Another week vanished, another Friday, and another mass of stories and comments that all fit into an overall narrative about the food system--a narrative I'm having a hard time detailing, but one that is clearly scary.
As to that, the Guardian website is hosting a narrated slide-show about the current state of British farming. In a word: bleak. Farmers are actually, literally, on the breadlines. Harvests have been reduced, of poor quality, or simply non-existent. Lamb prices have crashed, pasturage is so poor that sheep are not getting pregnant, and disease is causing stillbirths and spontaneous abortions. British self-sufficiency in agriculture has declined from 70% to 50%. Here on Vancouver Island, it's declined to 10%. So far the ferries haven't stopped for more than about twelve hours, so panic has been avoided. But as the power of storms increase with the rise in global temperatures, this too will change.
Damian Carrington, at the Guardian, writes about how the EU was stymied this week in trying to put a short-term ban on neonicotinoids--which have been implicated in colony collapse disorder. Germany and the UK were the primary opponents:
The chemical companies that dominate the billion-dollar neonicotinoid
market, Bayer and Syngenta, were relieved. Syngenta chief operating
officer, John Atkin, said: "We are pleased member states did not support
the EC's shamefully political proposal. Restricting the use of this
vital crop protection technology will do nothing to help improve bee
health."
A spokeswoman for the Department for Environment,
Food and Rural Affairs defended the UK's abstention: "Bee health is
extremely important but decisions must be based on sound scientific
evidence and rushing this through could have serious unintended
consequences both for bees and for food production. We are not opposing
the EU's proposals. But as we do not have the evidence yet it is
impossible for us to vote either way."
But Prof Dave Goulson, at the University of Stirling and who led one of the key studies showing that neonicotinoids harm bumblebees,
told the Guardian: "The independent experts at EFSA spent six months
studying all the evidence before concluding there was an unacceptable
risk to bees. EFSA and almost everybody else – apart from the
manufacturers – agree this class of pesticides were not adequately
evaluated in the first place. Yet politicians choose to ignore all of
this."
At the end of another year of painful austerity and mouting debts,
Greece's battered economy is seeing over 1,000 workers lose their jobs
every day.
On the surface, many cities still looks prosperous, but the nation's
deep crisis is clearly reflected in the windows of hundreds of empty
shops.
More than one million Greeks are unemployed, which is one-quarter of
the workforce, and the country is facing a youth unemployment rate of 58
percent.
But while many are struggling to survive in this harsh financial
climate, others are returning to the land from the towns and cities that
onced promised so much.
Up until a month ago, Kostas Bozas was a city banker. Now he is
unemployed and has moved to his father's house in a village outside
Thessaloniki, going back to his roots in search of a future.
"I come a from a steady job, and now at the age of 50 it's the right
opportunity to become a farmer ... my father will teach me the things he
knows from his father."
Thousands have taken the road back to farming in recent years - while
the rest of the economy is in free fall, the farming sector is actually
adding jobs.
