Open Farm Sunday - Hungersheath and Fordhall

Last month Birmingham Friends of the Earth went into the countryside to celebrate Open Farm Sunday, an annual event aimed at increasing people’s knowledge and access to farms and farming. Having previously visited an organic farm in Worcestershire, for this day we went into Shropshire to two farms, Hungersheath and Fordhall Farm.

Hungersheath is a small mixed farm with farm shop, tea rooms and 3 acres of pick your own. It has specialised in its asparagus crops for many years and to celebrate this was offering free tastings of a range of asparagus-based dishes. Cream cheese and asparagus terrine, pea and asparagus mousse, and cheese and asparagus muffins were just some of the delights on offer to sample. We picked up some great ideas on interesting things to make with a seasonal, local crop and stocked up on spears from the local shop in order to try out the recipes for ourselves when we got home. We also had a good walk around, saw the animals and had a chat with the farmers there.

Our second visit of the day was to Fordhall Farm – England’s first community owned farm, with over 8000 shareholders. This farm has been organic for over 65 years and is part-owned by some BFOE members. For Open Farm Sunday there was a beer festival on offer with live music as well as a host of fun activities including welly wanging, archery and some birds of prey. There was also a large range of different stalls selling a range of produce offering the opportunity to taste wares, including some particularly memorable brie. The weather had been ominous all day and before we had managed to see everything on offer there was a torrential downpour that saw us sheltering in the farm shop before making a run for it. It was a shame that we didn’t get the chance to learn even more about this exciting venture but we did at least get a cider in before the rain started.

BFOE is very involved in the national Fix the Food Chain campaign and part of this is about building alliances with farmers and trying to promote alternatives to intensive factory farming. It was really interesting to visit these places and learn more about the people and the methods used for planet-friendly farming. With the second reading of the Sustainable Livestock Bill due in November, it is really exciting to think that farms such as these could be supported much more in the future and will hopefully become a more common sight across the country.

Roxanne Green

Elms Farm Excursion, Bank Holiday Monday 31 May

On Bank Holiday Monday 31 May a group of us from Birmingham went to Elms Farm, a biodynamic farm near Pershore, Worcestershire, as part of FOE's Fix the Food Chain campaign which forges links with local farmers.
Demeter is an organic standard dating back to the 1920s closely based upon the philosophies of Rudolf Steiner. Demeter follows a lunar calendar for planting, cultivating and harvesting with the aim of building a diverse ecosystem and becoming completely self reliant.
Elms Farm has been run since 2003 by Charbel Akiki who lives there with his wife Sussana and their four daughters. Charbel also shoulders a considerable amount of childcare while Sussana is at work in Birmingham.
I realised straight away I've met Charbel several times on his stall at Farmers Markets in Birmingham, so it was great to see from where his delicious salad leaves originate.
We began by attending Pershore's 'asparagus festival' which was a bit of a let down, I think we were too late for the asparagus, although there was some still on sale. We saw the parade through the town centre with lots of colourful floats, but I think most of us were more interested in the Farmers' Market. Like most of them in the UK, however, takeaway food and jars of preserves predominated.
Having scored our asparagus and, in Nigel's case, some serious quantities of seriously chocolaty cheesecake, we headed in the direction of the delightfully named North Piddle and Elms Farm. Many thanks to Nigel Baker, as I greatly enjoyed being chauffeured in his Toyota Prius, never having ridden in one before.
Sussana and Charbel welcomed us with a big pot of tea and we met a group from Worcester FOE who'd also come to see the farm. We soon got to know one another, chatting away and learning all about the intricacies of running a farm to Demeter standard, which is one of the most rigorous. Charbel and Sussana gave us some background on the farm, before we went on a tour.
First stop was the orchard, planted with the help of an agricultural college with some 600 fruit trees of some sixteen varieties of apples, pears, plums and cherries. Hens and Chickens were wandering around and live in a coops up in the orchard. Foxes are a serious problem, last year the farm lost around fifty birds. Cute and cuddly or a financial liability?
We then went on to look at the plantings of strawberries, three varieties; early, mid and late, the greenhouse with tomatoes, courgettes and those wonderful salad varieties planted out.
What struck me most seeing the farm is the way the crops co exist with the weeds, which grow all over the place and the sheer effort of maintaining the farm by hand. There's no tractor. It's easy to see how the price of Charbel's produce reflects the work which goes into it.
There's a beautiful meadow alongside full of tall grass and wild flowers, and Charbel described how nice it is for his children to enjoy. That's a good highpoint on which to conclude this report of our visit, and you can see some highlights on the video I made here.

A revealing talk by Jasber Singh

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Food Inc – Lifting the lid

You will never look at dinner the same way

Food, Inc, the Oscar nominated powerful film about the US's broken food chain is coming to Birmingham next Monday 15th February at Vue, Starcity.

Food Inc is a hard hitting documentary film which is a stark and powerful reminder of just how broken the global food chain is. Film maker Robert Kenner lifts the lid on the US food industry, exposing how the world's food supply is controlled by a handful of multinational corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health and the environment.

Food, Inc is critically acclaimed and has received an Oscar nomination in the Documentary (Feature) category and find out who wins on the 7 March 2010. Featuring experts such as Eric Schlosser from Fast Food Nation, along with forward thinking social entrepreneurs like Stonyfield's Gary Hirshberg, Food, Inc. reveals surprising and often shocking truths about what we eat and how it's produced.

On one hand, farming has progressed and we have bigger breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, herbicide-resistant soybean seeds and even tomatoes that won't go bad. However, on the other side, we also have new strains of E. coli the harmful bacteria that causes illness, we have increasing obesity in humans and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults. Food Inc. shows just why we need to act now to protect our food, our health and the health of the planet.

The film powerfully highlights the unintended consequences of industrial agriculture and the need to move to planet friendly farming. Individuals can make a difference and Birmingham Friends of the Earth are campaigning to fix the food chain to get the Government to put people and the planet first, so please come and get involved. Friends of the Earth on the evening will have postcards to put pressure on the MPs to push for sustainable farming.

So come along to the special day of the one-off nationwide cinema screening at 6.30 pm at Vue, Starcity on Monday 15 February.

Meat Free Mondays: Buy one get one free at Warehouse Cafe

The meat and dairy industry produces more climate-changing emissions than every plane, train and car on the planet - 18% of the global total. This doesn't mean that you have to give up eating meat, but that you should consider reducing the amount of meat you eat, see our other food chain blogs for more information about our Food Chain campaign.

So we can start by having Meat Free Mondays, or any other day of the week. 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.

To make this easier for us, and to tempt us by having an enjoyable Monday evening out, with excellent food, the Warehouse Cafe at 54-57 Allison Street, Digbeth B5 5TH, has a great offer: buy one meal, get one free until 8th February. Call 0121 633 0261 for details of the Meat Free Mondays offer and reserve up to eight places - four will be free. Mention that you read about it on this blog.

Our Food Chain Parade

Last Saturday, members of our campaigns group were out in Birmingham City Centre on a Food Chain Parade to end our Food Chain fortnight of action.

As you can see from the picture below we were drawing people's attention to the issues surrounding factoring farming in this country leading to deforestation of some of the world's most valuable pristine habitat in South America. Arrows go from the animals to the bags of soy feed which they eat to the man with the chainsaw who cuts down the trees to grow the crops.


The parade went from in front of Tesco on New Street, up to Victoria Square, along Colmore Row, down Church Street, across to Ludgate Hill, up to St Pauls Square, along Brook Street, along Graham Street up Frederick St and along Warstone Lane where we finished at the 24 carrot farmers market in the Jewellery quarter.

Shaking our maracas we made our way along the route giving out badges and stickers to people along the way and singing our own version of "Old MacDonald Had A Farm".

It was a really fun event. Thanks to everyone who helped make the props and who joined in on the day. Let's hope that all the MPs get behind this now and the bill goes through parliament to make our food planet-friendly.

Click here to see how you can help online.

Bees - the new canaries

Over the years a few different animals and plants have been termed the new canaries in the coal mine for climate change and the ecological problems facing the world. Amphibians are at terrible risk of being wiped out, which could lead to huge increases in the numbers of insects and other problems. Coral-bleaching shows how much the oceans are warming and there is also evidence of how acidic they are becoming, with the real possibility that they could lose their ability to store carbon. Now though, it is the turn of the bees to become the symbol of environmental problems with a new film vanishing bees looking at the reasons for colony collapse disorder and warning of the consequences if nothing is done to save them.

On Wednesday a few of us from Birmingham Friends of the Earth went along to see the film at The Electric cinema and all of us certainly did come out thinking we wanted to do something - maybe put a hive on the roof of the Warehouse? Well, no that's probably not feasible, but definitely plant some bee-friendly stuff in the garden and maybe chuck a few seed bombs into the disused bulldozed sites of Digbeth.

While not as bleak as the Age of Stupid, the picture given in this film in the no-action-being-taken scenario, is also pretty worrying. The arguments for the importance of bees for all of us are pretty stark and cannot be ignored. The trouble is that neither this film nor any scientific study has provided conclusive proof of what is causing the bees to disappear. If you go expecting to get that, you'll be disappointed.

As a film, the vanishing of the bees has been described as "earnest", so I wasn't expecting it to be much more than informative, but there certainly were some interesting characters in the film and a few shocking facts - for example, the USA is now flying in bees from Australia to pollinate certain crops!!! It was also nice that there was a woman called Bee and a man called Dr Pollan in there who obviously belonged in their field.

The culprits are gradually revealed in the course of the documentary through interviews with bee-keepers, scientists and farmers. As an environmentalist they are pretty much what you'd expect; the use of certain pesticides, the use of intensive farming methods that have created huge monocultures rather than the biodiversity of mixed organic farming systems, loss of habitat and probably some of it is due to the industrialisation of bee-keeping itself. Many of these are also drivers of climate change and other problems associated with the ecology of our planet, so although the fate of bees is not necessarily directly linked to climate change, if we deal with one we will be helping to deal with the other, too.


I hadn't realised quite how much The Vanishing of the Bees would be about the USA, but that was primarily the focus, with only a minor mention of the UK. The fact is that we are the two countries mentioned who have not banned a certain Bayer pesticide with nicotinoids, which has been banned all over Europe where bee-keepers showed conclusive proof of what it was doing to bees (even Germany has banned it and Bayer is a German company!). I very much liked the French bee-keepers who took on the industrial giant and won, describing themselves as hippies who had been underestimated.

The American bee-keepers were interesting characters, but most of them work on such a massive industrial scale, taking their bees back and forth across the USA on lorries, that I kind of want that way of working to fail. There were a few small-scale bee-keepers and the ones who work locally with crops that flower at different times of the year seem to be doing much better.

Overall, it was certainly worth going to see, but the film was a bit over-long and could have been a bit bolder. For someone who didn't know about the topic at all, it would be very revealing, but for those with a reasonable amount of knowledge already, it did sometimes come over as a little patronising.

What is clear after seeing The Vanishing of the Bees, is that we must do something to change the destructive farming practices and have a new green revolution. This will help with food security both in terms of contributing fewer of the greenhouse gases that are causing climate change and in helping to protect bees who are vital for so much of the food we eat. This all ties in very well with our Fix the Food Chain campaign, so look here to see how you can help with that in Birmingham this weekend.

Joe Peacock

My Opinions on Sustainable Food Production

DEFRA's Food Policy Unit is inviting comments on sustainable food production (at foodpolicyunit@defra.gsi.gov.uk).


I have replied that the British government's initiatives include a number of useful developments – but also one seriously flawed assumption: namely, that ‘we must increase food production in order to meet increasing demand’.

We already produce more than enough food to feed the world; our failure has been one of distribution, not technology. The essential task is for the ‘rich’ world to release some of its grip of the world’s food resources, and enable local communities worldwide to be in control of feeding themselves.

The growth in human population will of course mean that there will be more mouths to feed (a trend which itself would be better controlled via greater equality), but unless we achieve much greater equality regarding access to food, we will always be plagued by the inefficiencies of our current economic system, and no amount of technological innovation (as with the supposed ‘green revolution’ of the 1970s) will solve it.
Your thoughts?

Aldo Mussi

Moseley Folk Festival

Giant chickens arrived at Moseley folk festival after it being overwhelming landslide victory after asking on Facebook and twitter that Mary Horesh, Birmingham Friends of the Earth campaigner should wear it at the festival and was even caught on camera. Also, we had bunting and a fabric cow blowing in the wind to give the stall a real country fair feel.

Birmingham Friends of the Earth were lucky enough to have a stall at Moseley Folk Festival and had an enjoyable time, listening to the music but also getting the public to get involved in our campaigns. One festival goer came congratulated the team and thanked us, encouraging us to keep up the good work.

Over the weekend we collected around 250 postcards for the fix the food chain campaign and around 200 for the reopening Moseley and Kings Heath station.

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.

The Market Floor

Our recent economic crisis has been a huge blow to all world economies. The poor are those who are generally hit by how the market has slowed down. As first world leaders rely on how the markets predict spending/public patterns in buying. We need first world governments to introduce a market which is not based on speculation, as public spending pattens vary, but rather a more coherent approach to how markets are governed is needed.
Markets can either generate wealth and transform lives , or they can marginalise the poor and increase inequality and degrade the natural world on which we are very much dependant on.
Small food producers, farmers can only have an influence on the way they operate if they use their power to increase productivity and sales, which would enable them to set better prices and to allow their workers to be paid a better wage. This is only made easier for those who have a major infulence on how they want to govern their large business, such as large land owners, intensive farmers and large food producers.
Markets are governed by too many intensive rules and regulations, contracts, credit, bargening and far too much competition, this causes developing world farmers and British farmers to look for a way to get out of farming, as they are finding farming isn't lucrative enough for them to continue with, as they are not being supported by their government to make farming worth while. British farmers seem to get a raw deal as British produce is deamed expensive and therefore sourced from countries who are selling there food much cheaper such as Eastern Europe, which makes it attractive for buyers. Countries such as Africa and India they can't afford to sell their goods at low prices as farming is a major part of their life structure and selling food at a low price is not an option. Even the cost of food for some being sold at a high price increases their already poverty stricken lives and this cause unnessesary demonstrations and rioting., which should not be something one ought to be doing to have a meal on one's table.
Farming is no longer seen as an industry to pass on through the family line as most farmers are abandoning farming, as their children don't see farming or producing food as an exciting or interesting way to make a living. Most people are heading to cities which are often over crowed to look for work which is generally hard to find, this adds to our already poverty stricken world and causing farms to be left abandoned or sold and this will then cause a huge short fall in food production and will then allow big businesses to produce our food, which would allow a huge drop in standards in the way our food is produced.
The way in which the market is set should not be allowed to dictate farmers/food producers lives, especially for those living in poorer countreis or small scale farmers in Britain. Instead the market should help influence and support those who are very much in need, by helping them store any grain/ crop which can be used in a leaner season and enable them to be more in control of what they are growing/producing.
Instead markets should be used for sustainable growth to help enhance rural communities, promoting tourism, small scale farming which would work towards building any one particular local economy, which is the driving force towards a global ecconomy.
If our global ecconomy is to survive governments need to get rid of the old school gentlemans agreement approach to our ecconomy and perhaps set a fixed price for 5 years to allow our global economy a chance to recover and livelyhoods to be saved.

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