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May 9 2008 ~ "resource nationalism" can endanger world food security.

The Telegraph today:
"....As food and fuel riots spread across the world, a string of governments have resorted to steps that menace the free flow of food and key commodities. Argentina has banned beef exports, while Egypt and India have stopped shipments of rice. ...
Kazakhstan has prohibited wheat exports. Russia has slapped a 40pc export duty on shipments, and Pakistan a 35pc duty. China, Cambodia, Malaysia, Philipines, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam have all imposed export controls or forms of rationing to ease the crisis.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has warned that this lurch towards national controls is becoming a threat to the open global system we all take for granted.... A new report by UBS says the scramble for scarce raw materials is turning ever more political, with ominous implications for ill-endowed societies that rely on imports. ... Nationalist policies are making the crisis worse.... ..."
US regulators deny that speculators have been a major force behind the latest surge in oil prices. The FAO says the cost of food for poor countries that rely heavly on food imports has raised food prices by 74% and, as we learned from the Financial Times on May 7th, "higher shipping rates are an extra burden for food importing countries, which are struggling to pay record prices for agricultural commodities."

May 9 2008 ~"overall there is little sign that policy-makers have grasped the enormity of what has happened."

As Magnus Linklater pointed out in the Times very recently,
"...just at a time when we should be considering how best to increase our production of grain, we in Britain are switching off one main source of it. ...
It is clear that the Government has yet to react to the dimensions of the looming world food crisis. It needs to begin a debate with the EU on the whole direction of Europe's agricultural strategy and rethink it from scratch, devising a strategy for sustainable production, then begin to educate the public about the realities ahead. It will mean a change in culture that is a million miles from the Tesco-driven consumerism we have grown lazily used to over the past 20 years. " Read in full
On the question of government complacency and inaction, warmwell readers are strongly urged to ask their MPs to support John Hemming MP, Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Peak Oil and Gas (APPGOPO) , who has tabled an Early Day Motion (EDM 1453) urgently calling on the government to review its prediction as to when peak oil will occur, in light of rising energy and food prices. You can, of course, find out who your MP is and email them through www.writetothem.com (new window) And see also the peak oil pages, now running on warmwell since early 2004. Example letter to MP and text of the Early Day Motion.

May 9 2008 ~ Professor Tim Lang "we’ve got to have a sustainable food system"

This morning's Today Programme (Listen Again), examined Gordon Ramsay's deliberately provocative assertion that chefs should be fined for using food that's out of season, Professor Lang from the City University’s Centre for Food Policy felt that in essence he was right:
".... We have got to push back towards seasonality...production is dropping just at the time when we have got to make the food system work on a more ecological basis....the global food system is going to have to shift..the fuel issue is clearly at the top of it. We're already seeing it in the Big Four commodities; wheat, maize, rice, soya....."
Prof. Lang and John Humphrys both agreed that "The days of 26,000 items on the supermarket shelves - those days are going to have to come to an end." Bob Stott, former Chairman of Morrisons, seemed both complacent and contemptuous - revealing a worrying set of assumptions that must be questioned. The challenge of securing the world's food supply was the subject of Professor Lnag's City University London lecture ‘Food Security: are we sleepwalking into a crisis?’ on 4 March 2008. It examined the clash between our cheap food culture and sustainability. At stake are fundamental questions for our national policy: what is land for, what skills are necessary and where does the public interest lie? The Powerpoint slides provide a dramatic summary. (More on Tim Lang)

May 8/9 2008 ~ Pirbright was in "desperate need of investment" from DEFRA in 2006 - but the leak not our responsibility says the government

The10 Downing St site was sent a petition that many readers will have signed, asking for compensation for the misery and financial losses through movement restrictions caused by "the lapse in Bio-Security at the Government's own laboratory at Pirbright in August 2007." The reply today Extract:
We implemented a detailed and systematic disease surveillance plan to provide robust evidence to the EU that the disease outbreak had been effectively controlled....
. The outbreak... not caused by the Government's role as a regulator..... primary responsibility for managing risks must lie with any facility where work on dangerous pathogens is carried out."
But how could Pirbright possibly manage risks effectively when their pleas for funding were ignored?

May 8/9 2008 ~ The government was alerted to the desperate lack of funding long before the virus leak.

The warnings from the IAH (memorandum at the end of the Science and Technology Committee's 4th report volume 2) make it quite clear that DEFRA was warned. For example:
"....The Visiting Group to the IAH in June 2006 noted that the equipment in these laboratories was in desperate need of investment, but this is not possible without additional funding from the Department."
Pirbright's pleas were ignored. This year, the Department is managing to find a total of £418 million to pay the EU fine for the RPA delays In 2006 it could not find the resources to keep its own dangerous house in order when it mattered - and now washes its hands of the consequences.

May 8 2008 ~ "completely unacceptable that we are going through this again"

The RPA page, begun in January 2006, was updated again today. The North- East chairman of the Country Land and Business Association (CLA), is still waiting for her Single Farm Payment - along with about 9,000 others in England who are owed a total of £190 million for last year. "I find it completely unacceptable that we are going through this again. It is causing huge problems, coming on the back of an appalling spring, rising prices and the aftermath of draconian foot and mouth restrictions..."

May 8 2008 ~"behind the façade of pleasantries about the industry the Government has no policy towards domestic food production at all" James Paice

Global food shortages have at long last focused attention on the UK's declining ability to feed itself. The Western Morning News reports that James Paice wants the Government to ditch its current policy which states that domestic production is "not a necessary condition for food security..."
An NFU spokesman too makes a plea for
"a clear acknowledgment of the value of stepping up food production, backed by some serious investment in research and development and accompanied by a genuine attack on the red tape which is holding us back..."
The Lib Dem, Roger Williams, said on May 1 "...we are going into world markets, pushing up the prices and making food less available for poor countries." Mr Paice's letter to Gordon Brown echoes this, saying our reduced agricultural output is "putting more strain on world markets and makes us compete with developing countries for that food".

May 8 2008 ~ Depending on cheap food from abroad is no longer a safe bet.

In DEFRA's own inimitable version of English, a spokesman told the WMN that food security depended on
"effective risk management and contingency planning, security energy supplies, access to food from a variety of sources and a strong food chain and infrastructure"
Food security actually means having enough safe food for people to eat - and depending on cheap food from abroad is no longer a safe bet. In less fortunate parts of the world, millions are finding themselves unable to pay for food because of the consequences of rising oil prices and the "silent mass murder", as the UN's Jean Ziegler put it in a recent interview, of the ever increasing clout of financial speculators in large index and hedge funds. We read in today's Financial Times that costs of importing foodstuffs are rocketing - and of course many exporting countries are now having to decide whether they can really go on exporting if this leaves their own people high and dry. (see below)

May 7 2008 ~ The commercialisation of Pirbright's "lateral flow" device "to support clinical diagnosis.”

While of course any kind of diagnostic test must be commended if it prevents the unnecessary slaughter of uninfected animals, it is hard not to feel continuing astonishment that the UK feels it must reinvent the wheel when better wheels are used elsewhere.
The US-developed rapid on-site RT-PCR kits are successfully used in former Soviet Bloc countries. These should have been our first line of defence in 2007, along with buffer vaccination. Lateral flow devices were used in Surrey - but unnecessary slaughter still took place. On Hunts Hill farm, for example, 362 mixed species of free-range animals were slaughtered "as a precaution" and the grief of the farmer and his wife when they discovered that the suspect pig, and all the other animals, had been free of disease was very painful to witness. (see chronicle of the 2007 outbreak)
The news of the commercialisation of Pirbright's lateral flow device is news today.
" ....An extract of a small sample of tissue taken from an animal suspected of having FMD is spotted onto the bottom of the device. This then flows up the device. If FMDV is present in the sample, a line forms within 10 minutes..."
But the test being used in former Soviet Bloc countries by the US trained teams can be used before any clinical signs are visible at all and before virus can be identified by any other means. Only a swab need be taken - not "tissue". The cartridges are light and safely disposed of after use. As one emailer comments, "It is a bit like re manufacturing Austin 7 motorcars; Charming , but the world has moved on and they have failed to notice."

May 7 2008 ~ Scrapie research continues....

SEAC's eventual reassurance that scrapie does not mask BSE has not - as we note in this answer to a Parliamentary Question asked on April 30 - prevented vast sums continuing to be spent on "research projects" into scrapie. A glance at Jonathan Shaw's answer gives a flavour of the sort of activity this money recently funded - for example :
".....The last three projects have looked at whether embryos, collected from a scrapie infected ewe, give rise to infected lambs when transplanted into scrapie free ewes. The most recent of these projects, SE1834, found that transplanted embryos do not appear to become infected...."
The utter insanity of this needs to be stated. No money available to compensate the swillfeeders - yet literally millions given to "researchers" who transplant the unborn lambs of deliberately infected laboratory sheep into other equally unfortunate laboratory ewes - all because of a theoretical threat, found in December 2006 to be unfounded.
See also warmwell's scrapie pages which, taken together, describe a situation that would be difficult to believe had it not been documented.

May 7 2008 ~ No compensation for swill feeders - but real dangers from present disposal of waste

Ann Winterton asked on May 1 2008 whether the Government would provide compensation to swill-feeders in connection with foot and mouth disease. (Hansard) "No" said Jonathan Shaw. He added
" there is no un-remedied injustice which requires reconsideration of the question."
The producers had spent many thousands of pounds setting themselves up with new belt and braces safety equipment only to find their businesses peremptorily closed by the Government at the start of foot and mouth disease outbreak. (More) The pigswill at Bobby Waugh's farm - the alleged cause of foot and mouth that justified the complete ban - was never even tested for virus. Lord Rooker asserted in February (Lords Hansard) that it was SEAC's advice as much as FMD that led to the ban - but this cannot even be called wisdom after the event. Are DEFRA officials and Ministers even aware that, as the Observer reported on Sunday, " The European Union is preparing plans to allow pig remains to be used to feed poultry. The practice - banned in Europe after the BSE crisis 10 years ago - would save farmers millions of pounds as prices of cereal feed for chickens soar, say officials in Brussels...."

May 7 2008 ~ Uncooked waste meat may contain animal pathogens, including BSE, the foot-and-mouth disease virus, African swine fever virus and classical swine fever virus.

So, to prevent outbreaks of these diseases in farm animals, the disposal of meat from catering waste is controlled under the Animal By-Products Regulations. There are 62 uncompensated former swill feeders - still fighting the injustice of the 2001 ban, but extremely concerned at the dangers of present composting practices. A farmer helping them rightly points out that there is evidence that shows the present composting of waste food, including waste meat, can be done in ways that contravene this legislation. The farmer on the cattle farm in the photo in which we see a cow grazing next to waste, is permitted to use the same telescopic handler to shovel the waste meat that is then used to feed the cattle.
The swill feeders' practices were never in fact proved to be in any way dangerous. They effectively recycled organic waste - 5.25 million tonnes of which is now sent to landfill in the UK each year . After seven years of protest, they are still to receive no compensation for the sudden and unwarranted loss of livelihoods that posed no threat of disease spread. "Animal Health", however, may indeed be condoning practices that really do allow the spread of viruses and bacteria. See email (extract) from Robert Persey - and more pages from the warmwell archives on the goverment's handling of the swill feeders.
UPDATE How timely is the Independent article about food waste.

May 7 2008 ~ "The theme of the symposium is tracking the emergence and global spread of FMD."

IAH celebrates its 50th anniversary this week as the World Reference Laboratory for foot-and-mouth disease. A one-day symposium, to be held at the Royal Society on Friday 9th May, will feature speakers from Belgium, Germany, Italy, South Africa, and Spain in addition to the universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh and Oxford, and IAH. "..The significance of the disease has been exacerbated by the globalisation of trade, the rapid growth and intensification of livestock keeping (especially in countries where FMD is chronic), and the threat of bioterrorist attacks." The first scientific talk will be given by Nick Knowles of IAH, who compares the gene sequences of new isolates of the virus with his ever-expanding database of FMD sequences from around the globe. Read news release.

May 7 2008 ~ It is "whistling in the wind" to blame OPEC for the huge rise in oil prices

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard writes in the Telegraph that a massive transfer of wealth from the Atlantic region to the rising commodity powers is taking place. Goldman Sachs think prices could reach 200 dollars. Barclays Capital bank say that OPEC no longer has the capacity to crank up production even if it wanted to do so. More on the oil page.

May 6 2008 ~ "We need a change in the approach to rural development. ....a sense of ownership in initiatives to improve production. ."

Letter in today's Guardian from Chris Wardle who has been a team leader of evaluations of rural community development projects in Ethiopia, Malawi and Uganda during the past 35 years:
"...... the large-scale rural development projects, funded by the EU and others, did not consult local peasant farmers. I know, because I was involved in one of these projects. They were imposed from the top down. ...
The key is a concerted investment of three to five years that directly involves the peasant farmers. They identify their food production problems and suggest possible solutions. As a result they have a sense of ownership in initiatives to improve production. .. ."
Read letter in full. A "sense of ownership". This is exactly and absolutely right - and is what gives those involved in initiatives of all kinds the power to succeed. Until top-down government and NGOs, however well-meaning, finally realise this, there will be yet more hot air and tragically wasted resources.

May 6 2008 ~ - "How organic agriculture and localised food (and energy) systems can feed the world and free us from fossil fuels.."

Guy Watson is chairman of Riverford Organics, the organic vegetable box delivery service. Mr Watson travelled to Kenya and Uganda to look at how organic farming methods
"... work in the places where it really matters to see for himself. He found that farmers, particularly in Uganda who had adopted organic and local supply methods weren't just as productive, or a little more productive, but twenty times more productive that the market- based farm next door. 'I wish that some of the people that say it can't solve the world's problems could see that', he said."
The ISIS report: Food Futures Now was launched in the Jubilee Room in the House of Commons last week and there was barely standing room
Of the ISIS report, Sir Julian Rose, a leading exponent of organic farming and Chair of the Association of Rural Businesses, says: “Most compelling! A succinct and pithy appraisal of the current state of the planet - and just the right resolutions.” (More)

May 6 2008 ~ "It is saddening that the very government which is supposed to support him killed him."

This was the comment of the nephew of one of the men killed by troops during food price protests in Mogadishu. The Independent today reminds us that UN food security unit warned last week that half of Somalia's seven million population faces famine.
".. It blamed an enduring drought as well as soaring food prices. Food protests have also erupted in three other African countries, including Senegal..."
Wikipedia ( entry for the International Fund for Agricultural Development) "Seventy-five per cent of the world’s poor live in rural areas in developing countries, yet only 4% of official development assistance goes to agriculture.... IFAD’s belief is that rural poor people must be able to have a say in the decisions and policies that affect their lives, and they need to strengthen their bargaining power in the marketplace."

May 6 2008 ~ assets of the FAO should be transferred to the UN International Fund for Agricultural Development

Abdoulaye Wade, the president of Somalia, has suggested the assets of the FAO be transferred to the UN International Fund for Agricultural Development, which he said was more efficient, and that the fund set up headquarters in Africa, "at the heart of the problem". FAO officials would not comment. (See Independent)
Meanwhile, according to Reuters, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon says he wants "to get our task force on the global food crisis moving at full speed" - but it seems that the task force will not hold its first meeting until next Monday when it will "study the underlying causes of the crisis and propose long-term solutions"

May 5 2008 ~ Oil price hits $120.36

Exactly four years ago on warmwell.com's oil page we reported from www.marketwatch.com, " As the price of crude oil keeps rising toward $40 a barrel and beyond, it has become increasingly clear that the world is heading toward a major oil crisis."
One article in Le Monde a couple of days earlier had stated bluntly,
".... the oil shock that promises to strike before the end of the decade is not like the ones that preceded it. ...Even if the United States succeeded in imposing its hegemony on all the oilfields in the world (outside of Russia), their army and their technology will not be able to prevail against the coming depletion of conventional oil.... The only viable path is immediate oil sobriety organized through an international agreement.....the blindness of politicians and the usual panicked overreaction of markets allows us to fear the worst.... Since the price will soon reach $100 a barrel, this will no longer be a simple oil shock -- it will be the end of the world as we know it." (Read article in full)
Bloomberg reports (May 5 2008) "Oil surged to an intraday record of $120.36 today."
(Transition initiatives are not alone in reviving the traditions of local production. Following a report in the Scotsman, the Guardian reports today that peat cutting is making a huge comeback in the Hebrides - but peat banks too are now heavily depleted.)

May 4 2008 ~ "We should get back to proper science before it is too late."

Booker's Notebook today: " .....On one hand our politicians are committing us to spending unimaginable sums on wind farms, emissions trading schemes, absurdly ambitious biofuel targets, and every kind of tax and regulation designed to reduce our "carbon footprint" - all based on blindly accepting the predictions of computer models that the planet is overheating due to our output of greenhouse gases.
On the other hand, a growing number of scientists are producing ever more evidence to show how those computer models are based on wholly inadequate data and assumptions - as is being confirmed by the behaviour of nature itself (not least the continuing non-arrival of sunspot cycle 24).
The fact is that what has been happening to the world's climate in recent years, since global temperatures ceased to rise after 1998, was not predicted by any of those officially-sponsored models. The discrepancy between their predictions and observable data becomes more glaring with every month that passes. ..... In view of what is now at stake, such quasi-religious incantations masquerading as science are something we can no longer afford. We should get back to proper science before it is too late."

May 4 2008 ~ "The cheap food era may be over "

Cheap energy and cheap food have gone together but both are now in question. The Press Association quotes the Asian Development Bank's president, Haruhiko Kuroda: "The cheap food era may be over." It reports that the bank has announced emergency funding to help poor countries and that the new aid will come in the form of "soft loans" for the governments of countries hardest hit.
"Asia is home to two thirds of the world's poor and nearly 1.7 billion people in the region live on £1 a day or less.... 60% of their spending goes towards food, and the figure rises to 75% if fuel costs are included, the bank says. .. prices of rice, for instance, had nearly tripled in the past four months. Higher food costs mean higher inflation, which will reduce consumption, savings and investment..."
Raising interest rates to control inflation can result in a serious economic slowdown. Many countries are imposing price controls or bans on food exports, but the Asian Development bank says this can discourage farmers from planting - which in turn reduces supplies and raises prices.

May 2 2008 ~ The UK - "pushing up the prices and making food less available for poor countries"

Roger Williams Lib Dem MP and Shadow DEFRA Minister Hansard ".....UK self-sufficiency in temperate or indigenous food products has fallen by about 10 per cent. over the past 10 years. That means that as a nation we are going into world markets, pushing up the prices and making food less available for poor countries." Unfortunately, Hilary Benn could do little more than talk in vague terms of "priorities". He implied support for UK farming and at the same time said that "the reason that production has come down from the peak of a decade or so ago is that we in Europe, along with others, have reformed the common agricultural policy. That is a good thing, too." (More - link mended)
Meanwhile, Bill Wiggin was reminding the House of Commons that "when we look further at the Government's biomass co-firing feedstocks, we find that a fifth of those are coming from palm oil products, which are causing deforestation and loss of habitat for the orang-utan. .."

May 2 2008 ~ " unacceptable risks to public health, the environment and the welfare of the animals themselves"

The current industrial farm animal production (IFAP) system often poses unacceptable risks to public health, the environment and the welfare of the animals themselves. "Putting Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm Animal Production in America" (pdf file 124 pages), is the result of a two year study in America. It recommends many ways to improve a dangerous and distressing situation, including limiting use of drugs in animals destined for the food supply. It criticises large feeding lots and calls for the phasing out of "troubling animal farming practices"
".....methods for raising food animals have generated concern and debate over just what constitutes a reasonable life for animals and what kind of quality of life we owe the animals in our care....good animal welfare can no longer be assumed based only on the absence of disease or productivity outcomes." (More)
The Commission's report gives an overview of livestock production in the US. Some of its photographs show with grim clarity what is involved in intensive methods of food production.

May 2 2008 ~ "Organic agriculture is the only option left in our looming energy crisis, when oil becomes too expensive and scarce for farming use..."

Letter from Richard Sanders of Elm Farm (Organic Research Centre) in the Independent today. ".... It is time to move on from sterile debates about GM food verses organic, about the relative killing power of organic and synthetic pesticides and whether an outdoor pig is happier than his concrete-dwelling cousin. We're running out of oil and we're running out of food. Proper organic farming allied to local food economies has minimal reliance on fossil fuels and must play a central part in future, sustainable solutions to feeding our hungry planet."

May 2 2008 ~ more than a matter of labelling regulations

The (BBC) reported yesterday that the demand for locally sourced meat is being exploited and beef labelled British has been found, in reality, to come from elsewhere ("Brazil or Botswana") But the report failed to mention the serious underlying issue that goes beyond fraud: if foreign meat is arriving without proper surveillance and testing the route for pathogens is wide open.
As one emailer writes today:
" If the origin of this meat is unidentified and has no audit trail, doesn’t that mean that this meat is likely to be entering the UK (and other EU countries?) illegally? Are samples being tested for disease?"
This problem is not confined to the UK. The Washington Post reported on Tuesday:
"...Most of the funds spent on food safety are spent on outdated practices of inspecting poultry, beef and pork carcasses, even though changing agricultural practices make this a waste of government money. .... only 1 percent of imported food is inspected, even though about 60 percent of fresh fruits and vegetables and 75 percent of seafood is imported..."
When disease can wreak such havoc it is surprising that in the UK the FSA's only reported response was to call for "labelling laws to be clarified". The Trust for America's Health report on Wednesday recommended that a new agency should be responsible for all food safety and that a priority should be "inspecting foods throughout the entire food production and processing chain".

May 2 2008 ~ Tesco towns or Transition towns?

Britain's small shops and independents are being squeezed out and the Commission has ducked the issue. Dismay at the Competition Commission's Groceries Market Investigation - final report (pdf) was expressed by MPC Associates, a group of Marketing, Management & Economic Consultants specialising in Out of Town shopping development in Europe and the UK. They comment that the CC has
"completely ignored the huge trading advantages of large car parking areas.... the Commission has no understanding of the real trading advantages nor the turnovers per square foot of retail selling space concerned with Out and Edge of Town Shopping .... failed to understand that saturation levels have been reached." (read in full)
As for the the Campaign to Protect Rural England, CPRE, - even before the publication yesterday confirmed their fears, they wrote, "... The Commission has failed to put forward strong tests on diversity or on appropriate scale for new developments .." Even Andrew George's tact cannot fully hide his disappointment.

May 2 2008 ~ "change must come in the first instance from the grassroots"

Will the bottom-up local enthusiasm of the many burgeoning Transition Towns initiatives be able to inspire a saner and more human scale solution to the saturation of Tesco towns? Ironically, on the same day as theCompetition Commission report's publication yesterday, CNN reported: "Since governments and big business seem unable, or else unwilling, to deal with these problems head-on, Hopkins believes the change must come in the first instance from the grassroots."

May 1 2008 ~TB blood test clear - but all the cows to be destroyed...

Private Eye's Muckspreader this week on the misery that is the UK's bovine TB policy - and the fact that, in the Somerset farmers' attempt to get sanity from a judicial review "Mr Justice Mitting dismissed the arguments of the farmers’ learned counsel, ruling that Defra’s ‘policy is lawful’...." It is unbearable too that
"....Tom Maidment of Pewsey, thirty-one of whose cattle had been condemned after the (gamma interferon) blood test had shown them as positive. He pleaded in vain with Defra in London for the chance to have them retested using the skin test. But, unaware of this, his local Defra Animal Health Office instructed him that his cattle should be skin tested after all. The results showed a stonking negative. Not one of his animals showed any sign of having been exposed to TB. And what was Defra’s response? It naturally ordered that all the animals should nevertheless be destroyed, at the taxpayers’ expense. Who gives a fig for science when someone else is footing the bill?"
Read in full and see also below for more background

May 1 2008 ~ "...people are hungry for positive solutions which engage their creativity." Rob Hopkins

The Independent today looks at Totnes: ".... In addition to the pound, the transition town organisation offers people advice at "oil vulnerability auditing workshops" on how their businesses can wean themselves off the black stuff; and the group is in talks with the council over "edible landscapes" – herb gardens instead of ornamental verges and bushes. They have recently secured some allotments for the green-fingered, and are promoting the use of energy-saving light bulbs. Similar ideas are in the pipeline....
...change is partly the result of work done by "auditors" from the transition town organisation. " Rob Hopkins is quoted:
"...The viral nature of the growth of the transition movement has taken us all by surprise. We have gone from one transition project to there being 50 formal ones and more than 700 at the earlier stages just by word of mouth and the internet... people are hungry for positive solutions which engage their creativity. The transition movement has been described as being 'more like a party than a protest march', and that feeling of being part of something playful and solutions-focused has undoubtedly been a part of its success."
See also warmwell's Transition page.

May 1 2008 ~ Tesco baulks at the Competition Commission’s plan for an independent ombudsman

The Financial Times reports on supermarket resistance on the proposals from the Competition Commission
"... it was on the issue of suppliers that the supermarkets and the commission came to blows, with Tesco, Asda and J Sainsbury voicing concerns over plans for an ombudsman to police dealings between the grocers and suppliers. ...."
David Greene, a lawyer who has represented the Association of Convenience Stories, is quoted. He says the report made “passing gestures” to small shopowners but failed “in any way” to protect them from the dominance of the largest supermarkets. " It was “strange” the report should suggest there were “few if any problems” at a time when the OFT was probing the industry over alleged price-fixing." Read in full.

May 1 2008 ~ Government’s plans to meet its renewable energy targets through offshore wind stymied by Shell.

Royal Dutch Shell has pulled out of the scheme. Full story in the FT "The London Array was to be the world’s biggest offshore wind farm, with 341 turbines in the Thames Estuary. Shell said on Wednesday it was seeking to sell its stake, while increasing its investment in onshore wind farms in the US...."
The FT also reported last month on the defiant words of Shell’s chief executive, Jeroen van der Veer, when he implied that Shell had 55 years of oil reserves. But this included investments that are far from being in traditional, easy-to-access fields and Shell, like all the others, is moving increasingly into difficult, expensive and carbon-intensive unconventional fuels, such as Canada’s oil sands. Shell is also the world’s largest distributor of biofuels. Although Mr van der Veer asserts that “what is unconventional today will be conventional tomorrow " extraction of oil from food crops is a disaster while extraction from oil sands is in itself highly energy intensive and can be fatal to wildlife. Yesterday, hundreds of ducks were found dead or dying in a toxic tailings pond belonging to oilsands giant Syncrude Canada Ltd. Newsnet was told that it's the worst such incident in the history of northern Alberta's oilsands.

28/29 April ~‘commodities super-cycle’ likely to cause starvation on an epic scale.

An article at www.countercurrents.org comments bluntly: "Major ecological disasters, such as the recent drought in Australia, which hit food production and drive up basic commodity prices, are good news for the corporate investor.....the biofuel sector is currently regarded as a potential source of huge returns for investors. .."
The Globe and Mail
"Geneva - UN officials on Monday blamed market speculation for the recent jump in global food prices and called for a concerted effort to ensure the world's poor can afford to feed themselves.
“We have enough food on this planet today to feed everyone,” the head of the UN Environment Program, Achim Steiner, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. But, he added, “the way that markets and supplies are currently being influenced by perceptions of future markets is distorting access to that food.” “Real people and real lives are being affected by a dimension that is essentially speculative,” said Mr. Steiner, noting that millions have found themselves unable to pay for food since prices began to rise steeply at the start of the year..."
And, as we reported below, Jean Ziegler, the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food, agrees, saying "..the very big investor hedge fund speculative investors" are largely to blame for the present crisis while the switch to biofuels at the expense of traditional forms of agriculture is nothing less than a “crime against humanity.”

Monday 28 April ~ 'devastating policies' which are weakening the world economy, increasing food shortages and destruction of forest across the planet.

We have received this cri-de-coeur from a shivering reader in Australia: "Will someone PLEASE tell the doom sayers that there is no global warming but the climate IS changing for the worse and it has absolutely nothing to do with you and me!"
The brilliant young Israeli astrophysicist Nir Shariv, formerly a adherent of the man-made global warming creed, now says, "Solar activity can explain a large part of the 20th-century global warming....cutbacks in future C02 emissions will not matter much in terms of the climate..."
On 14 April this year, the UN's Climate Committee, the IPCC, was challenged by four scientists, including one Nobel Peace Prize winner, who said that while CO2 has risen dramatically for the last ten years, world temperatures have been falling. Their letter (pdf) :
"Before we radically rearrange the political economy of the world because some scientists claim anthropogenic CO2 is the cause of climate change, it might be worthwhile for anyone taking a position on the topic to consider whether or not this is indeed “well settled science.” Dr. Richard Lindzen, MIT, March 2008"
The current dogma that CO2 is the man-made villain in the story of global warming can brook no such denial. It's hard not to be impressed by some of the evidence, though. It appears that the sun has indeed "gone quiet, very quiet" source and has slowed its internal dynamo as it did in the last period of low solar activity, lasting from about 1790 to 1830 (the Dalton Minimum).

Monday 28 April ~ "...a megalomaniac idea that the recent rise of half a degree would have been caused by man"

The writer of another expert and fascinating website giving a 2000-year historical perspective to what it calls the 200-year sunspot cycle remarks,
"Considering the evidence it looks like a megalomaniac idea that the recent rise of half a degree would have been caused by man. So great are the natural variations. But man has always wanted to be in the center of the world."
On 23 Apr 08 we read, (see Geophysicist) "The first sunspot appeared in January this year and lasted only two days. A tiny spot appeared last Monday but vanished within 24 hours. Another little spot appeared this Monday. Pray that there will be many more, and soon."

Saturday 26 April ~ seawater-irrigated agricultural areas would allow biofuel to make sense

An intriguing letter in the Times (many thanks to Anne Lambourn for the link) refers to biofuels made from the oil rich seeds of saltwater-loving plants (halophytes), irrigated by sea water. Such crops do not compete for fresh water-irrigated land. There is more on the NASA website about this fascinating idea and the pdf file is clear and well illustrated
"....Considering that 43% of the Earth’s landmass is arid or semi-arid, and 97% of the Earth’s water is seawater, the potential for fuel-food feedstock halophyte production becomes very large. As an example, if the Sahara desert (8.6×108ha) were made capable to support halophyte agriculture, and if production were increased to 100 bbl/ha-yr of bio-oil, it alone would supply 421.4 Q, or 94% of the 2004 world energy consumption..this would either free up arable food-producing land or itself become a source of food where the demand for food outpaces that for fuel. Most importantly, it would free up the use of freshwater (only 3% of Earth’s water) for other purpose.."
Read in full.

Saturday 26 April ~ What farmers need to step up production - less red tape

Anthony Gibson sums it up in the Times: "...not a return to production subsidies so much as less red tape, a big increase in investment in research and development and some long overdue words of support and encouragement." Read full letter.

Friday 25th April 2008 ~ seminar discussing African Horse Sickness (AHS) and West Nile Virus

Horse and Hound say that all interested owners are invited and it is to be
"hosted by the Thoroughbred Breeders' Association (TBA) and The Horse Trust.
"Emerging Equine Diseases" takes place on Monday 23 June at Tattersalls, Park Paddocks, Newmarket, Suffolk. Experts from Defra, Pirbright (the government laboratory) and the Animal Health Trust will discuss subjects including disease prevention, insect vectors, the strategy for containment and the development of an AHS vaccine."
Leading international speakers include Professor Alan Guthrie from University of Pretoria, South Africa, Dr Josie Traub-Dargatz, Colorado State University, USA, Professor Philip Mellor and Dr Chris Oura from the UK’s Institute of Animal Health, Pirbright, Dr Jules Minke from Merial, France and representatives from Defra. There will be ample opportunity for questions and discussion throughout the day. Tickets cost £30. To reserve a place go to www.thetba.co.uk or telephone the TBA on 01638 661321. See also warmwell's African Horse Sickness page

Thursday 24th April 2008 ~ "a pattern of ignoring and manipulating science"

Wherever the truth lies in matters such as Global Warming, the causes of vCJD, Genetic Modification and so on, we have been worried for several years that any scientist having the audacity to question received dogma, in which so many millions and so many reputations are invested, is treated as a heretic or smeared as something worse. Today we have been sent this link from AP news (with thanks to Norm in Australia) reporting that in America, 60 percent of senior scientists responding to a questionnaire - chemists, toxicologists, engineers, geologists and experts in the life and environmental sciences -reported personally experiencing what they viewed as political interference in their work over the last five years -in other words, that they feel they have been pressured by superiors to skew their findings. Read article.

Thursday 24th April 2008 ~ Biovet’s Foot and Mouth vaccines will enter the market this year

India, which has 20% of the global cattle population, now wants to get rid of Foot and Mouth disease by vaccination and not culling. 200 million doses of vaccine a year are to be produced to protect them.
Yesterday, Biovet Pvt. Ltd announced the commissioning of Asia’s first bio-safety level 4 (BSL-4) manufacturing facility. The Wall Street Journal:
"The global demand for FMD vaccines is about 500 million doses and Biovet could very well break even just by exporting the vaccines to countries in West Asia..."
Krishna Ella, founder of Bharat Biotech International Ltd talks of "addressing a significant gap in the application of new technologies to animal health care and a potentially huge market"
(See also www.financialexpress.com)
Cutting edge vaccines and on-site rapid diagnosis provide the only practical and humane way forward in halting the ever-increasing global spread of such damaging diseases.

Thursday 24th April 2008 ~The best preparation is to have a vaccine waiting and ready for use

On the subject of African Horse Sickness, Dr Watkins says we cannot assume - particularly after our Bluetongue experience in Northern Europe - that any AHS outbreak is going to be small nor easily controlled by culling. In Dr Watkins' view, culling horses would be totally unnecessary if a drug company such as Fort Dodge were commissioned and the vaccine and its storage paid for. She asks,
"Who will develop, license and manufacture this suite of killed African Horse Sickness vaccines covering all 9 serotypes? Who will pay for it? Certainly Europe and DEFRA will not. Will the horse industry pay for it?.... if they do, they would be in a powerful position to negociate sensible and humane terms for the use of the vaccine with the authorities. ... ..." Read in full
As Dr Meiswinkel says below "There is NO chance that the culling of horses for the control of AHS would be tolerated by the equine industry."

Thursday 24 April ~ The presidents of Bolivia, Nicaragua and Venezuela and Cuba's vice-president plan a £50 million pound scheme to combat the impact of rising food prices

The BBC reports that the host of the Latin American summit, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, said the food crisis was "the biggest demonstration of the historic failure of the capitalist model" and he told fellow leaders that they needed to create a distribution network "so we don't fall into the hands of intermediaries and speculators, which stop millions from receiving food"
The ALBA trading bloc was formed by Mr Chavez as an alternative to US-backed free-trade agreements. Wikipedia calls it an international cooperation organization based upon the idea of social, political, and economic integration between the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. Daniel Ortega says of the food crisis, "This issue is really crucial for the future of our people, most of all to the people of the poorest countries."

Thursday 24 April ~ Federal regulators are backing away from two proposals that would have allowed institutional investors to expand their stake

Energy prices, poor global crop yields, increased demand from China and India and the weak U.S. dollar have all helped to make food prices soar. But the UN's special rapporteur on the Right to Food, Jean Ziegler, below, is not alone in blaming "..the very big investor hedge fund speculative investors"
Washington's Globe and Mail agrees: "...another factor has exacerbated these price increases, and incited unpredictable gyrations in the futures market: the growing clout of financial speculators, like large index funds and hedge funds."
Farmers have in the past been able to offset financial risk by selling future crops at a locked-in price. But the part played by financial speculation in food, fuel and fibres is thought to have been driving up prices and causing havoc in the markets. There had been alarm that rules were going to be changed allowing speculators to expand their stake even further. However, the New York Times reports that in the US "... federal regulators are backing away from two proposals that would have allowed institutional investors to expand their stake..."

April 24 ~ Since January, big rice-producing nations including India, China, Vietnam and Egypt have capped export

The Independent today reports that "... Wal-Mart's cash-and-carry division Sam's Club is limiting customers to four 9kg bags each to prevent a run on stock. Managers at some branches of Costco, the US's biggest cash-and-carry supplier, are limiting sales of rice and flour. The firm's chief executive James Sinegal said he believed media reports of global food shortages had fuelled the surge...World rice stocks are at their lowest since the Bangladesh famine of the mid-70s and production this year is not expected to meet the 430 million tonnes likely to be consumed globally. The situation has boiled over into mass protests, riots and looting in countries including Mauritania, Senegal, Yemen, Guinea, Mexico, Morocco and Uzbekistan. In Haiti, the price of rice, beans and fruit rose by 50 per cent in the past year. Six people died in demonstrations earlier this month. ..."

Wednesday 23 April 2008 ~"this new speculation, this flaring speculation is driving up the prices...it's silent mass murder"

Biofuels are not the only reason why food prices are soaring. The UN's special rapporteur on the Right to Food, Jean Ziegler, pulls no punches in blaming "..the very big investor hedge fund speculative investors" who moved out of the financial market and moved into the market of "agrarian raw material - rice, wheat, sugar and so on". (See transcript from the Australian PM program broadcast around Australia on Radio National )
It was Jean Ziegler who said on Sunday (Reuters) that he was bound to highlight the "madness" of people who think that hunger is down to fate.
"Hunger has not been down to fate for a long time ... This is silent mass murder," he said in an interview.
He blamed globalisation for "monopolising the riches of the earth" and said multinationals were responsible for a type of "structural violence".
"And we have a herd of market traders, speculators and financial bandits who have turned wild and constructed a world of inequality and horror. We have to put a stop to this," he said.
But Jean Zielgler is no friend to biofuels either. On 26 October 2007 he told a news conference at the UN that it was a crime against humanity to convert agricultural productive soil into biofuel and called for a five-year moratorium on biofuel production to halt the growing "catastrophe" for poor people. ." (Independent)
AFP reports that Gordon Brown has vowed to look again at government targets for use of biofuels.

Wednesday 23 April 2008 ~ Oil is now within striking distance of $120 a barrel. Grains prices still rising

The FT paints a grim picture today: "Chinese demand for oil is accelerating ahead of the Olympics with crude oil imports up by almost a quarter to 4.07m barrels a day in March, compared with the same month last year. ... In Nigeria, militants attacked two Shell pipelines on Monday..... in an effort to reassure the market, Opec’s secretary general highlighted the cartel’s plans to expand capacity. ... However, Opec has no plans to meet before September, suggesting little prospect of any relief on supplies before then.
In agricultural markets, corn prices rose ... senior commodity analyst at Ag Resource, warned that more poor weather could affect germination rates and lower yields below the USDA’s current projections. .. Strength in grain prices and concerns about the impact of export restrictions on tight global supplies pushed rice prices higher ..." (Oil depletion page)

Wednesday 23 April 2008 ~ "... enthusiasm for growing your own is stronger than ever."

Peterborough Today: ".... Holding an allotment may have gone out of fashion for a while, once we had recovered from the austere war years and popping to the shops seemed an easier alternative, but today it's very much back in vogue. Celebrity chefs such as Jamie Oliver extol the virtues of growing your own and more and more young people are taking up the spade. In Peterborough, the people renting the 1,300 allotment plots from the city council range in age from 20 to 90. Three years ago the occupancy rate was 50 per cent, but today it is 78 per cent, and at least nine of the council's 24 sites have waiting lists...." As Rob Hopkins has said, "We need to relearn the skills that sustained our ancestors; crafts, local medicines, the great art of growing food. This is a big challenge. This is THE big challenge."

Wednesday 23 April 2008 ~ Shakespeare's birthday today - and the words of one of his wisest creations:

"Sir, I am a true labourer:
I earn that I eat, get that I wear, owe no man hate, envy no man’s happiness, glad of other men’s good, content with my harm, and the greatest of my pride is to see my ewes graze and my lambs suck." As You Like It Act 3
Smallholding is becoming ever more popular. A modern day Corin is Alan Beat who, with his equally talented wife, Rosie, runs a sixteen acre smallholding in the upper Tamar valley. Highly recommended is his "A Start in Smallholding." See also the Transition Initiative page

Tuesday 22 April 2008 ~ "food and oil prices “risk becoming a destabilising force in the global economy”.

The FT today reported that record global food prices will be on the agenda of the Group of Eight heads of state summit in July for the first time in almost 30 years.
".....John Lipsky, the IMF’s deputy managing director, said in a speech in Rome to an energy forum that the rise in commodities prices required a “globally coherent response”, as prices for food and oil had reached a level that could destabilise the global economy. His warning contrasts with the institution’s much milder comments at its recent spring meeting, when it said: “Inflationary risks – notably from higher food, energy and other commodity prices – have risen.”
The UN secretary-general has warned that the crisis in food and fuel prices “could trigger a cascade of other multiple crises . . . affecting economic growth, social progress, and even political security around the world.”

Monday 21 April 2008 ~ Holland wrinkles its nose at London Stink claim

We hear that the NFU's claim that the manure stink in London at the weekend was caused by the smell of slurry spreading in Holland reaching us has raised a few Dutch eyebrows:
"In Holland nobody I know has smelled anything at all. We Dutch are either used to it and appreciate that farming is not smell-free - or it is a stink in a teacup..." See article and translation
(All the same, the NFU is right, surely, to warn against the consequences of changing the rules about slurry spreading as part of tightening up nitrate regulations.)

Monday 21 April 2008 ~ "I am not into scaremongering. But AHS demands that we look directly into its eye - because this is a no-nonsense disease."

Warmwell.com is very grateful to have received this email from Dr Rudy Meiswinkel for publication on the subject of African Horse Sickness. If anyone understands the risk to the UK it is he. Extract
"....with a mortality rate of close to 100% you can be sure that if AHS was to strike it would cause a kind of mayhem that the veterinary authorities might well not be prepared for.
With BTV-8 in northern Europe we are seeing how difficult it is to anticipate the spread of the virus because of the movement of infected animals and the random dispersal of infected midges; both these avenues of virus movement are impossible to control effectively. Once this was realised (with realisation coming only through experience!) the competent authorities opted for widespread vaccination, but only after 15 months had passed. If AHS was to arrive in northern Europe there is NO WAY that a wait of 15 months could be allowed...."
Read in full on warmwell's AHS page

April 20 2008 ~".. as many as 90% of the horse population could be infected and compulsorily slaughtered".

African Horse Sickness may sound like a far off threat - but the same Culicoides midges that spread bluetongue in Africa also act as vectors of AHS. One remembers the kind of wishful thinking that bluetongue midges "may not be able to survive the British climate" in this BBC report on the first bluetongue case last year - and in which farming leaders were reported as saying they were "confident there would not be a major bluetongue outbreak".
The stark reality, however, is that our island boundaries do not protect us. Nor does the "wait and see rather than prepare" mindset whose only "cure", when the worst happens, is slaughter. The UK reluctance, as always, to commit to vaccine production may lead to disaster for horses and owners, Horse and Hound this week are under no illusions about the seriousness of the danger:
"Jonathon Shaw has confirmed horse owners would only be given £1 compensation by Defra - no matter how valuable the animal."
Read in full (Warmwell will be starting an AHS page next week.)

Sunday 20 April 2008 ~ " A billion people overweight, 800 million people who are starving, who are hungry, who are not fed enough...."

Raj Patel's "Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System" is now out in paperback. In an interview, Mr Patel explained (interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now):
"....if you imagine a sort of hourglass, at the top there are the millions of farmers who grow the food that we eat, and at the bottom there are billions of us consumers, and in the middle there are just a handful of corporations that mediate between the people who grow our food and us.... able to drive prices down for farmers... And then you're processing the food so that what we end up with is food that is rich in salts and fats and sugars, food that tends to make us want to buy more, food that makes us obese....the environments in which poor people find themselves are more conducive to being overweight and to be unhealthy in the cities - and for poor people in the fields, those kinds of prices from the industrial food system are driving them out of business..."
Reviewers mention the book's optimism: "... it's not just bleak - the stories of resistance are inspiring..." and "... the soft underbelly of this system is susceptible to positive change by grass roots movements."
You can listen to the interview online.

April 17 ~ Peat bogs are Europe’s rainforests - and under threat

In their centralised zeal for energy, building ever more on-shore giant wind turbines in the most inappropriate places without thinking of the consequences, our leaders, ironically, are in danger of making things far worse. Wind farms cannot of themselves reduce emissions and there is no evidence that they reduce emissions by displacing fossil power station generation either. However, the infrastructure of wind farms does dry out peat bogs - which irreversibly destroys the peat's ability to act as a carbon sink. The dried peat then releases "tens of thousands of tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere." The Scotsman reports today that Struan Stevenson, MEP:
"... wanted the EC to call a moratorium of building on peat land while they carry out a more detailed analysis. But that is beyond the commission's power, apparently," he said.
The Scotsman article concludes: "Mr Stevenson believes more thought is needed on how to move forward with renewable energy, including wind farms. "We are rushing towards them without thinking of the consequences and whether these processes are sustainable," he said." ( See also windfarm page)

April 17 2008 ~ "... some great old photos of Clapham Common dug up for allotments, and people growing food on the rooftops of London during World War Two."

Middlesbrough Council commissioned a map from designers Andre Viljoen and Katrina Bohn – authors of Continuous Productive Urban Landscapes – which identifies existing and prospective foodgrowing sites in Middlesbrough. It details existing allotments in the town, maps surplus land and highlights connections between the town and local food producers. This is a plan for the local authority and others to consider as a new context for strategies towards a more local and sustainable food economy. (see Designs of the Time and see below on Middlesborough)
Rob Hopkins' review of Andre Viljoen's book on continuous productive urban landscape says "it is a hugely readable, passionate and visionary book. It aims to put productive land use at the centre of urban design. ... He advocates creating networks of green spaces throughout the city (he takes London as his case study), which are connected by cycle paths and walkways, which combine urban agriculture, recreation and a wealth of other uses. ...a book of the most profound importance at this point in history...We should view our cities as much in terms of being productive spaces as we view our rural areas...." See review.

April 17 2008 ~ A system integrating good housing to landscape, conservation of natural resources - a very practical design system. Permaculture.

The video about permaculture by Bill Mollison, the movement's co-founder, takes the viewer through its history and developments. The video begins dramatically with a plane dropping food parcels onto a parched landscape - the commentary:
"When the Western world sees food drops for the starving of Africa we think it will never happen to us, but there's a man in Australia who says that's where we're heading..."
You can watch it free on the internet ‘In Grave Danger of Falling Food’ Amazingly, it was made almost twenty years ago,

April 17 2008 ~ Britain farmland - more and more being bought up by rich investors

As we reported in January and again in February , farmland is being scrambled for by the rich and canny, often from abroad. The Independent today reports that the cost of rural land has risen 40 per cent - but the article does not tell the whole story. We are reminded of the words of Barton Briggs, one of Wall Street's most legendary investment strategists, who has been advising those with money to buy up farms and stock them with "seed, fertiliser, canned food. wine, medicine. clothes etc." The "etc" could well mean guns to keep away the rest of us. How very different from the practical solutions offered by Rob Hopkins and the Transition Handbook
Dr James Bellini in January urgently advocated "localisation" He talked of "localvores who now advocate the growing of food locally - that's what life was like before the industrialisation of food." Handing over our local food economy to large industrial corporations will very soon be seen to have been suicidally foolish. The move back towards localisation has never before been so urgently needed. And it is now a whole year since the report "Fuelling a Food Crisis" (pdf) by Green Party Euro-MP Caroline Lucas warned that oil stocks and EU trade and energy policies were threatening food price hikes - and could cause the UK to be vulnerable to food shortages for the first time since the Second World War.

April 17 2008 ~ "the need for affordable food versus the need for renewable energy..."

Current economic uncertainty has led producers to hoard rice - and the rich now see it as a lucrative or at least safe bet. Rice consumption has outpaced production. Global reserves have decreased by half just since 2000 and in the last three months alone, prices have doubled to about $1,000 a metric ton for the high grades. Australian farmers who used to supply 20 million people around the world are giving up on rice. Ever scarcer water resources are being directed to other grains and towards livestock. Poor countries such as Senegal and Haiti each import four-fifths of their rice - their dietary staple - and are being left in the lurch. There is rice disease in Vietnam. The NYT today comments:
"The global agricultural crisis is threatening to become political... The World Bank and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization called on major agricultural nations to overhaul policies to avoid a social explosion from rising food prices."
Even though rice itself is not used to produce biuofuel, the poor nations whose subsidies from rich countries are given to support biofuels, are facing civil unrest and actual starvation. Can the rich nations' leaders respond to the reality that biofuels are killing people - and work instead towards getting off oil dependency - as in the highly successful Transition initiatives?

April 16 2008 ~ Professor Bob Watson "Can we change our priorities in the agricultural sector?"

850 million in developing countries do not have access to the food they need. Energy 'experts' promoting biofuels in the EU have not sought the views of agriculture specialists or soil scientists on biofuels and Professor Watson's thoughts as chief environment scientist on the sustainability of biofuels have never been asked for - but he warns that the policies have run ahead of the science.
Yesterday, the International Assessment of Agricultural Science & Technology for Development (IAASTD) under Prof Watson published a report stating that failing to take action on food shortages and "continuing to focus on production alone will undermine our agricultural capital and leave us with an increasingly degraded and divided planet." (See video report) Ironically, it was the very day that the Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation (RTFO) made 2.5% biofuels a compulsory ingredient at the pumps. CNN reports that "Many people on both sides of the debate are pushing for a second generation of renewables from sources like wood waste, non-edible crops and crops that grow much faster." See also New York Times today on the IAASTD report.

April 16 2008 ~ The British Government failed to sign the IAASTD accord.

Prof Watson's deeply-held view that "Business as Usual will not solve the problems of poverty and hunger" appear to cut little ice with the UK, USA, Canada and Australia who have all failed to sign the final report after disagreement over its conclusions about trade. The IAASTD report's key questions include how to enhance production of more nutritious food in a way that has
"no adverse consequences for the environment - indeed positive consequences and in a way that really helps the poorest of the poor. We believe we can build on the successes of the past and make the system more participatory ...making sure we understand the needs of women, who play an absolutely key role in agriculture in developing countries, and we need to combine local and indigenous knowledge with the knowledge that we have in the more formal part of society - in the universities and think tanks and governments...Some trade policies of today certainly help some people but don't help the poorest of the poor.."
See also Farmers Guardian d You can hear Professor Watson on YouTube talking with great seriousness about social exclusion and environmental degradation.

April 16 2008 ~ There is emphasis in the report on proven traditional agricultural methods from around the world as much as on the new technologies.

The controversial questions surrounding GM were not dodged by the IAASTD report. The fact that we still don't know how GMOs will alter biodiversity, eco-system function or affect human health is seen as important. "We do know," says the video report, "that corporate control over seeds can undermine the livelihoods of small scale farmers." As for the combined expertise of the smaller farmers across the world, the four year study took pains to collect information. We learn, for example, that after Hurrican Mitch in 1998, farmers in one small area of Honduras using "zero tillage" (which helps prevent mud slides) managed to feed the rest of the country.

April 15 2008 ~ It has exacerbated a global food crisis - yet our petrol tanks must now contain at least 2.5 per cent biofuel...

The Independent: "Amid growing evidence that massive investment in biofuels by developed countries is helping to cause a food crisis for the world's poor, the ecological cost of the push to produce billions of litres of petrol and diesel from plant sources will be highlighted today with protests across the country..... Norman Baker, the Liberal Democrat transport spokesman, said: "Thanks to flaws in the Government's system, companies selling these fuels will even be allowed to get away with saying that they don't know whether they've been sourced sustainably or not. This makes a mockery of the entire idea of sustainability standards."

April 15 2008 ~ "the period of intense oil production [growth] is over".

Even today's story of a possible big oil discovery in Brazil may not delay the ending of cheap oil by very much. The Carioca field ( BM-S-9) is located beneath a layer of salt in water more than 2,000 meters deep. No official information is available yet to confirm the guess that there might be 33 billion barrels of oil there - and the cost of extracting it will be very much higher than in conventional oil wells. Extracting and turning the oil into usable form will also be extremely energy-intensive. Only recently has the physical technology even existed to drill in water that deep. It will be a difficult and expensive enterprise. However, it may perhaps alter the policies of the country most desperate to secure supplies.
Russia, until recently considered the most promising oil region outside the Middle East is now admitting stagnation and that the period of intense oil production is over. The FT today reports that the vice-president of Lukoil has compared Russia with the North Sea and Mexico, where oil production is declining dramatically - and even the Russian government has admitted that production growth has stagnated.
The thirst of governments for cheap energy and the mad dash for bio-fuel is, of course, what ultimately lies behind the food riots now spreading across the planet. There are now only 8 to 12 weeks of cereal stocks left in the world.

April 15 ~ "It is hard to understand how two such different food economies could occupy the same planet, until you realise that they feed off each other"

"the grain required to fill the tank of a sports utility vehicle with ethanol ... could feed one person for a year" George Monbiot today tells us in the Guardian that this year, global stockpiles of cereals will decline by around 53 million tonnes - while the production of biofuels will consume almost 100 million tonnes. He reminds us that Ruth Kelly promised that "if we need to adjust policy in the light of new evidence, we will" - and wonders what new evidence she requires.
"...In the midst of a global humanitarian crisis, we have just become legally obliged to use food as fuel. It is a crime against humanity, in which every driver in this country has been forced to participate... While 100m tonnes of food will be diverted this year to feed cars, 760 million tonnes will ... feed animals - which could cover the global food deficit 14 times. ..."
Having looked askance at a purely vegan diet, and noted that although pigs and chickens feed more efficiently than grain-fed beef - unless they are free range, "the monstrous conditions in which they are kept" becomes an issue, he encourages us to consider a freshwater fish that can be raised entirely on vegetable matter. He then draws attention to the surreal nature of our awareness of the global crisis: "While half the world wonders whether it will eat at all, I am pondering which of our endless choices we should take...." A salutary article - but it does rather suggest that George Monbiot thinks that there is no immediate worry for the UK. Of course the prosperous West must do what it can to give practical help to the worst affected - but unless we quickly revamp our whole thinking about energy and local food supply - and consign bio-fuel targets to the scrap heap - food riots could be a reality here too.

April 14 2008 ~ "we aren't boycotting supermarkets entirely but we are gradually weaning people off them"

Good news from a self-sufficient village in Hampshire. The VAT registered village cooperative in the village of Martin has been successfully operating for nearly four years now. There are 164 families there and 101 of them signed up to work the "Future Farms" rota. The Mail reports:
"Every year more produce is added and the scheme - likened to a community allotment - has breathed new life into a village that has only a church and a working men's club. .... the farm sells 45 types of vegetables, 100 chickens a week, 20 pigs a year, 32 lambs a year and is now starting to sell beef.
Members of the committee include a consultant radiologist, a horticulturalist, a computer programmer, a former probation officer, a secretary and a council worker."
The strengths of such a scheme are many; not least that so many people are working together for a common purpose. The only food not being moved more than about two miles is the meat animals - who have to be sent to slaughter some distance away since, because of a shameful series of cock-ups, we have lost the majority of our good local slaughterhouses.

April 14 2008 ~ The animal welfare issues of prolonged transport to slaughter.

.. have been well documented by CIWF What is so difficult to bear is how unnecessary was the demise of small local slaughterhouses. In the early 90s, hundreds of small and medium sized abattoir owners had suddenly to comply with wholly inappropriate and unnecessary "harmonising" legislation. It involved vast expenditure. Closures took place all over the country and, instead of the small slaughterhouses often attached to local butchers shops, animals for slaughter began having to travel 100 miles and often more to their final uncomfortable destination. The claim that this was for "hygiene" reasons was soon exploded and, (see "The Great Deception" page 304) John Gummer then gave the "curiously disingenuous explanation that the owners had "taken a commercial decision not to invest in the future of their businesses"..."
And on it goes.
As Steve Dube wrote in the Western Mail in January: "...Most of the post-World War Two network of local slaughterhouses closed in the face of a barrage of regulations before the turn of the (21st) century... the trend could continue if Britain adopts new proposals from the Meat Hygiene Service and the Food Standards Agency.."

April 14 2008 ~ We need "intelligent growth"

Suicidal "Growth" is leading to famine. "How can we persuade economists and governments to see ‘growth’ in another light?" asks Stephan Harding in this month's Resurgence "...we in the affluent North must grow our abilities for living simply - we need to learn to do well with less. Intelligent growth also involves the growth and recovery of the soil. We need to allow soil to thicken wherever it has been depleted by the depredations of the agribusiness farmers and their corporate overlords..."
Things are looking ever bleaker this week and food riots are being reported across the globe.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is providing "short-term measures" such as providing subsidised fertiliser in three African countries affected by food riots (see All Africa.com)

April 14 2008 ~ The FAO's measures cannot surely do much more than paper over a few cracks.

Fertiliser - subsidised or not - is produced with fossil fuels. Some are derived from natural gas, and gas prices have climbed, too.
The Globe and Mail on Saturday:
"... It's almost impossible to boost production quickly, because of land and water shortages and competition from biofuels."
The urgent warnings of such writers as Stephan Harding on "intelligent growth" have never seemed more timely. World leaders may have agreed on Sunday (FT) to make the "global food crisis" the top priority of the next Group of Eight meeting in Tokyo, agreeing that "more work should be done on possible links between biofuel crops and food prices" - but only a fundamental rethink about the limits of economic growth can help now, and one fears these leaders are entrenched in the myth that growth can be limitless. Hope is now centred on local initiatives who are in touch with reality on the ground - and in the earth.

April 13 2008 ~ Mass starvation warning

When it is the head of the International Monetary Fund who warns of hundreds of thousands of deaths from starvation and calls for strong action on food prices there can no longer be any denial of the seriousness of the situation globally. At a meeting in Washington, " ....Dominique Strauss-Kahn said that social unrest from continuing food price inflation could cause conflict. There have been food riots recently in a number of countries, including Haiti, the Philippines and Egypt."BBC
The concern of the IMF is not a merely humanitarian one. The situation could affect developed western nations because of trade inbalances and "the still unfolding financial market turmoil and... the potential worsening" of housing markets and the credit crunch.

April 12 2008 ~ "people whose lives are being blighted by bland corporate values - the stallholders and publicans and shopkeepers whose jobs are hanging by a thread..."

If we needed evidence that a return to a pre-oil-dependent life could actually be better for us, two books reviewed today in the Guardian might give us pause - (and thanks to Norm in Australia for this link.) After examining the nasty reality behind so much of our thoughtless consumerism, it concludes:
"... - the grinning corporate culture of "leisure", and expensive cups of coffee, and apartment complexes, and piped music, and apples that are all the same size. "Although things are officially better," says Kingsnorth, "unofficially we feel worse." And why are we allowing this to happen? "Because we must grow," he says. "We must develop, and regenerate, and push forward. We must consume and profit and invest, and the end goal, while unclear, must not be discussed, and must certainly not be questioned."
But what is so inspiring about the new awareness - Transition community projects, Kitchen Gardeners International and all the clear-eyed, bottom-up plans for urban and rural regeneration - is that it is discussing and questioning - and realising that the assumption that juggernaut economic growth brings health and happiness is an empty and dangerous one. For human sanity and development, perhaps the monster is running out of steam just in time.

April 11/12 2008 ~ "The backyard organic garden is sounding less and less like an elite affectation, every single day."

In an article at Salon, "Peak Weed Killer?", we read that industrial monoculture will soon be in trouble because of the "relentless ascent of synthetic fertilizer prices" - this includes price hikes for glyphosate -- a.k.a. Monsanto's RoundUp --because of the increasing scarcity of a key ingredient: phosphorus:
"...rock phosphate, the source of nearly all industrially-used phosphorus, is a non-renewable resource....synthetic fertilizer and industrial herbicide prices are rising because of growing demand, resource scarcity, and energy costs. That backyard organic garden, presumably recycling every nutrient possible, is sounding less and less like an elite affectation, every single day."
Read article

April 11 2008 ~ What is the UK Government's position on Food Security?

The 2002 DEFRA paper on food security opined,
" National food security is hugely more relevant for developing countries than the rich countries of Western Europe." (p23) and asserted that there was enough food to feed the world. Self-sufficiency was "an undesirable goal for a trading nation" (and wouldn't work anyway)
All this complacency notwithstanding, the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Peak Oil and Gas, was inaugurated on Tony Blair’s last full day as Prime Minister, Tuesday 26th June 2007. Two months later, the then CSA, David King, told them, "generally, I am personally not convinced that focusing on the "peak oil" concept is the most helpful approach."
Today we were told in an email that when Margaret Beckett was asked by Farmer's Weekly correspondent David Richardson how much of the nation's food should be produced at home, she retorted that "she would not dream of wasting her own or her staff's time on such a ridiculous exercise. Food security is not an issue " she said.
Thankfully, there are committed experts who are able to see things with a little more clarity. Professor Tim Lang gave a talk (‘Food Security & Peak Oil’) to the All-Party group at Portcullis House on March 25th

April 11 2008 ~ role for gardening and urban agriculture

Professor Lang's talk sets out several relevant questions in a Powerpoint Presentation that effectively communicates a sense of urgency. One slide asks:
• If 95% food is oil-dependent, what would a post or ‘less oil’ food economy look like?
• Which sectors need to change most?
• Cost: prices need to rise but how much would they? SDC $100 showed +5-10%
• Skills on farm - role for gardening / urban agriculture?
There is, of course, no official food security policy yet. Gundula Azeez (Soil Association) also gave an audio & Powerpoint presentation at the meeting and the All-Party Parliamentary Group now has their own website where several interesting links can be found.

April 11 2008 ~ Family farms and urban gardens

Roger Doiron is Founding Director of Kitchen Gardeners International, a nonprofit network of 5200 gardeners from 90 countries
source "My job as a sustainable foods advocate is to convince people that family farms and gardens not only can feed the world, they're the only thing that can in the long run. Big, industrial agriculture ....would not have been possible were it not for the cheap and easily-obtained inputs on which industrial foods depend, the most important of which is oil. It has been estimated that our highly-industrialized food system in the US requires 5-10 calories of fossil fuel energy to create 1 calorie of food energy.
In recognition of planting season and the intersecting geopolitical crises now upon us, I am proposing that home growers finally catch a break. Not from bugs, weather, or clunky garden shoes, but from taxes.....why not offer incentives for solar-powered, healthy food production in their backyard?... "
The Kitchen Gardeners International website carries a wonderful photo of urban food growing.

April 11 2008 ~ "people want to make it a mainstream activity"

A recent Guardian article suggests very seriously that the growing of fruit and vegetables in town-centre planters and parks could be a blueprint for the future
"....Groundwork South Tees advised schools, mental health hospitals, residential care homes and retailers on planting and growing many varieties of herbs, vegetables and fruit. Containers of different sizes were used so people could cultivate whatever space they had.
Middlesbrough borough council turned over parkland, town-centre planters and other landholdings for fruit and vegetable growing. The eight-month project culminated in a town meal outside the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, where up to 8,000 people shared meals from the food that had been grown.
This year, Middlesbrough plans to supply seeds and containers to anyone interested, and already has 2,000 individuals and groups lined up, including 31 out of 51 schools, with 280 growing sites."
Tim Lang, professor of food policy at City University, knows as well as anyone that the era of cheap food in the UK is over, and that the nation is "sleepwalking into a crisis". With rising oil and food prices the idea of urban farming in the UK is of vital importance - but the fundamental problem is that so much land has ended up in the hands of private developers.

April 11 2008 ~ Governments are racing to secure food imports

The Financial Times today:
"Governments are racing to strike secretive barter and bilateral agreements with food-exporting countries to secure scarce supplies as the price of agricultural commodities jump to record highs...The moves coincide with a significant tightening of the global food market as leading exporters of agricultural commodities ban foreign sales. The government-to-government contracts could bypass those restrictions, diplomats say...."
Can anyone still be in doubt at the seriousness of the situation? But a glance at mainstream headlines shows little attempt to inform and warn. Reuters does carry a financial story which contains the line "surging food and fuel prices risked triggering political upheaval in the world's poorest countries.." Bilateral agriculture contracts now happening behind closed doors shows just how short sighted has been our abandonment of self-sufficiency, our dependence on "cheap" imports and the government's apparent inability to understand the vital importance of farming and food security.

April 10 2008 ~ " waves of unrest around the world...all related to the food and fuel prices"

The UN fears that governments may be toppled and that food riots could spread, fanned by hunger, frustration and global television coverage. The Independent's story is not just about the rioting of those literally starving in Haiti.
" In Manila, troops armed with M-16 rifles now oversee the sale of subsidised rice... In Egypt, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Mozambique, Senegal, Burkina Faso and Cameroon there have been protests in recent weeks all related to the food and fuel prices. ...."
The UN is "helpless in the face of the spreading crisis and it can only advise governments to improve crop irrigation, storage facilities as well as infrastructure. .."
The article also looks briefly at the deteriorating situation in Morocco, Indonesia, Cameroon, Egypt, and Pakistan. Does the UK still think it can continue as if we are in a "post agricultural era" and that cheap imports are always going to be available to feed the country? (Oil prices jumped to above $112 a barrel on Wednesday. According to Matthew Simmons, the current highs of $100 per barrel are "cheap". ... he is more concerned about energy shortages than the rising price of oil.- see peak oil page)

April 9/10 2008 ~ 33 nations from Mexico to Yemen may face "social unrest''

Dr Stephen M Apatow , in a no-punches-pulled letter to Pascal Lamy, Director-General of the World Trade Organisation and colleagues at the International Bar Association, talks of "the prioritization of geoeconomic progress over the protection of vulnerable populations"- and quotes Bloomberg (the article - before its update today - appeared also in the Telegraph):
"China, Egypt, Vietnam and India, representing more than a third of global rice exports, curbed sales this year, and Indonesia says it may do the same. Investigators in the Philippines, the world's biggest importer, raided warehouses last month to crack down on hoarding. The World Bank in Washington says 33 nations from Mexico to Yemen may face "social unrest''..." (read in full).
Dr Apatow continues: "Experts now fear that impoverished populations may also be allowed die in the event of a pandemic, where the geopolitical objective is minimal interference with world trade and travel.
Since the Year 2000, we have watched the international community spiral into crisis, due to the prioritization of geoeconomic progress over the protection of vulnerable populations. ..." (Read letter in full)

Wednesday April 9 2008 ~ "With all our combined efforts we must be able to move the EU-tanker..."

Vaccination is a European issue. It's now high time for an urgent all out campaign to get the inappropriate but seemingly unbudgeable EU trade rules on vaccination changed. The end of cheap energy, the insidious creep of new viral and bacterial diseases, the depletion of the soil, the end of cheap imports - all could soon make the EU's obsession with trade and protectionism irrelevant. What matters now, more and more, is food security. The economic situation worldwide really will affect what countries such as Britain can import - and sooner rather than later. The "bottom-up" grass roots commitment and energy is inspiring. High time then that the urgency of the need for food security is acknowledged in the media and government.

Wednesday April 9 2008 ~ Argentina - empty shelves are the price of soaring energy and grain

Argentina is a fertile country - but at least a quarter of the Argentine population still lives in poverty - and food prices rose 40% last year caused by the effects of oil depletion. Increased export taxes prompted a farmers' strike - called off last week for 30 days in expectation of talks - but now Argentine farmers could revive the strike. It combats the soybean export tax being raised from 35% to 45% and new taxes being put on other farm exports, including wheat. The tax rises are to raise revenue but also, and this is a vital point, to discourage farmers from selling food overseas that is needed at home. The small farmers are naturally frustrated that their profits are being creamed off by a government that seems to give no benefits in return. Argentina's key grains exports are likely to be disrupted again and blockades resumed. As one reader on the BBC page explains, "Prices for basic commodities like dairy products, meat fruit and vegetables have gone up enormously in the recent months, as it is more profitable to export than to sell them in the country."

Wednesday April 9 2008 ~ The big exporters with political clout and pedigree breeders are often those who continue to raise powerful voices against vaccination

using the unscientific and misinformed perceived "problem" of subclinical carriers in vaccinated animals as justification. But as Intervet has rightly pointed out, where can this subclinical virus lurking in "carriers" go if the animals around it are protected? The most basic knowledge of virology shows this fear to be unfounded. As CLA Wales director, Julian Salmon, reports (icwales.icnetwork.co.uk) following a recent visit to Argentina, those who routinely and effectively vaccinate are baffled by Europe:
"They failed to understand the EU’s archaic stance on vaccine."
The NBA petition calls for a common sense approach based on sound science for the use of vaccine to protect livestock. In France, the biggest animal breeders' organisation, ProNaturaFrance, has now put it on their own site .

Tuesday April 8 2008 ~ The production of money, not food, takes precedence every time for UK government - but without farming we all go hungry

Steve Dube in the Western Mail today says that competitors outside the EU have "few welfare or environmental strings attached" to the advantages of a global free market system. The European Commission's wish to link farm subsidies to environmental conditions could disadvantage European farming even more. Farming is not the only industry to suffer, he says ".... But it is the only industry where it really matters that it is so severely disadvantaged by unequal competition, for the simple reason that without it, we all go hungry. An added challenge facing farmers is that they are largely unrecognised at a UK Government level, where the production of money, not food, takes precedence every time." More

Monday April 7 2008 ~ Briefing day for everyone interested in setting up a Community Supported Agriculture project.

One example of how things are taking off locally (food feet rather than food miles) is a briefing day for everyone interested in setting up a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) project.
The Soil Association has funded 3 experts; Jade Bashford, Mark Harrison and Nick Weir, to run the day for people interested in Community Supported Agriculture or "CSA" in Gloucestershire. It will be held on Wednesday April 30th at Stroud Community Agriculture, Hawkwood College, Stroud, in Gloucestershire (Painswick Old Road Stroud, GL6 7 - 01453 759 034 . Please see link to information and booking form (new window) The event is FREE and lunch and refreshments will be provided. Places are limited so booking is essential. For more information on the Soil Association's new Community Supported Agriculture project, contact Amanda Daniel on adaniel@soilassociation.org

Monday April 7 2008 ~ The crisis is global

Anyone who still thinks that the turmoil in financial markets isn't going to affect world growth should read today's Financial Times in which the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund and former French Finance Minister, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, rubbishes the notion that the credit crisis is largely a US problem. Developing countries such as China and India would be affected.
"The crisis is global," he said. "... . use of public money can be examined....The forecasts we are going to release in a few days are not very optimistic. The downside risks we underlined in the last world economic outlook have materialised."
The myth of economic growth continues and will take some dispelling. The UK continues, with apparent complacency, to watch its ability to feed itself decline. A serious question is to ask for how much longer the UK can import cheap food from countries which are themselves getting more and more concerned about the rise in prices. (see also the Transition Initiative page)

Sunday April 6 2008 ~ Staring down the barrel of a crisis

"It's time to abandon the cruise ship of empire in exchange for a lifeboat... to trust in ourselves, our neighbors and the Earth that sustains us all." Guy R. McPherson is a professor of conservation biology at the University of Arizona. His article today in the Arizona Republic pulls no punches about what he feels will be the inevitable result of the end of Cheap Oil.
"You can kiss goodbye groceries at the local big-box grocery store: Our entire system of food production and delivery depends on cheap oil. .... We have come to depend on cheap oil for the delivery of food, water, shelter and medicine. Most of us are incapable of supplying these four key elements of personal survival.... On the other hand, the forthcoming cessation of economic growth is truly good news for the world's species and cultures.... Our individual survival, and our common future, depends on our ability to quickly make other arrangements. ..a personal challenge..."
See also warmwell Transition Town page.

April 6 2008 ~ EU's Rapid Alert System for Non-Food Products (RAPEX) includes UK wind turbine

While human scale windmills for local small-scale use are of value, Warmwell's page on windfarms carries the caption, "Beware missionary Zeal over wind farms..." Many of the references deplore the fact that the highly subsidized devastation of vast areas of our most beautiful landscape by windfarms is mere political green window-dressing - what is now called "greenwashing". While the Government no longer pays direct subsidies to the operators they demand that the electricity utilities take a growing percentage of their supply from wind power - the cost goes straight to customers. Wind turbines currently occupy a total of five square miles of Cumbria.
Now - along with the faulty toys and defective electrical appliances that pose a danger on the EU RAPEX page, we see a wind turbine in the UK described as posing
"a risk of injuries because of insufficient tightening or movement of the connecting bolts. This results in fatigue leading to overload which causes the heads of the bolts to pop off."
As one emailer laconically puts it, " I knew these things are spoiling the landscape, will never produce enough power to pay for themselves but to use them as weapons of (mass) destruction..."

April 4 2008 ~ Food prices... effects are being felt globally.

The FT is taking the subject very seriously indeed. Their InDepth page on food prices covers many aspects - all of which are challenging. They talk of a long-term, structural change.

April 3 2008 ~ The National Conference for Transition Towns is to be held in Cirencester next weekend

We're grateful for the information that this will take place at the Agricultural College (just outside Cirencester on the Tetbury road) The energetic Green MEP,Caroline Lucas, is in the area and will be addressing the Conference on Friday. Then she will going on to talk in Stroud about the future of food production- and will be conveyed round the area in one of the Stroud Valley Car Club motors. The Transition Network conference takes place in Cirencester from 11-13 April 2008. It will run from lunchtime on Friday 11 April to midday on Sunday 13 April. The conference ".. is designed for people involved in a transition initiative in their locale or who are "mulling over" whether to start one up. There will be workshops, Open Spaces, World Cafés, presentations, discussions, dancing and maybe even a soccer match. The aim is to help people learn how to broaden, deepen and accelerate their initiative, and connect with people to share ideas, inspiration and experiences." The conference programme and content are almost complete.

April 3 2008 ~ Top-down does not work

The success of the Transition Town lies in its evolutionary process - starting with the enthusiasm of communities taking matters into their own hands and watching in awe at what so quickly starts to take shape because of all the various local skills and talents available. The "Transition Handbook" by Rob Hopkins is an antidote to the way top-down government works.
"It's a question of unleashing the collective genius around you.. ...unless we can create this sense of anticipation, elation and a collective call to adventure on a wider scale, any government responses will be doomed to failure, or will need to battle protractedly against the will of the people..... ."
So it is with a sigh that we read in today's Telegraph:
"Ministers have drawn up plans to force through the development of 10 eco-towns despite widespread local opposition..."
The eco-towns proposed - and what "eco" means in this context is rather hard to fathom - include poor Throckmorton, in Worcestershire. (recent posts on the Transition movement) See also update in Guardian And as Charles Clover says in the Telegraph, "The fact remains that it would be more eco-friendly not to build these eco-towns at all."

April 2 2008 ~ "alternative ways of handling any future outbreak, with minimum disruption to the industry.."

From the website of www.meatinfo.co.uk we learn of the existence of a report, written by the Chief Veterinary Officer, Jim Scudamore, who was in post during the 2001 FMD disaster. John McIntosh, the Chairman of the Aberdeen & Northern Marts group is quoted:
"During his address McIntosh spoke about the unfortunate phase of foot-and-mouth which struck during August and September 2007. Empathising with livestock producers, he said he too felt the same financial pain and anger as a result of FMD but hoped the Scudamore report - which details the government's retired chief veterinarian's findings - would suggest alternative ways of handling any future outbreak, with minimum disruption to the industry."
We should very much appreciate any further information about this report. UPDATE More about the review (Many thanks to Anne Lambourn)

April 2 2008 ~ "... labelling of products from vaccinated animals must be prohibited." Jan Mulder

One of the accepted proposals from the Dutch Liberal Party (here) is to appeal to the Commission and the Member States to take measures to guarantee free trade of products from vaccinated animals. Without trade restrictions no objections in the UK to vaccination being used to combat FMD in 2001 and again in 2007 would have remained. The vaccines have proved themselves effective in countries that use them, such as Uruguay in 2001 Vaccines of the exact match were, ironically, available at Pirbright at the time of the outbreak down the road last August when virus escaped from the site. Their immediate use would have prevented the misery for the affected farmers and the country-wide financial fallout from the control measures chosen instead.
Jan Mulder: "The European Commission and the member States must do everything to guarantee free trade of these products. .... These products are as safe as any other animal products and a label will unnecessarily worry consumers." (More)
Jan Mulder (VVD, Netherlands) ALDE member of EP agriculture committee and former Vice President of the temporary committee investigating the UK's foot and mouth crisis of 2001 has been involved intensively in the debate on animal diseases and the introduction of vaccination.

April 2 2008 ~ "a real grass roots movement that is inspiring people to get involved.."

/icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/ today on the spread of Transition towns, in which communities "focus on sustainability through renewable energy, allotments and farming but also aim to explore possibilities of water supply, waste recycling" - and "new economics" in the form of localisation of currency. Transition Town Llandeilo is following in the footsteps of Totnes. "Local currency puts money back into local businesses whereas ordinary money takes it out."
The US organisation, BerkShares, Inc., a non-profit organisation in the Southern Berkshire region of Massachusetts, say on their website,
"....people who choose to use the currency make a conscious commitment to buy local first. They are taking personal responsibility for the health and well-being of their community by laying the foundation of a truly vibrant, thriving local economy."

April 1/2 2008 ~ Compton develops a microchip to identify viruses

www.newburytoday.co.uk
". .. Top IAH scientist Dr Paul Britton, from Great Shefford, told a microbiology conference on Monday that the microchip could detect up to 300 different viruses that infect humans, livestock, birds, fish and insects. : "The great advantage is that you don't even have to know which virus you are looking for. ... The chip contains over 2,800 stretches of gene material from over 300 viruses. While it is currently being used mainly as a research tool, it will soon be distributed to other microbiologists across Europe working to battle infectious animal diseases."
While pleased that IAH Compton have developed this microarray, one wonders how the development, described as being able to "diagnose within 24 hours" compares with rapid diagnostic technology already being used worldwide such as that by Idhaho.Inc, whose recently invented 10 target screen kit for the RAZOR system gives it the ability to test for 10 pathogens in one pouch, returning results in 30 minutes.

March 31/April 1 2008 ~ bTB - part of the answer at least lies in the soil

Very little notice has been taken, it seems, of the conviction expressed over the past years by ex-colonel Danny Goodwin-Jones, director of the Carmarthen-based Trace Element Services Ltd, that "once you put back the trace elements all the creatures that live in the soil recover and they keep it healthy" (see earlier posts).
He maintains that restoring trace elements into the soil cuts fertiliser and vets' bills. Now, the Western Press' Steve Dube reports that Rural Affairs Minister Elin Jones wants officials to look into the use of micro-nutrients or trace elements in tackling the disease in badgers as well as cattle. Four years ago, the 2003 - 2004 EFRA Committee report on bovine TB ( pdf file 85 pages) (link mended) took Col. Goodwin Jones work on trace element restoration seriously: (Extract here)
Anecdotal evidence at least shows that trace element treated farms are free of TB, while their neighbours are going down with it

March 31 2008 ~ Back to the backyard - not simply because it's fun but for our economic survival

Peak Oil is a turning point for society - and denial is getting harder for politicians (especially when even the Archers are discussing "going Transition"with such conviction). Transporting food over vast distances is simply not going to be possible for much longer.
An Australian permaculture advocate, David Holmgren, echoes some of the convictions of the Transition Town movement in this interesting and optimistic podcast clip about backyard production. "A modern fusion that also involves water re-use, solar design, more use of trees and integrating animals into that too.....Chickens forage in a healthy system based on organic methods of soil building and waste recycling.... in this world of less energy, we have to redesign everything we do."

March 31 2008 ~ Biofuel targets. Why were the real experts not listened to?

Political decisions on so-called "environmental solutions" are made before their real impact has been properly assessed. A team led by Bill Sutherland of Cambridge University has drawn up a list of 25 potential threats to Britain (New Scientist), inspired, he says, by the debate over GM crops, "... the same seems to be happening with biofuels..."
The thoughtless setting of carbon emissions targets has also been questioned by the UK's Chief Environmental Adviser, Professor Robert Watson. (see BBC last week) The EU's Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation (RTFO) is to introduce 2.5% biofuels at the pumps from tomorrow. Professor Watson has warned that it would be insane if the RTFO had the opposite effects of the ones intended. The UK Department of Transport must follow EU policy demanding the inclusion of 5% biofuels in road fuels by 2010. The US, too, has set numerical targets for biofuels without properly considering their knock-on impact.
As the BBC says, "many will question why energy experts promoting biofuels in the EU were allowed to go unchallenged so long by the views on biofuels of agriculture specialists or soil scientists."

March 31 2008 ~ Small scale biofuel production - another matter.

Another BBC article explains how a retired teacher makes his own backyard biofuel from chip fat. He says he likes
"the idea of using a waste product to make oil, and I like the idea of being energy independent... it also saves a lot of money"
It costs him some £21 for a tank of home-made bio-diesel, compared with £80 at the garage.

March 31 2008 ~And, if one has the stomach for it....

the speedboat Earthrace's attempt at creating a speed record for circumnavigating the globe uses fuel partly made from the liposuctioned human fat of its lean New Zealand born skipper. But as an www.energytribune.com article, Man-Blubber: A Biofuels Bonanza! dryly comments: "... a bushel of corn fed to an already overweight adult can be expected to be converted into folds of cellulite-sweet crude with a remarkable efficiency...".

March 27/28 2008 ~ Peak oil' meeting in Taunton

www.somersetcountygazette.co.uk There will be a talk on Peak Oil, Climate Change and Transition Towns:"...Transition Towns aims to work with Somerset communities to make positive moves to increase resilience to falling oil levels. Victoria Watson and Mike McGuffie are holding the meeting at Silver Street Baptist Church at 7.30pm on Monday, March 31. The problem, the solution and the way forward'. Ms Watson said: "We are looking to reach out to all those people who are concerned by these issues and want to contribute in some way to working towards a better future for all of us."...."

March 27 2008 ~ Ninety-five per cent of the UK's fresh fruit is imported

Guardian yesterday ".....Tim Lang, professor of food policy at City University, says the era of cheap food in