Food & Farming – Seeding Our Future

Digging into Regenerative Agriculture

A model of de-intensification for humans too! Ever since I co-founded an organic farm in 1990, I’ve tried to stay aware of trends in sustainable farming. The latest is regenerative agriculture: there’s a lot of hype and froth around this, so I recently visited two farms who are doing it for real. One is a … Read more

Subtle Agroecology: another element in Regenerative Agriculture?

Subtle Agroecology is a new term, created by the editor of a recent book on the subject, Julia Wright, an expert in agroecology at Coventry University. SA is “the systematic study of the invisible world as it relates to agriculture”, and is highly relevant in these times when we urgently need to renew soils, cut … Read more

UK Food Strategy: the Dimbleby Report offers a clear, positive direction

It was only last year that Professor Tim Lang, one of the UK’s top experts in this field, published Feeding Britain, an exhaustive and exhausting 567-page account of why our food system is so dysfunctional: see blog here. Henry Dimbleby and team deserve a lot of credit for crystallising a set of major issues, and … Read more

Food security: how your community can take the initiative

There are many aspects of the Covid and climate crises where you may feel disempowered, dependent on government responses. However, food security is an issue where individuals and communities have scope for positive action now! Britain’s food self-sufficiency has declined from 80% to 60% in the past thirty years. We’re especially vulnerable on vegetables and … Read more

Britain’s fragile food security insights from Tim Lang

by Caroline Walker I have a nice personal memory of Professor Tim Lang. In 2001 I had just retired as head of the Small School in Hartland, North Devon, a very small independent secondary school where cooking the lunch together was a foundational practice. I heard about the Caroline Walker (no relation) Awards which recognise … Read more

Digging deeper into local food

Online briefing and discussion:Tuesday January 12, 7.00-8.30pm Organised and hosted by Transition Town Bridport and Seeding our Future Our food supply is more fragile than it appears. Some 40% of our food comes from abroad,and depends on good harvests, stable climate and frictionless borders. Covid, ClimateChange and Brexit are make feeding Britain even more precarious. … Read more

Why local food matters for Bridport

Bridport has a reputation as a foodie centre, but how solid is our local food security? Several local organisations believe we need to grow and buy more of our produce locally: you can find out more at their stall on Barrack Street in the December 12 Farmers Market. The main problem from climate change for … Read more

Food Security: Opportunity, Research, Action

It’s easy to feel disempowered these days, but this is an issue where we can all do something. Food security means reliable access to enough good quality, affordable, sustainably produced food. Many experts believe that food shortages and price rises will be a major impact of climate change during the next few years. You may … Read more

Perspectives from Bridport Local Food Group

This month’s Seeding Our Future webinar has started an important exploration of how our local food system can adapt to the coming challenges of climate change, just as the recent pressures of Covid-19 are revealing how adeptly the Bridport area’s independent food and drink producers and suppliers can innovate during exceptional times. Short supply chains … Read more

Six big questions for our times

and some ways to explore answers Have you ever had the experience of wandering, lost in the mist, and emerging to find you’re at a vantage point where you can see at least broadly where you are, and where you want to go? That’s the place I’ve reached recently, and I’m sharing my perspectives in the hope that … Read more

Current Events

Climate Fellowship Circle

Higher guidance and mutual support in uncertain times The worsening climate crisis is a valid reason for alarm, bewilderment, and other difficult feelings, and… this is also a chance to find spiritual insights, blessings and positive change amid the turbulence. The idea of the Fellowship Circle is to offer a safe and creative space to explore both of these aspects. Following a positive pilot session in March, this will be an ongoing monthly group, for up to 12 people. It is intended for anyone wanting to work through painful emotions about the climate crisis, and willing to explore spiritual approaches in the widest sense, which can help us find inner peace and outer purpose in these confusing times. Some of the approaches and processes we could explore in an ongoing group could include: Joanna Macy’s Work that Reconnects, to help us share our painful feelings about the climate crisis, be witnessed, and move through them to new perspectives.Sharing relevant teachings, prayers and meditations from the faith traditions, for example Buddhist (e.g. Thich Nhat Hanh), Christian (e.g. Richard Rohr), Sufi (e.g. Llewellyn Vaughan Lee).Drawing on Jem Bendell’s Deep Adaptation approach for loving, compassionate ways to meet rising turbulence around us. This invitation is being initiated by Alan Heeks, who would like to work with a few others to hold and facilitate the group jointly. Alan has been facilitating groups for many years, with a focus on resilience and climate change since 2016, and is also involved in local climate responses, including the Bridport Climate Forums, Bridport Food Matters, and pilot Climate Cafés. See more at www.seedingourfuture.org.uk. Practicalities: The group meets in central Bridport, on Thursdays, 7-9pm. Requested donation £5 for room hire. Limited to 12 people: to enquire or reserve a place, contact Alan by email or on 07976 602787.

The Devon venue and facilitators for these programmes will be the same as the October 2021 group described below, and the content will be broadly the same. Details of how to book will be available in early 2022. For details of the March course, see here. Please note that the course is only open to Tamar and Wessex Faculty members.

Featured Blog

Deep Adaptation and climate change: an introduction

Back in 2018, the sense of urgency about the climate crisis rose sharply, helped by several key voices, including Greta Thunberg, and Professor Jem Bendell. Whilst he strongly supports all efforts to reduce climate change, he cites extensive scientific evidence that it is too late to avoid serious worsening. Jem uses the term Deep Adaptation as a focus for facing and adapting to the major climate and related challenges of the coming years: I agree with his view that we need to find responses which go well beyond resilience in the way it is mostly understood. Deep Adaptation has attracted widespread support and involvement, and pushback, some of this from within the environmental movement. Jem’s work highlights the dilemma between giving people the bad news and alarming outlook full force, or softening the message to avoid turnoff. Both sides in this argument cite experience and psychological research that supports their view. It’s not a debate that can be resolved, but it highlights a key factor: that emotional responses, not factual information, are what limit many people’s engagement with the issue. As of 2022, Deep Adaptation is best summed up as a large informal network and body of online groups and resources (blogs, videos, special interest groups etc.) which have grown around Jem’s original paper published in 2018. This blog offers my view of the main elements of DA. You can get a good overview and entry routes at www.deepadaptation.info. To see Jem’s updated version of his original 30-page paper, click here. One of the many things I value in Jem’s approach is that he acknowledges the deep emotional and spiritual impacts of facing a bleak outlook, and points to ways to process these impacts, including faith, and “a vision of people sharing compassion, love and play.” Having led various groups on Deep Adaptation, I support the view that the first step in engaging with the climate crisis is to face and work through emotional responses, which may include fear, grief, bewilderment, and despair. I share Jem’s belief that one of the best ways to process these feelings is the Work that Reconnects, initiated by Joanna Macy. Having space to voice your emotions in a supportive group, and have them witnessed, is an alchemical step that enables people to move forward whilst living with their feelings, and I’ve seen it work repeatedly. For my summary of Joanna’s process, click here. A distinctive part of Jem’s outlook is his belief that societal breakdown is likely in many countries including the UK within the next ten years. The most probable trigger for this is global food shortages. He shares the view of many experts that a Multi Bread Basket Failure is possible anytime from now: this means major crop failure in the same year for the few countries and staples most world population depend on. Jem’s expectation of societal collapse puts him at the pessimistic end of the climate experts I’m aware of. At the 2019 Findhorn climate change conference (see my blog here), I asked some of these other experts for their view, such as Jonathan Porritt, Vandana Shiva and Charles Eisenstein: they don’t think societal breakdown is likely. My view is that there will be major turmoil in many countries, and huge stress on western Europe and elsewhere from refugees, as well as food shortages. I believe that emergency resilience should now be a high priority for households, communities and government on all levels: see my blog on this topic here. I have commissioned research on how UK food growing can adapt, see research report here. I am also leading pilot work on raising food security in my hometown of Bridport, and we are happy to share what we learn: see more here. Overall, DA has two major, related strands: Inner adaptation: exploring the emotional, psychological, and spiritual implications of living in a time when societal disruption/collapse is likely, inevitable, or already happening. Outer adaptation: working on practical measures to support wellbeing, ahead of and during collapse (e.g. regenerative living, community-building, policy activism). One of the most widely used DA frameworks is the 4R’s, summed up here using some quotes from Jem’s original paper: Resilience: recognising what we most want to keep, and skills to do so, including how to handle deep emotions such as fear and grief. Facing the emotional impacts enables us to act more clearly and coherently. Relinquishment: This “involves people and communities letting go of certain assets behaviours and beliefs where retaining them could make matters worse. Examples include withdrawing from coastlines… or giving up expectations for certain types of consumption”. We need to make voluntary choices where we can. Restoration: This “involves people and communities rediscovering attitudes and approaches to life and organisation that our hydrocarbon-fuelled civilisation eroded.” For example, the mutual support of local communities. Reconciliation: “With what and whom shall we make peace as we awaken to our mutual mortality?” This recognises that the pressures ahead may intensify polarities, extremism, scapegoating, and we need to get beyond them. The Deep Adaptation approach has attracted widespread support and participation: you can get a flavour of this at the Deep Adaptation Forum here. It has also attracted criticism from various quarters. You can see a good response to this in the article in Deep Ecologist by Naresh Giangrande, who is a Deep Adaptation Advocate, and was previously a leading figure in the Transition Network: see article here. Jem has published a blog with his response, and introducing the updated version of the original paper: see more here. If you start exploring Deep Adaptation online, you can soon feel overwhelmed. So here are a couple of suggestions on where to start. This 2020 blog by Jem gives an overview in a few paragraphs of how DA has evolved, plus a listing of his blogs, in categories, with links: click here. The Love in Deep Adaptation: a really well-considered piece about the huge focus in Western culture on individual needs and control, and how deep adaptation and […]