This morning we got our first vegbox from Riverford Organic Veg delivered. Riverford up here in the North East are based on Home Farm near Northallerton, so while its not very local, its better than some other schemes we have seen and/or used, plus they don’t airfreight anything, so its not all that bad.

Anyway the local deliveryman, Ian, knocked on the door and introduced himself and gave a quick little bit of info about the veg, which was great. Then he realised that we have met before as we used the scheme about 3 years ago, but still it  was quite nice, and if I was brand new to the whole idea then it would have been perfect.

This weeks box was quite nice we got some lovely vine tomatoes, a bag of lettuce, carrots, celery, parsnips, leeks, onions and some sante potatoes. We also ordered some mushrooms as an extra.

The box itself, which is a small veg box, was £11.45 and the mushrooms were £1.49. Compared to the equivalent organic veg from Tesco, its about the same price, if we got a larger box it works out a bit cheaper. But there are only two of us, so we don’t need that much veg!

Now onto the contents, well its organic and fresh from the farm, well most of it, some has been shipped from abroad, but I will explain a little bit about that latter. Now where was I, ok so its organic and fresh from the farm, so its still covered in mud, its misshapen and all different sizes, everything the supermarkets have taught is to hate. Which means its good!

The carrots are less bright and orangey but they smell so good and feel nice and juicy, the leeks are as good as the prize winning ones grown by my farther-in-law, if not as big! Parsnips, not normally a veg I am that much in love with, look and smell absolutely beautiful.

The potatoes, look just brilliant, and will be lovely roasted, boiled, chipped etc, and I fear for how much I will cry when I cut into those onions.

Now I said some stuff comes from abroad, well this week we have a couple of items which have been shipped in, most obviously the tomatoes. These lovely vine tomatoes which you can see in the photo are from Spain, now some might be thinking, hey that’s not good, why not grow them here in hot houses to cut down on the carbon footprint. Well it has been shown that importing them by sea  from southern Europe is much less environmentally damaging than growing them in a hot house.

Now this isn’t true seasonally eating, but lets face it, in this country we have what’s called the hungry gap between April and May, when there isn’t a lot available and for many of us, the tomato has become a year round staple. If Riverford didn’t offer people tomatoes, then they would go to Tesco and buy hothouse grown tomatoes, which are more environmentally damaging. At least it better than nowt.

The other two imported veg are the lovely lettuce bag which has come from France and the crunchy celery from Italy.

All in all I am very satisfied with our first box, tonight’s tea is going to be baked parsnips and carrots with sausages, made with some of the parsnips, carrots and onions from Riverford and some sausages we have in the freezer which came from a lovely farm shop in Wooler up the road in Northumbria which Lindsay’s grandparents buy from.

Anyway, next week we are getting some eggs and milk as well, so we will see how that does, but based on the fact that they were pretty good a couple of years ago and the still high quality now, I think it looks good that we will keep using them.

Sorry for no sooner update but things have been hectic. Anyway the Ethical Challenge is going quite well. This past month we have focused on our food, particularly as Fairtrade Fortnight is currently on, and I have been looking quite closely at Fairtrade from a Bahá’í Perspective lately. We even had a very successful Fairtrade Event at the Newcastle Bahá’í Centre this week, which I will blog about shortly.

For the past couple of years we have bought Fairtrade on and off, but quite recently we made a commitment to, where possible only buy Fairtrade. For tea, coffee and sugar this is easy, and we have already been doing this for some time anyway. But we have looked very closely at everything else, bananas, chocolate, cola and even our rubber gloves! All of these are products we can swap for something that is Fairtrade, many of which we are buying online from ethicalsuperstore.com, and they are based in Team Valley so low carbon on the transport.

You see most people involved in the manufacturing of cheap food get a raw deal. In some cases the economies of entire nations are affected: people are kept in poverty through the actions of western consumers. And if I am trying to live more ethically I really need to try and help stop that.

So our weekly shop now has more Fairtrade products in the basket, from spices to rice. Although we currently do have a lot of Ringtons tea in the cupboard, but this is because my Nana is always giving it to us, however, Traidcraft have their Fairtrade tea blended by Ringtons, and I can’t imagine that they would have anything to do with a non-ethical company, so I don’t feel too bad about having that in my cupboard.

I am also aware that eating too much meat is not so good for the environment, so we have also looked to eliminate some meat from our diet. We aren’t going veggie, I used to be and would love to again, but I have medical issues preventing me from becoming completely veggie. So fewer cows need to fart methane to keep me happy!!!

Fruit and veg is one area where we are badly failing, looking at what we buy, its often imported or grown in hot houses. So I have been looking at ordering a weekly veg box from Riverford Farm, who deliver organic veg boxes. So that’s starting once we return from a visit to Suffolk next week, so we will see how that goes.

So I will keep plodding on and let you know how its going.

God Bless

Michael

Lately I have been thinking a lot about food, and more precisely sustainable and environmentally friendly food.

You see, I look at what we here in the developed world eat, and then I see images of children in the developing world starving, and like many people, I can’t accept that this is the way the world should be.

Now I am an admirer of Norman Borlaug, and his Green Revolution, though I imagine that if he had done his work today, it would certainly not be called that. Now his work led Mexico from being a net importer of grain in 1943, to self sufficiency in 1956 and finally to becoming a grain exported by 1964. The Green Revolution has a number of environmental issues though, substantial use of pesticides, loss of agricultural biodiversity, heavy use of water etc. But considering the rate of population growth this century, it clearly has helped to keep the world feed, and if we didn’t use these techniques, surly we would have seen many more famines that we have.

Now this leads me onto organic food, personally I like the idea of organic, personally I don’t like the term though, I prefer traditional agriculture, as for thousands of years it the only way we could grow crops. But yields is an issue, with some crops the yields can be as low as 50% compared with intensive farming methods, and I honestly do not think that we could feed the worlds current population if we went 100% organic. But environmentally speaking, organic is best, fewer pesticides, less water use and increased biodiversity.

Its clear that continued use of the techniques pioneered by Borlaug are not good, and the environment is suffering. So for my part I think the world needs to move towards more organic food production. But do I necessarily mean certified organic, no personally I think that if synthetic fertilizers are used that say contain only vitamins and minerals, that’s fine, I know its not with a lot of people, but that’s just my personal opinion. GMO is another matter altogether, I don’t understand the science to form any kind of opinion about it, though we have been altering crops for millennia with selective breeding, so I sometimes wonder if GMO is simply a more advanced version of that.

But I am a real hypocrite, I don’t always buy organic, and I don’t always buy local, I try, and I am getting better, but sometimes my budget just doesn’t stretch far enough, I wish it did though. And at the same time I am aware that I am thinking like a western elitist, as a friend from Pakistan says, I have never know the pains of hunger, and as he says from his point of view. He told me that he looks at me and my ilk and thinks we are simply rich idiots prancing around thinking we know whets best for the world and telling him if he has to starve to make sure our melons can be organic then tough.

Now I do think if I was in his shoes and was starving, I would be screaming at the top of my voice for farmers to farm as intensively as possible and use the finest GM crops science could manufacture, oh and use tractors galore and fly it to me on the fastest jet planes possible, cause I don’t care about carbon footprints, I am just starving to death!

So where am I going with all of this, well I really don’t know, this world has so many problems, most of them caused by man, we have grown simply too numerous for this world to handle and we need to start thinking about reversing population in order to ensure the world can sustain not only the human race, but the other wondrous plants and animals on earth.

But even if we don’t go down the organic route, how can we feed the ever growing world population without further damaging our environment, personally I don’t think we can, the world is at breaking point and we need as a matter of urgency to either bring population growth down to zero, or better still reverse it so its negative population growth.

So to sum up my thoughts on food:-

• I like the idea of organic food
• I am not sure if organic farming can feed the world
• Local is best
• For things that cannot be grown locally Fairtrade is best
• Synthetic fertilizers of vitamins and minerals are ok
• Population growth needs to go to zero or less to allow us to be able to feed the world.

None of it makes sense but then again, it something I can’t make sense of in my own mind anyway!

But I will finish with this question:- Did the Green Revolution solve the potential hunger crises caused by the human pollution explosion of the 20th century, or did it enable that growth to happen?

Sorry for rambling on!

Michael