Cambridgeshire food producers

Found a few great leads today that Transition agriculture could use to contact local producers:

http://www.cofco.co.uk/site/organic-box-scheme.html

http://www.aboutorganics.co.uk/organic_food_drink/directory/east.htm

http://organiceast.co.uk/

Plants For A Future Web resource : 7000 Edible, Medicinal & Useful Plants

Instead of getting this book I should just check out:

Plants For A Future : 7000 Edible, Medicinal & Useful Plants

Permaculture demonstrated in Malawi to encourage diverse indigenous crop growing

http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6526?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+worldwatch/all+(Worldwatch+Institute)

Growing Communities, Hackney London

During my Permaculture Design Course in London with Naturewise, I spent some time touring and working at Growing Communities (GC) Hackney market gardens. Very interested in this urban food production system started off by Julie Brown. Salad and soft fruit is grown in what was beautifully described as a "patchwork farm" of allotment gardens across Hackney (see green cabbage symbols on map above, each one is a growing site). Remaining seasonal fruit and vegetables are sourced in East Anglia. The only imported goods are fairly traded bananas and other exotic fruits there is a high demand for now. All goods are then distributed at Stoke Newington farmers market.

In addition apprentices are taken on, and then encouraged to set up and manage their own city market gardens.

Excitingly, there is a new start-up programme http://www.growingcommunities.org/start-ups/programme/ that allows the GC model to be rolled out for other areas. Possibility for this scheme in Cambridge could be Massive.

http://www.growingcommunities.org

Vegan Organic Network

Linking to http://www.veganorganic.net/

A vegan friend writes for the Vegan Organic Network (VON), and he grows all allotment produce without animal inputs.

My initial thoughts: Some techniques here are clear cut, for example using green manures for soil fertility building instead of application of animal manures, however indirect use of soil fauna is unavoidable and a farm without soil animal life is unnatural....

HANG ON. Vegan Organic network is about stockfree farming, i.e. the deliberate avoidance of livestock keeping on farm, NOT scouring the soil for worms and removing them so they don't get hurt. VON friend does not and would not have a wormery, but the worms and other soil life in compost are unavoidable and necessary and he treats them carefully.

Need to read further on this, and check out the radio show that Roger and Dave did.

Meat production, Monbiot and Fairlie

Read a sequence of 2 Monbiot articles:

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2002/12/24/the-poor-get-stuffed/

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2010/09/07/strong-meat/

Haven't read Simon Fairlie's Meat book yet.

Thoughts on meat production:

• Ethically: inappropriate animal suffering is inherent in mass production of meat, BUT vegan food production does cause indirect animal suffering in the form of habitat displacement (think soya plantations), food web disruption through pest control...other e.g.s?
• Sustainable meat production can be achieved: year round grass fed hardy Red Poll cattle, North Ronaldsay sheep on beaches and estuaries consuming seaweed. The problem is feeding livestock grain crops that take up land area and resources to grow. Originally was meat more a byproduct of mixed farming? Were livestock kept to eat grain harvest leftovers/straw/pasture grass and provide fertility in the form of manure and other functions? The Permaculture livestock animal has multiple functions, and its intrinsic behaviours are used as inputs on the farm, e.g. pigs rooting around in stubble fields, loosening soil and fertilising as they go; the use of "chicken tractors".
  
• Is veganism always the greenest option? Meat/livestock products may be the only feasible yield available from a particular area of land. Think Scottish highlands, Yorkshire Dales where sowing of a vegetable or grain crop is too difficult and the most useful thing that can be done with that land is to put it down to pasture. The vegan alternative would be getting as much plant food from the land as possible and importing the rest?