Fairtrade Fortnight - Windward Islands Farmers

Renwick Rose, from the Windward Islands Farmers' Association, at the Fairtrade Foundation Conference (19th February) on "The global food crisis and Fairtrade: Small farmers, big solutions?"

Veggie And Vegan Recipes

A diet which includes meat is responsible for annual greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to driving a mid-sized car for 3000 miles.

A vegetarian diet will generate 50% less emissions (1500 miles).

Going vegan (no animal products at all, no dairy, no fish, no milk) cuts the emissions released by around 87% (to the equivalent of driving just 391 miles).

Organic meat is nice and all, but an organic meat-based diet only reduces your emissions by around 8%.

You can browse some vegetarian recipes here, and some main courses that are vegan here.

From the two lists, the lentil-based recipes jump out: Red Lentil Balls and Spiced Lentils with Cucumber Yogurt.

Also read: 10 Surprising Reasons To Eat Less Meat

Remade Fashion Fair - 21st Feb in Birmingham

The Remade Fashion Fair will be held at the Custard Factory in Birmingham, 11am to 5pm, on Saturday 21 February 2009.

It's organised by Freedom Clothing, a "fashion think-and-do tank" here in Coventry. You can also follow Freedom Clothing on Twitter.

You can see a list of stallholders, and photos of their wares, here.

In their words:

"As we move into difficult economic times, there is obviously a moral imperative to support local producers and artisans. We're really passionate about encouraging people to buy - and perhaps even have a go at making - high quality recycled fashion. We are hoping that this event, which we believe will be the UK’s first exclusively concentrating on high quality recycled fashion, (or if not certainly in the Midlands), will encourage others to join the movement."

Cooking And Eating As A Family

Raymond Blanc is also the vice-president of organic gardening charity, Garden Organic, which is just east of Coventry:

"Creating a more caring family - and the best way to create cohesive families is by cooking and eating together - is more likely to create a caring society ... Food harvested and eaten in season tends to be tastier, fresher, more nutritious, supports local communities and, because there is plenty of it, is cheaper, he said."

Photo credit: Telegraph

Fairtrade In The Workplace

Organic Veg Box Report

This morning, we received our fortnightly organic veg box -- 1 yellow pepper, 1 broccoli, 1 cauliflower, 7 potatoes (5 huge, 2 small), 3 onions, 9 carrots, 3 leeks, 5 tomatoes, and a bag of lettuce. That costs £9.95. We also order an "extra" each fortnight - 3 big mushrooms. We get ours from Flights, but Down to Earth here in Coventry do boxes for their customers.

Smart Food Packaging

Tim Lang has a good idea: food packaging that is embedded with computer chips to instantly link your mobile phone to an online sustainable food guide.

"Do I eat green beans from Kenya, because they are good for me, or do I say no because there are four litres of water embedded in each stem of green bean?" asked Professor Lang, from City University, London. He outlined a number of criteria that consumers should consider when buying food: how much energy and water are used to produce each calorie of food; what is the impact of the food item on climate, biodiversity, and the labour-force of the country it was grown in, and what are the health and financial costs of food.

New Eco-Features For SUVs

Real Bread Campaign

After watching The Hairy Bikers start a new series on bread-making and cakes the other day, I've ran across news of the Real Bread Campaign.

It's a joint effort between Sustain and Andrew Whitley, an organic baker and author.

Britain produces almost 12 million loaves a day, but only 3% are produced by regional artisan bakers. The campaign's definition of "real" bread is bread made with flour, water, salt (not mandatory) and some yeast, either naturally occuring or industrial -- with no additives or added enzymes.

Most industrial bread is made by the Chorleywood Bread Process (CBP). Traditionally, most bread was fermented (allowed to rise) for many hours, often overnight. The CBP uses high-energy mixers and "a slew of chemicals" to make a very white loaf in double-quick time.

"In contrast, if you let dough ferment for long enough, natural and beneficial bacteria work to make the bread more digestible, nutritious and tasty. Most British bread is made too quickly for these bacteria to have a chance. Fermenting dough for six hours as opposed to 30 minutes removes around 80% of a potentially carcinogenic substance called acrylamide found in bread crusts, and long yeast fermentations conserve the highest levels of B vitamins in dough."

The Real Bread Campaign aims to inform people about the state of modern bread and where to find the real thing.

"It will encourage bakers to improve their methods and to reward (with new customers) those who are already making great bread. We'll be campaigning for honest labelling of all ingredients. We want individuals, schools and other institutions to make their own real bread ... It's even been calculated that making a loaf in a home breadmaker uses less energy than buying one in a supermarket. Bake your own and save the planet? I see the beginnings of a joyful and healthy domestic economy."

VAT And Repairing Electrical Goods

Praise the Lords!

Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan, who chaired the Lords Science Sub-Committee on Waste Reduction, said: "It is time for the Government to remove its priorities from household waste to the far greater problem of industrial and commercial waste ... We would also like to see the VAT regime reformed so that products that have a long life cycle and can be easily and cheaply repaired are made economically more attractive."

The waste reduction report also criticises the Government's decision to cut the budgets of agencies such as the Waste Resource Allocation Programme, created to encourage more sustainable business practices.

Five-A-Day Fruit And Veg

The average person in the UK eats less than 3 portions of fruit and vegetables a day, instead of the recommended 5. You can download a handy chart on what qualifies as a portion here.

The Times has a top 8 list of "pick your own fruit" farms.

For August, greengages, plums, early damsons, and blackberries are coming into season. Apricots, gooseberries, blueberries, cherries, loganberries, rasberries, peaches, and redcurrants are still in season.

The Story Of Stuff - Consumption

Food Security And "Expended Energy"

This was a thought-provoking piece on BBC News yesterday:

The Second Law of Thermodynamics is about order; the Universe is inexorably heading to increased randomness and disorder. For practical purposes, this does not have to be a problem because we can increase order locally by hard work, by expending energy. But in the process we create greater disorder (heat and waste) elsewhere. If there is plenty of energy and plenty of "elsewhere", then we don't have to worry. Indeed, for our whole existence, we largely haven't worried; in fact the whole world order, built on trade and economics, hasn't worried.

A recent study looking at Nicaraguan coffee production and processing showed that the total energy embodied in coffee exported to several countries - though not all - was not compensated by the dollar price paid for that energy. Essentially, the conclusion was that the country is exporting subsidised energy.

The orderliness required to plant, grow, harvest, process, pack, store, monitor, administer, transport, display and sell the produce in a supermarket is simply staggering, and the expended energy intense. As an example, tomato production in the US consumes four times as many calories as the calorific value of the tomatoes created.

Surely at some point, let's say between $50 and $500 per barrel of oil, it no longer makes any sense to simultaneously export and import food high in embodied energy.

100 Months

"In just 100 months' time, if we are lucky, and based on a quite conservative estimate, we could reach a tipping point for the beginnings of runaway climate change."

Summer's Here - BBQ A-Go-Go

You can find veggie burger suggestions here.

For drinks, you could serve fair trade honey beer, or perhaps, a pitcher of English ginger beer and fair trade organic rum.

You could get the rum from Utkins, the Co-Op, Saino's, or there is an independent brand called Papagayo.

Food Prices, Petrol Prices

100 lorry convoys are protesting today around Britain, with hauliers talking about "the hardest time we've ever had," crisis and catastrophe, that "they need help."

With a drastically-higher cost of petrol, we can drive less.

In contrast, tens of millions of the world's poor could die of hunger as a result of soaring food prices.

The Guardian is starting a five-day series of articles -- on the impact of global food price rises -- by looking at Egypt.

Adel Beshai, an Egyptian economist: "It has to do with the food-fuel equation. The real issue now is that the price of oil hit the $100 mark and the price of oil will continue to rise. There is now competition between fuel consumption in the developed countries, where food is being turned into cheaper fuel, and food consumption in poorer ones where they want to eat what is being turned into fuel."

A higher price for oil means a higher price for fertiliser, higher prices for tractors and farm machinery, and higher prices for pesticides (which rely on oil). The US diverting 30% of its corn crop -- to fill SUV tanks with biofuel rather than feed the world-- isn't helping either. Barack Obama represents the corn belt, make of that what you will.

The other factor is more of the world eating meat, eggs and dairy products. Over 30% of the world's grain goes to feeding animals rather than people directly. If we had a more global vegan diet, we wouldn't be having this kind of strain.

Yes, we have to pay for higher petrol, and we have to pay 50p more per portion of rice at certain curry houses. But what we're experiencing is nothing compared to the impact of food price rises in the developing world.

Video: Corn and rising food bills

The Home Growing Act 2018

Transition Culture is always worth a weekly read ... Rob has reposted an article from Organic Gardening Magazine:

"It took a bunch of rapidly greening politicians to realise that punitive taxation aimed at mitigating environmental meltdown wasn’t half as effective as persuading people, with the help of a real financial incentive, to do something about it in their own gardens. The Green Party laid the foundations of what became the Home Growing Act, which was included in the King’s Speech of 2018. No British monarch has ever looked quite so chuffed at seeing his own personal passion enter the statute book."

Smaller Cars - Lower Petrol Bills

Summer's Here - Cutting The Lawn

What is the carbon impact when you cut the lawn?

According to Which? magazine, cutting a lawn with a push mower allows a 60kg person to burn 360 calories an hour ... It costs an average of 20p every 100ml of fuel for a mower with a petrol tank and about 4p for every 20 minutes that you use a 1700W electric mower.

Of the seven hand mowers put to the test by Which?, the winning model was the Husqvarna Novocut 64 (http://www.husqvarna.co.uk/, £80), scoring highly on how the lawn looked and the speed with which ground was covered. The second best was the Brill Razorcut Premium 33 (http://www.manualmowers.co.uk/; £95).

Individual Carbon Allowances

A committee of MPs, the Environmental Audit Committee, has called for individual carbon allowances. There would be a national amount of carbon allowed, and each of us would have an equal portion of that quota. If you want to use more carbon than your allowance, you "buy" unused carbon from people who aren't using up their entire allowance. Year on year, the national amount gets reduced, so that, year on year, we meet our targets for domestic emissions.

Other stories:

Grease lightening, go, grease lightening.

Earlier this month, the Nigerian militant group Mend unexpectedly announced that it would halt attacks on multinational oil installations if Barack Obama requested a ceasefire.

Antony Sheehan, chief executive of Leicestershire NHS Trust, has told the BBC that government attempts to improve mental health services for the South Asian community have not worked.

Sheehan: "We really should acknowledge the impact of institutional racism in mental health and wider health and social care services, in the same way it is recognised in the criminal justice system. The real issue is just how we've chosen not to connect with these communities."