Resilience and wisdom to stay happy in the years ahead
Improving food security and affordable housing supply There’s a widespread view that strengthening local communities will be crucial in the years ahead, to help us all to adapt to increasing levels of disruption, including food supplies, utilities, weather patterns, and more. One way to speed up this process is to create garden hamlets, which would … Read more
Climate change is already impacting food supplies, and is forecast to create much greater disruption in the years ahead. Seeding our Future commissioned research to understand both the threats and the scope for positive adaptation: two versions are available, one for Wales and the Borders, one of the focus areas for Seeding our Future’s work, … Read more
Probably… and how can we prepare? By food emergency, I mean a prolonged period of serious food shortages, and/or extreme food price inflation. Many of us already know how fragile Britain’s food security is, and how flimsy the long-standing Government strategy is: ‘Leave it to Tesco.’ We currently import 46% of our food, and supply … Read more
Restoring our bond with Mother Earth I’m writing to share a vision with you which feels increasingly vital for our survival. This vision interweaves two ideas which I see discussed increasingly, but only rarely connected. One is the urgent need to increase local food production in the UK (especially vegetables, fruit, proteins), as climate change … Read more
Maybe: at least the outlook is promising… Food security is one of the issues which makes me compare the 2020s to the 1930s: there are huge problems looming, most people are in denial, but a few are making preparations which could be crucial. Some of these are in Wales, and as a fresh immigrant, I’m … Read more
Three years on, what has worked, and what hasn’t In 2020, and before that, many experts on food security and climate change were warning of imminent problems, and sadly they were right. Covid has added to the challenges of extreme weather, but the UK has had it worse than some other countries, due to … Read more
Guest blog As the world continues to grapple with the challenges of climate change, it’s becoming increasingly clear that we need to find new ways of farming that are more sustainable and regenerative. That’s where regenerative agriculture comes in – a way of farming that focuses on improving the health of the soil, increasing biodiversity, … Read more
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
For groups and communities wanting to buy land for local food production, there’s now a comprehensive online toolkit at www.communityfarm.land. It has been created by the Ecological Land Co-operative and Co-op Culture, who have assisted dozens of projects to get started. The website is well-organised, and includes sample document formats, lists of organisations and advisors, … Read more
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