Getting from Here to There: the nuts and bolts of the Transition
It is, of course, not possible to implement such a change overnight. It would require an unprecedented collaboration and shared sense of urgency and purpose, akin to that seen in 1939, when the amount of land under cultivation increased from 12.9 million ha. in 1939 to 19.8 million by the end of the war. Food production during that period had risen 91%, and the UK was able to feed itself for approximately 160 days a year, rather than the 120 days it had been in 1939 (Gardiner 2004). There was also, of course, the famous ‘Dig For Victory’ campaign, which led to a significant proportion of the nation’s diet coming from back gardens and allotments. One of the challenges facing us today is how to design the business models required to bring this about in such a way to make them financially viable in the current economic situation, which is very different from that in which they will need to function in 20 years’ time. Models that offer potential for being integrated into existing farming enterprises will be vital.
Part of making such an approach possible will be the implementation of new models for getting food to people. These will include (but not be limited to) Community Supported Agriculture, consumer/farmer co-ops, farmers’ markets, local procurement, local processing, local investment mechanisms and many more. There will also need to be a huge programme of reskilling, given the small number of people with broad scale food growing skills. Engagement will need to be deep and cross-sectoral. The Transition movement is one of many that are looking at the practicalities of rebuilding local economies, and this paper is an indication of the scale of its thinking. How the various models and approaches might fit together is a key part of the thinking that Transition initiatives do, and this paper identifies the need for a national-scale version of the research that underpins this paper, as part of a food plan for the UK.
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