Manchester’s FoodDe-Industrialisation

Jules Bagnoli for Ragged University,The Castle, 19th February 2013

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Manchester’s food glut• Northern hemisphere’s single growing season with 8 hour light difference

leads to historic preservation/micro-biological food cultures around smoking, salting, drying, brewing: bread, cheese, butter, yoghurt, wine, beer

• Harnessing micro-organisms (fermentation) leads to chemical, process, bio engineering advances

• NW is UK’s biggest & most concentrated food producing area: Kelloggs, Heinz, Cargills, Goodlife.

• 70% increase in demand in food, 2011-50

• So why do we have so little ‘local’ food? 40% undersupply - 80% self-sufficient to within 50 miles in 1940, 0.25% by 2010

Counting the carbon• 41% of all fossil fuel used is oil - 95%

of transport.

• Production peaked in US (1970/1), world (2008-20)

• Pre-1940 farming used organic animal faeces/guano

• WW2 use of Bosch’s inorganic ‘chemical’ nitrates stockpiled from WW1

• 1 ton fertiliser = 1 ton oil, 7 tons carbon, 130 tons water

• UK diet uses 4.5 litres of oil per day, per person

• Price of oil, fertiliser and food linked (x 4 increase in last decade)

• Food has changed more in past 50 years than previous 10,000

• Loss of farming heritage, land – Chat Moss, Ashton Moss, Failsworth

‘Back to the Future’ of pre-1945 farming?

Food system resilience3 day food stocks: Just-in-time supermarket stocks

Weather shifts: Outdoor farming struggles with global weirding

Adulteration: Horse Meat Scandal, more to come

Species Migration: Portugese sardines relocate

Crop failures: 2012 UK grain harvest

Demineralisation: more trace minerals lost in last 50 years than 5,000 before

Pure water shortages: Great Plains Aquafer

Pesticide run-offs: Algae blooms

Commodity speculation: Corn prices

Biodiversity: Hive collapse, 2 million UK species, soil collapse, nutrient cycle

Drive to scale up food• 37 Tesco stores within 10 miles of Liverpool

• Agriculture scaled up to supply fast-food then retail chains

• 78% reduction in small retailers

• Less diverse food chains

• Less real consumer choice – 38 apple varieties in Salford 1789

• Food is not scalable – factory or cottage industry

• Mountainous barriers to entry stop consumers getting food they need or want to buy – we are sold what’s easiest to make in bulk

• Nano Food Network

• Abundance

• Unicorn Grocery (Moss Brook)

• Kindling Trust (Land Army, Manchester Veg People, Farmstart..)

• Biospheric Foundation (Veg box, MIF)

• Cracking Good Food

• Moss Cider

Manchester’s Food Revolution

Future Farming • Consciousness change needed to merge nature with ‘man-made’

• Development of holistic, non-dualistic systems thinking

• Personal growth and healing movements merging into ideas on food – a wider definition of growth, endorsed by climate change threat

• Grow where 80% of food, 70% of energy is consumed

• Global agricultural land grab – fields disproportionately cheap to rent

• Rethinking ‘green space’ - forest gardens, green roofs, urban agriculture

• Indoor farming – the rise of ‘Ponics’ Aqua, Aero, Hydroponics

• Circular food systems mimicking nutrient exchange – Hebden Bridge ‘closed loop’ industrial estate where one firms outputs become nexts inputs

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Thankyou!

Ragged University

Refarming

Unlike Minds

RSA