Author of Finding Lights in a Dark Age, Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future and A Small Farm Future
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I’ve been blogging about farming, ecology and politics since 2012. I welcome well-tempered discussion. Please note that if you’re a new commenter, or if you include a lot of links, your comment will go into the moderation queue before publication. I sometimes miss comments in the queue so feel free to nudge me via the Contact Form if your comment fails to appear.
Posted on January 1, 2014 | 8 Comments
Happy new year of the family farm (…any bets on how many more of them will be gone by year’s end?) Over the next couple of weeks I’ll mostly be sat in the cab of a digger trying to carve a new family farm out of the wilderness here in northeast Somerset – so please excuse any delays in your regular blog service. Anyway, here’s a quick post to chew on. A few years ago I published a paper called ‘Genesis and J. Baird Callicott: the land ethic revisited’ in the Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture1. …
Continue readingPosted on December 13, 2013 | 4 Comments
Hankering after a seasonal story, but tired of the saccharine nonsense doled out by the mainstream media at this time of year? Look no further, for Small Farm Future’s very own Chris Smaje has brought you ‘Global Hunger: Three Christmas Ghost Stories’ – now available for free on Wiley-Blackwell’s Statistics Views website. It beats the Muppet Christmas Carol any day! The article is something of a meditation on the Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus, which was prompted by my recent debates around this with Clem and Tom here on this blog, and also to some extent with Graham Strouts on his …
Continue readingPosted on December 5, 2013 | No Comments
Maybe it’s time to write something about practical farm issues for a change, and what could be more practical than compost? In principle, compost is one of those ‘what’s not to like’ phenomena. You pile up unwanted organic matter that otherwise requires disposal, mix it with a bit of air and water and, hey presto, you end up with a magical substance that feeds your next crop and builds your soil. Compost is foundational to the organic farming idea of building beneficial biological cycles into farming practice. But the practicalities of composting raise quite a number of dilemmas. Here are …
Continue readingPosted on December 5, 2013 | 11 Comments
Maybe it’s time to write something about practical farm issues for a change, and what could be more practical than compost? In principle, compost is one of those ‘what’s not to like’ phenomena. You pile up unwanted organic matter that otherwise requires disposal, mix it with a bit of air and water and, hey presto, you end up with a magical substance that feeds your next crop and builds your soil. Compost is foundational to the organic farming idea of building beneficial biological cycles into farming practice. But the practicalities of composting raise quite a number of dilemmas. Here are …
Continue readingPosted on November 25, 2013 | 14 Comments
As promised, I had a blog post ready for this week about compost but as ever I’m overtaken by events. While attending the AGM of the excellent Land Workers’ Alliance this weekend, Kate McEvoy of the no less excellent Real Seed Collection gave a talk (an excellent one, as it happens) about the impending EU plant reproductive material regulation, which reminded me that the deadline for amendments to the regulation is as soon as 4 December. So, readers of Small Farm Future, please get your pens & placards handy! I won’t reiterate here all the complexities and implications of the …
Continue readingPosted on November 19, 2013 | 6 Comments
Thanks to a tipoff from Paul, my friend and much-missed some time contributor to this blog, I watched this interesting programme about global population trends by Professor Hans Rosling. Lovely graphics, great public speaker – bottom line(s): birth rates are falling in most parts of the world thanks to the heroic efforts of health and birth control specialists, but income inequalities remain stark…the poorest people use virtually none of the world’s resources (including carbon) so it’s really not a problem if they use more, small-scale farmers are heavily represented amongst the poorest of the poor, and simple things like access …
Continue readingPosted on November 9, 2013 | No Comments
Those of you who’ve followed this blog will know that Spudman, my crime-busting alter ego, fought a lengthy battle with Mendip District Council to win the right to live on our holding and thereby make it possible to continue with our veg box business Vallis Veg. But Spudman didn’t act alone. Not only did he receive unstinting support from the long-suffering Mrs Spudman, not to mention the Spudkids, but also from a great number of other people in our local community and beyond. This weekend we’re having a little party on the site just to thank some of the local …
Continue readingPosted on November 4, 2013 | 4 Comments
Well, busy times here at Small Farm Future just now – our editorial team have been travelling the length and breadth of the country giving presentations and consultations and writing articles for Statistics Views and letters to The Guardian. All good stuff, until Mrs Spudman put her foot down this morning and made us actually go to the farm and pick some bloody vegetables for the box scheme for a bloody change. The ignominy! The team were just about to head back indoors to write a blog post when we discovered that the chicken coop door closer needed fixing…and a …
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