Tuesday 15 October 2013

The important of food security and resilience


Food security refers to the availability of food and one's access to it. A household is considered food-secure when its occupants do not live in hungar or fear of starvation. 

Food prices on the global stage are rising. While there are speculations of this being due to factors such as population growth, energy costs and climate change, much of this is due to the markets trading commodity futures. Staple commodities such as corn, wheat, rice and cotton.
The ethics of gambling on future world food prices is questionable at best. 

In developing countries, large tracks of land are being bought up by large multi national companies from previous wild habit and subsistent farmers.
I find this trend very worrying, as it displaces more people from agriculture and into city slums. It enforces food proverty by removing the oppunitity of local food production by its people.
It produces helpless and deskilled people who have no control over such basics as water, food, heat and shelter.

I feel it is very important to encourage small farming families to remain on the land similar to how the Swiss government  do this and to provide oppunitities for people to excercise a right to produce some/all of their food, water and heating needs regardless of whether it is a developed or developing nation. 

In the future, he who controls the food and water supply will control the world. I'm sure seed companies like Monsanto figured this out decades ago. 

The value of heritage seeds can never be under estimated. The right to save your own seed varieties from season to season is still under pressure from hard lobbying from seed companies. 

The person that has a ( debt free ) small parcel of land and with that the means to provide the four basics for his family is truly free.






3 comments:

  1. They're trying to stop you saving your own seeds?

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  2. It's because F1 seeds do not grow true to what they were. It's a bigger problem in the US than here AT THE MOMENT!
    Marie you are so right, that's why we worked so hard to have a smallholding and to pay off the mortgage.

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  3. It is worrying isn't it! They are trying hard to get into Europe. And soon it will be like USA were you can be arrested for saving seed from your grain harvest.
    Cumbrian you should google Monsanto Europe and you should find a lot of articles about gmo, f1, pesticides and seed patents. It is scary stuff and they have lobied for changes in law and regulations to protect in the USA. They are very active in Middle East and Africa also.

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