With rising oil prices hitting home across Australia, I completed another Earth Matters radio show on Australian responses to peak oil. You can download the MP3 here and subscribe to the podcast here (host was experiencing website issues at the time of publishing, hopefully resolved soon)

Together with climate change and financial crisis, the phenomena of peak oil is one of many factors causing strains across the globe. It’s linked to everything from food riots in Africa to increased living costs in Australia’s mortgage belt.

Many analysts argue the recent escalation in oil prices is evidence we are close to a peak in global oil production which would bring the world into an unprecedented era of declining energy availability. In a society where everying from transport, food and consumer goods needs a steady flow of sweet black crude, the consequences are likely to be enormous.

Many people have Mad Max type visions when thinking about peak oil. But on today’s show we will explore some proactive responses at the government and local level. In fact, some of the strategies for dealing with peak oil and climate change lead to beneficial social and environmental outcomes.

Earth Matters first discusses the Queensland Government’s 2007 McNamara report, which was Australia’s first high level acknowledgement of the peak oil problem. The report calls for a “war-time mentality” to address the issue.

Elliot Fishman from the Institute for Sensible Transport warns of major vulnerabilities in Australia’s car-based social and physical infrastructure and raises policy alternatives being adopted around the world.

We then hear from Sonya Wallace, coordinator of the Sunshine Coast Transition Region which has joined the growing global “Transition Movement”. Sonya talks about creative and empowering strategies for developing community resilience in response to peak oil and climate change.

More information on the transition movement is available from http://transitionculture.org

Read an analysis of the McNamara report by Stuart McCarthy.

I interviewed visiting Cuban environmentalist Roberto Perez for Earth Matters.

You can download the podcast from the 3cr website.

With oil hitting $110 a barrel, Cuba provides a powerful example of how an industrialized country can survive a so-called “peak oil” scenario, where oil availability goes into an inevitable decline.

When the soviet union collapsed, Cuba lost a huge percentage of its vital oil imports.

The country also lost important trading partners which provided the country’s food needs and important export revenue.

Cuba was pushed into an immediate food and energy crisis, a situation compounded by long-standing US embargoes.

After responding to the crisis with a more localised economy and organic food production system, Cuba is now being celebrated as a model of self-sufficiency.

It was the only country in the 2007 World Wildlife Fund’s Living Planet report that met a set of criteria for sustainable development.

Roberto Perez is a cuban biologist and permaculturist who is currently touring Australia.

He’s been telling audiences about Cuba’s experience and what it means for oil-dependant countries like Australia.

More information about Roberto’s Australian tour is available at http://www.permaculture.com.au

This week I attended a fantastic community forum called Think Global: Eat Local in Byron Bay.

After a screening of the film Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil, there was a panel discussion featuring Cuban permaculturist Roberto Perez, Robert Pekin from Brisbane-based CSA Food Connect and Russ Greyson from the Australian Community Gardens Network.

It was all very stimulating and exciting for people like me interested in the relocalisation movement.

But it was when the panel opened for questions from the floor that the evening climaxed.

An empassioned woman grabbed the mic with gusto and started to talk about the importance of growing your own food locally.

She talked from her own experience about how she’d planted hundreds of fruit trees in the rental houses she’d lived in over a twenty year period in the area.

“Living in a rented house and think you can’t plant trees? No excuse,” she said.

When she heard that the Government was handing out fines for people planting unregistered banana trees she started planting more and more banana trees than ever before.

On one occasion kids snuck into her front garden to secretly take bananas from a tree she had planted.

When she suddenly arrived back home, the startled youngsters started to apologise profusely for ’stealing’ her fruit.

She said to them, “don’t apologise, I planted it for everyone to enjoy”.

But the clincher was a story about something that had happened to her at the Woodford Folk Festival.

Part of the ticket price for the festival was directed to planting native trees to offset the festival’s environmental impact (and presumably to create a nice glowing feeling for participants).

But the woman said she didn’t want a native tree planted from her money. She wanted a fruit tree.

The guy said it was not possible.

An argument ensued but the festival representative was adament that only native non-food-growing species would be planted.

The woman drove her point home with a classic comment that really challenges us to think about whether planting natives really is the best strategy for reducing our environmental impact and improving the amenity of our public places.

“What did you have for breakfast?” she asked the young man, “Quandongs?!”

For those that don’t know a quandong is an Australian bushfood.

Quandongs have amazing nutritional properties and are being developed for commercial production.

But quandongs, like many bushfoods, are still not a core part of mainstream Australian diet. And you wouldn’t live for very long subsisting on them, even if you could afford going price of ninety dollars a kilo.

So until we have a nourishing and abundant bushfood cuisine, I wholeheartedly agree that we should be planting fruit trees and other edibles in our public place.

In the face of real food security threats from peak oil and climate change, planting fruit trees is a great strategy.

In confining food production in remote rural areas we become alienated from how our food is grown and depend on fossil fuel-based agriculture with its ineffecient transportation model.

This makes it easier for farmers stick with industrial farming and its toxic chemical dependency issues.

Bring the food home I say.

Quandongs anyone? You can get them here.

My boss recently commented that God couldn’t have created a more troublesome thing than moving house.

Well, my boss and God probably hadn’t seen this youtube video featuring a bunch of Melbourne kids moving house by bike.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI-kYdqLniA

Good to see that low-energy transport alternatives like bikes can be so much fun.

Well, big agro is at it again in the land of the free - once more making it hard for small scale producers to supply the growing demand for local, sustainably produced food.

This recent op-ed piece in the New York times has got a fair bit of traction in the media.

It’s written by a farmer who describes the legislative barriers to being a small-time producer supplying local markets like farmers markets.

US laws reinforce the domination of a large scale producers who truck their industrial produce from one side of the country to the other, with huge energy, social and environmental overheads.

This has been the story of small-time farmers for a long time. It’s becoming a huge issue now because there’s increasing numbers of consumers who want sustainably produced local food.

I wonder what the situation for Australia in this regard. I know that local producers have a hard time getting their stuff into the large supermarket chains.

I know that deregulation, of the dairy industry for example, makes agricultural products so cheap that only those with larger farms are viable. And that this then creates a vicious cycle where the small farms are eaten up by bigger farms which become massive monsters chewing up resouces and spitting out industrial food.

But I don’t know of regulatory impediments to being a local supplier. I’m not a farmer.

I’m sure they exist.

My partner often reminds friends that all chocolate contains acceptable levels of contamination by cockroaches.

Don’t know if it’s true or not, but the reaction is typically one of horror. Yet eating bugs doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.

While Indigenous peoples have nourished themselves on invertibrates for millenia, the UN has cottoned on just recently.

The United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is looking at the benefits of using insects for human consumption for the Asia Pacific region.

This may make your skin crawl. But with insects being as rich a source of protein as meat and fish, insects might be a huge nutritional and commercial opportunity.

Scoop has an article, UN: Edible Insects Provide Food for thought. Thanks to Raj Patel’s blog for this one.

And if you are interested in some creeply crawly cuisine, I recommend Bill Mollison’s The Permaculture Book of Ferment and Human Nutrition published by Tagari press.

It contains serving suggestions for weavils, grubs, grasshoppers, termites, acquatic insects and snails.

North African cous-cous, a fermented wheat-cake dish, for example, contains grasshoppers.

Although my partner will never agree with me - she squirms at the thought of anything wriggly - I can’t see any good reasons not to eat invertibrates.

They are abundant. Some insects have more protein than fish or meat. Larvae are even rich in fats and other essential nutrients.

I reckon we need to break down the barriers between food animals and “pests”, as insects are often thought of.

If you can develop a cuisine based around nuisance creatures, it will reduce the need to obliterate them with toxic pesticide regimes.

It seems apt to quote permaculture legend Bill Mollison who said “the problem is the solution”.

Just finished Earth Matters for this week. The show focusses on genetically engineered canola and the many risks associated with GE crops.

It also takes a look at seed saving with one of Australia’s pioneers in the field, Jude Fanton pictured here with a mildew resistant Professor Mary Sheahan’s cucumber.

I interviewed Louise Sales, genetic engineering campaigner with Greenpeace. Louise discusses what’s been an eventful month in relation to GE crops.

Moratoria in Victoria and NSW will end in February while South Australia took a more cautious approach on GE crops deciding to extend its moratoria.

February also saw several Canadian farmers visit Australia to warn about the perils of adopting GE-canola. I interviewed Canadian National Farmers Union Vice-president and a canola grower, Terry Boehm who talked about how GE seeds and biotech companies are forcing farmers into a relationship he likens to “feudalism”.

Jude Fanton, co-founder and director of the Seedsavers Network talked to me about the importance of saving the seeds of hierloom and rare varieties to combat the consolidation of the seed ownership and the ecological risks of genetic monocultures.

You can download the show (after Sunday) or subscribe to the podcast at www.3cr.org.au/podcasts.

In an attempt to rein in the UK’s burgeoning obesity crisis, the UK government has launched a policy making cooking classes compulsory in schools.

Schools and children’s secretary Ed Balls said the government wanted all 11- to 14-year-olds to be taught how to prepare simple and healthy meals using fresh ingredients.

Ministers hope this will encourage healthy eating and leave children less vulnerable to weight gain, as experts predict up to a million children could be obese within a decade.

This is a great policy no doubt. But I wonder how long Government’s will continue to implement good policy like this at the same time as implementing bad policy, like where fast food and highly processed food continues to be marketed to kids.

A more holistic approach is needed, and perhaps this is only possible where there is more local autonomy.

It would be great to see this kind of approach in Australia. Teaching kids to cook acquaints them with using fresh ingredients rather than highly-processed foods.

This has health benefits but also provides the important environmental lesson that we depend on natural systems.

The more we depend on natural systems, and therefore nuture them, the less we need the giant multinational food companies. These corporations profit from over-feeding us and who have the biggest ecological footprint.

Full article here:

http://www.politics.co.uk/news/opinion-former-index/children-and-family/compulsory-cooking-classes-launch-anti-obesity-drive-$484512.htm

A new study by Cornell University researchers challenges the widely help assumption that a purely vegetarian diet is the most ecological way to eat.

For want of a better word I was “vegetarian” for a few years but am now a selective omnivore. I respect people who go vego but I also think think vegetarianism isn’t the solution to all our social, ethical or environmental problems. And that’s what this study seems to suggest.

The researchers say a low-fat vegetarian diet is very efficient in terms of how much land is needed to support it. But the report added an important caveat to this, that some dairy products and a limited amount of meat may actually increase this efficiency.

“The findings of their new study, which concludes that if everyone in New York state followed a low-fat vegetarian diet, the state could directly support almost 50 percent more people, or about 32 percent of its population, agriculturally. With today’s high-meat, high-dairy diet, the state is able to support directly only 22 percent of its population, say the researchers, ” an article in Science Daily reports.

The study, published in the journal Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems, is the first to examine the land requirements of complete diets. See the article here:
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071008130203.htm

With his straw hat, checked shirt and slow mid-western drawl, John Petersen seemed the quintessential US farmer. Only a conspicuous pink feather boa around his neck suggested otherwise. Petersen was in Byron over the weekend to promote the documentary film, The Real Dirt on Farmer John, based upon his colourful life as a non-conformist in conservative rural America. John is a third generation farmer but is also a writer with a flamboyant sense of style.

The film depicts the rollercoaster ride of the Petersen family farm, based on Petersen’s memoirs. After falling into debt and ostracised from his community, Petersen is forced to sell his equipment and the majority of his farm. For many years he considered walking from the land in despair. Eventually recovering his pride and inspired to do things differently, he established one of America’s most successful Community Supported Agriculture farms, Angelic Organics.

The Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) model adopted by Petersen was founded on a direct relationship with between farmer and customer. A group of interested people in nearby Chicago agreed to share the financial risks of the farm in return for fresh organic produce delivered through a box scheme. Through farm open days and deliveries they get to know who grows the food they eat.

“It was the rebirth, something impossible happening and coming back into being,” John said.

“Farms never do that.”

John observed “tremendous interest” in Australia in the CSA model which revitalised his farm. This groundswell is global, John said, with customers wanting to reconnect with the source of their food and farmers wanting to boost their dwindling incomes and enjoy a greater sense of meaning and autonomy.

After the film, Petersen (feathers and all) joined a panel of local food activists to discuss the potential of the CSA model and other community-based food systems in the Byron Shire.

Byron resident and event organiser Joanne Hay outlined her plan to establish a “herd-share” CSA in Byron. Shareholders buy a herd of dairy cattle and access raw milk while the farm manager gains a secure market willing to pay a premium for the product.

“Herd-shares are better for farmers because farmers get paid better. They’re better for consumers because we know we can visit our cows whenever we like, we know how they’re cared for and how clean the dairy is. It’s better for culture because our relationship with the land is stronger,” Hay said .

John Dolman, from the Santos group of stores, said that while CSAs pose a challenge for his business, it encouraged Santos - “a business which prides itself on ethical behaviour” to go along with this “wonderful community spirit.”

“For me, the practise that I do from my office, for example, is to support in any way and every way to support those efforts to create stronger communities. I see that Community Supported Agriculture is just a perfect place in which community is strengthened, and learnt about and practised.”

Former dairy farmer, Robert Peakin is the director of a Brisbane-based CSA called Food Connect. Peakin said there’s “a huge amount of interest” in supporting CSAs, whether it’s his “blue ribbon” social enterprise or a more traditional model.

“There’s millionaires literally camping at our door, waiting to see what they can put money into to help schemes like this go ahead.

“It’s really what everyone wants. Whether John [Dolman]’s selling it from his retail outlet and he’s got a whole bunch of committed people or whether it’s a stand-alone CSA, the traditional CSA model like John [Petersen] does. And any young bloke who’s keen enough can grab five acres and easily within three years can be feeding fifty families.”

Panellists agreed that the CSA model and other relocalised food systems such as farmers markets are a great way to encourage environmental farming practices and reduce food miles while building community at the same time.

“I think it’s going to be consumer driven, that there’s going to be a demand from people who are better informed and are more discerning. Plus there is the limitation of the resources to distribute food as we are today. And I think this will lead us to increased local consumption,” said Donald Recsei from Byron Bay Farmers Market.