The Tenby Cottages Community Garden Group

Monday night (October 18^th) saw the first meeting of the Tenby Cottages Community Garden Group, a community group based in Lozells who are planning on turning waste ground into a community growing space. The project was proposed by Friends of the Earth’s Tom Pointon, and has now been taken on by Sarah Royal of CSV Environment, and I was lucky enough to be in attendance for this first meeting.

The idea of the project is to convert an area of waste ground into a community grow site, where local residents can grow their own fruit and vegetables. The area chosen was once home to a set of cottages (the Tenby Cottages, of course), which were knocked down some years ago as part of a redevelopment scheme by the local council. As yet, however, nothing has been proposed for the site by the council, and thus Tom saw the opportunity to create something positive. Up until recently, the site, located just off Poplar Avenue in Lozells, has been the victim of fly tipping. However, work has been conducted in the past few months by CSV Environment, and the site has been flattened and covered in bark chippings ready to be transformed.

A grow site is an area of disused land (often in an area that attracts anti-social behaviour), which has been transformed to become a place where local residents are allocated a grow bed in which to grow their own food. It is different from an allotment because residents do not pay rent on the site, and everything grown must be for personal consumption. Each resident who holds a grow bed there is given a key to the site, so it is secure at all times. Projects such as this already exist across Birmingham, namely the GEML Project (Grow It, Eat It, Move It, Live It) which has had great success in Ladywood, and the Concrete to Coriander Project.

The meeting was largely an introductory session, allowing local residents to come and voice their opinions on the running of the site to Sarah Royal and Cynthia Cupido, who works for Birmingham City Council Housing. The originally proposed plans had 30 grow beds, measuring 1 metre by 2 metres, laid out in a fairly uniform pattern. However, residents seemed to prefer the idea of less beds and more space for benches to make the site more sociable. There was even talk of a barbeque area being built so residents would be able to eat their produce on site! Also on the site there will be composting bins, where locals will be able to bring their organic waste, as well as a shed in which to keep communal tools.

So what’s next? Once the residents have decided on the layout of the site, CSV Environment will get to work on making the raised grow beds for the site. The council will be investigating whether or not they are able to get a water supply to the site, to prevent any inevitable injuries caused by lugging huge tanks of water back and forth from home! It is then up to the residents to organise themselves into a constitution community group. This will give them access to funding which otherwise would not be available, particularly from “Awards for All”. Despite there not being a huge turnout for the first meeting, the residents who did attend were all enthusiastic about the project, and were keen to get more people involved. There was also talk of trying to get the local schools involved. If a local school was allocated one or two beds, the children there would be able to learn how to grow their own food, and the importance of doing so. It would also be beneficial to get local shopkeepers and businesses on board, as well as local councillors, to support the project.

I was very impressed with the enthusiasm of everyone involved at the meeting. Sarah in particular was very passionate about getting the site up and running. I think grow sites are a great way of transforming a local eyesore into something which the community can be proud of and ultimately benefit from. Hopefully everything at the Tenby Cottages site will be ready by March next year, just in time for the new growing season! Keep your eyes peeled for pictures in the coming months as the site starts to take shape.

Meat Free Mondays: Join the herd

Come along to the Warehouse Café in Digbeth and enjoy their Meat Free Monday, where on a Monday you can buy one meal and get one free throughout November, just ring the cafe 0121 633 0261 to reserve your table*, and mention the Birmingham Friends of the Earth blog (reservation essential).

Meat Free Mondays is not about going vegetarian, it's about revolutionising meat and dairy farming and reducing our consumption. It’s about fixing the food chain, as it’s a far from perfect world out there. However, we do not want to attack the farmers, but help them to move to planet friendly farming.

Friends of the Earth have found that the meat and dairy industry produces more climate-changing emissions than all the planes, cars and lorries on the planet. Rainforests play a vital role in reducing the impact of our CO2 emissions but they are currently being destroyed in order to grow soy to feed UK livestock. Plus increasing demand for meat and dairy has led to unsustainable farming practices that threaten our planet.

So how can we help? By getting the government to enable our farmers to grow their own feed for their animals. There is 700 million EU subsidies going into intensive farming and this could be invested with our farmers to help them grow and feed their own animals. This would be better for the farmers and better for our food security.

Plus eating more vegetables is not only great for your health but also good for the planet too! UN’s top climate scientist Rajendra Pachauri states that “People should consider eating less meat as a way of combating global warming. UN figures suggest that meat production puts more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than transport.” In the UK we eat 3 ½ times more meat the World Health Organisation recommends, putting us at risk of cancer, diabetes and obesity.

The point of having Meat Free Monday (or just a meat free day or meal) is it will take the pressure off the food chain and get people thinking about caring about what they eat and the impacts it has on the world around us. It is more realistic to get the whole world to alter their diet and reduce their consumption than get a few to convert to vegetarianism or veganism.

There is a lot more possibilities opened by having a meat free meal or day, for example a school changed to have one day a week meat free. Then for the other days of the weeks they were able to invest in organic meat or fish. Meat Free Monday is all about making smarter choices and it’s not about having a go at the UK farmers, which quite frankly have enough to worry about.

So by not eating meat for one day a week we are saving ourselves as well as the planet.

For November the Warehouse Café is offering the chance to ‘buy one get one free’ on all main meals bought on Mondays*.

* Offer equivalent to one free main meal to same or lower value of meal purchased. Maximum 4 vouchers used together. Limited spaces available, so booking essential and early booking recommended. Offer valid Monday until Monday 30 November.

City Farm Open Day

Yesterday a few volunteers from our group went along to do a stall at Balsall Heath City Farm for their open day. As a local to the area I knew of the farm's existence, but rather shamefully had never actually been to it to find out what goes on, so was looking forward to it on two fronts - as a chance to talk to people about our campaigns, but also to see what they do.
I wasn't disappointed on either front. We had a really nice time talking to kids about what we were doing while dressed as a chicken or cow and engaging with people who wouldn't normally know about Friends of the Earth. We got some postcards signed too, but didn't go for the hard sell as it was just great to find out about people's opinions and inform them about the broken food chain.
The whole place had a really nice vibe to it and the people who work there do a wonderful job at engaging kids with nature and animals. They were making things from waste, colouring pictures for competitions in which everyone was a winner and got a prize, recycling everything and selling home-made food. The city farm also works with offenders, as I understand, teaching them about farming and food production in planet-friendly ways and is a great intiative. Every part of Birmingham, especially inner-city areas, should have somewhere like this in my opinion.

GM – NOT the answer (whatever the question) - by Rianne ten Veen

Though in core GM is playing with genes (an ‘environmental’ issue – though NOT part of natural cross-breeding as it crosses the significant line of mixing species!), it not only has environmental impacts, but also health and very worrying social justice impacts.

The economic liberalisation policies of the IMF and the Worldbank have prevented many poor countries from providing significant support for local agricultural production. The WTO’s Agreement on Agriculture and other trade agreements let large agri-businesses compete against small local producers for access to domestic markets, while prohibiting protection of local markets, driving ever more people into poverty (as poor farmers can’t compete with subsidised imports and go bankrupt).

The Third World Network says “[the prevailing approach] is astonishingly aggressive. It is to force developing country markets open to allow European and American companies to come in and take over their markets. This will damage or destroy local economies, and will lead to even more instability, poverty and hunger” (see: here for a short video)

International civil society organisations, farmers and others who see through the do-good PR-washing know that as a result of decades of agricultural liberalisation, the primary problems we are dealing with today are the result of transforming food “… from something that nourishes people and provides them with secure livelihoods into a commodity for speculation and bargaining” (Bello, Walden. How to manufacture a global food crisis: lessons from the World Bank, IMF. The Nation. June 2, 2008).

So while the number of hungry people grows (as is clear from many recent UN appeals!), profits of agri-business have never been higher: three companies (Cargill, Archer Daniel Midlands (ADM) and Bunge) control the vast majority of global grain trading. All three posted profit increases for 2007, at the beginning of the price hikes, at between 36% and 67% above the preceding year. Bunge alone announced profits for the last quarter of 2007, of 77%, or US $245 million, above the same time period the previous year. And Cargill posted profits for the first quarter of 2008 - at exactly the same time as the food crisis went from serious to life-threatening for millions - at 86% above the same time period last year. Large grain trading companies in Asia are forecasting profit increases of up to 237% (!) for 2008. In an unregulated global ‘free’ market these companies have gained enough market share that their actions can set the direction of global prices and send shockwaves through the entire system.

And it is not just the grain traders at the end of the supply chain who are profiting from this situation, but the agri-business multinationals at the start of the chain as well (and, surprise, surprise, often these are the same companies). Cargill’s Mosaic Corporation, one of the world’s largest fertilizer companies, posted profits for their most recent quarter at USD2.1 bn (!), or 68% above the same quarter a year earlier. Profits at Potash Corporation, the world’s largest potash producer for fertilizers, posted a bottom-line gain of 181% for the first quarter of this year, at the height of the food price surge.

And now these profits are not enough, so to add insult to injury, the bio-tech/ agri-business present themselves as ‘solvers of the food problem’… these are profit-driven corporations not charities and in reality often prevent farmers from planting the local native seeds they have been using for generations (and making the seeds of the GM crops they sell infertile to force farmers to keep buying - click here for a video, just 2.5 minutes)

So while the average family in the UK throws away 450 pounds’ worth of food per year, and the above, it’s clear the world does not have a food problem, we have a hunger problem. So solving our greed and international trade injustices are what we need to look at, NOT giving those that already hold so much of our means of survival (food production) even more opportunities to make us dependent on them, and them to make profit…and the poorest losing first (who already regularly can’t afford food and, as farmers, will be made even more dependent on the global market whims of agri-business)!

Instead, we should take the statement by faith based organisations as shared at the June 2008 UN Food and Agricultural Organisation conference to heart and action on: “We advise caution against ‘short-term’ solutions. A clear focus, respecting the integrity of creation, must be kept on eliminating poverty and unjust social structures, the root causes of hunger. ... We support proactive approaches inspired by ‘food sovereignty’ and the ‘primary right to food’.”

This article has gratefully used data from ‘Food System in Crisis’, Development and Peace, June ’08 (click here for the full document)

Rianne

Save the bees!

After watching an item on Countryfile the other week on the plight of the bees did it drive home the importance of the bees. Not only do bees produce honey but they also are very important to our food supply. Did you know that 40% of our food supply relies on bees? All the orchards and fruit farms are reliant on bees pollinating their flowers. They also have an important environmental role, being responsible for pollinating wild plants which produce seeds and fruits on which birds and wild animals depend.

Einstein said that if the bee died out, that it would only be 4 years until human civilisation would end.

Now the bee population in America are reducing because they are being attacked by colony collapse disorder and this may emerge in the UK. New exotic threats such as the small hive beetle are expected in the UK anytime. In the UK the populations are reducing but nobody understands why? The UK doesn’t know enough about bee disease control and the medicines that are available are inadequate.

In the UK there is virtually no wild honey bees left due to the effects of the parasitic varoa mite and the viruses it carries, and for which to date, there is no cure.

What can you do about it?

* Sign the bee keepers associations petition at www.britishbee..org.uk.
* Make your garden bee friendly by planting flowers that they prefer.
* Make www.foxleas.com/bee_house.htm or buy a bee house
* Take up bee keeping, see www.britishbee.org.uk for advice

Mary