home and local food

– a future project? –

Introduction

Articles

Case studies

Introduction

This site was started on 16th November 2006. Its purpose is to investigate and facilitate home and local food growing in Britain. (1/12/06)

Why?

Well, in pursuit of the good life. Watch this: ‘Path to Freedom’ free video,

But don’t watch this: ‘The End of Suburbia’ video, which you have to buy to see the whole thing.

Well, do watch just the free clips – but don’t worry about it. It’s just a few hoary old men telling you ‘The End is Nigh’. What they’re actually telling you is that the capitalist system has run through the best of the oil and gas, but given the damage that’s been done to the planet – and I don’t mean the global Climate Change we’re all supposed to worry about, I mean land degradation: loss of soils, loss of forests and local climate disruption caused, and loss of local knowledge of how to use the land well well [1] – given the disruption and suffering that those fuels have wreaked on our planet, it’s a good thing the worst is over, isn’t it? Meanwhile, let’s focus on the positive.

The first video shows a family of four growing most of their food on a tenth of an acre – yes, 1/10 acre! – urban garden, and having a lot of fun in the process. Their yield is 30 tonnes per acre, which is over ten times the yield from broadscale agriculture using what’s called ‘Standard Farm Practice’ (SFP), which is typically less than 3 tonnes per acre (see Table 30, p.18 on this DEFRA report). Amazing, eh? Well you could do that. Up to a point, the less garden you have the better, because the smaller the plot the easier it is to use it well. Careful attention on a regular basis, and not much time or labour, is what it takes. Even with broadscale farming this is true, read this if you need convincing: MultiBenefitsofSmallFarmAg.pdf.

‘But that garden is in southern California,’ you may say. Well, that’s why we in Britain need to do some research – serious, methodical research, but have fun and good food at the same time. Yes, southern California has lots of sun, but they don’t have much rain – it’s naturally desert there – and we’ve got lots of rain, and enough sun, so we can do it too!

Who’s doing it already?

A major part of the project will be a survey – haphazard, at first, but let’s see; maybe there are many people out there who think home and local food matters – using site visits and details sent in by email. A site may be a home garden, perhaps a designated area within a garden: an orchard or vegetable plot; an allotment; a community garden; or a plot where produce is grown for sale, but specifically for local consumption. The details of interest for this survey will be:

• your name or names, and something about you relevant to food growing – why are you growing food? do you think it matters? how?;
• where the plot is located geographically, and its situation, topography, etc.;
• size of plot where produce is grown, either as linear dimensions: x units by y units, or area: in square units. Any units are fine: feet, yards or metres, or sq feet etc. – but do take care with these;
• types / varieties of crops grown;
• for each crop, yield – if recorded – in lbs. (and/or ozs if small yield of something special) or kilos and grams (or litres for juices etc.) per annum (or in particular year or season) – or comment on quantity grown, if yields were not recorded quantitatively;
• for each crop, how was it consumed (including whether it was frozen, bottled etc.) by whom: how many in the household, their preferences, who did the preparation and cooking etc.;
• also of interest is, what you did with produce surplus to home consumption: gave it away, swapped, traded – perhaps first made into jam, pickles, or just composted it; and
• any comments, tips, difficulties etc.

Note: commercial plots producing for sale locally are also of interest – may need to adapt list of details to suit – however, if you sell anything at all to a supermarket, you are disqualified: this site is a supermarket-free zone!

Any suggestions on what else would be of interest for this survey gratefully received.

Do contact me. Everything (sensible) that you send will appear on this site, with your name anonymised (initials, or ‘anon’) if you prefer.

1. But see Heather Johnson, ‘Subsistence and Control: The Persistence of the Peasantry in the Developing World’, http://www.undercurrentjournal.ca/2004I1%20-%20johnson.pdf [accessed 1/12/06] (also copied here)

top