Food from Dale End?
Having raised the issue of food security (along with a low-cost, convivial alternative-style means of regeneration) as a topic for their Annual Conference last week with publication of Roger Levett's essay in Fit for Purpose (see blog entry), the WMRO appears to have promptly ignored it all.
Food after all, appears as if by magic. When the Conference delegates ate their lunch, I'll bet they thought little, if at all, about the fragility of the just-in-time systems that got it there, let alone where on earth it originally came from.
Or, as pertinently, where it all went to. This includes what the food companies chuck at source or in transit, the freegan stuff the supermarkets discard, the 30% we throw away, and the dung we produce.
Any notion that our food supply could be threatened in a UK city in the 21st century seems alien, fanciful, irrelevant.
So no wonder that the Conference delegates chatted about other things, including 'Green Infrastructure, leadership and the value of the environment'. This apparently included 'joint working' and 'intergenerational thinking' plus the familiar if unfeasible and undesirable 'one voice', this time for 'the environment sector' whatever (whoever?) that might be - oil companies, if their recent adverts are to be believed.
Considering alternative food supplies won't seem so alien when shortages hit . . . well, home. All the evidence indicates that our highly 'efficient' food supply systems are unsustainable, a situation about to be dramatically exacerbated with nine billion of us on the planet. This is because the grub on our plate is not at the end of a system; it's part of a cycle.
Many of us urbanites will have to face our squeamishness about the fur and feathers, the heads, claws and paws, let alone the death of the animals we eat. And there's all that embarrassment to overcome about dung, theirs and ours, that's so very useful for the growing of plants.
With such matters at the back of my mind, I read about the long-running fiasco over Dale End with its abandoned Toys'R'Us, ugly carpark and more than tatty air.
Given its rural-sounding name . . . Is it too fanciful to suppose . . . ?
The landowners are the City Council. They have the means and power to create open space or parkland at Dale End instead of continuing to mutter for years about the possibility to reconsider to restart to rethink to rebuild yet more retail glories for the big boys.
No, you're right. The Council wouldn't make Dale End an open space for us. After all, we've got the prospect of a vast 8 acres at Eastside City Park. And they'd cite lawyers, planning processes, best value and all that time-consuming gubbins.
So any ideas to revert the end of our dale, mammon forfend, to cultivation, whether Havana-style horticulture (see also the BBC clip below) or a Dickson Despommier-style highrise farm (see also the Discovery Channel clip) does seem a stretch too far, even if it were sold as a trendy, money-spinning tourist attractor showcase.
Far too fanciful. (See the third video clip, Simon Baddelsey's on the Victoria Jubilee allotments in Handsworth.)
Yet our food security is a topic that will, alas, return.
The BBC on Havana horticulture
The Discovery Channel on vertical farms
Simon Baddesley's video about the Victoria Jubilee allotments in Handsworth
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Well then, we'd best get started on doing it ourselves. See a thought along much the same lines here: Cities: solved by Andrew Dubber
So, shall we meet to plot ideas and strategy?
Very nice to read.
It still amazes me to see quite how much food is thrown away. Families claim that they are struggling financially, yet they seem oblivious to the £1500 of food they discard each year.
Even at university, where everyone is too quick to complain about poverty, one discovers whole packs of bagels, unopened ready meals and even whole saucepans with embarrassing amounts of burnt food stuck to them in the rubbish bin.
One hopes that as food prices inevitably increase well above inflation, people will reevaluate what they dispose of as they become enlightened as to the scarcity of food. Unfortunately, such realisations will undoubtedly come too late, given that economists have theorised that a scarcity crisis in Europe before the next century is practically unstoppable. We must, must do all that we can!
Suggest you check out www.geml.info and see how we are progressing not quite Havana but a start! Plan is to expand to provide temporary growing spaces (both in the ground and in big bags if contaminated) on council and urban living owned land awaiting development.
Agree food is an often forgotten issue 25% of global co2 is from meat production. Local food can also help create rural jobs and make us more secure.
Thanks for your comments Kate. Just to note that food security was discussed at the workshop, and the opportunity was given to further explore Roger Levett's 'Fit for the Future' chapter. But it wasn't covered at any great length because delegates chose to take the conversations on a different track - a shame you couldn't be with us to add your views on the day. But do not despair, we'll be continuing all of the debates on our blog, Observations (link below). We'll be asking all conference delegates and the Observatory's wider network to explore the broad subject of economic recovery for the region further (including all the workshop discussions). I've already linked your blog post to the Environment workshop post, but feel free to add further comments at http://wmro.wordpress.com/2009/10/22/environment-and-economy-fit-for-the-future/
Or to other debates at http://wmro.wordpress.com
thanks for your comments.
Email and twitter comments have added the desolate acres of Longbridge to the debate! And why not? (St Modwen?!)
We could invite to the debate restauranteers, allotment holders, the food markets, food shop owners of the Soho Road and Balsall Heath, Morrisons with their 'local' produce counters, logistics guys within the city, food producers such as Wing Yip & East End Foods . . . ??
I spend time in Paris (for family reasons). Family-run food shopos proliferate. Two reasons prevented 'le londification': First, a cap on the size of retail outlets - this stops big supermarkets as they can only run on big scales. Secondly, a high % of shops have to keep their function, once a premises is fishmonger or greengorcer or butcher, always a fishmonger or al . . . this makes for lively, market-streets full of people buying great produce.
dp: who are you?
I'm a great believer in small scale contributions to change, that lead to wider changes in behaviour and larger scale changes. I'm pleased to report on two small scale projects about growing food in Birmingham.
One is GROFUN, (Growing Organic Food in Urban Neighbourhoods), which has a group in Kings Heath and is spreading to Moseley. I wrote about this in my Birmingham Mail blog in July (blogs.birminghammail.net/lighterfootprints). Look at their website if you are interested in joining, or starting a group in your area (www.grofun.org.uk).
The other is Moseley in Bloom which, through their “Meteoric Makeover”, created a colourful and food producing screen to the derelict Meteor Ford site in Wake Green Road, Moseley. Healthy runner bean plants grew amongst the nasturtiums and local residents – including my household – benefited from the produce. This contributed to their Gold award in September this year.
What can we do together for next year?