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 27, 2013 | 8 Comments
The average age of market gardeners in the UK is around 60, and currently we import around 70% of the fruit and 40% of the veg that could be grown here. We badly need more people growing more fruit and veg – not just my view, but also that of the Fruit and Vegetables Taskforce commissioned by the previous government. Market gardening – and especially any kind of organic or agroecological market gardening – is much more labour intensive than extensive farming, and it doesn’t pay too well. Throw in the fact that many farmhouses have been sold off as …
Continue readingPosted on January 21, 2013 | 2 Comments
In its ceaseless search through the blogosphere to identify even the smallest of byte-sized morsels that might inform its mission, Small Farm Future has stumbled upon an alter ego in the shape of Steve Savage’s blog Applied Mythology, which puts the case for agribusiness-as-usual. I think I can safely say that the editorial office here at Small Farm Future is unanimous in its commitment to evidence-based policymaking, and Savage’s evidence as an industry insider is certainly interesting. I do wonder a little why critics of organic farming and similar initiatives are so vociferous in their condemnations given the overwhelming dominance …
Continue readingPosted on January 14, 2013 | 7 Comments
I’m planning to start running what I hope will be a long-term experiment in different methods of organic vegetable growing, and I’d like to invite comments on it. If you can suggest ways in which the experiment could be improved, please let me know now before I embark upon it! I’ve written a brief outline of the experiment under the grand title of the ‘Vallis Veg Small Scale Horticultural Trial’ which is also available on the Research and publications page, so I won’t repeat the details here. The basic point is that in an ideal world it would be nice if …
Continue readingPosted on January 8, 2013 | 10 Comments
I’ve recently returned from my annual junket to the Oxford Real Farming Conference, which just gets better every year. At the conference I ran a session entitled Envisioning Agroecological Futures and I promised to write up the ensuing discussion on this blog – a rash promise as it transpires, for not three days after the event many of my copiously scribbled notes now seem entirely unintelligible. Ah, the perils of aging. Anyway, here goes, and apologies if what I say below ignores, belittles or otherwise traduces what anyone had to say. I don’t mean to be offensive – well, not …
Continue readingPosted on December 24, 2012 | No Comments
…and a happy new year to anyone who for some bizarre reason may be reading this blog during the holiday season. Small farm future will now be taking a Christmas break until early in the new year. Upcoming highlights for 2013 will include a report back on the Oxford Real Farming Conference, an analysis of R. Ford Denison’s interesting book Darwinian Agriculture, and doubtless more posts on many other topics that I promised to cover in the past but never did. For me, 2013 is also likely to involve a long drawn out planning appeal against Mendip District Council and a …
Continue readingPosted on December 17, 2012 | 1 Comment
I keep coming across the notion currently that ‘ideological’ support for small-scale farming is problematic and that no particular level of farm scale can be regarded as optimal – ideas which are obviously at the heart of this blog. I’m inclined to respond with the thought that there is no such thing as an ‘unideological’ position – it’s a cardinal error to assume that the mainstream way of doing things must somehow involve less political baggage. And if indeed it’s true that no particular level of farm scale is optimal, then surely the time has come for a massive investment …
Continue readingPosted on December 9, 2012 | No Comments
I just spent a couple of amazing days at the University of Oxford at a workshop on agrobiodiversity. For me it felt like a true “university” with anthropologists, ecologists, geneticists, archaeobotanists and farmers coming together to share their skills and knowledge. I learned so much in such a short space of time that I feel a bit overwhelmed. It’ll take me a while to digest it all, if I ever do. Many of the themes that I’ve previously raised on this blog loomed large – farm scale, labour inputs, perennial versus annual crops, biodiversity. I don’t think many of my …
Continue readingPosted on December 2, 2012 | No Comments
As Small Farm Future starts going viral, I’m finding that it’s subject to an increasing amount of spam. I’ve recently activated spam filtering software to deal with the problem, but there’s a risk that some genuine comments will get filtered out. If you find that your comments don’t appear on the blog please email me via Vallis Veg to let me know. I’m currently in the midst of a raft of interesting meetings around the country – the inauguration of a UK branch of the international peasant/small farmer movement Via Campesina, working on the emerging College of Enlightened Agriculture, and …
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