of the school year at a new Free School.
I remember that great star of the programme Opportunity Knocks, Hughie Green. We all used to sit down as a family to watch him presenting his unknown talent. But the phrase I remember him for the most was this; “…and I mean that most sincerely, folks!” We all knew, of course, that with his adopted transatlantic accent and smooth flow of talk, the one thing he was not was sincere! So when I listen to a political speech in which the most frequently occurring word is ‘frankly’ – I am inclined to be less than completely trusting.
I am not against the concept of free schools – the jury is still out. I do think that teachers should have more autonomy, and I believe that a free education is a right that should be available to all, in the national interest. But when I see the size of the school that my grandchildren go to, and when I see that the less bright pupils are left largely to ‘catch up if they can’, I am convinced that the real solution to our education problems is to double the number of teachers and halve the size of classes. Smaller rural schools should be kept open so that numbers of schools should increase rather than decreasing through mergers and closures. Of course it costs money – it’s what is called ‘an investment for the future’!
But I despair when I hear David Cameron describing as ‘powerful’ Michael Gove’s sound-bite; “You have to learn to read before you can read to learn!”
The over-use of sound-bites is, I believe, directly associated with the present state of the party political system, which appears to me to have outlived its usefulness. I remember a time when a Party would state its beliefs and principles, and voters would decide which set of principles they wanted to support. Now, though, politicians take a straw poll (by one means or another) to discover which policies are the ones which voters like, and then say, ‘That’s what we will promise to do!’ The trouble is that the main parties are therefore all heading in broadly the same direction! So we have ended up with a marginally bluer version of that gifted self-publicist Tony Blair – David Cameron, who used to have a career in PR! I am completely confident that my own MP will slavishly follow the party line while paying brief lip-service to what her constituents say; probably in the hope of a place in Government.
So I am afraid that while I listened to David Cameron being very frank at the Norwich Free School, my eyes were inexorably drawn to the sign in the screen behind him which displayed what must be the ultimate in meaningless sound-bites, ‘The Future Is Here!’
I remember that great star of the programme Opportunity Knocks, Hughie Green. We all used to sit down as a family to watch him presenting his unknown talent. But the phrase I remember him for the most was this; “…and I mean that most sincerely, folks!” We all knew, of course, that with his adopted transatlantic accent and smooth flow of talk, the one thing he was not was sincere! So when I listen to a political speech in which the most frequently occurring word is ‘frankly’ – I am inclined to be less than completely trusting.
I am not against the concept of free schools – the jury is still out. I do think that teachers should have more autonomy, and I believe that a free education is a right that should be available to all, in the national interest. But when I see the size of the school that my grandchildren go to, and when I see that the less bright pupils are left largely to ‘catch up if they can’, I am convinced that the real solution to our education problems is to double the number of teachers and halve the size of classes. Smaller rural schools should be kept open so that numbers of schools should increase rather than decreasing through mergers and closures. Of course it costs money – it’s what is called ‘an investment for the future’!
But I despair when I hear David Cameron describing as ‘powerful’ Michael Gove’s sound-bite; “You have to learn to read before you can read to learn!”
The over-use of sound-bites is, I believe, directly associated with the present state of the party political system, which appears to me to have outlived its usefulness. I remember a time when a Party would state its beliefs and principles, and voters would decide which set of principles they wanted to support. Now, though, politicians take a straw poll (by one means or another) to discover which policies are the ones which voters like, and then say, ‘That’s what we will promise to do!’ The trouble is that the main parties are therefore all heading in broadly the same direction! So we have ended up with a marginally bluer version of that gifted self-publicist Tony Blair – David Cameron, who used to have a career in PR! I am completely confident that my own MP will slavishly follow the party line while paying brief lip-service to what her constituents say; probably in the hope of a place in Government.
So I am afraid that while I listened to David Cameron being very frank at the Norwich Free School, my eyes were inexorably drawn to the sign in the screen behind him which displayed what must be the ultimate in meaningless sound-bites, ‘The Future Is Here!’
Wednesday, 31 August 2011
A Satisfactory Day
It was my time to give blood again yesterday. I am never quite sure why I am so keen to do this, or why I get such satisfaction from it; but I am almost on a high when I have done the deed. Strange.
Before I kept my blood-doning appointment I went to the centre of Truro for a pasty and a relaxing stroll. It was the first opportunity I had had to view Truro’s newest landmark, the sculpture of the Drummer. I am not particularly keen on it and don’t think that most people will have the slightest idea what it is supposed to represent, or what its significance is. The drummer is a naked figure balanced precariously on a globe, beating on a drum strapped in front of him with very extravagant arm movements. I guess that his position, off centre, on the globe, is supposed to indicate forward movement, but it looks to me as if he is about to fall off! His dignity has been somewhat punctured by the placing of a condom on the appropriate organ. Perhaps it is part of a ‘safe sex’ campaign!
I arrived early to give blood, but they slotted me in straight away. I found myself sitting next to a charming 20 year old woman, whose mode of dress and presentation were full of character and interest. I asked her about the beautifully drawn fake tattoo on her face – it was a kind of celtic design, which her mother told me that she painted on herself. I found her dress style attractive, especially the pronounced fish-net pattern of tights and the shoes which were yellow on one foot and green on the other! It was her first time at a blood-doning session and she was a little nervous, explaining that she couldn’t stand the sight of blood! (It later transpired that she was not permitted to donate until certain checks had been made with her doctor; the Service being their usual cautious self.)
During conversation with her and her mother I discovered that Zoe and her boyfriend were to emigrate to Brisbane in a year’s time. They are going for a year in the hope that they will be allowed to stay permanently. She is studying Psychology, and he Journalism. I explained my own Antipodean connections, and gave them my email address, just in case they fancy some time volunteering as interns at a certain site in Tasmania!
My lovely friends, complete with Great Dane, have successfully moved lock, stock and barrel to their forest-covered hillside in Tasmania, from Holland. They had to wait in Melbourne until the dog escaped from quarantine, and finally made it to their new home last week. They have many challenges ahead, including building their house, sorting out a satellite phone connection, setting up rain water collection, sanitary arrangements, a garden, an aquaponics unit, all from scratch. Exciting and scary! But they are young, energetic and talented, and have become experts in permaculture and natural building methods like cob, super-adobe, earthship techniques, manufacturing solar panels, and much more. I am looking forward to visiting in a few months.
Perhaps on a future visit I will once more meet Zoe with her different coloured feet!
Before I kept my blood-doning appointment I went to the centre of Truro for a pasty and a relaxing stroll. It was the first opportunity I had had to view Truro’s newest landmark, the sculpture of the Drummer. I am not particularly keen on it and don’t think that most people will have the slightest idea what it is supposed to represent, or what its significance is. The drummer is a naked figure balanced precariously on a globe, beating on a drum strapped in front of him with very extravagant arm movements. I guess that his position, off centre, on the globe, is supposed to indicate forward movement, but it looks to me as if he is about to fall off! His dignity has been somewhat punctured by the placing of a condom on the appropriate organ. Perhaps it is part of a ‘safe sex’ campaign!
I arrived early to give blood, but they slotted me in straight away. I found myself sitting next to a charming 20 year old woman, whose mode of dress and presentation were full of character and interest. I asked her about the beautifully drawn fake tattoo on her face – it was a kind of celtic design, which her mother told me that she painted on herself. I found her dress style attractive, especially the pronounced fish-net pattern of tights and the shoes which were yellow on one foot and green on the other! It was her first time at a blood-doning session and she was a little nervous, explaining that she couldn’t stand the sight of blood! (It later transpired that she was not permitted to donate until certain checks had been made with her doctor; the Service being their usual cautious self.)
During conversation with her and her mother I discovered that Zoe and her boyfriend were to emigrate to Brisbane in a year’s time. They are going for a year in the hope that they will be allowed to stay permanently. She is studying Psychology, and he Journalism. I explained my own Antipodean connections, and gave them my email address, just in case they fancy some time volunteering as interns at a certain site in Tasmania!
My lovely friends, complete with Great Dane, have successfully moved lock, stock and barrel to their forest-covered hillside in Tasmania, from Holland. They had to wait in Melbourne until the dog escaped from quarantine, and finally made it to their new home last week. They have many challenges ahead, including building their house, sorting out a satellite phone connection, setting up rain water collection, sanitary arrangements, a garden, an aquaponics unit, all from scratch. Exciting and scary! But they are young, energetic and talented, and have become experts in permaculture and natural building methods like cob, super-adobe, earthship techniques, manufacturing solar panels, and much more. I am looking forward to visiting in a few months.
Perhaps on a future visit I will once more meet Zoe with her different coloured feet!
Sunday, 8 May 2011
Who Really Runs the Country
This is the text of a letter I have recently written to my local paper. The City of Truro seems to be scheduled for major development over the next 15 or 20 years, and the local residents and local councillors seem powerless to stop it!
I am the first to admit that when it comes to the workings of government, both local and national, I am pretty naïve. But I am beginning to understand what the present Government means by ‘localism’. They are like the grown-up at the Christmas party who says, “I will decide where to put the Christmas tree, and how big it will be; and you, my children, may put the fairy on the top!”
The letter from Caroline Jones about the proposed Duchy/Waitrose development resonated very strongly with me, and strengthened my conviction that we are being governed not by elected politicians but by the mass retail industry.
Permissions will soon be sought for developments along the A390. These are the sites chosen by developers as being suitable for housing and supermarkets (i.e. showing the greatest potential for profit). Other sites are available, but the developers are not interested in these.
The only ‘defense’ which the Local Authority has is to provide a brief for developers to follow, thus retaining a little control – the fairy on the Christmas tree.
If the Council had the temerity to refuse permission for these sites to be developed, there would be a public inquiry, and the Secretary of State would find in favour of the developers, in the interests of that myth, economic growth.
Why these sites? Because there needs to be enough housing to accommodate the residents needed to service the supermarkets – to work in them, but more importantly to shop in them. And there lies the irony! I am old enough to remember when big business was there to service the population, but now it’s the other way round!
Never mind that we might prefer to move away from the superstore model, and encourage locally owned retail units processing and selling local goods – although this would provide more local employment. The unfortunate fact is that we do not have the clout or the cash that the Tescos and Asdas of this world have, who continue to suck the money out of the local economy and channel it out of the County, or even the Country.
These large transnational chains are able to buy the developers, who in turn are able to buy the land for eye-watering sums even before a planning application is made, secure in the knowledge that with the Westminster Government’s agenda behind them, the Local Authority doesn’t stand a chance. Thus local residents are reduced to a shopping statistic.
Meanwhile, what of the Core Strategy Document? Although the initial consultation period has only just finished, it seems to have become irrelevant! It appears to have already been superseded by these proposals.
So localism does not mean local decision-making. It does not mean either National Government or developers accepting the views of local communities, how ever much they pretend.
And while ‘consultation’ may mean Cornwall Council listening to the views of residents and parish and town councils, it does not mean that National Government will put the views and interests of local communities above its own. And, let’s be honest, we know who carries more weight with the Government – you only have to note that occasionally a Councillor may get an MBE, while supermarket bosses get knighthoods!
Every supermarket that gets built reduces the viability of small customer-friendly shops, not just in the City, but also in surrounding communities where local shops are not just a convenience but a point of social contact. As these shops lose custom to supermarkets, and as village residents are more inclined to shop away from their village because the small shop can no longer afford to stock a wide range of goods, the village itself slowly withers. An increasing proportion of residents work and shop away from the village, then start to send their children to the bright new school in the new development, as promised by the developer; the village becomes a dormitory and loses any chance it might have had to become a sustainable community with some measure of self sufficiency.
I don’t know what measures our elected Councillors could take to protect us from the destructive power of these retail giants, but I wish I could feel that they are all on our side (as I know that some are). Of course there is a need for more housing. But it should be up to us where it goes and how many there should be – just as Councillor Kaczmarek’s Core Strategy Document suggested. Was that document just another PR exercise? Do we have to continue to give in to blackmail – no Park and Ride without Waitrose?
So while I am deeply sympathetic to demonstrations and campaigns against cuts, or student fees, what would really get me marching is a campaign, led by our Councillors, in favour of genuine localism, as against the sham policies of this Coalition and its Big Society.
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