Tag Archives: Sustain
A Big Dig in the Growing Gap
Every grass roots movement finds itself pulled in two directions: mucking in vs. wider coordination; hands on vs. strategy. Birmingham’s many community growing projects find themselves getting on with the former, and not so much of the latter.
An emphasis on one direction over the other leaves us with gaps: gaps in communication, gaps in in getting things done, gaps in sustaining a project. For example, at this point, the communication gap means that we don’t even know how many Birmingham groups there are!
Making community food growing part or every town & city – The Big Dig Project plans to expand across England.
Across England, six cities are already participating in the Big Dig Programme: Brighton & Hove, London, Sheffield, Middlesborough, Coventry and Manchester.
The Big Dig is a national project to engage people in community food growing projects across England, and is all about making community food growing a part of every urban landscape.
Urban food growing: Why it matters
Last week I wrote about the pointlessness of Birmingham attempting to be self-sufficient in food. That is not to say that growing (and eating!) food planted and nurtured in the city isn’t worth promoting, let alone doing.
It is. Here are three arguments as to why.
The first is the every-little-counts argument. Clare Devereux of Brighton & Hove reckons their allotments and gardens produce 0.14% of what they need.
What if that could be nudged upwards to, say, 1%? Add in vertical farming and nudge local supplies up a tad more to, say, 2% or even 3%?