Author of Finding Lights in a Dark Age, Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future and A Small Farm Future
Menu
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 May 19, 2013 | 2 Comments
Regular readers of this blog will know that Spudman, my superhero alter ego, has been fighting a battle with Mendip District Council for the right to live on my land like a proper farmer (a planning officer at Mendip once told me that I wasn’t a ‘proper farmer’ – it’s now my badge of honour). Our farming activities have been on a bit of hiatus since last autumn, largely as a result of the planning situation, and I’ve seriously contemplated trying to find a less stressful and more remunerative line of work. But once an improper farmer always an improper farmer …
Continue readingPosted on May 12, 2013 | 6 Comments
I wrote some blog posts[1] a while back about GM crops that were prompted by Mark Lynas’s notorious speech to the Oxford Farming Conference[2]. This has led me into various blogosphere debates with GM proponents like Steve Savage[3], Rachael Ludwick[4] and Graham Strouts[5] – mostly polite, but not always. I suppose the main point of blogging is to put out ideas and try to use what comes back to you to reflect more deeply on the issue, so this essay is an attempt on my part to do that. It’s an awful lot longer than a regular blog post, and …
Continue readingPosted on May 5, 2013 | 9 Comments
If you’ve got nothing more than a 3x3m patch of urban garden, here’s a suggestion – dig it up and grow potatoes, carrots and onions. Why? Let me explain… The idea was prompted by River Cottage chef Mark Diacono’s book A Taste of the Unexpected. Diacono argues that life’s too short to grow unremarkable food like the three aforementioned vegetables, which are cheaply available from the shops anyway and taste no better when grown at home. Why not, he says, grow unusual things that are hard to find in the shops, no harder to grow, and utterly delicious? I appreciate …
Continue readingPosted on April 27, 2013 | 2 Comments
I recently finished Gordon Conway’s book One Billion Hungry: Can We Feed The World? and offer below a few thoughts, since the book raises many issues close to the theme of this blog. Conway is an agricultural ecologist who’s been heavily involved in agricultural development work throughout his long career and has held all sorts of senior positions at places like the Rockefeller Foundation – so he’s well qualified to write on the subject, but also has a few blindspots. Unlike me in both respects, then. Conway’s basic story is that more people go hungry today than ever (although slightly …
Continue readingPosted on April 21, 2013 | 7 Comments
I thought I’d post an update on my vegetable growing experiment, if only to prove I do occasionally get out and do some growing rather than just sitting at my computer composing angry screeds about the state of the world. It’s way too early to present any results from the experiment, which will be some years in the coming if indeed they ever do. But I’m aiming to offer a running commentary as time goes on about how it’s going. I’d welcome any thoughts on what I’m doing, and what I might do better. So I’ve now pretty much got …
Continue readingPosted on April 14, 2013 | 8 Comments
A friend of mine mentioned that this blog is increasingly focusing on the big political picture and getting a bit too distant from the practicalities of small-scale growing. Maybe he’s right. I’ll try to make amends in my next post by writing something about the early progress of my vegetable growing experiment. But dammit, I just can’t help dwelling on the political side of things when it’s this that’s the main impediment to a just and sustainable food system – and given the upcoming political event on Wednesday, I feel obliged to post something political today. No, no – not …
Continue readingPosted on April 8, 2013 | 1 Comment
Excellent news just in from mid-Devon – the planning inspector has allowed the appeal of the Ecological Land Co-op for all three of their smallholdings at Greenham Reach on which I posted in January with no unexpected conditions attached. My delight at this outcome is mingled with anger that Mid Devon District Council spent an alleged £40,000 that they could presumably have devoted to something of actual use to their residents on contesting an application that their own planning officers had recommended for approval, while the dedicated people at the Ecological Land Co-op have had to devote a huge quantity of time, …
Continue readingPosted on April 2, 2013 | 2 Comments
DEFRA are conducting an industry-sponsored consultation on why there is a lack of new entrants into farming, and what can be done about it. I hate to be cynical (no, really I do), but here’s a few wild top of the head punts on my part as to the lack of new entrants: agricultural land costs way more than anyone can ever make back by farming it, old farm buildings have been converted into residences for people who don’t farm, the planning system prevents people who do farm from building new residences, many farmers get paid less than the costs …
Continue reading
If you like my writing, please help me keep the blog going by donating!
Subscribe via RSS