Posts by Kate Cooper
#TNOfood event — Food poverty in Birmingham: And finally . . .
At the end of Forum conversation on 9th February, I asked the people round the table to write the answers to two questions. And here are the questions, and what they wrote in reply:
What is the most interesting /important thing you’ve heard this evening?
- That supermarket data sets could be followed and federated to get a proper view in real time of consumption (though I’m not sure how!)
- Efficiency (and growing efficiency) of the food supply system.
- We eat safe food of very high quality but if supermarket supply chains (i.e. us) become too picky, growers will sell to other countries where they aren’t so fussy
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#tnofood: Food poverty in Brum? Join on-line 6pm to 9pm this evening
What will Brummies be eating in 2050? There’s food a-plenty in the city now. However, a significant proportion of us eat highly processed, high calorie crud.
So how much of a problem is food poverty in the city today? What are the factors that could redress things? And what might make matters worse?
That’s the topic for the New Optimists Forum this evening.
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Join a conversation on food poverty in Brum on 9th February
On 9th February between 6pm and around 9pm, these people (from left to right: Jim Parle, Lucy Bastin, Nick Booth, Farida Vis, Sandy Taylor and Parveen Mehta) will be discussing food poverty in Birmingham, the factors and events could worsen or ameliorate the situation towards 2050.
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Will the lights go out?
Could Birmingham do an industrial-city version of what’s been achieved on the Isle of Eigg; i.e. become energy self-sufficient?
The islanders have achieved much through the demand side. Here in Birmingham, we’re about to do something radical on the supply side.
Aston’s EBRI looks set to be the beginning of a game-changer — and in the first instance for Birmingham.
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Feeding nine billion in 2050: Insect sushi anyone?
For all the action, fun and fanfare about people growing their own food, a harsh reality means ginormous scale agriculture and distribution systems are needed to feed cities where, already, over half the world’s population live.
By 2050, the world’s population will be around nine billion. So will we all be fed? And if so, what will we be eating?
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Radio 4 Food Programme: Generation Food
Radio 4′s Food Programme yesterday ran “Generation Food“, a ‘profile of people with radical ideas about food in the UK’. Listen to it here.
It features the likes of Colin Tudge and Todmorden’s Mary Clear —
see all the links below.
The work of such people makes our world a better place and their particular communities lively, convivial, fun and hey! let’s do similar stuff everywhere we can.
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Mapping food production in Birmingham: Part II
An outcome of the first New Optimists Forum event last November was the notion of mapping local food production in Birmingham.
Hence on Friday I joined a meeting of four people, Dr Farida Vis (@flygirltwo), Andy Mabbett (@pigsonthewing), Andrew Mackenzie (@DJSoup) and Brian Prangle (community organiser for OpenStreetMap in Birmingham, aka Mappa Mercia), who together know more than a tad about (a) mapping, (b) data and (c) allotments and growing local food.
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Chatham House Food Supply Scenarios — 4 years on
Chatham House, along with the EPSRC and Cardiff University, began a project called ‘UK Food Supply in the 21st Century: The New Dynamic‘ in 2007.
In May 2008, they published four global food supply scenarios (see above), and related them to EU/UK stakeholders.
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How self-sufficient can Birmingham be? Should we even bother trying?
Pam Warhurst of Todmorden’s Incredible Edible was interviewed by Radio 4′s You and Yours yesterday (38.35 minutes in).
She reckons that what they’ve done in Todmorden can be done anywhere. Hundreds of Tod people grow veg and fruit in their front gardens just for other townspeople to pick and eat.
Todmorden is a small place, only some 15K people. Pam doesn’t think they’ll achieve their self-sufficiency target in Tod by 2018, but it didn’t seem too unrealistic for them to set it . . . In contrast, could Brum feed its citizens?
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