In the latest edition of the Ecologist Sir Julian Rose, pioneering organic farmer and owner of the Hardwick Estate, asks if organic farming has “sold out and lost its way”. Rose argues that organic production has gone from being the practical manifestation of an ecological and social movement to a marketing opportunity for the supermarkets and agribusiness:
“What ‘organic food’ and its localised market was in those days bears little resemblance to ‘the industry’ that it is today: an industry that is heavily and centrally policed, has a compendium of regulations and is ‘big business’ on a global scale.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Last week Provenance was invited to attend a meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Agriculture and Food for Development (APPG). The subject of the meeting was agroecology, a systems approach to agriculture born of ecology and taking into account sustainability, resilience and equity as well as production.
The speakers, Prof. Martin Wolfe, Patrick Mulvany, Dr. Julia Wright and Dr. Michel Pimbert, argued that taking an agroecological approach to agriculture could help address environmental issues while maintaining and increasing food production: indeed, this was a key finding of the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), which DFID Ministers approved in June 2008. Read the rest of this entry »
As well as being one of the founding partners of Provenance, I’m also a director of ECCE-Bio, a network of European organic producer co-operatives. The network has taken some time to find its feet – not helped by the current economic climate – but is beginning to make contact with other farmer groups, CSOs and government organisations and intends to develop a a useful programme of work at its AGM in Rome this April. Provenance hopes to be able to support ECCE-Bio in this work over the next year.
As I’ll be writing about some of the activities ECCE-Bio is involved in over the next few months I thought some background information would be helpful. Read the rest of this entry »
Provenance is proud to have worked with Defra’s Sustainable Development Programme on the relaunch of SD Scene, an e-newsletter reporting the latest news and progress in sustainable development, from across government and from local, regional, national and international businesses and organisations.
Provenance has also developed a new website for SD Scene. Sitting within the Sustainable Development Programme website, the dynamic SD Scene section allows frequent updates and user comment and discussion. Read the rest of this entry »
Best wishes for a delicious Christmas and a fruitful New Year from William, Josiah and Nick at Provenance.
I keep hearing the “Sustainability” word used a lot to describe an aspiration for the sort of food that people would like to buy. There is no definition of sustainability apart from the thee columns that are supposed to support the concept: environmental, economic and social. For many years the economic criteria has been use to define a good buy: ie the cheapest is the best, but the two other columns are now more considered, environmental and social. It is no good buying the cheapest if the purchase damages the environment and peoples lives. Read the rest of this entry »
Peachey’s Preserves is an artisan producer of jellies, chutneys, relishes and savoury jams and marmalades Read the rest of this entry »
It seems we have forgotten about eating some of the most delicious seasonal vegetables – or maybe the multiples have not bothered to put them on their shelves. Sprout tops, turnip tops and kale. You can find some kale around, the trendy one is Cavolo Nero, but they can be hard to find: black and green kale is also good. Read the rest of this entry »
Amongst all the current – and long overdue – discussion of global food security, a new mantra is increasingly heard: food production must double by 2050 if a projected world population of 9 billion is to be fed. Norman Borlaug, pioneer of the Green Revolution, asserted this target at the IARI in March 2005; Jacques Diouf, head of the UN FAO repeated the requirement at a food security conference earlier this year. The claim has since been widely repeated in print and on air. Read the rest of this entry »
In a recent conversation with Stuart Orr, a friend from WWF International, the topic of water management and the value of water footprinting came up. In particular we talked about the localised impacts of basin and watershed management and the indicators, incentives, sanctions and technologies that could and are being employed to effect positive changes (more about this in a forthcoming post). As an aside Stuart mentioned that improved irrigation technology and incentives to encourage its use may in fact have negative impacts on water availability at basin scale. Read the rest of this entry »