It’s only natural

City customers give organic farmers and sellers reason to keep growing, writes Carli Ratcliff.

Posted 07 June 2011, by Staff, Sydney Morning Herald, smh.com.au

“Organic food is an imposition of city folk (worried about their colons) on farming folk, telling them how they should farm.” So said A. A. Gill on his recent visit to Sydney. Though far from the most inflammatory statement the British writer made while on our shores, it didn’t earn him any favour with proponents of organic food.

Organic farmer Quentin Bland, of Kurrawong Organics near Bathurst, sells his organic vegetables every Saturday at Eveleigh Farmers’ Market, Darlington, and Sydney Sustainable Markets at Taylor Square. Bland views his city customers quite differently.

”We’ve had great support and a real appreciation for our work from our customers in Sydney,” he says. ”They are the only customers I grow for now.”

Bland, a brassica specialist – broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, brussels sprouts – has diversified his crops in line with the demands of his city customers. ”It means I don’t have to grow for supermarkets,” he says. The farmer has nearly doubled his plantings and output in the past year and works with his son, Alexander.

”We have planted garlic, fennel and herbs,” he says. Bland has been farming for 25 years, certified organic for 12 years.

He believes the attraction of organics is two-fold. ”The feedback from customers is they love the taste,” he says ”They also appreciate that they are in season and produced without chemicals.”

Phil Nelson-Marshall of Marion Plains Pastoral, near Bourke, grows organic lamb, beef and free-range pork and has had a similar experience. ”We have built a large customer base that comes back each week,” he says.

He raises meat just for the growers markets at Eveleigh, Frenchs Forest, Warwick Farm and Newcastle. ”We decided to sell direct to customers because we couldn’t get a good enough price from wholesalers,” he says. Nelson-Marshall is passionate about sustainable agriculture, which led him to organic farming. ”The word organic tends to get overused,” he says. ”For me, ‘sustainable’ is a better term because that is what we are about: looking after the soil and the animals in a way that ensures that there will be food tomorrow and for the next generation.”

Retailer Allison Findlay of Always Organic at Brookvale says many of her customers buy organic foods because they have similar concerns: ”They want to avoid genetically modified ingredients, hormones and chemicals in their food and they have concerns about the environmental impact of intensive farming,” she says.

Fluctuating supply is not the issue it was. ”We get consistently top-quality produce from our farmers,” Findlay says. ”And while some weeks some items may not be available due to weather conditions, our customers understand that is nature. It is how our food supply is meant to flow, in line with the seasons, not the false sense that we can have what we want, when we want it.”

Matthew McLennan of Taste Organic, Crows Nest, says his customers have shifted their expectations, too. ”By definition, organic and biodynamics are all about diversity and biodiversity – working with nature rather than against it,” he says. ”Our customers understand that by buying in season they will find fruit and veg at their best, fresh, abundantly available and therefore less expensive.”

Critics and several studies point to evidence that organically raised vegetables do not contain higher vitamin and mineral contents than conventionally grown.

Nutritionist Rosemary Stanton says that the vitamin level debate should not be the focus when it comes to organics.

”There is as much difference between the nutrients in one [conventional] carrot and another, as there is between an organic and a regular carrot,” she says. ”There are other reasons for choosing organically produced foods – mainly environmental reasons, including soil quality, water conservation, biodiversity and of course, pesticide use.”

Organic orientation

Market stalls

Kurrawong Organics, vegetables Eveleigh;

Sydney Sustainable Markets, Taylor Square.

Champion’s Mountain Organics, fruit and vegetables Eveleigh; Sydney Sustainable Markets, Taylor Square.

Block 11 Organics, fruit and vegetables Eveleigh.

Marion Plains Pastoral, organic beef and lamb, free-range pork Eveleigh; Frenchs Forest; Warwick Farm; Newcastle.

La Tartine, bread Sydney Morning Herald Growers’ Market; Northside Produce Market.

Shops

About Life Rozelle, 8755 1333; Bondi Junction, 9389 7611, aboutlife.com.au.

Alfalfa House Enmore, 9519 3374.

Always Organic Brookvale, 9939 1913.

Arete Whole Foods Caringbah, 9526 8088, aretewholefoods.com.au.

Doctor Earth Bondi Junction, 9389 2160.

Granny Smith Natural Food Market Turramurra, 9988 3787.

Honest to Goodness Artarmon, 9420 3761, goodness.com.au.

Life Organic Newtown, 9565 1156, lifeorganic.com.au.

Taste Organic Crows Nest, 9437 5933, tasteorganic.com.au.

Source: Good Living

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/restaurants-and-bars/its-only-natural-20110604-1flpy.html

Very few have done justice to environment: Jairam Ramesh, Environment Minister

 

Posted 06 June 2011, by Urmi A Goswami, The Economic Times, economicimes.indiatimes.com

Many in the business community see Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh as a daunting risk factor in their projects, while activists say he is not doing enough to tame polluting and profiteering capitalists. In an interview with ET’s Urmi A Goswami, the minister pitches for a pragmatic meeting ground between the two.

Are environmental concerns still seen as inimical to business?

There is friction and both sides are responsible . I think environmentalists do no service to their cause by taking fundamentalist stances. I am not defending corporate India’s track record but for many environmental problems there are technological solutions. There is the obduracy of the environmentalists , creating an atmosphere of distrust and antagonism, while the business community takes environment for granted.

To them, the environmentalist is a headache to be managed or co-opted . Very few have done justice to the environment, that too less out of conviction and more out of compulsion. There is a surplus of advocates, and pragmatists are in short supply. We have to be pragmatic to find the solution between different and competing interest groups. This is not Sophocles’ Antigone, not a choice between good and evil. It is really about a choice between competing “good(s)”- finding a pragmatic solution. There are no template solutions. Each case is sui generis. So, we can’t have consistent solutions, but we should have clarity of solutions.

How to guarantee predictable atmosphere for business while addressing environmental priorities, to prevent ad hocism and discretion?

Putting in new systems in government is back breaking; so many approvals to take from different agencies, ministries, states, Parliament . One should be aware of one’s mortality and maximise efforts in the time one has got. So we push for enhanced transparency in relation to civil society organisations and the general public to ensure compliance. Predictability comes through laws.

It can’t come from precedent, as each case is unique. It also comes from extreme transparency, which is the only antidote for ad hocism and discretion. That is why there is a need to make public the background to every decision. I did that for Maheshwar and Posco , the criticism was that it was too much information. But there is nothing like too much information.

What about continuous monitoring to ensure that business/industry is environment-compliant andconscious?

We don’t want to be policemen; the inspector raj or command and control system doesn’t serve the purpose. We must adopt multiple solutions. The role of government is to set standards and create an environment where people are incentivised. That is why I asked Esther Duflo of MIT to design a market-based system to deal with air pollutants. We have made a small beginning in Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Tamil Nadu and I hope it succeeds.

Of course, the market is not the panacea for all ills. Another option is real-time monitoring. Our forest cover is measured once in two years, we are now moving towards a real time monitoring of forest cover as in Brazil. I have discussed this with Isro. This will allow us to assess afforestation and reforestation claims. Third party auditing, it’s happening in Gujarat, where local engineering colleges are monitoring pollution levels in industrial estates like Vapi and Ankleswar. Financial penalties are laughable. The penalties must increase. I started the system of name and shame. We did it with a leading private company in the steel-mining-power sectors , and a public sector company. The board of the company has to pass a resolution acknowledging the violation and the resolution has to put up on the website.

A big part of the problems are legacy issues, how can that be addressed?

What the Chinese are doing, we are not. They are ruthlessly closing down industry and businesses they find to be non-compliant . But it is not possible for us to do what they are doing. When I say we will close down distilleries and paper mills in Uttar Pradesh, political leaders raise the issue of “rozgar” . But the threat of closure is potent as well. For the first time we have invoked Section 5, and the treat is forcing investment in change. The CEPI exercise ensured an action plan for remediation in industrial clusters. So a credible threat to closure does yield results.

Doesn’t the threat cease to be taken seriously? It becomes a waiting game, you threaten to close and then you allow the project to get through?

That is not correct; a lot of remediation gets done. The issues raised involve more than my ministry. The environment ministry is not the CVC, CBI or CAG. There is a political system. Everyone wants a Tolstoyan viewpoint . No doubt, it is a dysfunctional system but no one can co-opt it. My job is not to merely listen to the connected but to the underdog who don’t normally get heard.

Do you see a change in corporate India’s approach to environment?

There are people in sector who have walked the talk – Hari Bhartia, Rajesh Shah, Jamshed Godrej, Jamshed Irani, Anu Aga, Yogi Deveshwar . The younger generation is becoming more aware. But the numbers are small. Corporate India needs to realise that there is an opportunity for leadership. China and South Korea are looking at green technology to exercise leadership. India was way ahead in solar and wind technologies, coal gasification – three areas of demonstrable excellence. But 26 years later we are where we were. One mistake was confining it to public sector unit; BHEL did tremendous work in the 80s, but the way we managed it, the leadership didn’t flower. With a large private sector, things may be different now.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/interviews/very-few-have-done-justice-to-environment-jairam-ramesh-environment-minister/articleshow/8742094.cms

Future of our children should be guiding philosophy

Our problem is that the vast majority of us have no idea where we are going or why we are here.

Posted 05 June 2011, by Vincent Hanna, Independent.ie, independent.ie

“For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings” — Shakespeare, Sonnet 29

I HAVE long maintained that the only way to deal with blatant insanity and injustice is by way of peaceful, non-violent, non-confrontational, non-co-operation as Gandhi suggested. I reckon that if you have nothing positive or constructive to say, then you should say nothing, and I have held fast to the belief that no one does wrong consciously but that they are simply not all there. I have therefore done nothing, said little and had my beliefs tested to a tremendous degree over the last 14 years.

Seeing as I believe that the worst that could happen in Ireland happened last November, when a man chose to take the lives of his two little girls and then went away and committed suicide — now that we have made more progress in the last 14 days than we have in the last 14 years towards maturity, and what positivity remains as a result needs so desperately to be capitalised upon, I feel compelled to look at our fundamental problems, as individuals, as a nation, as a continent and as a species, their solutions and the potential consequences of the manifestation of those solutions.

First of all then, as individuals — to be or not be is not actually the question — the extent to which one should be is the question. And once we resolve to being, it is the ultimate question, asked throughout the ages but never really answered.

Socrates had to go and die on us and all he left us with was that all that he knew was that he knew nothing. Plato admitted in his Republic that he couldn’t tell us and had to give us his analogy of the cave, which basically puts us all at the back wall of a cave watching shadows of puppets moving to and fro and potentially risking our lives were we to go out and see so much as a blade of grass for real, let alone another human being.

The best Aristotle could come up with was his “Balance” or his Nicomachean Ethics, which were basically the precursor of Bob Dylan’s “How many roads must a man walk down before they call him a man?” but neither he nor Bob gave us so much as a rough estimate or a vague description of the right road.

Jesus Christ couldn’t talk properly. He had to speak in parables. Essentially, all he left us with was that we can do anything that we like — except anything that we like. “Go forth and multiply” but don’t lust. “Keep holy the Sabbath day” but don’t be lazy. He was “the way, the truth and the life” but he couldn’t have been proud of it and we can’t be jealous. The best of all though is that we can’t be angry about this (let’s not talk about greed).

The fact is that there is no such thing as a moral objective or even a purpose for one, and no one, dead or alive, can say otherwise truthfully and it is our courage in the face of this that measures us. It is our ability to be reasonable when there is no reason, to hope when there is no hope, to live when we know that we’re dying and to believe when there is nothing to believe in that measures us.

Our problem is that the vast majority of us have no idea where we are going or why we are here. Our solution is simply to keep on going with faith, hope and a crazy little thing called love, and the potential consequences will be lives lived like Garret FitzGerald’s.

It used to be said that the sun never set on the British Empire. It has set every evening in Ireland since long before the dawn first filled Newgrange with light over 5,000 years ago. Our sovereignty has never been, is not and never will be in question. Indeed, as has been revealed over the last 12 years or so, there have been countless sick, twisted, demented and perverted people, priests and politicians from whose placenta we will spend our lives trying to detach ourselves — but we remain.

Everyone under 35 in this country is worth infinitely more than the billions that we seemingly now owe, together with substantial compensation for being psychologically battered, utterly humiliated, totally misrepresented and falsely accused all of our lives. What we have had to put up with, if it didn’t kill us or make us kill ourselves, has to have made us among the strongest people on earth.

As “a priest of the eternal imagination, transmuting the daily bread of experience into the radiant body of ever living life”, James Joyce wrote, “When the soul of a man is born in this country, there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.” He did, as so many of us do.

The best of the Irish, probably thanks to the worst, have a knowledge and understanding of the human condition that Sigmund Freud admitted he couldn’t comprehend. What he probably saw as mad men fighting with sticks over a small ball and women who were stronger were actually people whose spirits could do more than a body or mind ever could.

Our problems are those most unfortunate people, utterly devoid of essence or who have had the essence beaten out of them. Our solution is you making the best of you, and the result will be an Ireland that the world knows and loves — a place where people are real by virtue of their knowledge of those that are not really with us. Declan Lynch’s brilliant recent Sunday Independent article headlined ‘Paddy has passed a milestone on the long road to adulthood’, I think and hope was an understatement.

As a continent, the Greeks — credit where credit is due — gave us all of western civilisation, as well as little things like democracy and reason generally. However, somewhat contradictorily, western civilisation has also been responsible for two world wars.

If we don’t have a monopoly on the experience of what not to do and the sources of knowledge of what might be wiser at our disposal; if we don’t realise the insignificance of borders beside the significance of people; if we don’t know the consequences, let alone the futility of trying to conquer the world; if we can’t so proudly share our incredible histories and what we have learnt from them and somehow come up with that ever elusive thing between communism and capitalism that we so need to come up with; if we can’t lead the world to something somewhere close to peace and prosperity by example; if we can’t get it together, then we might as well fly a few planes into Sellafield.

The European Union does not so much have a problem as it does the final solution — and it is not money. Economically speaking though, not that it really matters in the big picture, euro bonds would be the way to go initially, together with making love with the USA, Canada, South America and Australia, establishing a seriously “special relationship” with China, Japan, India and Russia and at the very least a decent handshake with the Middle East and maybe all together we could develop the strength to actually look at Africa.

As a species, we are not the brightest. Einstein said two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity but that he wasn’t sure about the universe. He was probably referring to our ability to do things like build nuclear power plants near fault lines or get four million people €200bn in debt, and who could disagree?

Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his Nobel Prize-winning lecture in 1970 almost said it all. He went through categorically the abject futility of the endeavours of politicians, moneymakers, academics and religion-pushers. He actually predicted planes flying into buildings and the human race being divided by its two major religions and eventually destroying itself in the name of God or Allah.

All people generally heard, though, is that he said, “One word of truth outweighs the whole world.” His ultimate conclusion was that the hope of the world rested on the shoulders of the writers and the artists. Those were the people he was addressing, but obviously he meant that it was up to those who can appreciate and understand what it is they are saying and proceed accordingly. He meant that it was up to you.

What I have gathered thus far, again, only for what it is worth, know thyself, to thine own self be true and so it will follow as night follows day, you can’t be false with anyone. Speak your truth quietly and clearly and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant, they too have their story. We’re one but we’re not the same. We get to carry each other and imagine — there is no heaven. As Marianne Williamson wrote and Nelson Mandela quoted, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.” Be powerful beyond measure. You’re hundreds of millions beneath worthless, so what have you got to lose?

What I am saying here is actually a simple plea for something of a Copernican revolution whereby the world is not led by men and money so much as it is by the futures of children and their happiness. I know. It’s absurd.

 

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/future-of-our-children-should-be-guiding-philosophy-2666653.html