organic food miles better...
This week in the Examiner, I'll be both highlighting and critiqing aspects of a report commissioned by DEFRA, conducted by the Manchester Business School. The report focuses on sustainability and food provisioning, with a particular focus on energy.
Some good points made, but plenty of errors picked up by various anti-organic truffle hounds....
The article will be more factual than theoretical, pointing to various misreadings out there and mistakes in the research itself. However, there will also be a focus on the salience of combining seasonal, local and organic, otherwise even local organic food can leave a heavy footprint (see also embedded food miles).
Theoretically, one of the main criticisms will be the conceptualisation of nature and the farm as two completely separate things...
The farming supplement of the Examiner is out on thursday....why not prepare for the article?
You can see the featured report here

Ahhhh..... Valentine's day

what a time of the year. It's a time you rarely hear people moan about the true spirit being lost, eh? No 'let's get back to the essential meaning of the day' really, is there? Instead, it's one of the most blatantly commercial celebrations there is: it's really just the first real excuse to spend after xmas. And don't they really push a particular type of wine in the supermarkets for V day? All those wines with blurbs on the back about soft tannins, fruity, velvety smoothness....wines that are in fact bland, characterless and at the same time globalised and heavily promoted.

I mentioned commodity fetishism recently, which I'd describe as the masking of important and otherwise objectionable unpleasantness, or occasionally horror, with frivolous aesthetics and surface attractivness. In this context, let's compare the love Valentine flowers are supposed to represent with the production of said flowers. Whether its the environment or the people who work the fields or in particular the green and glass houses, the prettiness of the flowers often mask the reality on the ground....

The thing is, organic has won the battle of language. Whatever about sales levels, whatever about organic being used to display or represent esteem, or status, or distinction, flowers on Valentine's day will never be the same again unless they are organic...and more and more articles seem to pop up each year making this point: Often in the US sometimes even with twee and transparent flash movies

But no one quite does it like PAN, the pesticide action network . (I'm not sure if the whole greek god of nature, and possibly an origin of the devil thing is played on deliberately by them in their choosing of the name PAN....)
Here's a typical one from their yearly offerings...ah go on, it's valentine's day you deserve another one
Just spreadin the love, baby

Techno-progress: Me, fred and foul farming

At last, I stumble along and make a wee bit of techno progress....
This site as you'll hopefully notice, looks a bit better and has some extra features now. I couldn't even turn on the comments ppl had made til now (!)

So I wasn't being rude, just a bit fred flintstoney (wasn't that car of his the best little eco motor? He still got the whole flash car buzz, probably had a massive loan on it, and didn't cause a negative ozone-depleting emmission...he toned up and only emmitted his own sweat....runnin along pretendin to drive....classic!)

And then to the news....obviously in the UK and Ireland at the mo it's bird flu. First things first: there is one place full of absolute must reads. With all the hysteria, it's worth considering how exactly this deadly strain came about. Are wild birds the victims or the vectors? What role do intensive factory farms and transport routes in various parts of the world play?

And what are the limits to what we as a society are willing to change to stop the spread of the bird flu? On the one hand, various people will be made to jump through life-changing hoops, and mass slaughterings will occur, while on the other, various options are completely off the adgenda.

One of the proposed answers, putting all farmed birds indoors, may be the cause of the problem in the first place. This is deeply troubling on a whole number of fronts. What of organics, and outdoor, backyard foul - keeping outdoor birds feeds feeds hundreds of millions in not billions of people in the majority south?

At times like this, disaster capitalism, and the death of nature spring to mind. Alarmist-sounding terms to be sure, but the ideas behind them are worth developing an understanding of.

But do check out the first link, to get a better picture of just how manipulated, contoured and pre-ordained the limits of the possible can be. It all reminds me of my old 1, 2, and 3 dimensional power days/daze in undergrad politics....

Power is best expressed when some ideas aren't known of as even being an option