{"id":51126,"date":"2020-02-12T19:20:24","date_gmt":"2020-02-13T00:20:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=51126"},"modified":"2020-02-12T19:20:26","modified_gmt":"2020-02-13T00:20:26","slug":"what-if-we-only-ate-food-from-local-farms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=51126","title":{"rendered":"What if we only ate food from local farms?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What if we only ate food from local farms?<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe would die from starvation. It\u2019s that simple.\u201d Or so TV botanist James Wong recently tweeted<\/a> in response to the title question, taken from a BBC feature<\/a>. In this post I\u2019m going to make the case that we wouldn\u2019t, that it isn\u2019t simple, and that in fact our chances of starving are probably higher \u2013 albeit in some quite unsimple ways \u2013 if we don\u2019t<\/em> start eating more food from local farms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A good many of the comments under James\u2019s tweet rehearsed various misconceptions about local food, so in a change to my intended programme I feel the need to put another side to the story in this post. If what I write here whets your appetite, so to speak, I cover these points in more detail in my forthcoming book, A Small Farm Future<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So\u2026to answer the opening question, it\u2019s necessary for some definitions \u2013 who is \u2018we\u2019, and what exactly does \u2018local\u2019 mean? Many of the commenters under James\u2019s tweet took the question to mean \u2018what if we, the inhabitants of Britain, only ate food that was grown in the country?\u2019 which seems a reasonable starting point. If \u2018we\u2019, so defined, had to do this tomorrow, we\u2019d probably struggle. But to me, the larger question is could we do it if we wanted to, given time to prepare?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Various commenters invoked the lessons of history in support of James\u2019s assertion, correctly pointing out that Britain hasn\u2019t been self-sufficient in food for two centuries. But what this tells us is that self-reliance hasn\u2019t been a priority of national food policy over that period, not that it\u2019s impossible. This raises the interesting question of why that\u2019s so and whether it might change in the future, points I\u2019ll come to shortly. First, though, it\u2019s worth asking whether Britain could conceivably feed itself if it so wished.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What if we only ate food from local farms? \u201cWe would die from starvation. It\u2019s that simple.\u201d Or so TV botanist James Wong recently tweeted in response to the title question, taken from a BBC feature. In this post I\u2019m going to make the case that we wouldn\u2019t, that it isn\u2019t simple, and that in fact our chances […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[15683,29009,15745,3207,9738],"class_list":["post-51126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-chris-smaje","tag-food-prduction","tag-local-farms","tag-local-food-production","tag-small-farm-future"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51126"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51127,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51126\/revisions\/51127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}