If people listen carefully to the news, in amongst a whole bunch of trivial stuff, they would hear about growing food problems in the world, certainly price increases now, but probably shortages next year too.
You’ve heard of guerrilla gardening? These inspiring videos take the concept further, and legitimise it a bit. It’s a sort of modern day Dig for Victory campaign
What should a community do with its unused land? Plant food, of course. With energy and humour, Pam Warhurst tells at the TED Salon the story of how she and a growing team of volunteers came together to turn plots of unused land into communal vegetable gardens, and to change the narrative of food in their community.
A whirlwind of energy and ideas, Stephen Ritz is a teacher in New York's tough South Bronx, where he and his kids grow lush gardens for food, greenery -- and jobs. Just try to keep up with this New York treasure as he spins through the many, many ways there are to grow hope in a neighbourhood many have written off, or in your own. (Filmed at TEDxManhattan).
Just to keep it local, a commenter to this post points out that "St Mark's church in St Helier noted that it had unused land down one side of the church, so it let a member's son build raised beds for local residents to grow vegetables in. If they can do it, so can others..."
And finally here is more or less the swan song of Andrew Wilford – “Wilf”. Filmed at TEDx a few months before he died. It sort of covers the whole problem. It includes some jaw-dropping figures about the mass of people plus our food animals versus the natural world. He touches on the reasons why unending growth, whether of food supply, energy, economies etc, is no longer possible.
Wilf was a Director of "Be The Change" Australia, President of Quest 2025 (an organisation illuminating the illusory nature of current economic systems) and a Director of Best Futures (a global research organisation focusing on biosocial system transformation). Wilf also worked with the Kokoda Foundation developing National Resource Security Immersive Scenarios examining climate, energy, water, food, ecosystem and economic futures. Sadly, he died on 13 August 2012, aged 48.
Text taken from the intros to the videos
3 comments:
Nick,
You're behind the times. St Mark's church in St Helier noted that it had unused land down one side of the church, so it let a member's son build raised beds for local residents to grow vegetables in. If they can do it, so can others...
Good for them! Nice to hear about something local happening. I'll stick that local snippet into the post. I'll also bring it up at the next Jersey in Transition meeting
That is a real tour de force from Wilf. As a former systems engineer he gets the integrity and connectivity aspect of these many issues. We need lot more of what he has to say. His loss is all the greater for that.
Post a Comment