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 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 …
Continue readingPosted on October 23, 2013 | 11 Comments
My previous post on insects in the garden led, naturally enough, to an interesting debate about optimism and pessimism in the environmental movement and about peak oil and energy futures. In fact, I’d been meaning to write something about energy futures and eco-optimism anyway. Really, I’m not quite ready to do so yet, but in the blogosphere you gotta ride the news and since the government has this week announced the building of a big new pressurised water nuclear reactor just down the road from me at Hinkley Point, I thought I should make a few preliminary points about the …
Continue readingPosted on October 9, 2013 | 18 Comments
A brief post this week on the bugs and the bees – well actually, mostly bugs. In fact, not really bugs either, strictly defined. Hell, I’ll just get on with it. Like most growers, I keep a keen eye out for certain insect pests that tend to plague the crops at predictable times of the year, like flea beetle, carrot fly, aphids and cabbage whites. But I’ve also noticed over the years cycles of various other insects and invertebrates that don’t impinge so directly on the crops. Early in the spring, the garden beds are rife with small wolf spiders …
Continue readingPosted on October 2, 2013 | 2 Comments
Today I thought I’d post some thoughts on the thoughts of another blogger (hey, the blogosphere can be so self-referential, no?). The man in question is Steve Savage of Applied Mythology, a blog that aims to make the case for the virtues of business-as-usual biotech agri. I’ve been following Steve’s blog for a while now, and though I disagree with the position he takes in virtually every one of his posts, I’ve definitely learned a few things along the way. Some relate to agronomic issues based on his insights as an industry insider, others have more to do with seeing …
Continue readingPosted on September 24, 2013 | 4 Comments
Throughout most of its existence, I’ve been the main grower for our market garden but this year my wife Cordelia has been in the forefront while I’ve sat at my computer preparing endless submissions for our planning appeal and writing elegant rebuttals to all those other angry men at large in the blogosphere who are too benighted to see the truth of my words. But now our planning appeal is over I’m getting back into the growing, helping Cordelia to put this year’s season to bed, and planning for next year. All of which has set me to thinking about the …
Continue readingPosted on September 17, 2013 | 5 Comments
I recently discovered that the government’s Department for Communities and Local Government has, in its wisdom, published a consultation document entitled Greater Flexibilities For Change Of Use. Contained therein is the suggestion that farmers with redundant agricultural buildings could convert these to residential dwellings under permitted development rights without the need to get planning permission. My first thought was that sustainable small-scale agriculture is a labour intensive enterprise that really needs people in numbers living on the farm, but currently this is pretty much ruled out by planning policy, so how good it could be to create multiple farm residences …
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