Other questions and challenges
The move from Totnes and District being merely one consumer in a vast and profoundly unsustainable globalised food system towards being a more self-reliant and resilient local ‘foodshed’ is a vast undertaking. Nonetheless, given the impending, or possibly already historic, peak in world oil production and the need to reduce emissions from agriculture by 80% over the next 40 years, this is a shift which is inevitable, and the sooner it is embarked upon, the greater chance it has of success1.
This research is in its early stages, but it may be useful at this point to identify some of the challenges and issues that have emerged thus far:
- An unknown percentage of the land that would be needed for this kind of approach is low-lying and at risk from flooding and other climatic and meteorological impacts that will arise from climate change. Furthermore, the Livestock Permaculture model itself is based on our understanding of our current temperate agriculture’s system; how applicable this will be in a couple of decade’s time is moot. More research is needed on this and on the amount of land it might remove from food production, or the changes in land use it might necessitate.
- Many of the datasets required to do this research more fully, and on a national scale, are not in the public arena and are hugely expensive to obtain. These include one set which allows a calculation to be made of the exact amount of land currently utilised by back gardens in any given settlement. Accessing the appropriate data sets will allow this work to be much more thorough.
- No exact data are included here with regards to the amount of fish that could be included in such an approach. The proximity of Totnes and District to fishing ports such as Brixham offers the possibility of significant input of protein, although at the moment most of that fish goes to markets elsewhere.
- This paper has explored the supply side of such an approach. The equally difficult aspect is that of creating the demand for locally grown produce, in the age of supermarkets and convenience foods. Although some models exist2, the generation of sufficient demand to support such a transition presents major challenges in the current economic paradigm.
- A calculation is needed for the potential generation of energy from anaerobic digestion, utilising slurry and other farm wastes, as well as waste food, and their ability to provide space heating, thereby reducing the demand for firewood, shown above to be potentially insatiable if viewed as the only source of space heating.
- Much of the land in the area being looked at here is hilly, unsuited for grain production. Exploration of new ways of using such land productively will be needed.
- Can this land use model be expanded to include other essentials like building materials, and medicines?
- The thorny issue of population needs to be explored, both the question of whether there are too many people in the area, and also in terms of the fact that Devon County Council states that in 2009, one in five households are pensioners living alone. Also of concern is the current average age of the Devon farmer, raising the important question of who will actually do the work required by this approach to feeding the area.
- Another challenge revolves around issues of nature conservation. The expansion of food production requires us to reassess current concepts of nature conservation, in which food production and habitat protection are often viewed as being mutually exclusive (as indeed with energy and chemical intensive agriculture they often are).
- Another challenge lies with the planning system, and the tensions that will arise as more people need to live in agricultural areas.
- The area of reskilling is also vital. The huge majority of people no longer have any experience or knowledge of food growing on any kind of scale, and farming as a profession has also become deskilled over the last 40 years. The training question is key; who is to be trained, where, and what will they be taught?
- One of the key challenges the authors of this paper have faced has been the data available for yields from different land uses. Data exists for yields from dairy and arable production, but little exists for more mixed, integrated approaches such as agroforestry. More data on this is urgently needed.
Footnotes
- point made most cogently in Hirsch, R.L.Bezdek, R, Wendling, R. (2005) Peaking of World Oil Production: impacts, mitigatation and risk management. US Department of Energy. Retrieved from www.netl.doe.gov/publications/others/pdf/Oil_Peaking_NETL.pdf [↩]
- For one summary of some of the potential models, see Hopkins, R. (2000) The Food Producing Neighbourhood. In Barton, H. (ed) (2000) Sustainable Communities: the potential for eco neighbourhoods. Earthscan Books, (2000) [↩]
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