Incredible Edible

In another quirky twist it turns out that the first identified source of horseflesh in the UK is in the Yorkshire town of Todmorden, which has thus far been famous for the community food growing project known as Incredible Edible Todmorden. Since the relevations that the FSA have found horse meat on the premises of a local abattoir there has been another round of reflection on how to inspect an regulate and increasingly complex food supply chain.

Since the BSA and salmonella scandals in the 1990s there have been periodic kerfuffles about where on earth our food comes from. In the academic literature the word most often used is that of 'provenance', which led to the food of origin appearing on the food label. But labelling is an inadequate response to consumers who wish to understand the provenance of their food, and not only because an abattoir that is capable of passing of horse as cow is hardly likely to be concerned about which farm the horses came from. To understand the deeper level of our connection with food we may need the French word terroir, a sense of the cultural connection with local soil expressed through food as well as other forms of folk culture.

Here is how I describe this connection in my book, The Bioregional Economy:

'The Gloucestershire love of apples is an example of what the French would call an attachment to terroir, the sense of pride in your local place and its specialities that could be taken as constitutive of a bioregional approach to provisioning. The contrast with a globalised market approach to provisioning is instructive. While the market economy needs global uniformity and standardisation, the bioregional economy revels in difference and local distinctiveness. The word ‘terroir’ comes, of course, from the word terre meaning land and it is this attachment to land, your local land, as expressed in the particular products it is suited to producing that lies at the heart of the ability of a bioregional economy to enable a process of environmental re-embedding.'

Of course buying local from farmers you know and, if you are not a vegetarian, eating animals that you have seen grazing in local fields, also offers immediate practical reassurance that you know what you are eating in a way a labelling system never can. For more on the delights of local provisioning in the Stroud Valleys please visit the beautiful blog Let Them Eat Hay by doyenne of the local food movement Helen Pitel.

So why have we moved from this satisfying local provisioning to a world of complex supply chains where regulation is virtually impossible? The answer is obvious: it increases the ability to extract value for the food corporations, which has also undermined the livelihoods of farmers. In a report from Green House thinktank published today, commodities expert Thomas Lines describes a world crisis for farming, a crisis of reduced agricultural incomes, and an ageing farming population. The author argues that a new approach is needed, building on known methods – a greater variety of staple crops, traditional farming techniques and agro ecology – to create a food system which is economically as well as ecologically more resilient and sustainable. His recommendation to farmers and growers north and south is that they should get themselves out of the market system and focus on providing good quality food for local markets.

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Transition Barter Habit Spreads up the Severn

A guest post from Simon Topping of Transition Gloucester.

Transition Gloucester recently held its first barter market, except we called it a “barter party” to make it feel more informal and experimental in case everything went horribly wrong! In fact the event went extremely well and has encouraged us to think how we might develop the idea in the future.

There were ten stalls at the market, held at Hucclecote Community Centre. Stallholders were asked to bring goods or services for their stall, roughly equivalent to ten pounds sterling. At the start of the market each stallholder was given ten “glevums”* with which to trade. They were told that they should try to return ten glevums at the end of the market which was to last for 45 minutes. They were also told that if they returned less than ten glevums then they had probably taken more than their fair share of goods and services on offer. If they returned more than ten glevums then they would have taken less than their fair share.

There was a rich mixture of goods and services on offer: homegrown fruit and vegetables, homemade wine, cakes and bread, mint tea and dried herbs, a selection of “service vouchers”, books, vintage records, low energy electric light bulbs and much more.

By the time the market was closed the majority of traders had exchanged most of what they had brought. Also, most traders ended up with roughly ten glevums, some with a few more, some with a few less. The deadline for the closing of the market encouraged those with too many glevums to make sure they bought something with them because, once the market was closed, the glevums would have no value.

We sat around with drinks after the market to talk about how it went. There were many positives, but also some questions:

Most traders were very pleased with the rich mix of goods they ended up with. We brought a pile of oinions to our stall and went away with a range of other vegetables, two books, a bag of mint tea and a low energy light bulb.

People also appreciated the direct link (in most cases) between the trader and what they were selling. The trader was usually also the producer (even with the books). There was a sense of connectedness in the whole process of producing, trading and, ultimately, consuming.

There was also a feeling that the trading was a social activity, as well as an economic activity – conversations naturally broke out over how goods had been grown or made and how best to use or eat or preserve what had been traded. This social interaction gave added value to what had been traded.

One very practical issue was how you could act as both buyer and seller at the same time. It was hard move around the stalls to see what was on offer and also be available at your own stall to sell your own goods. Maybe each stall should have both a buyer and a seller.

Some items were in high demand - two bottles of home made wine to be precise! How does the seller decide who to sell the wine to? Should s/he sell it to the person who gets there first – this might favour the fastest movers! Should s/he increase the price of the wine until somebody decides to drop out of the auction? And if the original price of the wine is increased then should the trader remove other items from their stall so that the total value of the goods they are selling is still the same as all the other traders? If not, that trader will have more glevums to spend than everybody else. Or should the wine seller keep the same price but just decide who needs it most!

The sort of conundrums which the barter market produced helped us unmask some of the hidden dynamics of markets, in particular how we measure value. The group who particpated in our experiment in bartering felt very positive about the event and we hope to run a further market in the coming months.

*The Roman name for Gloucester Tweet

Mediation

I have been suffering a most unQuakerly frustration with the media recently. Taking a more constructive and co-operative approach, I have to acknowledge the extraordinarily difficult role they have in explaining a complex world in two-and-a-half minutes. We have had two recent visits to Stroud by a cameraman and journalist pairing to make what they can of the story of our local currency.

The first was Tim Muffet from the BBC Breakfast programme. His item was cool, involving camera tricks and that irritating background music that is wholly unnecessary and seems designed to avoid the risk that you might actually think about what the reporter is saying. The story was honest and Stroud looked great.

Then we had a visit from Hayley Platt from Reuters TV, who apparently sell their stories around the world. Her take was rather different, with a wider range of views and the narrative being developed by local people rather than by the journalist herself. Here I particularly liked the fact that three women talked about economics while the man was making the coffee.

Trying to communicate anything of interest in a soundbite is clearly challenging and it sometimes seem that the public debate is trapped by this unhelpful format. Who is imposing it? I think the journalists themselves. Most people are neither stupid nor have the attention span of a gnat. We are being trained to think and speak so briefly that any issue which requires systemic or deep thought becomes impossible. I would recommend the reading of German philosophy as a night-time antidote. Tweet

Guild of Green Economists

The New Economics Foundation is advertising for a Chief Economist. This raises several questions for me. The job is directed at a number-cruncher, which is made clear by the requirement for skill in 'modelling', which to any economist reading the advert can rapidly be translated as 'regression analysis', the stock-in-trade of the academic and research economist.

This is a pity, since regression - and indeed most forms of high-level mathematical analysis - cannot deal with the complexity of the ecological system we are a part of. If we begin our analysis of the problem with maths we are bound to end up with the sort of simplified truth that is always wrong as far as the planet is concerned.

Most large corporations have a Chief Economist - Vince Cable, now the darling of the radical set, is a former Chief Economist with Shell - and now nef is to have one too. In the world of economics, there are a great many chief economists but very few indians. This has set me wondering about why large companies need an economists but small businesses and communities apparently do not.

When I moved to Stroud nearly four years ago now I was still quite insecure in my role as an economist. I did not want that label - which smacks of capitalist apologism - but was shy about claiming the title 'green economist'. When I dared to say that I was a green economist I was delighted by the response: 'Great! We need one of those!'. It seems to me that this was the right response: every community needs at least one economist.

Perhaps the reason we do not have local economies is that we do not have economists. The 'practicing economist' that nef explicitly ask for must have been practising either in academia or in a corporation since there is no paid role for an economist working in her or her local community. We could not imagine a local economy functioning without an accountant, yet economists are isolated in their ivory towers rather than working in their backyards. We must have people who count money, but have not seen the need for people who are expert in the wise use of local resources.

So in response to nef's call I would like to suggest a grass-roots alternative: the guild of green economists. This could be a network of those who, rather than the 'deep understanding of economic theory and practice and excellent quantitative and analytical skills' that nef is calling for, have a jobbing knowledge of how local economies work, a sensitivity to the idiosyncrasies of their own local economy, and a desire to rebuild an economy with a connection with the local environment at its heart.

If any readers of this blog would be able to commit some time to turning this vision into a reality - especially if you might be able to handle the internet end of things - I would be glad to hear from you. Tweet

Transitional Demand for a Town in Transition

We have reached the exciting stage of 'no turning back' with our local currency here in Stroud. As we go into shops and pubs making the case for the Stroud Pound many people ask 'What is the point of a local currency? Can't we just decide to spend more money in our local economy?'

Our currency is designed on the model of the German Chiemgau, which itself follows the model of the Worgl - the holy grail for currency enthusiasts, which allowed its small Austrian town to flourish like an economic oasis in the midst of the desert of inter-war Depression. The money, like most natural systems, deteriorates over time, which is intended to increase the speed with which it changes hands. This is the key feature that underpinned the success of the Worgl experiment.

But whether or not this works in Stroud, launching a local currency is an important political move, because it is a transitional demand. According to Len Arthur:

'Transitional demands are those which relate to current grievances and seem a legitimate solution but if won would create a direct challenge to power resources of those who dominate.'

Making your own money is a practical response to the failure of the capitalist economy and a commitment to your local community, but is is also a real and immediate challenge to the system itself and the monopoly on money creation by the banks. This is the reason why the Worgl system was shut down by the Austrian state. We are waiting with interest to see the reaction here if the currency is a success. Tweet

Timelessness is Bliss

Having studied philosophy at university I tend to shy away from it now. However, it seems we need to have a little think about time. The woman who taught me philosophy was actually a specialist in the philosophy of time. She dwelt at the top of a flight of concrete steps in a brutalist building in my college grounds. She was immensely small with an oversized head and nobody has ever better exemplified for me the philosophical thought experiment of the brain in the vat.

Imagine our amazement when she upped and left one day - ran away with a male philosopher she had met at a conference. Whispering sweet nothings about Schopenhauer and Wittgenstein had clearly led on to more bodily interests. Good for her! And perhaps she was on to sometimes that I wasn't able to grasp as an opinionated 21-year-old.

Ecofeminist Teresa Brennan has said that ‘nature is the source of all value, and ultimately of all energy, but the inherent dynamic of capital is to diminish this value and this energy in favour of time and technology.’ This seems to imply that if we spent more time in country walks we would begin to see through the hollow sham of our technotopia and probably find we had more time on our hands too. I can't be the only person who finds that when I work less I feel as though I had more time - and sometimes get more done too.

Rethinking time is valuable when it comes to rebuilding a local economy. It is clearly irrational, if you take time for granted, to bother to do anything for yourself at all. The rational response is to work a large number of hours, for the highest rate of return you can negotiate, and purchase everything in the market. Thus a fixation on time strips everything of value out of human lives.

E. P. Thompson pointed out that one of the hardest things for the early capitalists was to train people to respond to factory time rather than natural time. Like laboratory rats they were trained to respond to a system of bells and whistles. Over time this seeped into the culture: we were trained to believe that 'time is money', we were softened up for having our lives stolen from us via working time directives and by the Time-Life Corporation.

In 'The World as Will and Representation' (great title!) Schopenhauer wrote that 'the will transcends time and space, which together constitute the principle of sufficient reason of being. Time and space are conditions for manifestations of the will, but the will itself is unconditioned by time or space. The plurality of things in time and space is an objectification of the will.' And remember he also had a dog called 'World's End'. Nothing helps to re-evaluate time like an awareness of how short our span on earth is. Tweet

Trading on the Yin

It says something about the relentless pressure of capitalism that I feel a need to apologise for having taken the whole month of August off work, and mainly offline and away from computers. I am torn between celebrating this and recommending to others that they live their principles in this way, and feeling guilty that I have dared to step off the treadmill.



It has been an interesting few months of talks, rest, reading and festivals. I know that most of the original and creative work I do happens during what is officially labelled as 'holiday' and that most of my good ideas come when I'm sitting on a bus or lying in bed. Strange, then, that I value the hours spent here, staring into a luminscent screen, giving myself RSI so much more.



Of the many things I've learned over the summer the most exciting is about Country Markets. As part of a commitment to encouraging local trading we developed a concept of 'fayre trade'. This takes as read the principles of fair trade, but supplements them by a commitment to reducing consumption and substituting local production and exchange for involvement in the globalised market wherever possible. However, having learned about Country Markets I am beginning to think we may have been reinventing the wheel.



My own product is face cream, based on my own need for something to deal with my arid skin which splits and re-splits throughout the winter. Producing it to a standard I'm happy with is surprisingly easy. I'm using organic ingredients and recycled jars collected from friends, and trying to keep inputs as simple and local as possible. The energy embodied in conventional, petroleum based skincare products is shocking, not to mention the unpleasantness of smearing paraffin on your skin.



Creating a market for such products is more of a problem. Legislation is widespread and intimidating and probably devised by the corporate-dominated EU mandarins to deter the small trader. But Country Markets, formerly part of the WI but now hived off, has found ways around this, including fighting the notorious Jam Law through the House of Commons in the early 1980s. Their local markets offer the opportunity for the small, local producer or enthusiast to trade at minimal cost. Despite the traditional jam and cakes image of the WI market, produce is not limited to food. It costs only five pence to join and is genuinely co-operative. For more see http://www.country-markets.co.uk/content.php Tweet

The Beauty of Thrift

I spent the weekend camping in rural Hertfordshire. I suppose it is difficult anywhere in the home countries to feel really in the countryside, but we were in a meadow full of wild flowers with a woodland and vegetable patch nearby.

Lydia has created utopia in a small patch of the South-East. Thrift Cottage is named after Anne Thrift, who left to Lydia the right to inhabit a small patch of Welwyn which she had enjoyed since before the passing of the Town & Country Planning Act in 1948. It so aptly describes the approach Lydia, and more recently her husband Robert, have taken to building the home they share with Scarlett.

Regular readers will wonder about my scatological tendencies, but I none the less need to share my excitement with Lydia's bathroom. Her toilet is a long-drop compost loo. You sit on a beautiful piece of retrieved hardwood which is always warm to the touch. You sprinkle a small quantity of fragrant sawdust, rather than flushing away your shit. All this takes places in an environment of tranquility, with wooden bookshelves and built-in wooden cupboards.

The whole eco-house exemplifies the attitude towards life that we need to foster to live in balance with nature. Opportunism is a key feature, with bricks, slate and wood scavenged from local skips and building sites. This is the Robinson Crusoe approach to building—making use of what your local environment provides—rather than driving to a builders’ merchant to buy building materials made elsewhere in the world—who knows where? I recently saw building stone wrapped in cling-film. It seems superfluous to mention the embodied energy both in the manufacture of bricks and blocks, and in their transport.

Other highlights included an outside bath: fill first and then heat by lighting a fire underneath, a summer pudding made with fruit picked in the local fruit patch, and a relaxing time spent on the turf roof.

Due to inept maintenance of the tracks and unfriendly timetabling I was forced to spend three hours of my homeward journey in Stroud. It was like a journey from the heights of the human spirit to their miserable depths. While I confess it is hard to imagine what the vernacular building style of Swindon might be, I cannot believe that it could be worse than the uniform blockwork, steel and glass, interrupted by mislaid tent-like structures, that is the landscape of Swindon today.
I made one of my increasingly infrequent visits to Tesco to buy an apple and noticed that the local media story was of a local murder by a young man of his mother and father. It felt possible to understand how somebody living in that degraded environment could be driven to such a level of cruelty and despair. Tweet