What will the future of food production look like?
What does food security mean to you?
Food security exists when all people, at all times, have access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. (UN's Food and Agriculture Organization)
Food security for a household means access by all members at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life. Food security includes at a minimum (1) the ready availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods, and (2) an assured ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways (that is, without resorting to emergency food supplies, scavenging, stealing, or other coping strategies).
How are we going to feed ourselves in the future?
How did we feed ourselves before the advent of cheap oil and industrial agriculture?
Where does your food come from?
Do you include food miles in your choices?
Do you consider the environmental repercussions of agricultural chemicals?
Do you choose organic foods?
What local foods have been forgotten?
In what ways are people today reconnecting with local foods?
What
will the future of food production look like?
The benefits of re-localisation
Healthier food
More active lifestyles
Greater self-reliance
A sense of connection to place and products
The re-emergence of local identity
An emphasis on quality over quantity
A meaningful common goal and sense of purpose
A means of overcoming addictive behaviours such as over-consumption.
fossil fuel energy used to mine, produce and transport packaging materials
methane released by animals and the farming of land
the breakdown of food and garden waste When food and garden wastes break down without fresh air, they create a mixture of gases including the very active greenhouse gas, methane. Save about one kilogram of greenhouse gas for each kilogram of food or garden waste avoided.
Compost non-meat food scraps or feed them to a worm farm: most councils can advise on composting techniques, and some even collect food scraps with green waste for commercial composting.
For grass clippings and leaves—let them break down naturally in the open air, compost them, feed them to a worm farm or put them in a green waste collection bin.
Ensure your compost heap or bin has plenty of fresh air: turn the material over regularly or use a compost tumbler. If the compost smells, there is not enough air and it is producing greenhouse gases
Grow your own food in your yard or on your patio – reduce your food miles
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Reduce mower fuel use by using a hand mower, mowing less often, or using a more fuel-efficient mower (4-stroke models often use less fuel): save 2.8 kilograms of greenhouse gas for each litre of fuel saved.
Share a lawn mower with your neighbours
Reduce the amount of grass
Avoid
over-watering gardens and wasting water: treating and
pumping water uses e
nergy
and generates up to 0.6 kilograms of greenhouse gas per kilolitre
for treatment and, in hilly areas, up to two kilograms of
greenhouse gas per kilolitre of water for pumping.
Plant trees to absorb greenhouse gases. But be careful: if your prunings and leaves go to landfill instead of composting, they will decay without oxygen, generating more greenhouse gas than was stored in the plant material as it grew.
Plant food plants instead of ornamentals ~ a food garden will benefit you and your family and the planet
Grow
your own vegetables, herbs and fruit trees. This can be
easily achieved even in an apartment by using tubs and planters
using your own compost.
Buying local food would mean eating fresher food, helping local farmers and so improving the local economy and community, cutting food miles and therefore energy, fuel and pollution
BUY LOCAL AS A PRIORITY ~ REDUCE EMISSIONS FROM YOUR FOOD MILES
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