Changing Course for Life

We appear to be entering a vortex between two worlds of food and farming. One end of that vortex is firmly planted in the dominant model of the past half-century, with its science guided, laboratory led, corporately controlled neo colonial global ambitions, the other end reaching into radically different territory where local and regional food cultivation and distribution fans out across countries increasingly committed to food sovereignty and resource conservation. Which of these models ultimately perseveres is largely down to us – because we are still fortunate enough to eat food virtually every day of our lives and are in a good position to demand that this food is of a quality suitable to genuinely nourish our body and soul. However at almost any time, outside events could intervene in making a significant part of this choice for us. Be they increasingly high fuel prices, catastrophic weather intervention or even extreme attempts to wrest control over the food chain by dominant corporate cartels hell bent on absolute world dominance. (more…)

Supermarkets present a very seductive picture to the consumer, but just under the surface it is a different story.

Research carried out in the UK some 15 years ago revealed that the average distance travelled by the food in a typical supermarket trolley is more than 3,000 kilometers. Most”fresh” produce is at least 4 days old and has passed through a number of processing and storage plants, involving subjection to very different temperature fluctuations, before getting onto the shelves. In the process, there is a loss of between 40 and 50% of the nutritional value of these foods. (more…)

‘Guns drawn and warrants issued against volunteers and supporters of life saving healthy foods’?

Is this an example of the sort of ‘democracy’ that the US wishes to defend and promote throughout the world via the establishment of its 600-plus military bases in more than 60 Countries?

It’s truly shocking to read about the hysterical federal and police intimidation actions taken against ‘Rawsome’ in Los Angeles this June. An action that bluntly flaunts the law in order to impose the will of some corporate pirate determined to maintain a stranglehold on the food chain. This is a prime example of totalitarian state interference in the lives and activities of well meaning citizens. (more…)

Julian Rose

This article is taken from www.theecologist.org

The dreams of the early organic pioneers have been subsumed into a rush for global supply chains, strict regulations and fast-selling brands

Back in 1975, when I first started converting my farm to organic agriculture, there were no standards for production and no rule book. Just a few people committed to weaning their land off agrichemicals, improving soil fertility and supporting good animal health through regular crop rotations and through the sensible applications of farm yard manure. It was about taking a caring attitude to the overall welfare of our farms and trying to engender a wide bio-diversity of species within the farmland habitat. (more…)

Julian Rose

This article is taken from Resurgence magasine May/June 2010

The green movement needs to revisit its fundamental principles; including (and especially) ‘Small is beautiful’, writes Julian Rose.

In the rush of excitement over both government and corporate moves to back green solutions for tackling climate change, many of the lessons so clearly spelled out by our founding fathers, including Leopold Kohr and E. F. Schumacher, have been all-too-hastily abandoned by those who should have known better. (more…)

Congratulations to Michael Schmidt – the Ontario farmer who’s due in a Newmarket court today for the verdict on charges he violated the provincial Milk Act by selling unpasteurized milk – for standing up to the anti-raw-milk lobbyists. I am very aware of what he and his supporters are up against, having founded the Association for Unpasteurised Milk Producers and Consumers in the United Kingdom back in 1989 to prevent the British government’s proposed ban of unpasteurized milk – and again in 1997. We won our battle on both occasions, maybe because of the “and Consumers” factor and much press support.

I ran a doorstep delivery service of our own Guernsey organic raw milk and cream, and this inspired me to write a leaflet with a tear-off strip briefly proclaiming the positive case for raw milk. The purchasers then signed the statement and sent the slip back to AUMPC. This was reproduced amongst 150 raw milk producers and their customers. We collected 15,000 signatures and delivered them personally to the Minister of Agriculture. (more…)

This book is for all those who recognise a degree of discontent at the current world in which we live. A world which, through our daily lives and actions many of us continue to unwittingly propagate. It is for those awakening to the realisation that things cannot continue as they are and a change is required.

In Changing Course for Life, Julian Rose spells out the truth of our current socio-economic context in a blatant and transparent acknowledgement of the ills of our society. It is easy to hide behind our ignorance of the finer and less savoury details of corporate greed, of modern industrialised agriculture, of the wide ranging effects of our unmitigated obsession with technological advancement. He explores just how and when our economies and societies departed from the objective of servicing our needs for a happy and harmonious state of existence with the natural world, to the point at which we now find ourselves: disconnected. A condition Rose aptly summarises as a state of being ‘subjugated to a sense of impotence by our own inventions’. (more…)

“Changing Course for Life – Local Solutions to Global Problems” Julian Rose

Excerpt:

“It is said that a civilisation that is loosing its seeds and destroying its soil is a dying civilisation: and we are. Today, over eighty percent of mankind’s diet is provided by the seeds of less than a dozen plant species – and most of these are ‘owned’ by just two or three transnational corporations. Ninety eight percent of vegetable varieties have disappeared from the diet of the western world over the past hundred years. Unless this catastrophic loss of biodiversity is reversed, our gene pool – upon which all life depends – will run dry within the span of this century.” (more…)

SAVING THE SEEDS OF HOPE – BANNING THE SEEDS OF DESPAIR

I thank you for the opportunity of speaking on this special occasion.

There could hardly be a more important issue confronting not just farmers, but the whole of society, than the subject of this meeting: how to grow adequate food and produce adequate energy without the aid of rapidly diminishing and highly polluting fossil fuels. And the reason why it is so important is because: this is not a concern for the future – it is the reality at this very moment. The transition from a 250 year old fossil fuel powered society to a genuinely sustainable renewable energy fuelled society is to be achieved in less than 25 years – if we are to avoid an ultimate meltdown of most of what sustains our present planetary ecology. That is not my prognosis but the increasingly broadcast view of the majority of professional climatologists from all around the world. (more…)

Resistance comes in three shades: passive, occasionally active and active.
The corporate and political powers who aim to take a controlling influence over the food chain count on the majority of civil resistance being of a passive ‘dumbed down’ nature. They can tolerate a certain amount of ‘occasionally active’ interference in their master plan, but they do not tolerate genuinely active resistance. So those of us who hammer continuously on genetically modified corporate doors are monitored, harassed and generally marginalised by the prevailing ‘status quo’ and its media poodles.We should have little doubt that the prevailing corporate backed government agenda is financed by the big agribusiness and pharmaceutical corporations, who turn-in annual combined profits in double figure billions and who do, indeed, aim to wrest total control over the human food chain. “Control oil and you control the State. Control food and you control the people” said Richard Nixon’s ex secretary of state Henry Kissinger. (more…)