Connection with rural areas

A report by BBC News yesterday said that by 2008 more than half of the world's population will live in cities, most of them in developing countries. This presents a huge challenge for rural communities everywhere as we lose people, key skills and also the immediate link with our customers. In the UK, if you live in a rural area you see how your food is produced every day, the tractors going up and down the roads, the seasons coming and going and this affects your food choices. In rural areas there is also more space to grow your own food. All this is lost as more of the population moves to cities and there is a much greater need for food supply systems to work effectively as there is very little immediate alternative.

The UN report, entitled The State of World Population 2007: Unleashing the Potential of Urban Growth, states that every week the number of people living in cities in Africa and Asia increases by approximately one million. This trend is predicted across the world and the rural community will have to continue to try and raise awareness of its value to the whole population by producing food, fuel and amenity, especially as more and more people lose direct contact.

Oil Seed Rape

Well, this part of Herefordshire has seen some terrible storms this last week or so. The village school had to be closed for a day because the roads were impassable. The storms have also made our oil seed rape go flat, it looks like some UFO has bounced across the top of the fields laying it flat in clumps. Time will tell, how it will affect the yield, but when I look back over the picture diary in this blog it is sad to see it as it looks now.

Still when I see the news items about Worcester only fifteen miles away I think we got off lightly!

English Cherries

Feels like all my posts will be about food this morning, but keep an eye out for British Cherries in the shops. They will soon be coming into season and are truly delicious. They are picked by hand to minimise damage and to my mind are one of the best British fruits. In fact a punnet of cherries don't last long in my house. Last year my children even put a sign on the fridge door saying "Dad, keep out of the cherries!" Well at least it's a healthy form of fridge grazing!

Check out the information on how they are grown on the Mansfields link. They are the largest growers of cherries in western Europe.

Go to work on an egg

Lots of discussion this week on whether the "Go to work on an egg" adverts should have been banned. Tremendous publicity for eggs! The campaign has probably received more media time that if it had been accepted and the adverts shown.

Nutrition messages aside and several people in our house have four - five eggs a week either poached, as omelettes, yorkshire pudding with Herefordshire Top-side of Beef (for Father's Day last Sunday except my first set were a disaster because the oven wasn't hot enough. We came back late from the Three Counties Show and I wanted to cook a roast dinner before it was time for getting ready for school the next day and was too impatient!), cakes (which reminds me I have to cook a dose of cakes for the school fete tomorrow afternoon), etc.

As with every poultrydiscussion we always come to the conclusion there must be balance and a vegetable omelette with lettuce picked fresh from the garden with a chilli dressing - can't beat it!!

If you want to see so vintage comedy though do take a look at the website - follow the link.

Arctic spring

Nature published an article yesterday that said that the Arctic spring has moved 14 days earlier in a decade! For someone who loves nature, that is an amazing statistic, but is it a clear sign of global warming?

Its amazing to think around a thousand years ago Eric the Red brought the Vikings to live on Greenland, where they lived happily by and large, until there was a climate reversal and a great cooling three hundred or so years later.

The climate is a fascinating if hugely complicated subject and I find as much conflicting information as I find complimentary on the issues surrounding climate change. Time will tell!

The Human Imprint

After the blogging day a week ago with Anna, I decided to start a second blog called The Human Imprint! I wanted to have a blog that was particularly focused on the global imprint of the human population (see link). If you want to read some of the ideas from my studies and research then please take a look and comment and let me know what you think - discussion is so important for thinking through and challenging ideas and making sure they are robust!

www.thehumanimprint.typepad.com

Nuffield Scholars Blog

After a fantastic training session with Anna Farmery from The Engaging Brand (see link on the right hand side) we have set up the Nuffield Scholars blog (see link). It was a day when we learnt about blogs, posts. widgets, podcasts, wikis and many more new things! It is also great to think that I have moved slightly ahead of my children for a while on the technological front! Not for long I am sure! So if you want to see how the Nuffield Scholars are doing on their travels check out the blog!